Gender Neutral Sindarin Dictionary

fallintolife:

researchjunkdrawer:

Being a queer Tolkien fan makes for an interesting time of things, and few places in the legendarium make that as evident as his Elvish languages. Not only is there no word for “sibling” in Sindarin (the most common elven language of the Third Age) while there are a lot of words for “sister” and “brother”, but even words like “bread-giver” and “eavesdropper” are gendered. Binary gendered, of course–this is Tolkien we’re talking about.

So what’s an agender fan to do? Make their own mini-dictionary of gender neutral terminology, of course!

Where do these words come from, anyway?

Many of the words in the dictionary are from the Sindarin dictionary available at Sindarin Lessons (linked in the document) or Eldamo.org. The remainder, for the most part, were created by me based on existing rules of the Sindarin language.

Why Sindarin?

It’s the only one of Tolkien languages I’ve studied in depth so far. :D;; When I have more familiarity with Quenya, I’ll do one for that, too. But it’s also the most useful elven language to know for the period in which The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings takes place, so there’s that, as well.

There are some words in the dictionary that you haven’t translated. What are “Vanyar” and “Teleri”?

Tolkien divided his elves into various clans, whose opinions of each other ranged from indifference to pure loathing. The Vanyar and the Teleri are two of those clans. This sort of detail doesn’t come up so much in his most popular works, but it’s very important in The Silmarillion, for example. If anyone would like to learn more about these groups, feel free to send me a message and I will talk about them way more than anyone really is interested in hearing.

Any other questions? Go right ahead and contact me and I will get back to you as soon as anxiety and executive dysfunction allow.

@deadcatwithaflamethrower