?

As I feared, it is un-understandable. I want to translate the sentence "what is a hobbit?" and I find it hard for me.

+Hjalmar Holm
that's no easy feet, I absolutely agree

perian, man te? perhaps?

+Hjalmar Holm
I like that

I'm from Turkey and Turkish doesn't have "am-is-are" and its grammer is quite close to Sindarin's, from what I can gather.

There is something called "statement suffix" in Turkish, which is -dir. I'll try to explain it with an example...

without the suffix:
mavi gök / blue sky
with suffix:
Gök mavidir / sky is (in fact) blue

I share this because it can also be used in questions, like:

ne hobbit? / what hobbit?
with the statement suffix:
hobbit nedir? / what is (a) hobbit?

Hoping this may give us some ideas. :)

+Ekin Gören Very interesting indeed. There is the grammatical difference between leniting a word and not leniting a word. But I have only a flimsy grip on that part of the grammar. I even don't know if perian and te in the sentence perian, man te is subject or object.

Is there any way for us to implement this root? http://eldamo.sourceforge.net/content/words/word-1624674371.html

Maybe we can use this for "statement suffix" I talked about. Like "Man ê *perian?" maybe.

*I'm not sure what kind of mutation P needs there.

If I am allowed to guess, man berian, with lenition, would be like asking "which hobbit?", yielding answers like "Bilbo, not Lobelia or Otho", whereas man perian, without mutation, would be "what is a hobbit", but the distinction is quite vague and also does not work for several words, like adan.

To make ê work, it has to be distinguised from ed, but, for understanding purposes, it might be best if it didn't cause mutation at all, like if it were a postposition rather than a preposition, but postpositions are maybe not so sindarin...

+Hjalmar Holm +Tamas Ferencz Look what I've found!
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+TamasFerencz/posts/eUonKXBgDgJ

There is information on the indicative "en" in that link. Possibly connected to my earlier finding ê. The problem is, I use "en" as "of (the)" so what should we do now?

I have no idea. I saw therer were many different ideas, but I can't make it out, and I can't read and understand the sentence. I am utterly confused.

+Ekin Gören do nothing - be satisfied that at present there is no clear evidence whether Sindarin uses a copula at all, and if it does, what that would be precisely...

It would make some sense with en as ~"that is". Il chem en i naugrim en ir ellath... "All the land that is [of] the dwarves [and] that is [of] ? all elves ..." but there are several ideas that would yield a coherent translation.

+Hjalmar Holm +Tamas Ferencz I guess the correct form of such interrogations would heavily depend on how exactly we are supposed to interpret mana in the coimas phrase. Personally, I'd try with simple Man perian [na]? for 'What is a hobbit?' and went for a heavy extrapolation of genitive meaning in Man e-beriain ho [sen]? 'Which hobbit is that?' (or even Man o pheriain? I need to think over that…).

+Александр Запрягаев As I said, there might be a possible distinction to make out of the presence or abscece of lenition. I first used Man perian but nobody understood me :-)