Tolkien later revised this internal history. The Elves were said by Tolkien to have been able of inventing (constructing) their own language (see Primitive Quendian). Tolkien never wrote an 'updated' version of the "Lhammas" that would be coherent with this later internal history of the Elvish languages. The essay as it stands in "The Lost Road" can be thus seen as an interpolated manuscript, badly translated by Men in the Fourth Age or even later: "For many thousands of years have passed since the fall of Gondolin." ("The Lhammas", p. 180). No autograph manuscripts of the "Lhammas" of Pengolodh were left; the three manuscripts we possess come from the original manuscript through an unknown number of intermediate copies.