Introduction

Syllabus

Part I

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Part II

Chapter One

Back to Realelvish

By the way, if you haven't found yourself a copy of The Lost Road (the book that has The Etymologies in it) get it now. It will be very useful for figuring out the conjugations.

Past tense in Sindarin covers almost all forms of past tense in English. I watched; I have watched; I have been watching - these are all translated the same way. For this I rely heavily on The Sindarin Past Tense by Thorsten Renk.

Basic A-verb Past Tense

When conjugating A-verbs, you have to take into account if the verb is intransitive or transitive.

The transitive past tense suffix of the A-verb is -nt. Transitive verbs are verbs that take a direct object, as you should recall.

Examples:

Lasta- → Lastant "it heard"
Doltha- → Dolthant "it concealed"
Linna- → Linnant "it sang"
Dringa- → Dringant "it hammered"

To make the conjugations for the other pronouns, you add an -e to the end of the past tense verb, which turns the nt into nn, then add the pronoun suffix. In the case of roots that end in -nna, to avoid -nnanne-, it is simplified down to -nne-.

Lastant → Lastannen "I heard"
Dolthant → Dolthanneg "you concealed"
Linnant → Linnelir "y'all sang"
Dringant → Dringanner "they hammered"

The intransitive suffix is -s or -st. As you may recall, intransitive verbs don't have direct objects.

Lasta- → Lastas "it listened"
Doltha- → Dolthast "it hid"
Muda- → Mudas "it labored"
Brona- → Bronast "it survived"

To make the other pronoun's conjugations, add an -e, and it will make the -s or -st into an -ss-. Then add the pronoun suffix.

Lastas → Lastassem "we, not you, listened"
Dolthast → Dolthasseg "you hid"
Mudas → Mudasselir "y'all labored"
Bronast → Bronasser "they survived"

Notice how the -s/-st suffix can be used to change a verb's meaning slightly? With this, you can make a verb intransitive. So, if you have a word that has a very similar mean in the transitive, like "to conceal" you can put it into its intransitive version: "to hide". Keep in mind that there are some verbs that this just won't work on, like "to come". There's no way you can make that transitive. Let's put these into a sentence to see how they work.

When the peddler couldn't see me, I hid a trinket in my clothing.
Ir i machor ú-obul tiri nin, dolthannen mach min chammad nîn.

When the orcs approached my house, I hid with my family under the bed.
Ir in yrch anglenner mar nîn, dolthassen a noss nîn nuin chaust.

As you can see, in English, one verb will often be both transitive and intransitive, and the only way to tell which way it is in a sentence is to see if it has a direct object. Even then, we sometimes drop the direct object when it's obvious, like "to kill". When dealing with a verb like that, you have to think about what would be acted upon. If the only thing that the doer of the action could possibly be acting upon is itself, then it is intransitive. With "to kill", it must be transitive because it must be done to someone else.

Basic I-Verb Past Tense

For the I-verb, there is three ways that the past tense is made, and these are often combined: adding an extra vowel, lengthening the vowel, and a nasal suffix.

The nasal suffix for I-verbs is -n, but it's not as simple as you would hope. The -n mutates the consonant it is attached to.

But these aren't the only changes that occur. Take the vowel of the root, and put another one of it in front of the root. There also is a vowel that changes: O→U. Because of this, the following consonant is put under Soft Mutation.

Heb- → Echemp "it kept"
Haf- → Achamp "it sat"
Mad- → Avant "it ate"
Gwedh- → Ewend "it bound"
Cen- → Egent "it saw"
Tog- → Udunc "it lead"
Dag- → Annanc "it slayed"

To make the other conjugations, add an -i to the end, which will the change the consonants as you will see, and then the pronoun suffix. The vowels will also change the same way that the non-final vowels in plurals are changed.

Echemp → Echemmin "I kept"
Achamp → Echemminc "we, and you, sat"
Ewend → Ewennil "you bound"
Egent → Egennigir "y'all saw"
Udunc → Ydyngilir "y'all lead"
Annanc → Ennengir "they slew"

Then there's the past tense that doesn't use any nasal augmentation, and only messes with the vowels. Vowel Lengthening occurs in verb roots that end in L, R, W, and F (that was a B in Common Eldarin). When making this type of past tense, you put the vowel that was on the inside on the front of the root, then "lengthen" the vowel of the root. Here is a chart of the way that the vowels lengthen.

Examples:

Dar- →Adhor "it halted"
Thel- → Ethíl "it intended"
Gir- → Îr "it shuddered" (because the G mutates to nothing, the i'ír becomes îr.)
Tir- → Idír "it looked"
Nor- → Onur "it ran"
Yr- → Uiur "it ran"

Doing the extra conjugations for these is a little different than the other I-verbs. The lengthened vowels have to be shortened, meaning that acute accents disappear and circumflex accents turn into acute ones. Then, an E is suffixed on, followed by the pronoun suffix. You have no I-Affection to worry about this time.

Adhor → Adhoren "I halted"
Ethíl → Ethilenc "we, and you, intended"
Îr → Írem "we, not you, shuddered"
Idír → Idirel "you looked"
Onur → Onurelir "y'all ran"
Uiur → Uiurer "they ran"

Prefixes and I-verbs

If there is something prefixed to the beginning of the verb, the prefix will be separated from the root of the verb and put before the vowels added on.

Ad-gar- → Ad-agor "it did __ again"
Ú-bed- → Ú-ebent "it did not say"

However, if the prefix was added back in Common Eldarin, then the vowel is not prefixed onto the main root. These are pretty easy to pick out because the roots have more than one syllable.

Athol- → Athul, not Adodul "it returned"
Echad- → Echant, not Edagant "it fashioned"

There is no Intransitive-vs-Transitive problem to worry about for I verbs. Yay!

Homework

DOC

PDF

RTF