Nominative: The subject; who/what is performing the action
Accusative: The direct object; who/what is being performed on
Dative: The indirect object; who/what the performance is for
Possessive: The owner or source of a thing

Example sentence: Elrond gave Arwen Glorfindel's horse.

Apart from explaining how Arwen managed to save Frodo from the Nazgûl, and why Glorfindel didn't make it to the Council of Elrond, the sentence demonstrates all four standard noun cases. (Just match the colors.)

Long Dative: This is a dative form, with the dative preposition "an" (to,for) Reflexive: This is a form that consists of the dative preposition "an" combined with a nominative form of pronoun.

Example sentence: Take Anduril to him yourself, Ada!

This sentence, which not only explains the absence of Elladan and Elrohir from "Return of the King", is a close approximation of how the long dative and reflexive pronouns would be used in English.

Now... the chart. I am going to reprint it here with no explanation, but if you are curious as to how the words were derived, read the essay at http://shivan.multiservers.com/pronominal.htm

notes on pronouns

1. "Le" is a Quenya word roughly translated as "thee" or "to thee". It is a highly referential form, and not a natural Sindarin word. Avoid in casual usage.
2. "Lle" is Grelvish. Stop using it. Please.
3. Notice there are two second person forms, "reverential" and "familiar". Your buddy, your lover, your brother ... these are familiar people: use the familiar form. If Glorfindel is speaking to Thranduil in court, use the reverential. If they're in bed, use the familiar.
4. Why are there two choices for most of the second person familiar forms? Quite simply because we don't know which is correct and either is possible, given what we know from the corpus. Unless and until more information becomes available, it is probably safe to assume they are interchangable. Just be consistant.
5. There is no attested difference between the 2nd person singular and the 2nd person plural. There is also no attested difference between the masculine and feminine gender. In both cases, use context to determine which is intended.
6. When using the independent forms of the possessive pronouns (a habit I don't recommend, as there is an alternative mentioned below), note that they follow the noun. In other words, "my lover" translates to "melethron nin" NOT "nin melethron".

mini-rant

"Nin" is one of the most misused words in the Sindarin language. There are actually three distinct forms of this word that are vastly different in usage. However, most of the time, the wrong form is used.

• nin: Dative and accusative form of the 1st person singular, i.e., "me"
• nín: Possessive form of the 1st person singular, i.e., "my"
• 'nin: A preposition meaning "to the" or "for the"

Such a little thing, that acute accent, or that apostrophe. But when dealing with words so similar in spelling but so different in meaning, it is important to pay attention to little details like that. "Mellon nin" does NOT mean "my friend". It means "friend me", and since the Elves didn't have Livejournal, this construction makes no sense.

It is for this reason -- the misuse of "nin" and "nín" -- that I recommend using the suffix method of showing possession, as described below. Not only does it flow better (which, if you'll recall from earlier lessons, was the intent of Sindarin), but it also avoids the problem of missing that accent mark. (I only use "nín" if I am emphasizing the "my".)

Suffixed Pronouns

In general, when the subject of a sentence in Sindarin is a pronoun, the independent pronoun is omitted in favor of a suffix that is appended to a verb. We'll go into this in more detail when we cover verbs, but for now, just be aware that they exist.

Additionally, these same suffixes can probably be appended to nouns to indicate possession. The two most famous attested forms of this are:

Lammen: my tongue lam, "tongue" + -n "my"
Gûren: my heart gûr, "heart" + -n "my"

Two things to be aware of here. Always insert an -e- between the noun and the suffix unless the noun ends in a vowel (or the suffix begins with one, as in the 3rd person neuter forms). This is to avoid "illegal" consonant groups. Also, nouns that end in 'm' and 'n' will *sometimes* double the final consonant before adding an ending. The words that do this are the ones that evolved from the primitive endings "mb" and "nd". The Dragonflame dictionary (available for download from http://www.jrrvf.com/hisweloke/sindar/df20.html) contains a list of such nouns.

(Note that common terms like mellon and melethron do not double before an ending.)

general reflexive pronoun

In the English sentence, "The man drank his juice" there is no way for a reader to know if the man is drinking his own juice or if he is drinking another man's juice. The word "his" alone is not sufficient to distinguish. Sindarin solves this problem by introducing the general reflexive pronoun "în". The word by itself has no meaning; rather, it serves to refer back to the subject of the sentence.

So, translating the juice example, we have:

I venn sunc i haw în "the man drank his (own) juice"
I venn sunc i haw din "the man drank his (someone else's) juice"

relative pronoun

The relative pronoun "i" (plural "in") is used to connect a dependant clause to an independent clause. Again, the relative pronoun has no meaning by itself, but is used as a placeholder that refers back to the subject of the independent clause, and is usually translated as "who" or "that".

Be careful not to confuse the relative pronoun with the definite article! Even though both are "i" in the singular and "in" in the plural, they serve very different functions. It should be apparent from context (ooh, that word again!) which is intended.

Examples:

Elladan i nant mi haust -- Elladan WHO was in bed
I delin in edhil teliar -- The games THAT elves play

The plural form "in" will cause a special mutation called "nasal mutation" in some consonants. As said in previous lessons, we'll get to that later. Promise.

Conclusion

• Most pronoun forms are not attested; they can only be derived or guessed at.
• Second person is distinguished by familiar and referential terms.
• Nin, nín, and 'nin are easily confused; pay close attention if you need to use them.
• Nominative pronouns are almost always suffixed to verbs.
• Possessive pronouns can be suffixed to nouns, although only the first person form is attested in Tolkien's works.
• The reflexive and relative pronouns are specialized forms that only have meaning as placeholders that refer to the subject of a sentence or a clause.