Question regarding the translation & tense

Wondering if someone could assist me with how you end up with 'echuidathar' for the translation of 'shall spring' in The Riddle of Strider? In my Sindarin dictionary I found 'echui' for 'awakening', and then hypothesized that adding the element 'tha' creates the future tense, but am unsure as to where the 'da' comes from?

I think the tenses in 'shall be woken' have thrown me also, as it seems to have a future and past tense combined, but I'm no linguist so there's probably a word to describe exactly this!

And also wondering, if the element 'tha' is added for 'he/she/it' but 'thar' is added for 'they'...why does 'the fire', which is the noun in this sentence fit into the category of 'they' as a plural rather than 'it', when 'a fire' implies a singular noun?

Hope this makes sense and thanks so much in advance!

I am assuming you are looking at Elaran’s translation; if not then let me know what translation you were referring to so I can comment on it specifically.

First thing to note is that you are misattributing echuidathar to “shall spring”. The line Od i lith naur echuidathar is equivalent to the line “From the ashes a fire shall be woken” in the original poem; both are the 5th line of the respective texts.

Echuidathar comes from the verb echuida- “to waken, rouse”. It is extrapolated from the attested (i.e. written down by Tolkien) primitive Elvish verb ✶kuitā-, a causative formation from the root KUY “awake, live” (i.e. it is derived as lit. “cause to awake” > “to awaken”). It is etymologically related to S. echui that you mentioned.

You correctly observed that the -(a)tha suffix is used to construct the future tense; thus echuida- > echuidatha “will awaken”. You are also correct in observing that echuidathar is the plural form thereof.

The reason that the singular noun naur “fire” is followed by a plural verb is because naur is not the subject. Notice that the original line reads “a fire shall be woken”, which is a passive construction - something/someone will awaken the fire. The way Sindarin handles such phrases is by saying “a fire (they) shall awaken”, with an unexpressed plural subject (“they”). This is based on an example attested in the King’s Letter: i sennui Panthael estathar aen “who should be called Fullwise”, lit. “that rather Fullwise (they) will call him should” - a bit complicated to parse through the literal translation admittedly.

The same passive construction is also seen in cýrathar in the 7th line.

Thank you so much, this is amazing and helps so much! Yes you are correct that I was referring to Elaran's translation :)

Also thanks for making sense of my jumbled up prose, I have been deep in The Riddle of Strider for the last few hours and everything has become a bit scrambled!

This is extremely helpful though thank you greatly, I really appreciate your time.

Happy to help! Let me know if you have other questions.

Amazing! I actually do have another question since you're offering, I was wondering if you know much about the plural rule for single syllable words with 'ua' diphthongs - i.e. 'dúath' (dark shadow). I seem to be able to find the plural rule for just about every diphthong except 'ua', although I did read somewhere that diphthongs in single syllable words ending in a single consonant don't mutate, with the exception of 'au', so I'm wondering if 'ua' wouldn't mutate? I have seen other examples of dipthong mutations in those types of words though I'm pretty sure.

My next thought is that maybe the i-affection rule applies to give us 'duaith' but I'm not convinced that is correct...any advice hugely appreciated!

Also just curious if you studied linguistics or just extremely knowledgeable & passionate about language & Tolkien?

Many thanks from Melbourne, Australia :)

Dúath is not actually one syllable, but two - this is not a diphthong, but simply two adjacent vowels (the technical term is “vowels in hiatus”). Dúath is a form that descended from dúwath (also attested).

So the plural of dúwath / dúath would follow the normal rules, and be dúwaith / dúaith. (Note that this is not technically i-affection, but rather i-intrusion.)

I might dispute being called “extremely knowledgeable” about anything, but I have indeed spent some years studying Tolkien’s languages. Incidentally I am also studying linguistics in university, but many of the other experts in the field of Elvish are not linguists, and it’s not a requirement to be one.

Ahhhh that makes a lot of sense, thank you so much! I'll keep an eye out for other similar words that I might initially misread as monosyllabic.

That's amazing, well thank you for sharing your breadth of knowledge on the subject, I am extremely appreciative! I'm sure your linguistics studies will complement your interest in Elvish fabulously :)

I had another question that came up when I was looking at Elaran's translation of The Riddle of Strider...I noticed that for 'from the' Elaran used 'Od i' before 'lith' in one line and 'Od iñ' before 'gwaith' in the other...I'm wondering if these different translations of 'the' (i/iñ) are related to their context in each sentence (I read something somewhere about articles in Sindarin being dependent on the noun function being nominative/accusative/prepositional) or is more related to the difference between the first consonant between 'lith' and 'gwaith'?

You’re on the right track! Indeed the difference lies in the following noun. What you’re seeing here is consonant mutation. In Sindarin the singular definite article i causes lenition/vocalic mutation/soft mutation (multiple names for the same phenomenon) of the following noun; the plural definite article in causes nasal mutation. These mutations affect both the initial consonant of the noun as well as the final consonant of the article in.

You can read more about it here.

Okay, I think I get it! So whether to use in or i depends on both the first letter of the following noun, and on whether it is plural or singular, and also affects the first consonant?

In theory, if you wanted to play around with a different, more metaphorical translation of 'light' and 'shadows' in 'A light from the shadows shall spring', to refer to ethereal light and ethereal shadow, could you substitute calad for glaegal or glae and gwaith for dúaith to produce Glaegal od i dhúaith, or glae od i dhúaith?

(I'm basing those ideas about light and shadow on what is written under dúath)