Council of the Wise · Seat 5

The Seat of Voices

The Quendi, those that speak with voices

When the first Elves woke beside the lake of Cuiviénen under the stars, the first thing Tolkien tells us is that they spoke. "Themselves they named the Quendi, signifying those that speak with voices; for as yet they had met no other living things that spoke or sang." Elvish was a spoken and sung tongue long before it was ever written down. That is how it reaches the hobbits too. On their first night out of Hobbiton, Frodo, Sam and Pippin hear Elves coming through the woods singing "A Elbereth Gilthoniel", and Sam never forgets it. Tolkien cared just as much how the words should sound: in Appendix E of The Lord of the Rings he set down how each letter is said, from the trilled r to the vowels, so that readers could speak the names as the Elves did. Lammath's own name comes from lamath, "echoing voices". This seat guards the spoken word: every pronunciation guide in Lammath, the sounds learners are taught, and in time the voices they will hear.

Sources: The Silmarillion, Of the Coming of the Elves; The Fellowship of the Ring, Three is Company; Appendix E; The History of Middle-earth vol. XII.