The Languages of Tolkien's Middle-earth is a book on the languages of Middle-earth by Ruth S. Noel. The first edition, entitled The Languages of Middle-earth, was published in 1974 by Mirage Press, Baltimore

Baltimore

Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...

. The revised version was published in 1980 by Houghton Mifflin

Houghton Mifflin

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is an educational and trade publisher in the United States. Headquartered in Boston's Back Bay, it publishes textbooks, instructional technology materials, assessments, reference works, and fiction and non-fiction for both young readers and adults.-History:The company was...

. Ruth S. Noel, also known as Atanielle Annyn Noel, is the author of The Mythology of Middle-earth.

Pages 16 through 34 contain surveys of the languages of the Hobbit

Hobbit

Hobbits are a fictional diminutive race who inhabit the lands of Middle-earth in J. R. R. Tolkien's fiction.Hobbits first appeared in the novel The Hobbit, in which the main protagonist, Bilbo Baggins, is the titular hobbit...

s and of the Rohirrim. They are both similar to Old English or Anglo-Saxon. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, creator of Middle-earth

Middle-earth

Middle-earth is the fictional setting of the majority of author J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy writings. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place entirely in Middle-earth, as does much of The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales....

, was a professor of this language, and a great expert on it. A few words are also Middle English

Middle English

Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....

 or local dialect place-names. Both lists are in alphabetical order.

The next section, "Quotations Translated" (pp 35-41), is a list (in chronological rather than alphabetical order) of all phrases and sentences in Sindarin

Sindarin

Sindarin is a fictional language devised by J. R. R. Tolkien, and used in his secondary world, often called Middle-earth.Sindarin is one of the many languages spoken by the immortal Elves, called the Eledhrim or Edhellim in Sindarin....

, Quenya

Quenya

Quenya is a fictional language devised by J. R. R. Tolkien, and used in his Secondary world, often called Middle-earth.Quenya is one of the many Elvish languages spoken by the immortal Elves, called Quendi in Quenya. The tongue actually called Quenya was in origin the speech of two clans of Elves...

 and Black Speech

Black Speech

The Black Speech is a fictional language created by J. R. R. Tolkien.One of the languages of Arda in Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium, it was spoken in the realm of Mordor...

 as found in The Silmarillion

The Silmarillion

The Silmarillion is a collection of J. R. R. Tolkien's mythopoeic works, edited and published posthumously by his son Christopher Tolkien in 1977, with assistance from Guy Gavriel Kay, who later became a noted fantasy writer. The Silmarillion, along with J. R. R...

, The Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings

The Lord of the Rings is a high fantasy epic written by English philologist and University of Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit , but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in...

, and Humphrey Carpenter's biography of Tolkien. Translations are either from Tolkien himself — given in quotation marks - or hypothesized by Noel. There are a few omissions and many mistranslations:

• Sindarin Mae govannen! (no translation given) = "Well met!" (page 36)
• Sindarin ammen! (no translation given) = Probably "for us."
• Sindarin pedo mellon a minno = rendered as "speak friend and enter." Actually, though this was the first translation produced by Gandalf
  Gandalf
  Gandalf is a character in J. R. R. Tolkien's novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. In these stories, Gandalf appears as a wizard, member and later the head of the order known as the Istari, as well as leader of the Fellowship of the Ring and the army of the West...
  
  , it was proven incorrect. The correct translation is: "Say 'friend' and enter." (page 38)

• Quenya A vanimar, vanimalion nostari! = rendered hypothetically by Noel as "o fair-home, fair-gold ... queen!" (page 41). The correct translation, as given in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, is: "O beautiful ones, parents of beautiful children!"

Next, from pages 42 to 51, we find a survey of the three non-Roman writing systems used by Tolkien in his published work: Anglo-Saxon runes (used in The Hobbit

The Hobbit

The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, better known by its abbreviated title The Hobbit, is a fantasy novel and children's book by J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published on 21 September 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the New York Herald...

), Cirth

Cirth

The Cirth are the letters of an semi-artificial script which was invented by J. R. R. Tolkien for the constructed languages he devised and used in his works. The initial C in Cirth is pronounced as a K, never as an S....

 or Angerthas, and Tengwar

Tengwar

The Tengwar are an artificial script created by J. R. R. Tolkien. In his fictional universe of Middle-earth, the tengwar were invented by the Elf Fëanor, and used first to write the Elven tongues: Quenya, Telerin, and also Valarin. Later a great number of languages of Middle-earth were written...

, the Elven script.

On pages 53 to 74 there is a survey of Quenya and Sindarin. On pages 75 to 92 there is a glossary of both languages.

The second half of the book (pages 93 through 207) is "The Tolkien Dictionary: Fourteen Tolkien Languages." The 14 languages in question are Black Speech, Common Speech (Westron

Westron

Westron, or the Common Speech, is a fictional language in the fantasy works of J. R. R. Tolkien.Westron is the closest thing to a lingua franca in Middle-earth, at least at the time during which The Lord of the Rings is set. "Westron" is an invented English word, derived from West...

), Dunlending, Hobbitish, Khuzdul

Khuzdul

Khuzdul is a constructed language devised by J. R. R. Tolkien. It is one of the many fictional language set in his Secondary world, often called Middle-earth...

 (Dwarvish), "Mannish" (any human language), Númenórean

Adûnaic

Adûnaic is a fictional language in the fantasy works of J. R. R. Tolkien.One of the languages of Arda in Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium, it was spoken by the Men of Númenor during the Second Age.-Fictional history:...

, Orkish, Pre-Númenórean, Quenya, Rohan, Sindarin, Sylvan, Wose. These are all the languages in The Lord of the Rings, except for Entish

Entish

Entish is a constructed language from the fictional works of J.R.R. Tolkien. It is the language spoken by the Ents in Middle-earth.Ents are not hasty creatures; they take their time. Even their language is "unhasty"...

 (of which no real examples are given; the closest we get is Elvish words strung together in an Entish manner, a sort of Ent pidgin

Pidgin

A pidgin , or pidgin language, is a simplified language that develops as a means of communication between two or more groups that do not have a language in common. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the...

).

Since 1980 a large amount of Middle-earth linguistic material has appeared in print, making Noel's book obsolete. The use of the Tengwar is also incorrectly presented.