Telerin
the language of the Teleri
Definition
Telerin is the language of the Teleri, the third kindred of the Eldar — the many folk who lingered on the long road and came last to Aman. In the Blessed Realm the Teleri of Alqualondë and Tol Eressëa kept their own archaic speech, kin to Quenya (the two tongues of Aman diverged somewhat but remained mutually close), and their tongue in the sea-washed city was the sweetest spoken in Eldamar.
The Tongue of the Sea-folk
The Teleri spoke a more conservative, softer form of the old Eldarin speech than the swift-developed Quenya of the Noldor — akin to it as their people were akin to the Noldor, but enriched by longsongs of the Sea; the Noldorin lore even claims the Teleri loved words and their own tongue “the richest in melody”.
- Those Teleri who never crossed the Sea — the Sindar of Beleriand and the others left behind — developed a kindred but separate language, Sindarin, of the far shore; Telerin stands between, the west-sea speech never hardened by exile.
In the Texts
In Appendix F Tolkien notes that while the Noldor in Aman spoke Quenya, the Teleri used “their own speech”, and the two Elvish nations of the Blessed Realm had two tongues; the language was not used in the written lore of the later ages, its part taken by Sindarin and Quenya. The legend that the Teleri’s language of songs on Tol Eressëa would cure death itself is preserved as the Lindalambe.
Significance
Telerin shows the branching genius of the Eldarin tongues: the great Elvish language-family holds its three main kinds — Vanyarin and Noldorin Quenya, Telerin, and Sindarin — and Telerin is the “middle stem”, the speech of the sea’s edge and of the friends of Ossë, untouched by the exile’s sorrow but grown from the same root as the daily tongue of Beleriand.