Menil Egyl (Evil Heavens)

So I have an MTG Arena deck I call Heaven's Blight (Black/White). It has one LOTR's card in it cause well had to have at least one. Anyways I wanted to use Sindarin for a name so I came up with S. menel n. “the heavens, firmament, region of the stars”and S. ogol adj. “bad, evil, wrong; gloom(y)”. Since I could not find a word for blight in Sindarin I opted for evil. And since the adjective follows the noun it modifies, and undergoes soft mutation, and also declined into the plural to match its noun I get menil egyl for Evil Heavens.

I am not sure that Menel can or should be pluralised in Elvish, this may be an anglicism.

Ogol and a small number of words of similar form have highly irregular plurals. Tolkien actually gave a few different plurals of ogol, none of which seem likely (from an historical phonological perspective); our current understanding of Sindarin historical phonology suggests the plural should be egil.

You are right, I should have caught that when I looked up the word ogol as there are various inflictions for it. There is only one word that has gyl in it and this is Tengyl pn. “Signifer" Which in itself evolved from Q. And looking how it formed. The gyl part came from calla which again is another element of col and (i)la. And looking at the phonetic pevelopment of sū̆k’la > ogl > ogol and √OKO > ogol it's clear there where two different process to form those words.

And interesting view on (Heavens) since it does mean "the heavens" and is already plural. I can see how leaving it menel ogol as it would mean the same thing ("the" evil heavens).

A few points to clarify here:

• S. Tengyl did not derive from Q. Tannacolli; rather, both of these forms derived from the same primitive Elvish form ✶tannakollī (which admittedly is nearly identical to the later Q. form). This is generally an important distinction to observe - Sindarin words do not derive from Quenya words, because Quenya is not an ancestor of Sindarin; the sole exception to that is words loaned from Q. to S. (which Tengyl is not).

• There is nothing wrong per se with a plural ending in -yl or even -gyl. For example, the plural of ungol "spider" is likely to be yngyl. The difference lies in the origin of the [o] vowel in the final syllable.

  • In the case of Tengyl, ungol, the [o] vowels in their final syllables are present in their primitive Elvish forms: ✶tannakollī, ✶uŋgolle (reconstructed based on ᴹQ. ungo. This [o], present in the primitive form, can undergoes i-affection and become [y].

• Meanwhile, the primitive Elvish form from which ogol is derived is ✶oklā (I am not sure where you found the form you looked at?). As can be easily observed, the [o] present in the final syllable of ogol is not in fact present at all in the primitive ✶oklā; this is the reason why it cannot become [y] in plural.

• As you correctly observed, that [o] in the final syllable of ogol is an epenthetic vowel, i.e. a vowel inserted between consonants in a phonological process (vowel epenthesis). The forms ogol and egil develop as follows (I am numbering each phonological rule applied as they are listed in the OS (Old Sindarin) and S (Sindarin) lists linked):

  • ✶oklā > [OS17] okla > [S23] okl > [S26] ogl > [S68] ogol.
  • Plural: ✶oklā·ī > [OS1] oklī > [OS17] okli > [S17] œkli > [S24] œkil > [S26] œgil > [S58] egil.

I hope this clarified things a bit.

This does clarify things a lot! Now it makes sense. You are a wealth of knowledge Ellanto. On another subject. can you explain the drop in the rr in compounds. IE. Aglarond [OS: aklara > S8: aklar > S26: aglar OS: rondō > S17: rondo > S23 rond] Which would be aglarrond what rule am I missing that would reduce the rr to r? Only one I see is S71: final [rr] became [r]. I was just observing how they formed from each word tracing it back. Just trying to visualize the process for myself.

You are not missing anything obvious. This was in fact an excellent question! I was a little puzzled with it myself for a bit and had to confer with a couple of friends to come up with a satisfactory answer.

I will answer in two parts: (1) when does [rr] reduce to [r] in compounds, and (2) what happens in the case of Aglarond.

(1) The geminated [rr] is permissible in Sindarin and does not normally reduce to a single [r]. It can be seen in class plurals for example, such as Rochirrim, Telerrim, or for example in Arroch (Húrin's horse). However it can reduce to a single [r] in one particular situation.

Elvish languages generally disfavour superheavy syllables. Sindarin can tolerate them in various cases, but there are still several phonological phenomena that simplify superheavy syllables.

The reduction of [rr] to [r], and potentially the reduction of geminates in general, seems to be one such phenomenon. We have an example of this: Aerandir "Sea-wanderer" (which more properly ought to be Gaerandir, but I'll refer to the attested form instead). Here (derived from gae(a)r + randir) we have a diphthong followed by a geminated [rr], which creates an superheavy syllable; this then causes the geminate to reduce to [r].

Note that this sort of reduction does not alter the position of the stress in the word, since the syllable remains heavy.

A hat-tip to Elaran for suggesting this idea to me.

[Note that Sindarin will tolerate a similar superheavy syllable if the diphthong is followed by a cluster instead of a geminate: e.g. Aeglos.]

(2) As for Aglarond - the case I described above clearly does not apply here. So why is there only one [r]?

In one place (the manuscript Nomenclature of Middle-earth) Tolkien specifically stated that Aglarond is derived from aglar (see The Lord of the Rings: a Reader’s Companion p. 421). However, if that was the case, we would indeed expect *Aglarrond instead; additionally the gloss "Glittering Caves" would be less fitting (though the gloss "Caves of Radiance", attested elsewhere, would be more fitting).

Upon discussing this with some people I am inclined to take the idea suggested to me by Luinyelle, that Aglarond is in fact derived from a verb, the primitive form of which is ✶akla- "to shine out, flash" (attested). This primitive verb form is attested, as is its Quenya derivative alca- "to glitter"; the Sindarin cognate of this verb was proposed as a neologism, agla-, some years ago.

I should here note that the stems of a-verbs (e.g. agla-) do not seem to lose their final vowel in compounds, unlike other cases where a vowel is lost a morpheme boundary; this is possibly because the stem itself is not perceived as a full independent word. Examples of this include Labadal (< laba-) and athrabeth (< athra-). Thus it is plausible that agla- + rond would simply yield Aglarond.

Thank you for this question! I enjoyed looking into this.

Thank you Ellanto! Again, see this just makes me want to learn more. I am glad I asked because I could not figure it out. I have another question about Círdan. But will post it in another spot.