Questions About the Exercises

[findegil]

[Huanarmo]

Thanks, Findegil.

I had not intended to stray into the territory of special mutations such as nasalized stops. In fact I know of that form only from a helpful extra table that Lúthien and Eryniel shared with me: 'Nazalized stops by archaic consonant groups'. Sure enough, it shows mb- words leniting to 'm…', not 'v…'.

For the purpose of this introductory exercise I will amend that example to a more straightforward 'b' word that lenites to 'v…'.

Meneg hennaid,

[findegil]

[Huanarmo]

Oops, thanks again, Findegil.

The third time pays for all, as the saying goes. Barad it is!

I really must familiarise myself more with the Etymologies.

Meneg hennaid,

[Eryniel]

You weren't the only one who read over the special cases, Huanarmo...

[Huanarmo]

Never mind, it is all worth another linnod:

I ben vaen nartha galad; boe ú-vaecheneb vellyn dîn!

~ 'The clever one spreads light; the dull-witted needs his friends!'

Aur vae,

[findegil]

[Eryniel]

[findegil]

Many thanks, Eryniel, for providing this clarification. It thoroughly answers my question about the reconstructed l-forms and also explains another puzzling thing in Pedin Edhellen: the use of le as a plural pronoun.

However, I am generally reluctant to accept a solution that disregards fully compatible data. If Tolkien really ever thought that -l- should be the general marker for all the courteous 2nd person forms in Sindarin, it has left remarkably few traces in the sources. On the contrary, he consistently defined the Sindarin le as a singular pronoun only*. Pure Sindarin had de, dhe as the courteous pronoun with the same form for singular and plural. But in Quenya singular and plural differed, and as the Noldor wanted to introduce this distinction in Sindarin too, they borrowed le from Quenya to serve as the courteous singular. No change was made to the plural; it continued to be d(h)e in Quenya-influenced Sindarin as well as in pure Sindarin.Thus the connexion of -d(h)- with the 2nd person was retained, and consequently I can't see any logical need to exchange the attested -dh- for a hypothetical -l-.
So: "Kann man schon machen wenn man will" -- ich wage froh den kühnen Lauf .

[Eryniel]

As stated before I do not feel qualified to judge how to proceed here. Maybe we should just vote on wheather we want to leave Pedin Edhellen or follow it?
I just do not know....