It’s neither “hannon le”, nor “le hannon”. Not even “le channon”, or “len hannon”, or “len channon”, or “hannon len”… Seen it all.
This phrase comes from the Lord of the Rings films. David Salo, the linguist who prepared the Elvish (and other) dialogues for them, reconstructed the verb hanna-, “to thank”, about 17 years ago. Yet the story of this reconstruction goes back to 1980, to the publication of the Unfinished Tales.
In the book, we see the word Eruhantalë, its meaning given as “Thanksgiving to Eru”. Obviously, Hantalë means “Thanksgiving”, and it is safe to assume that -lë is one of Quenya’s abstract noun suffixes which leaves us with Q. hanta-, “to thank” or “to give thanks”. Seeing other medial NT words in Quenya appearing as NN in Sindarin, we can reconstruct the same as S. hanna-. So far so good.
Then, in January 2002, Vinyar Tengwar published its 43rd issue, and some of Tolkien’s previously unpublished works were released. This is when we learned that the Primitive Quenderin root for this verb was √HAN. And now we have a problem… Page 365 of the eleventh volume of the History of Middle-earth, War of the Jewels (or simply, Tolkien) tells us that the initial H disappeared:
PQ h- only survived in the dialects of Aman. It disappeared without trace in Sindarin.
In other words, hanna- needs to be anna-. But now, another problem. We already have that verb and it means “to give”, not “to thank”. Yet, if we look closer, we can see that √HAN and anna- actually share the meaning “to add to”. Then we have han- “to give” in Telerin. These led some of us (linguists) to the idea that anna- can be used to thank without a direct object and by employing the dative case. In other words, we’ll use “to you” instead of “you”.
First, let’s clear up the pronouns:
Le - Nominative, you (thou)
Len - Accusative, you (thee)
Allen - Dative, to you (to thee)
Len annon - I give you (as if you own someone, and giving them to someone else)
Annon lembas allen - I give lembas to you
Annon allen - I give thanks to you
A word derived from two different roots is not uncommon in Sindarin. Just as Quenya’s hanta- and anta- end up as anna- in Sindarin, Q. lamba and lambe are seen as lam in S. Also, like anna-, we have eitha- derived from both √HEK and √EK.
This is one of the most common mistakes made by Elvish enthusiasts / LotR fans. The problematic nature of hanna- is known for fifteen years yet the word couldn’t get out there, since most people just want to use the phrase and be done with it. I myself have learned about this only two years ago or so. I think this is a great example on how complex these languages can be, even with seemingly simplest things. And I hope this post will serve you all well.
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