The Elvish Linguistic Fellowship

Early this summer, Mary Beth told me about The Elvish Linguistic Fellowship and it's web site. She was browsing around, seeking a translation of Ali's name into the Elvish created by J.R.R. Tolkien and used in the Lord of the Rings. She discovered that 'Alison' translates into 'Arwen' in the High Elvish Quenya language and means 'noble daughter.'

A Quenya tutorial available online notes, "Within Tolkien's mythos Quenya was the language of the Elves that dwelt in Valinor in the Uttermost West; being spoken in the Blessed Realm, it was the noblest tongue in the world. Later one of the clans of the Elves, the Noldor, went into exile in Middle-earth, bringing the Quenya tongue with them. In Middle-earth it soon fell out of use as a daily speech, but among the Noldor it was ever preserved as a ceremonial language, and as such it was also known to Mortal Men in later ages. Hence in The Lord of the Rings we have Frodo delivering the famous Quenya greeting elen síla lúmenn' omentielvo, "a star shines on the hour of our meeting", when he and his friends run into some Elves (and the Elves are delighted to meet "a scholar in the Ancient Tongue")."

The site contains links to reams of resources including downloadable fonts for Mac and PC for a couple of the scripts that Tolkien developed for his languages.