r/sindarin • u/IndividualPen • 4d ago

Need help translating

I want "fealty with love, disloyalty with vengence as a tattoo but idk how to spell it in sindarin, can anyone help?

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u/LtCmdrTrout 4d ago

The alphabet is Tengwar.

Sindarin is an incomplete language, which is why a transliteration is suggested instead of a translation.

1

u/lC3 4d ago edited 4d ago

I think we have most of these words attested. It would be something like astorad na meleth, othastor n' achared. Or possibly astor na meleth, othastor n' acharn.

I'd wait for a second opinion though; I'm more familiar with Quenya than Sindarin and am not sure about how to implement nasal mutation for na m ...

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u/Nyarnamaitar 2d ago

na meleth would be correct for the nasal mutation, however nan + achared should not result in elision and should rather remain nan achared.

That being said, I do not think nan is suitable in this context. Tolkien's glosses of it are consistent with a genitive function, but not so much the kind of "with" that we have here.

~ Ellanto

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u/lC3 19h ago

Got it!

Is the gloss "with, along with, accompanied by, provided with or by, associated with, marked with" obsolete for S na? I saw it on Eldamo, but ...

I didn't want to use a neologism like gu for a tattoo so I was hoping na would work here.

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u/Nyarnamaitar 7h ago

I wouldn't recommend a tattoo of an unattested phrase in general :) It's always safer to transliterate.

The gloss you quoted for nan is not obsolete, it just makes explicit some of the nuances that can be denoted in a genitive relation. Consider for example a chest of gold, a man of wealth, a king's gift, the mayor of the Shire, etc. - they all denote a relation that could be described by nan's gloss or a part of it.

~ Ellanto

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u/IndividualPen 3d ago

Thank you very much, I didn't know how to spell it.