Elfling FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) List

Recent Changes as of January 26, 2004 This change revamped the style and updated the list of managers and how to obtain wordlists. List manager corrected in 0.1.

Updating of language in 1.3.

Detailed Table of Contents

Section −1: About language in the Lord of the Rings movie

−1.1 What languages are used in the movie? Sindarin, the everyday spoken language of the Elves, is the only language that is subtitled; it is spoken by Aragorn and Arwen, and it is Legolas’s native tongue. Sindarin and Quenya, the ceremonial language of the Elves, can be heard both spoken and in the soundtrack. Black Speech, the language of Mordor, is whispered by the One Ring. Khuzdul, the language of the Dwarves, can be heard on the soundtrack only. It should be noted that published material on these languages is extremely sketchy, so their use in the movie betokens considerably more pure invention than with either of the Elvish langugaes. (dos) Khuzdul can also be seen written on the walls of the chamber of Mazarbul in a dwarvish mode of runes (Angerthas Moria). The Angerthas are also used to write English in the leaves seen of the Book of Mazarbul; these are based on Tolkien’s own designs. Some runes are also seen in the manuscript of Bilbo’s book. A tengwar mode is used on the pages of Saruman’s book. [I never got a long enough look at these to figure out what they were!] (ds) −1.2 Who wrote the lines for the movie and the soundtrack? Some lines (e.g. "Noro lim, Asfaloth!") come directly from Tolkien’s published writings. Those lines in the movie not directly from Tolkien were translated from English by Elfling participant David Salo. The Quenya lyrics in the Enya song “May it be” were translated by Roma Ryan. Other lyrics in Tolkien’s languages appearing in the soundtrack were translated by David Salo. (dos) −1.3 Who taught the actors to pronounce the languages? The language coaches for the movie were Roisin Carty and Andrew Jack. They taught the actors pronunciations based on written, spoken, and videotaped guidance from (in alphabetical order) David Salo, Tom Shippey, and Bill Welden. Roisin Carty also assisted composer Howard Shore with pronunciation during the recording of the soundtrack. (dos) −1.4 What did X say in Y scene...? Try Ryszard Derdzinski’s site, http://www.elvish.org/gwaith/movie.htm. David Salo is compiling a list of lines he wrote that are used in the movie. Look for it soon. −1.5 Is Elfling a movie-related list? No, it is not. Elfling existed a considerable time before the movies did, and its purpose has not changed. The Elfling list deals with Tolkien’s invented languages. Posts about language use in the movie are welcome. Non-language-related movie posts are not welcome.

Section 0 About Elfling and the Elfling FAQ

0.1 Vital statistics on Elfling Date of inception: September 5, 1998

Posting address: elfling@yahoogroups.com

Subscribe address: elfling-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Unsubscribe address: elfling-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

List managers: David Salo

Moderator email address: elfling-owner@yahoogroups.com

Website: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/elfling/info.html

FAQ site: http://nellardo.com/lang/elf/faq.html

Rules site: http://www.terracom.net/~dorothea/elfling.html (dos) 0.2 Who wrote this FAQ? And what are all those initials after FAQ paragraphs? The founder of Elfling, Dorothea Salo, started a separate mailing list to write the Elfling FAQ. All FAQ writers were members of Elfling at the time the FAQ was written. The present maintainer is Brook Conner; suggestions for additions or changes should be emailed to him. Most sections of the FAQ have initials in parentheses after them to indicate who wrote them. FAQ writers with their initials: Paul Curran (pc), Helge Fauskanger (hkf), B. Philip Jonsson (bpj), Edward Kloczko (ek), David Salo (ds), Dorothea Salo (dos) (also the previous maintainer of the FAQ), Lisa Star (ls), Reto Steffen (rs), Gernot Katzer (gk), Ales Bican (ab), Claude Heyman (ch), Krzysztof Zaraska (kz), Lukas Novak (ln), Per Lindberg (pl). Please note that this FAQ is intended to provide a diversity of opinion wherever opinions enter; it is intended less as an authoritative statement than as a sampling of thought in the field. Signed paragraphs represent the opinion of the indicated author at the time the paragraph in question was authored. Unsigned paragraphs can be freely blamed on the FAQ maintainer. 0.3 What are all these acronyms Elfling uses? JRRT = John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

CJRT = Christopher Tolkien, JRRT’s son

LotR = Lord of the Rings

HoME = History of Middle-Earth LT1: The Book of Lost Tales 1 (1983, ISBN 0-04-823231-5) LT2: The Book of Lost Tales 2 (1984, ISBN 0-04-823338-2) LB: The Lays of Beleriand (1985, ISBN 0-04-440018-7) SM: The Shaping of Middle-earth (1986, ISBN 0-04-440150-7) LR: The Lost Road (1987, ISBN 0-04-440398-4) RS: The Return of the Shadow (1988, ISBN 0-04-440669-X) TI: The Treason of Isengard (1989, ISBN 0-261-10220-6) WR: The War of the Ring (1990, ISBN 0-261-10223-0) SD: Sauron Defeated (1992, ISBN 0-261-10305-9) MR: Morgoth’s Ring (1993, ISBN 0-261-10300-8) WJ: The War of the Jewels (1994, ISBN 0-395-71041-3) PM: The Peoples of Middle-earth (1996, ISBN 0-216-10337-7)

Q. = Quenya

S. = Sindarin

N. = Noldorin

K. or Kh. = Khuzdul (Dwarvish)

RGEO: The Road Goes Ever On (Second Edition 1978, ISBN 0-04-784011-0)

(Second Edition 1978, ISBN 0-04-784011-0) UT: Unfinished Tales (1980, ISBN 0-04-823208-4)

(1980, ISBN 0-04-823208-4) Letters: The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981, ISBN 0-04-440664-9)

(1981, ISBN 0-04-440664-9) MC: The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (1983, ISBN 0-04-809019-0)

(1983, ISBN 0-04-809019-0) MET: Middle-Earth Time

Silm: Silmarillion

SA: Silmarillion Appendix

FS: Firiel’s Song

CO: Cirion’s Oath

Etym: Etymologies

QL: Qenya Lexicon

GL: Gnomish Lexicon

VT: Vinyar Tengwar

Arct: Arctic Sentence (mod, ab, hkf by permission; amazon links by nellardo) 0.4 Why does Elfling frown on asking for translations from English? We don’t mind people who ask for translations so that they can better understand the languages. One-time, off-the-cuff requests do tend to get under our collective skin. The best way I can explain this is via analogy. If you are a lawyer, for example, are you constantly asked for free legal advice? If you work with computers, do people expect you to be always available to troubleshoot their home PCs, or design their personal web pages? Chances are that a lot of people who ask you for such services are not interested in learning how to solve their problems themselves, or in finding a way to return your kindness. They may not understand or appreciate the amount of work and study that goes into what you do, or how much time they are taking from you. So with Elfling. Our members who are capable of answering translation questions have put in a lot of time on the languages; even more time than you might think, since materials are so scarce and disorganized. It is not pleasing to have someone with little real interest in the languages waltz in, demand an immediate translation into “Elvish” (some questioners do not even understand that there is more than one Elvish language!), and vanish into the ether as soon as their question is answered. Too many one-time translation questions disrupt the flow of the mailing list, also. I consider it a great testament to the real kindness of people on Elfling that most such questions are answered quickly and well. If you want a translation, what is the polite way to proceed? Do a little work on your own. Go to the Etymologies, or to Ardalambion, and at least try to find the words you want. If you can’t find the words, or need help fitting them together once you’ve found them, THEN come ask on Elfling, and welcome! You might even discover an interest in the languages you didn’t know you had—and then you can derive real benefit from Elfling, and become a valued contributor as well. (dos) 0.5 How should I write Elvish words or phrases in my mail so that other Elflingers can read it? Elvish words or phrases occuring in English text are often enclosed in '_' signs, _like this_. To ensure that all non-English letters are represented correctly, try to use ISO-8859-1 or Western Europe encoding. People who for whatever reason cannot use this encoding write with English letters only, doubling long vowels and skipping diaereses (or using a colon after the letter with the diaeresis). (kz, ln)

Section 1 How do I learn to speak, read, or write Elvish?

1.1 What websites are out there? Should any be avoided? Many people start with Helge Fauskanger’s Ardalambion website (http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf). This site exists in Spanish translation (http://members.es.tripod.de/barbol/ardalamb/ardalamb.html) and Polish translation (http://www.lodz.tpsa.pl/bez/Tolkien/Arda/index.html) as well, and essays from it have been translated into other languages. (dos) Mellonath Daeron has a FAQ: http://www.forodrim.org/daeron/faq.html. Lisa Star has a list of sources of information on and off the net: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/9902/langinfo.htm 1.2 Are there any training courses or tutorials out there? Helge Fauskanger is writing a series of tutorials on Quenya; download them from their place on Ardalambion. The Curso quenya list distributes Helge Fauskanger’s course translated into Portuguese. The best print publication available is Nancy Martsch’s Basic Quenya, but it contains a number of major inaccuracies. Beware also of Ruth Noel’s book The Languages of Middle-Earth, which is both out-of-date and inaccurate. (dos) I believe that several members of the Lambenor list are working on pedagogical materials (dialogues, mostly). If you read Spanish, you may want to subscribe to the Lambenor list and see what’s up with that. (dos) 1.3 Are there any reliable dictionaries/wordlists available? For Sindarin, try Didier Willis’s, at http://www.geocities.com/almacq.geo/sindar/, or Ryszard Derdzinski’s at http://www.elvish.org/gwaith/language.htm. (pl) Also try Edward Kloczko’s Dictionnaire des langues elfiques. Words are translated into English as well as French. Helge Fauskanger’s Ardalambion website (http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf) contains several wordlists, as well as various guides to the Etymologies. (dos) From a post by Helge Fauskanger to Elfling: While a few would-be “dictionaries” are floating around the net (in nearly all cases without the permission of the compiler), they are usually amateurish, inaccurate, outdated, not very useful and generally unimpressive in appearance. On my web-site (http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf) a number of hopefully accurate wordlists can be found, covering all the “minor” languages, such as Valarin, Khuzdul ("Dwarven” if you like) and Adunaic. Many of these lists now include etymological discussions of the individual words (Telerin, Nandorin, Old Sindarin, Doriathrin). For Quenya there is what I call a “Corpus Dictionary” that includes the words found in our samples of actual Quenya (not early “Qenya”) text, plus stray words that in the sources are scattered throughout some twenty books and other publications. For the two main vocabulary sources, the Etymologies in the HoME book “The Lost Road” and the early Qenya Lexicon published in Parma Eldalamberon #12, I offer complete two-way indices. Taken together, the Corpus Dictionary and the two indices cover very nearly all the Q(u)enya vocabulary we have. You would need “The Lost Road” and PE #12 to use the indices, of course. Helge Fauskanger has also compiled more comprehensive Quenya dictionaries (English-Quenya and Quenya-English) that include most of the published vocabulary of LotR-compatible Quenya (though not all of the early, often conflicting “Qenya” material; for the latter see Parma Eldalamberon #12). 1.4 Are there any reliable grammars available? Again, since much of the Elvish corpus has not been published, writing a grammar is difficult to impossible. The grammars that exist for Quenya and Sindarin were written a long time ago and are decidedly unreliable. (dos) 1.5 Are there any reliable pronunciation guides available? Julian Bradfield has .wav files to assist with the pronunciation of Tolkien’s languages on the TolkLang website: http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/misc/local/TolkLang/pronlo/pronguide.html. 1.6 What is useful to the study of Tolkien’s languages in the HoME books? What about in the Letters of JRRT? From a linguistic point of view, the most important books in HoME are The Lost Road and The War of the Jewels. LR is absolutely indispensable if you want to study Tolkien’s languages seriously, for this book reproduces the all-important Etymologies, our prime source of Elvish vocabulary. The War of the Jewels contains the essay Quendi and Eldar, that deals with the Elvish names of various incarnates and incidentally gives away much information about the languages in question. These two books should: indeed must: be in the library of any serious student of Elvish. What other books you should purchase depends on your interests. If you want to study Adunaic (Numenorean) the book to get is Sauron Defeated. Here is found an extensive and detailed, though never completed account of this language. SD also includes quite a few Tengwar inscriptions, both in English, Sindarin and Old English. The longest Sindarin text that has ever been published, The King’s Letter, is also found in SD. If you are interested in Westron, The Peoples of Middle-earth gives many more “original” forms of the names Anglicized by Tolkien than the ones mentioned in the appendices to LotR. If you want to study the earliest forms of the languages that finally became Quenya and Sindarin (sc. “Qenya” and “Gnomish”), you should get the two volumes of The Book of Lost Tales, where Christopher Tolkien quotes many words and forms from the very first Elvish wordlists made by his father, dating back to about 1915. Outside HoME, the most interesting books are The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, The Road Goes Ever On and The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. MC contains Tolkien’s essay A Secret Vice, with Tolkien’s thoughts and theories about language-making, plus one “Gnomish” and some early “Qenya” poems - one of them with a translation into mature Quenya, providing us with a unique opportunity to compare the two versions directly. The Road Goes Ever On contains Tengwar calligraphy of the poems Namarie and A Elbereth Gilthoniel as well as interlinear translations of them, followed by Tolkien’s notes. Much valuable information about the Elvish languages is also found scattered around in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien; see for instance letters # 211, 297 and 347. (hkf, by permission) The reading of Etymologies (The Lost Road, HoME 4) and LotR Appendices E and F is a must, before you go reading Ardalambion. (ek) I wholly do not agree with Edward Kloczko’s statement that reading Etym and Appendixes E and F is a must, before reading Ardalambion. Etym can’t be read; it can be studied, but not read. Someone knowing very little about Tolkien’s invented languages will find Etym a horrible and confusing manuscript. Appendixes E and F are not very necessary. Appendix E contains a pronunciation guide; it’s good when you want to pronounce, but you can read (when you’re reading silently, you don’t pronounce and don’t recognize words by sounds, but by shape). Then this appendix contains information about Tengwar and Cirth— Ardalambion doesn’t deal with this anyhow. Appendix F contains things that are in fact mentioned in Ardalambion in particular articles. But I don’t say that Appendixes could not be read, it’s good to read them and I think almost every reader of LotR has read them. But it’s not a must. (ab) While Tolkien’s pubs are the source of all info, they are not really useful for learning Elvish unless you have a great deal of time, and a substantial knowledge of linguistics. They are also very expensive to pile up if you are just interested in a few words. (ls) 1.7 What useful print materials are available aside from what JRRT and CJRT wrote? Lisa Star’s journal Tyalië Tyelelliéva contains articles of interest to scholars of Tolkien’s languages, as well as interesting notes on other Tolkien-related topics. The journal’s website is http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/9902/ . Members of the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship publish a number of journals, although in the past several years publication has been at best sporadic. These journals include Parma Eldalamberon (website http://www.eldalamberon.com/p arma9.html) and Vinyar Tengwar (website http://www.elvish.org/VT/). The journal Quettar, published by TolkLang owner Julian Bradfield, appears to be on semi-permanent hiatus. Anders Stenstrom publishes Arda on an irregular basis. Estel is the journal of the Spanish group Sociedad Tolkien Espanola. It is available only to members of the group; unfortunately, it is only possible to join the STE if you live in Spain. However, some Estel articles are available via the STE’s website: http://www.ctv.es/USERS/alcazar/sociedad.html . (dos) 1.8 Where can I get fonts for Tolkien’s alphabets? How can I learn to write them? Beginners learing the Tengwar can have a look at Per Lindberg’s guides: http://www.forodrim.org/daeron/md_teng_primers.html. There's a very good font at Amanye Tenceli, which also contains lots of reliable info about the Tengwar: http://hem.passagen.se/mansb/at/. (pl) Daniel Smith has created tengwar fonts: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/4948/tengwar.htm . He also has an excellent listing of other pages with information on tengwar: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/4948/tenghall.htm". The Yamada website contains a list of Tolkien fonts: http://babel.uoregon.edu/yamada/fonts/tolkien.html. (dos) There are two more fonts worth discussing, designed by Julian Bradfield and Paul Urban, available as METAFONT sources to be used with the typesetting system TeX. Iwan A Derzhanski wrote a set of efficient macros (called TengTeX) to facilitate Eldarin typesetting—in fact, these macros do nearly all of the work for you. (gk) You can see Julian’s font at http://www-ang.kfunigraz.ac.at/~katzer/tengwar.html This is a small website (in German) dealing with the rules of Eldarin typography; it shows numerous samples of Quenya and Sindarin texts. (gk) Didier Willis has converted some already-available fonts into PostScript Type 1 and TeX fonts. These can be found at http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Cavern/9443/fonts/. From Lisa Star’s site: An anonymous TTF Certh font can be found on Chris O’Prey’s home page (not much explanation). Free. http://www.middle-earth.demon.co.uk/tolkien.htm. This is the angrthas.zip font. (Chris O’Prey’s home page also has beginning wordlists for some of the other languages. He hasn’t gotten very far with it, but it is fun anyway. Also, it has the only Adunaic wordlist I have seen available.) A TTF Certh font by Morton Bek, called cirth.zip. There’s not much explanation for it but its free. http://home3.inet.tele.dk/bek/tolkien/tolk.htm (ls, by permission) General information on tengwar can be found at http://stud2.tuwien.ac.at/~e9026179/Tolkien/Tengwar/Index.html. 1.9 How do I learn to speak, read, or write the other invented languages, like Orkish, Khuzdul/Dwarvish, Adunaic, or Westron/Common? None of these languages is as well-developed as Quenya or Sindarin. With the materials we currently have, they are not usable as complete languages. The Ardalambion website will get you about as far as it is possible to go. (dos) 1.10 Is there a bibliography of Tolkien-language resources (aside from Tolkien’s own works) available? At present, there is none that the FAQ maintainer knows about, aside from part of this FAQ. 1.11 How much did Tolkien write in (and about) his invented languages? Which books and other publications can I find this in? What has not yet been published, and why? The short answer to this is that Tolkien wrote a fair amount, but only a fraction of it has been published. For a list of books to find Tolkien's own writings in, see the list of list of acronyms. If the book has an acronym listed in this FAQ, then it almost certainly has some amount of material on Tolkien's languages. As for what hasn't been published and why, that's largely a matter of what Tolkien's estate decides to do. There are many stories about why various things have not been published, stories that strike this FAQ maintainer as political apocrypha (i.e., largely unsubstantiated). If parties to the decisions on what should be published wish to add to this, feel free to contact the FAQ Maintainer directly. 1.12 Why is Nancy Martsch’s book Basic Quenya not completely reliable? From a post to Elfling by Helge Fauskanger: Martsch thinks the present tense is simply formed by adding the ending -a. She didn’t realize that in the case of “basic” verbal stems, you must also lengthen the vowel. So having isolated the stem sil- “shine” from the future tense siluvar, she would use sila as the present tense. It should be síla (síla). The explanation of how the past tense is formed is very summary and strangely phrased. Martsch makes it sound as if past tense formation is a rather obscure feature of Quenya grammar. True, there are some uncertain points, but let us not exaggerate. The traditional misinterpretation of the endings for inclusive and exclusive “we” made it into her book. Not really her fault; she relied on An Introduction to Elvish, where some garbled information from Dick Plotz is presented. The endings should go like this: exclusive “we” is -mme, inclusive “we” is -lme, inclusive dual “we", sc. “you (sg.) and I", is either *-lwe or *-lve, probably the former. What the distinction between inclusive and exclusive “we” really consists of, Martsch explained in a rather confused way. The point is simply this: Is/are the one(s) you are addressing included when you use the word “we"? If so, you should use inclusive “we". Or do you refer to a “we” that does NOT include the one(s) you are talking to? In other words, are you talking about a group you yourself belong to, whereas the one(s) you are addressing do(es) not? Then you should use exclusive “we". Concerning the partitive plural ending -li, Martsch presents the traditional explanation that this plural implies “many", whereas the normal plural (in -i or -r) only implies “several". Hence eldar = “elves", but eldali = “many elves". I think, however, that this is over-simplified. The function of the plural in -li is not fully understood, but it can’t always imply “many". Martsch says nothing about the aorist tense of the verb. She assumes that declarative sentences can be turned into questions without employing any special particle or question-marker; she does little more than to add a query at the end of the sentence. Moreover, Martsch’ spelling is somewhat inconsistent, because she doesn’t dare to regularize the differing spellings found in Tolkien’s material. So we have C/K and Q/QU coexisting. What she says about the noun cases is, as far as I remember, quite OK. 1.13 What would my name be in Elvish? The first place to check is Now We Have All Got Elvish Names, by Helge Fauskanger. More recently, there is Quenya Lapseparma, the Quenya Babybook, which took inspiration from Helge's work and numerous baby name books, then ran with it.

Section 2 Where do I go if…

2.1 … I’m interested in invented languages in general, not just Tolkien? The CONLANG mailing list (http://groups.yahoo.com/list/conlang) deals with constructed languages. Other useful sites include Mark Rosenfelder’s Language Construction Kit, at http://www.zompist.com/kit.html, and the Langmaker site (http://www.langmaker.com/index.htm ). There is a Constructed Languages Webring at http://www.ifi.ntnu.no/~hannemo/sc/index.html, with links to many more sites. (bpj, mod) 2.2 … if I’m interested in Tolkien, but not specifically his languages? Try the two Tolkien-related Usenet newsgroups: alt.fan.tolkien and rec.arts.books.tolkien. Also, there is a mailing list devoted to Tolkien called TOLKIEN-L. (dos) 2.3 … I would prefer to converse in another language than English? If you are worried about your English writing proficiency, be aware that you will not be flamed on Elfling over it; such flames are specifically forbidden. Also, the Elfling moderator maintains a Translators’ List of volunteers who can translate posts to Elfling out of several different languages into English. So non-native proficiency in writing English need not be a barrier to Elfling participation for many, many people. To post in another language and have your post translated, simply send your post to the list; the moderator will do her best to find a translator for you. There are mailing-list and Usenet alternatives to Elfling, however: Spanish: Try the Lambenor mailing list (http://groups.yahoo.com/messages/lambenor), run by Josu Gomez.

French: Try the French-language Tolkien newsgroups. Relevant websites not in English include: Edward Kloczko’s La Fee site (http://www.multimania.com/lafee/).

Didier Willis’s articles, at http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Cavern/9443/tolkrefs.html.

Gernot Katzer’s page in German about the tengwar at http://www-ang.kfunigraz.ac.at/~katzer/tengwar.html.

See also section 1.7 of this FAQ for translations of the Ardalambion website. (dos) 2.4 … I want to write in Quenya and Sindarin and have other people understand me? For communicating in Quenya, try the Quenya mailing list. You are asked to post to this list primarily in Quenya, using English only for translation (as in “Here's what I meant to say. Did I get it right?”). Elfling is a good choice also; members have posted a great deal of poetry in Quenya and Sindarin, and Didier Willis composed and posted a Quenya murder mystery. Lisa Star, editor of Tyalië Tyelelliéva, hosts an Elvish Poetry Prize, awarded every other year. Read more about it at the TyTy website: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/9902/ (dos)

Section 3 What about MERP/ICE? Is that from Tolkien?

Iron Crown Enterprises and the Middle-Earth Role-Playing System have moved a long distance beyond Tolkien in their efforts to create a playable universe. So, too, with Tolkien’s languages. Most of the words or names you will find in MERP have been invented, more or less felicitously. As a rule, it is not safe to assume that a word or name in MERP is attested in Tolkien. Often, particularly in the first edition, it is not even safe to assume that the word or name is composed of attested roots or is in accordance with known phonological and grammatical rules of the languages. For the second edition, MERP editor Chris Seeman made a concerted effort to improve linguistic aspects of the books. Those who have worked on improving words, phrases, and lettering have included (in alphabetical order) David Salo, Arden Smith, and Patrick Wynne. The Snow-Elvish dialect Lossidilrin (The Northern Waste) and the Silvan tongue are inventions of David Salo. (dos)

Section 4 What do I need to know about linguistics before I try to learn Tolkien’s languages?

4.1 What are some good resources in beginning linguistics? I have a fondness for the well-known textbook An Introduction to Language by Victoria Fromkin and Robert Rodman. I also like April MS McMahon’s Understanding Language Change for an introduction to historical linguistics. (dos) I have a suggestion for a book I found particularly helpful. The book in question is The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language, Second Edition, by David Crystal. It covers a wide variety of subjects from noun cases, language statistics, articulation to even language dysfunctions and acquisition. (ch) 4.2 What are some good resources in Indo-European historical linguistics? From a post to Elfling by Candon Clannach: Try Comparative Indo-European Linguistics: An Introduction by Robert S.P. Beekes. It’s very good; it was originally published in Dutch. Also, An Introduction to the Indo-European Languages by Philip Baldi. It’s good, but I don’t like it as well as the first. In addition: A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages by Carl Darling Buck is fairly useful, but it is a bit dated, and he lists some Celtic words (specifically Welsh) as PIE cognates, when in fact they are Latin borrowings. From a post to Elfling by Rich Alderson: The best book currently available is Andrew Sihler, New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin (ISBN: 0195083458), followed closely by Oswald Szemerényi, Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics (ISBN: 0198240155). Stay away from Beekes--too idiosyncratic for a beginner, even though it’s touted as an introductory text. 4.3 What do all the asterisks before word forms or sentences mean? Linguists use asterisks for several reasons, which can be rather confusing. An asterisk before a word form usually means that the word is reconstructed, which means that the word is not preserved anywhere but can be intelligently guessed at by looking at similar words in various stages of the language in question or at similar words in related languages. An asterisk before a sentence, however, usually means that the sentence is ungrammatical, that there is something so wrong with it that a native speaker of the language would not accept it as a possible sentence. Unfortunately, the two usages sometimes become conflated, so that an asterisk before a word may denote an unacceptable word formation. To get around this problem, some people prefer to use one asterisk before a word to denote reconstruction, and two asterisks to denote unacceptability. (mod, thanks to Ales Bican for bringing up the question)

Section 5 How do the languages work?