A word for “a noise” appearing in a list of roots for sound words from 1959-60 with variants hlóna and hlōn, derived from the root √(S)LON (PE17/138). It also appeared in a draft of the Quendi and Eldar essay from around the same time as hlōn “sound” from ✶slōn, an element in ohlon “diphthong” (VT48/29). It appeared in its plural form hloni “sound” in the Quendi and Eldar essay itself (WJ/394).

Conceptual Development: A similar form ᴱQ. lon or londe “loud noise” appeared in the Qenya Lexicon of the 1910s as a derivative of the early root ᴱ√LOŘO [LOÐO] (QL/56).

Neo-Quenya: For purposes of Neo-Quenya, I would use this word mostly for incoherent (and especially non-vocal) noise, as opposed to Q. láma for more coherent (and especially vocal) sound, even though this isn’t entirely consistent with Tolkien’s term Q. hlonitë for “phonetic”. Perhaps the use of hlon- in this term emphasizes that a phoneme cannot by itself be coherent, especially consonantal phonemes (which were the focus of early Elvish linguistics).

In a post on 2024-05-07 from the Vinyë Lambengolmor Discord Server (VLDS), Luinyelle in fact suggested hlón(a) could also mean “phone, speech sound”, based on its use in hlonitë “phonetic”. I personally recommend fuller pahtahlon in cases where a simple hlón would be ambiguous.