Alicornutopia

...So I realize this is probably not the point of these particular sandboxen but I am *very curious* what happens when Istarno/Celebrendes/Lirnith team up to immortalize Elian and presumably subsequently most of the rest of humanity.

Based on the second thread, my guess is “any big differences are swallowed by Fate and/or Eru at the end of the Second Age”

Right, obviously it has to be the case for the purposes of the second thread that nothing changed, hence the "probably not the point" disclaimer.

EDIT: Guess it was actually addressed in-thread.

Where should I ask various flavours of IC/OOC/hypothetical story snippet questions?

ETA: ... About elves in particular.

also can someone merge the two elves threads, preferably into the one in creations, that'd be nice

I bet merging the two elves threads would turn out really confusing for anyone trying to reread them later.

Could just discontinue this one and say "please use [other thread] for further discussion" (with a link back to this one over there).

I would be happy to do 'make the characters talk'/hypothetical questions in this thread or the other one.

In that case I have an IC question for the Fëanor from mommy fix it:

You say that ’Pen’s grammar can make a perfectly valid language, and I agree with that to some extent. I think you’re missing some important nuance in the analysis, but you were engaging in a conversation with nonlinguists instead of writing a paper for a linguistics guild so that’s reasonable. In any case, you are extremely descriptivist instead of prescriptivist about English. Why, then, do you seem more prescriptivist about the language you call Thindarin? I would have expected you to adopt the local accent when learning that language.

The Thindar have not adopted the th->s sound shift; that is why Elu Thingol calls himself that instead of Elu Singol. The Quenya version of his name would be Elu Thindicollo; people excessively wedded to the sound shift would call him Elu Sindicollo, and I would argue that it is they who are disrespecting the local language (though I harbor no particular desire to demand people show Elu more respect.) In their defense perhaps they simply couldn't pronounce the relevant sound cluster; people not exposed to the sound often can't. Similarly, the Thindarin name for Thauron, Gorthaur, employs the same root 'thaura'.

Separately, Elven languages unlike human ones are designed for aesthetic value and subject to judgments on aesthetic grounds. It would be silly and limiting to hold languages not explicitly created and cultivated towards aesthetic ends to the standards designed for ones that are, but I am not categorically descriptivist and have preferences about the proper development of Quenya.