Notice to subscribers

I am currently applying a zero-tolerance policy to returned messages. If your copy of a TolkLang message comes back saying you don't exist, your subscription will be immediately cancelled. If a message comes back saying your mailbox is full, or similar, your subscription will be immediately suspended. If you aren't getting messages, use the mail server status command to check your subscription. Alternatively, here is a list of suspended accounts as of last night.

The Tolkien Language List

Welcome to the home page of the Tolkien Language List, otherwise known as TolkLang.

What is TolkLang? It is a mailing list whose purpose is discussions of the linguistic aspects of J.R.R. Tolkien's works. This covers everything from Elvish vocabulary and grammar to his use of Old English. The list is (lightly) moderated. TolkLang may be received normally, or as a weekly digest. To subscribe, send a message containing the line (in Subject OR message-body)
subscribe
or, for the digest version,
subscribe digest
to tolklang-server (at) quettar.org

Miscellaneous useful things

Here are some of the items in the archive:

The information sent out to new subscribers to the TolkLang list.
A list of books by Tolkien.
Information on Quettar, the bulletin of the linguistic group of the Tolkien Society. There is also an index of Quettar provided by Anthony Appleyard.
Some fonts for the tengwar and cirth, designed with Metafont for use with TeX (and a pointer to Truetype fonts).
A page of PostScript (64 Kbytes) describing the numerals used with the tengwar.
An experimental pronunciation guide to the Elvish languages.

TolkLang messages

The individual messages sent out on TolkLang are not currently formatted in a manner suitable for Web browsing, but you can find them here. Note: in order to prevent spammers harvesting the messages, they are protected by password authentication. The username is tolk, and the password is lang.

You can also find previous messages packed into gzipped tar files, one file per volume, in the directory Packed.

You can also search the message archive. (If you dislike frames, then here is a frameless search page.)

If you'd like to get an idea of what we do, you can look at the last issue of the weekly digest.

The Elfling and Lambengolmor mirrors

Elfling and Lambengolmor are other lists on Tolkienian linguistics. This site holds mirrors of the these lists, mainly so that they can be searched (from the search link above).

Longer articles

A collection of fairly substantial articles on Tolkienian linguistics can be viewed here.

Poems

A collection of poems in Elvish that have been submitted to TolkLang. This collection is maintained by Anthony Appleyard.

Prose

A similar collection of prose in Elvish.

Temporary documents

The archives are also used to store temporary documents associated with postings to the list.

Other Web pages of interest

Recommended for beginners (and others): Helge Fauskanger, with some help from others, has produced the most comprehensive description of languages of Middle-earth available on the Web; come to that, it's more comprehensive than any of the paper resources in my collection. The only disadvantage is the truly horrible misuse of colours, which can make it hard to read, and results in invisible words on monochrome screens. However, anybody with any questions about anything to do with Tolkienian linguistics should investigate this site first.
Carl Hostetter's Resources page
The Elvish Linguistic Fellowship, including Vinyar Tengwar, and Parma Eldalamberon.
The home page of the Mellonath Daeron, the linguistic guild of the Stockholm Tolkien Society.
Ryszard Derdzinski's web page Gwaith-i-Pheddian.
The home page of a Finnish Tolkienian linguistics group.
The home page of the Tolkien Society
The page for the Oxford Tolkien Society, Taruithorn.
The Czech Tolkien page.
A Tolkien page based in Sweden
A Russian language Tolkien page
A list of email lists on language(s).

Julian Bradfield

tolklang-request (at) quettar.org