Sindarin was designed with a Welsh-like phonology. It has most of the same sounds and a similar sound structure, or phonotactics. The phonologies of Old English, Old Norse and Icelandic are also fairly close to Sindarin and, along with Welsh, certainly did have an influence on some of the language's grammatical features, especially the plurals (see below).
Consonants[]
| Bilabial | Dental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| plain | lateral | plain | lateral | ||||||
| Stop | p b | t d | k3 ɡ | q | |||||
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ŋ 4 | ɴ 8 | ||||
| Fricative | f v | θ ð1 | s z | ɬ2 | x ɣ | χ5 | h | ||
| Trill | r̥6 r | ||||||||
| Approximant | ɹ10 | l | j | ʍ7 w | ʟ9 | ||||
- written ⟨th⟩ and ⟨dh⟩ respectively
- written ⟨lh⟩
- written ⟨c⟩
- written ⟨ng⟩
- written ⟨ch⟩
- written ⟨rh⟩
- written ⟨hw⟩
- written ⟨ŋ⟩
- written ⟨k⟩
- written ⟨ł⟩
The phoneme /f/ is voiced to [v] when final or before /n/, but remains written as ⟨f⟩. The sound [f] is written ⟨ph⟩ when final (alph, "swan") or when used to spell a lenited /p/ (i-pheriannath, "the halflings") which becomes [f].
Old Sindarin, like Common Brittonic and Old Irish, also had a spirant m or nasal v (IPA: /ṽ/), which was transcribed as mh. This merged with /v/ in later Sindarin.
Phonemically, Sindarin ⟨ch⟩ aligns with the other velar consonants like ⟨c⟩, ⟨g⟩, ⟨w⟩, etc but is phonetically the voiceless uvular fricative /χ/.
Orthographic conventions[]
| Letter | IPA | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| i | j, i | Represents [j] when initial before vowels, [ɪ] (short vowel) and [iː] (long vowel) everywhere else. |
| ng | ŋ, ŋɡ | Represents [ŋ] when final, [ŋɡ] everywhere else. |
| ph | f, ff | Represents [f] when final, [ff] everywhere else. |
Vowels[]
Monophthongs[]
| Vowels | Front | Back |
|---|---|---|
| Close | i y | u |
| Near-close | ɪ | ʊ |
| Open-mid | ɛ | ɔ |
| Open | a | |
An accent signifies a long vowel (á, é, etc.). In a monosyllabic word, a circumflex is used (â, ê, etc.). However, for practical reasons, users of the ISO Latin-1 character set often substitute ý for ŷ, as ISO Latin-1 does not have a character for ŷ, only ý and ÿ.
In Old Sindarin, there was a vowel similar to German ö (IPA: [œ]), which Tolkien mostly transcribed as œ. Although this was meant to be distinct from the diphthong oe, it was often simply printed oe in publications like The Silmarillion, e.g. Nírnaeth Arnoediad (read: Nírnaeth Arnœdiad), Goelydh (read: Gœlydh). This vowel later came to be pronounced [ɛ] and is therefore transcribed as such (e.g. Gelydh).
Diphthongs[]
Diphthongs are ai (pronounced like aisle [ai]), ei (day [ɛi]), ), ui (too young) or (ruin) [ui]), and au (cow [au]), ). If the last diphthong finishes a word, it is spelt aw. There are also diphthongs ae and oe with no English counterparts, similar to pronouncing a or o respectively in the same syllable as one pronounces an e (as in pet); IPA [aɛ, ɔɛ]. Tolkien had described dialects (such as Doriathrin) and variations in pronunciations (such as that of Gondor), and other pronunciations of ae and oe undoubtedly existed.