TheLhammas (/ˈɬɑ.mɑs/;Noldorin for 'Account of Tongues') is a work of fictionalsociolinguistics, written byJ. R. R. Tolkien in 1937, and published in the 1987The Lost Road and Other Writings, volume five ofThe History of Middle-earth series.
Tolkien, aphilologist, became fascinated byconstructed languages, and invented stories to provide his languages with a suitable world,Middle-earth. This resulted inThe Lord of the Rings andThe Silmarillion. He peopled Middle-earth withElves and other races, and in theLhammas presented the theory that allMiddle-earth's languages had a shared origin. In the document, he diagrammed the resulting "Tree of Tongues" and described the fictional history of the evolution of some 30Elvish languages.
Scholars have noted the realism of Tolkien's family of Elvish languages, analogous to theIndo-European family, as well as his changing views of their linguistic history, which he shifted radically soon after creating theLhammas. The result was that the Noldorin language described in the document and in the contemporaneousThe Etymologies, soon became theSindarin found inThe Lord of the Rings, while the new Noldorin became just a dialect ofQuenya; Tolkien redrew his "Tree of Tongues" accordingly.
From his schooldays,J. R. R. Tolkien was in his biographerJohn Garth's words "effusive about philology"; his schoolfriend Rob Gilson called him "quite a great authority onetymology".[1] Tolkien was a professionalphilologist, a scholar ofcomparative andhistorical linguistics. He was especially familiar withOld English and related languages. He remarked to the poet andThe New York Times book reviewerHarvey Breit that "I am a philologist and all my work is philological"; he explained to his American publisherHoughton Mifflin that this was meant to imply that his work was:[2]
all of a piece, andfundamentally linguistic in inspiration. ... The invention of languages is the foundation. The 'stories' were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows.[2]
The Tolkien scholarVerlyn Flieger writes that[3]
it is important to remember that all of Tolkien's studies, the focus of his profession, was a concentration on the importance of the word. His profession as philologist and his vocation as writer of fantasy/theology overlapped and mutually supported one another".[3]
In other words, Flieger writes, Tolkien "did not keep his knowledge in compartments; his scholarly expertise informs his creative work."[3] This expertise was founded, in her view, on the belief that one knows a text only by "properly understanding [its] words, their literal meaning and their historical development."[3]
Tolkien is best known as the author of thehigh fantasy worksThe Hobbit andThe Lord of the Rings, both set inMiddle-earth.[4] Hecreated a family of invented languages forElves, carefully designing the differences between them to reflect their distance from their imaginary common origin. He stated that his languages led him to create theinvented mythology ofThe Silmarillion, to provide a world in which his languages could have existed. In that world, thesplintering of the Elvish peoples mirrored the fragmentation of their languages.[5][6]
TheLhammas was written in 1937. It exists in three versions. The two long versions, A and B, are closely similar, soChristopher Tolkien published B inThe Lost Road and Other Writings, annotating it with A's minor variations on the text. The third, latest, and much the shortest version is theLammasethen.[7][8]
TheLhammas as published presents the theory that all thelanguages of Middle-earth descend fromValarin, the language of the angelic beings or Valar, and were divided into three branches:[8]
The Elves developed the language they were taught into the language of the Laiquendi ('Green Elves') and Eldarin, the shared language of theEldar. This in turn gave rise to the languages of thethree divisions of the Eldar, Lindarin, Noldorin, and Telerin. What Tolkien called "Elf-Latin",Qenya, the classical and ancient language of the Eldar, derived from Lindarin with influence from Noldorin.[8]
TheÓsanwe-kenta, orEnquiry into the Communication of Thought, was written as a typescript of eight pages, probably in 1960, and was first published inVinyar Tengwar (vol. 39) in 1998. Within its fictional context,a frame story, the text is presented as a summary by an unnamed editor of the last chapter of theLhammas. The subject-matter is "direct thought-transmission" (telepathy), orsanwe-latya ("thought-opening") inQuenya. The frame story character Pengolodh included it as last chapter to the Lhammas because of the implications of spoken language on thought-transmission, and since the Incarnates (Elves and Men) use a spoken language, telepathy can become more difficult with time.[10]
Tolkienlater revised the internal history of the Elvish languages, stating that the Elves were capable of constructing their own languages, but did not update theLhammas to be coherent with this. The document as it stands inThe Lost Road and Other Writings can be thus seen as aninterpolated manuscript, badly translated by Men in theFourth Age or even later: "For many thousands of years have passed since the fall ofGondolin."[8] InTolkien's frame story, no autograph manuscripts of theLhammas of Pengolodh remained; the three surviving manuscripts came from the original manuscript through an unknown number of intermediate copies.[8] A tradition ofphilological study of Elvish languages exists within the fiction; Tolkien mentions that "The older stages of Quenya were, and doubtless still are, known to the loremasters of the Eldar. It appears from these notices that besides certain ancient songs and compilations of lore that were orally preserved, there existed also some books and many ancient inscriptions."[11]
| Time | Events |
|---|---|
| First Age | Elves inBeleriand;Fall of Gondolin; Beleriand destroyed TheElf Pengolodh writes theLhammas inSindarin |
| Second Age | (Númenor drowned) |
| Third Age | (The War of the Ring) |
| Fourth Age | Men find and translate the manuscript, badly, intoWestron |
| Fifth Age | ——— |
| Sixth/Seventh Age | Tolkien "translates" the 4th Age manuscript into English |
TheLhammas and related writings like "The Etymologies" illustrate Tolkien's conception of thelanguages of Middle-earth as alanguage family analogous toIndo-European, with diverging branches and sub-branches – though for the immortal Elves theproto-language is remembered rather thanreconstructed. This "concept of increasing separation" was also employed for theSundering of the Elves in Tolkien's legendarium.[14][13]TheLhammas indicates on Tolkien's diagrams of the "Tree of Tongues" that there were at various times some thirty Elvish languages and dialects.[8][15]
After he had written the contemporaneousLhammas andThe Etymologies (also published inThe Lost Road and Other Writings), Tolkien decided to make Sindarin the major language of the Elves in exile inBeleriand. As such, it largely replaced Noldorin; eventually Tolkien settled on the explanation that after theNoldor returned to Beleriand fromValinor, they adopted the language used by theSindar ('Grey Elves') already settled there.[16] TheLhammas thus represents a stage in Tolkien's development of his Elvish languages (and of theSilmarillion legendarium), documented also inThe Etymologies and an essay, "The Feanorian Alphabet".[17][9]
Bill Welden, writing inArda Philology, comments that "the High-elven tongue of the Noldor", mentioned by the Tolkien figureFaramir in a draft ofThe Lord of the Rings,[18][9] sounds, and looks from the "Tree of Tongues" in theLhammas, as if it must beQuenya "as we would expect". But, Welden writes, it's actually "almost exactly" Sindarin, which Tolkien derived from Welsh. Further, the version ofThe Lord of the Rings that he submitted tohis publisher relied on "pretty much" the same conception of the Elvish language family, with Noldorin instead of Sindarin as the language ofGondor. Tolkien tried several schemes to make the change to Sindarin work in terms of rates of linguistic change. Because the Noldor's use of Sindarin was rather sudden, he settled on a radically new scheme: when theNoldor arrived back in Middle-earth fromValinor, they adopted the native language ofBeleriand where they settled. The Elves of Beleriand were Sindar,Silvan Elves who had never gone to Valinor. The Noldor had been speaking Noldorin, a dialect of the ancient language of Quenya, and it had changed little, unlike Sindarin. TheLhammas andThe Etymologies had been describing Sindarin (but calling it Noldorin). Tolkien hastened to redraw the "Tree of Tongues", in a version recorded inParma Eldalamberon 18, to accommodate this restructuring.[9]