Within the Echoriath, the Encircling Mountains, just west of Dorthonion and east of the River Sirion, lay a round level plain with sheer walls on all sides and a ravine and tunnel leading out to the southwest known as the Hidden Way.
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To the west and south it had a long shore with the Great Sea Belegaer, to the north were the highland regions of Hithlum, Dorthonion and the hills of Himring, to the east the Ered Luin reached nearly to the sea.
Adûnaic derived from the closely related Bëorian and Hadorian dialects of Taliska, the language spoken by the first and third houses of the Edain when they first entered Beleriand during the First Age (the language(s) of the second house, the Haladin, seems to have had little or no influence on Adûnaic whatsoever, despite the apparent presence of both the Haladin and the Drúedain in Númenor prior to its downfall).
Before the ruin of Beleriand at the end of the First Age, the sea was narrow and ice-filled in the north, forming the strait of Helcaraxë, the Grinding Ice.
According to The Silmarillion, Elu Thingol was not counted among the Moriquendi, although he was king of the Moriquendi of Beleriand; for he had seen the light of the Trees in Valinor.
He is introduced in The Silmarillion as an Elf of Beleriand and is a character existing in some form from the earliest to the latest writings.
Before the coming of the Noldor it was spoken far and wide in Beleriand (save in Ossiriand) and all the names of places, of rivers, woods, fields, plains, hills and mountains were given in this tongue.