Class Starts September 5th!
Registration is closed. People who are in the waiting list will be added to the Spring 2017 semester if no one drops out before September 5th. If you’re on the waiting list, keep watch over the next week so you can be ready if you get added to the Roster!
Some significant changes are coming to the textbook as a result of the writing of the book version (still not done… stuff happened, and I’m just past the halfway point.) Here are a list of the changes that I’ll be adding to the book over the next week, as I turn the textbook pages back into documents.
Structural changes to the lessons:
- Conversation Practice – at the end of each lesson will be a short section about how to form little conversations on specific topics or using specific methods to convey information. These are much more about learning to communicate in the language, versus the hardcore grammar in the first half of the lesson. These will make the lessons a fun thing to do with your friends, letting you hold short conversations with them as you gain competence in the language.
- The homework assignments are now all short scenes or conversations. I’ve found that students do a LOT better at translating a sentence when that sentence is put into a context. Students doing better on the homework means less work for me, which is win-win! The less win is that these assignments take a LONG time to write. I compose them in Sindarin, then translate them back into English, then have to break them down for all of their vocabulary, all of which is time-consuming. Writing one of these takes a day to do, meaning that each lesson takes two days… and that’s why I’m only half-done with the book so far. I’ve tried to make all of the assignments exciting, interesting, or funny to keep you guys engaged… but not all of them will be. It’s hard to make talking about crop-yields entertaining, but it’s really hard for certain grammatical tools to get exercised a lot otherwise. Also I only have these written for the first half of the book, because I’m not done yet.
- Extensive annotations will be added to everything. Well, the first half, since that’s what I have done so far. On the website, they will appear as sticky-notes attached to certain paragraphs. I’ve often lamented the fact that I couldn’t include better annotations and source-citing to the lessons, but I finally found a non-intrusive way to add them in!
Content Changes, beyond just rewording explanations.
- 0.2 About Fan-made Words
- 1.2.4 Conversation Practice: Choose an Elven Name
- 1.3.5 Conversation Practice: Greetings and Introductions
- 1.4 The Rhythm of the Words
- I’ve revised my ideas on PH’s behavior. I’ve been starting to think for a while now that I was wrong to think that it was a double consonant sound – at least in “modern” Sindarin. It definitely was in the past, but in “modern” Sindarin, I think that only S is a double consonant intervocalicly, and that it always is a double consonant intervocalicly.
- Because of some changes to my ideas on mutation with an, I’ve edited this lesson too.
- 1.4.5 Conversation Practice: Greetings, Farewells, and Introductions 2
- 3.1 Articles, Adjectives, Adverbs, and Prepositions:
- I’ve moved the articles to this lesson, since it’s rather light and easy in comparison to the following lesson. With this, it should be an easier transition to the more rigorous grammar lessons.
- I never really bothered to before, but now there is a section on how prepositional phrases are used to modify nouns and verbs as well.
- 3.1.5 Conversation Practice – Describe Someone
- 3.2 Genitives, Possessives, the Copula, and Conjunctions
- The Articles have been moved to the previous lesson.
- Because of some HUGE changes I’ve made to my negation system, I’ve had to make some changes here too, which means a new section in this lesson: 3.2.3.2 The Uncertain and Negative Copulas
- 3.2.5 Conversation Practice: Describe Your Origins
- 3.3 Basic Sentence Syntax
- This lesson was bloated, so I moved the “esta-” stuff to the next lesson.
- I expanded on the Compound Predicate idea, this time actually calling it what it is.
- 3.3.4 Conversation Practice: Likes and Dislikes
- 3.4 Imperative and Passive Voice
- I’ve added a huge new section on Passive Voice, which covers my new thoughts on how to use “esta-“.
- 3.4.5 Conversation Practice: Talk About Your Feelings
- 4.1 Numbers and Dates
- More massive changes to counting systems. I finally relented and included the #&# style of translating numbers. This at least gets us to 99.
- After thinking it over, I think that Tolkien’s ambiguous statement about Elves reckoning in sixes and twelves wasn’t talking about their counting system, but instead about how they preferred to count time. Therefore, it’s all a bit easier. I was able to make the homework more fun too! *mine is an evil laugh*
- 4.1.4 Conversation Practice: Writing Dates
- Chapter 5 Has been split into two halves – plurals and prestanneth.
- 5.1.4 Conversation Practice: Explain “Why”
- 5.2 Class Plurals
- I’ve included descriptions of old plural forms, but I don’t make you try to make them yourselves, since they aren’t productive morphemes in Sindarin anymore.
- I’ve decided to include gwaith in the plurals for groups of people.
- 5.2.6 Conversation Practice: Need
- Chapter 6 (was Chapter 5.3-5.5) Prestanneth, Prefixes, Prepositions, and Negation
- I’ve split the mutations learned into two lessons – the ones you’ll need all the time, and the ones you’ll use occasionally, if at all. Then I listed all of the reasons and times that each type of mutation is used, combining the prestanneth and prepositions and prefixes lessons in a way that I think will be a lot more useful.
- 6.1 Common Mutations
- This lesson contains: Lenition, Nasal Mutation, Mixed Mutation, and Long Mixed Mutation.
- I found an error with one of the charts (it wasn’t in the main, big, omni-chart, but it did end up in the little one. EN+F = EN-F, not E-F.
- AN+(M)B = AM B, not AM MB; AN+(N)D = AN D, not AN ND; and AN+(N)G = AN G, not AN NG.
- 6.1.6 Conversation Practice: Comparing Things
- 6.2 Rare Types of Mutation
- This lesson contains: Liquid Mutation, Stop Mutation, H-Mutation, DH-Mutation, and No Mutation.
- 6.2.7 Conversation Practice: Giving Directions
- 6.3 Negation
- I moved the comparing things to the conversation practice on 6.1.
- New Negation Theories! I finally relented and adopted AL|LA for the general negation root, after a year of gnashing my teeth at Tolkien for not bothering to actually explain how negation would work in Sindarin after just rejecting what he wrote in PE17. But, the ways I’ve reconstructed this system are a bit different from how you may suspect.
- In the past, people would take al- and make it the general negator. I don’t think that’s what Tolkien intended. So, I borrowed Quenya’s lá into Sindarin, as *law. I’ve also included Quenya’s la- response to questions, though again, not how people may expect me to. I used the other vowel-root verbs from Sindarin, u- and gwa- to guess that with a pronominal suffix, it’d be *lae- instead of just *la-.
- As per Tolkien’s description of his rejection of ú- as the general negator and turning it into an almost negation-like “cannot” or “impossible” in meaning, Ive included that.
- 6.3.4 Conversation Practice: Elven Cosmology
And… that’s as far as I’ve gotten. I hope to have the book complete and selling before December, so look forward to more updates as time goes on.