Sindarin
hanna-
verb. to thank
Cognates
- ᴺQ. hanta- “to thank, give thanks”
Element in
- ᴺS. hannad “thanks”
anna-
verb. to thank
Cognates
- ᴺQ. hanta- “to thank, give thanks”
Derivations
- √HAN “add to, increase, enhance, enrich, honour (especially by gift); give”
A neologism for “to thank” coined by Elaran in 2018, more accurately “to give thanks”, derived from the root √HAN “enrich, honour”, the (hypothetical) basis for Q. hanta- “to thank” (also hypothetical). It can be distinguished from S. anna- “to give” by the fact that this verb is intransitive, whereas “give” is transitive. Thus anna- without a direct object means “give thanks”, whereas anna- with a direct object means “give”. The common way to say “thank you” would be annon allen “I give thanks to you” or annas annin “[he/she] thanked me” (anna- with intransitive past, lit. “gave thanks to”), with the object of the “thanks” in the dative.
For further information on this verb and phrase, see the How to Thank in Sindarin on Parf Edhellen.
Alternate Etymologies: The Sindarin verb for “to thank” is exceptionally controversial. For Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies, David Salo coined the word ᴺS. hanna- “to thank” based on Q. hanta-, with hannon le becoming the common (Neo) Sindarin of saying “thanks, (lit.) I thank you”. However, Carl Hostetter criticized this word in his 2006 article Elvish as She Is Spoke, pointing that the likeliest basis for Q. hanta- was the root √HAN, but in Sindarin the initial h would be lost resulting in ✱anna- which could not be used since it conflicts with anna- “to give”.
In 2018, Elaran proposed annon allen as a new phrase for “I thank you”, eventually developing the intransitive/transitive markers to distinguish it from anna- “give”. In 2019, I made a counter proposal of in my own article In Defense of Hannon Le, arguing that ✱hanna- “to thank” might have entered Sindarin as a loan word from Quenya and thus still be usable. Ultimately, though, the community we both spend time in (the Vinyë Lambengolmor Discord Server) settled on using annon allen. Since I firmly believe that languages should be defined by their community of speakers, and annon allen has become the dominant phrase, I eventually caved and in 2022 added anna- “to give thanks” to Eldamo, deprecating David Salo’s older neologism ᴺS. hanna-.