Children at a Birmingham school are learning a language with a unique ring to it - Tolkien's Elvish. Pupils at Turves Green Boys School are learning to speak Sindarin, the language invented by JRR Tolkien and spoken by the elves in his Lord of the Rings trilogy. Special educational needs co-ordinator Zainab Thorp is a member of the Tolkien Society and teaches the classes after school. She claims it sharpens the pupils' skills in other languages - and meant they were the envy of their friends when they went to see the films. Sindarin, which is used in the Oscar-winning film Return of the King, is loosely based on Welsh. Tolkien was fascinated by language all his life and his academic career saw him occupy the post of Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University. The inspiration for Sindarin came about when Tolkien was a boy living near the Oratory on Hagley Road in Birmingham, Mrs Thorp said. "From there he was able to observe the railways," she said. "He used to watch the coal trains thunder up from the valleys with all the names of the Welsh coalmines on the sides. "He became besotted with the Welsh language and started to develop Sindarin, which is loosely based on it." The language was "horribly complicated", Mrs Thorp said. "The boys are doing it because they are not forced to do it by the national curriculum," she said. "They are doing it just for the joy of learning. "As a consequence it improves how they process and analyse language, hones their research skills. "It has all sorts of uses." Luke Chapman, a year ten pupil, has been studying Sindarin for a year. In December he went to a Lord of the Rings exhibition at the Science Museum in London and compiled a questionnaire in Elvish for visitors. He will also help Mrs Thorp conduct a Sindarin workshop during a Tolkien weekend in May. "I watched the first film and basically wanted to know what the elves were saying," he said. "So I started the classes and carried on. "I watched the last film and could understand what they were saying - mostly they got it right." | 
