Valarin

In J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional universe of Middle-earth, Valarin is the tongue of the Valar and Maiar. As angelic beings with the ability to communicate through thought, strictly speaking the Valar had no need for a spoken language, but it appears that it was adopted as part of their assumption of physical, humanlike forms.

Valarin was extremely alien to the ears of the Elves, and very few of them ever learned the language, only adopting some of the Valarin words into their own Quenya. The Valar learnt Quenya instead, and used that to converse with the Elves, or with each other if Elves were present. Valarin seemed to use long words, for example the Valarin word for Telperion, Ibrîniðilpathânezel is eight syllables long. The Vanyar adopted more words from Valarin into their dialect Quendya than the Ñoldor, as they lived closer to the Valar.

At least one word in the Black Speech, nazg "ring", seems to be borrowed from Valarin naškad (Melkor was a Vala and Sauron was a Maia, so they had to know Valarin).

Valarin is unconnected to all other Languages of Middle-earth as it arose outside of Arda, and except for a few words (mainly proper names) nothing is known of the language.

In older versions of The Silmarillion and in the Lhammas, Valarin is further subdivided in Oromëan, Aulëan and Melkian. In this conception, all Elvish languages arose from Oromëan, but this view was later dropped.

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