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Quenya

Quenya (pronounced [ˈkʷwɛɲja])[T 1] is a constructed language, one of those devised by J. R. R. Tolkien for the Elves in his Middle-earth fiction.

Quenya
Eldarin
Created byJ. R. R. Tolkien
Datec. 1910–1973
Setting and usageThe fictional world of Middle-earth
Purpose
Latin
Tengwar
Cirth
Sarati
Language codes
ISO 639-3qya
qya
Glottologquen1234
Ah! like gold fall the leaves in the wind, long years numberless as the wings of trees! The beginning of the Quenya poem Namárië written in Tengwar and in Latin script
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Tolkien began devising the language around 1910, and restructured its grammar several times until it reached its final state. The vocabulary remained relatively stable throughout the creation process. He successively changed the language's name from Elfin and Qenya to the eventual Quenya. Finnish had been a major source of inspiration, but Tolkien was also fluent in Latin and Old English, and was familiar with Greek, Welsh (the latter being the primary inspiration for Sindarin, Tolkien's other major Elvish language), and other ancient Germanic languages, particularly Gothic, during his development of Quenya.

A notable feature of Tolkien's Elvish languages was his development of a complex internal history of characters to speak those tongues in their own fictional universe. He felt that his languages changed and developed over time, as with the historical languages which he studied professionally—not in a vacuum, but as a result of the migrations and interactions of the peoples who spoke them.

Within Tolkien's legendarium, Quenya is one of the many Elvish languages spoken by the immortal Elves, called Quendi ('speakers') in Quenya. Quenya translates as simply "language" or, in contrast to other tongues that the Elves met later in their long history, "elf-language". After the Elves divided, Quenya originated as the speech of two clans of "High Elves" or Eldar, the Noldor and the Vanyar, who left Middle-earth to live in Eldamar ("Elvenhome"), in Valinor, the land of the immortal and God-like Valar. Of these two groups of Elves, most of the Noldor returned to Middle-earth where they met the Sindarin-speaking Grey-elves. The Noldor eventually adopted Sindarin and used Quenya primarily as a ritual or poetic language, whereas the Vanyar who stayed behind in Eldamar retained the use of Quenya.

In this way, the Quenya language was symbolic of the high status of the Elves, the firstborn of the races of Middle-earth, because of their close connection to Valinor, and its decreasing use also became symbolic of the slowly declining Elven culture in Middle-earth. In the Second Age of Middle-earth's chronology the Men of Númenor learnt the Quenya tongue. In the Third Age, the time of the setting of The Lord of the Rings, Quenya was learnt as a second language by all Elves of Noldorin origin, and it continued to be used in spoken and written form, but their mother-tongue was the Sindarin of the Grey-elves. As the Noldor remained in Middle-earth, their Noldorin dialect of Quenya also gradually diverged from the Vanyarin dialect spoken in Valinor, undergoing both sound changes and grammatical changes.

The Quenya language featured prominently in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, as well as in his posthumously published history of Middle-earth The Silmarillion. The longest text in Quenya published by Tolkien during his lifetime is the poem "Namárië"; other published texts are no longer than a few sentences. At his death, Tolkien left behind a number of unpublished writings on Quenya, and later Tolkien scholars have prepared his notes and unpublished manuscripts for publication in the journals Parma Eldalamberon and Vinyar Tengwar, also publishing scholarly and linguistic analyses of the language. Tolkien never created enough vocabulary to make it possible to converse in Quenya, although fans have been writing poetry and prose in Quenya since the 1970s. This has required conjecture and the need to devise new words, in effect developing a kind of neo-Quenya language.

External history edit

J. R. R. Tolkien began to construct his first Elven tongue c. 1910–1911 while he was at the King Edward's School, Birmingham.[1] He later called it Qenya (c. 1915), and later changed the spelling to Quenya. He was then already familiar with Latin, Greek, Spanish, and several ancient Germanic languages, such as Gothic, Old Norse, and Old English.[T 2] He had invented several cryptographic codes, and two or three constructed languages. Tolkien took an interest in the Finnish mythology of the Kalevala, then became acquainted with Finnish, which he found to provide an aesthetically pleasing inspiration for his High-elven language. Many years later, he wrote: "It was like discovering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me."[T 2] Regarding the inspiration for Quenya, Tolkien wrote that:

The ingredients in Quenya are various, but worked out into a self-consistent character not precisely like any language that I know. Finnish, which I came across when I had first begun to construct a 'mythology' was a dominant influence, but that has been much reduced [now in late Quenya]. It survives in some features: such as the absence of any consonant combinations initially, the absence of the voiced stops b, d, g (except in mb, nd, ng, ld, rd, which are favoured) and the fondness for the ending -inen, -ainen, -oinen, also in some points of grammar, such as the inflexional endings -sse (rest at or in), -nna (movement to, towards), and -llo (movement from); the personal possessives are also expressed by suffixes; there is no gender.[T 3]

Tolkien never intended Quenya or any of his constructed languages to be used in everyday life as an international auxiliary language,[2] although he was in favour of the idea of Esperanto as an auxiliary language within Europe.[3] With his Quenya, Tolkien pursued a double aesthetic goal: "classical and inflected".[T 3] This urge, in fact, was the motivation for his creation of a 'mythology'. While the language developed, Tolkien felt that it needed speakers, including their own history and mythology, which he thought would give a language its 'individual flavour'.[T 4][4] The Lord of the Rings, according to Tolkien, "was primarily linguistic in inspiration and was begun in order to provide the necessary background of 'history' for Elvish tongues".[T 4] This process of first inventing a language and then creating a background setting for its fictional speakers has been described as unique.[5] Dimitra Fimi, a Tolkien scholar, argues that Tolkien's invention of Qenya started as a quest for the ideal language, to match the moral and aesthetic objectives that were part of his project of creating "a mythology for England". Fimi argues that Tolkien deliberately used sound symbolism to unify sound and meaning and make the language appear as an ideal language, fit to be spoken in the utopian realm of the Elves and fairies of Valinor.[6] Tolkien considered Quenya to be "the one language which has been designed to give play to my own most normal phonetic taste".[T 5]

From the onset, Tolkien used comparative philology and the tree model as his major tools in his constructed languages. He usually started with the phonological system of the proto-language and then proceeded by inventing for each daughter language the necessary sequence of sound changes. "I find the construction and the interrelation of the languages an aesthetic pleasure in itself, quite apart from The Lord of the Rings, of which it was/is in fact independent."[T 6]

Development edit

In his lifetime, Tolkien experimented ceaselessly with his constructed languages, and they were subjected to many revisions. Quenya had many grammars with substantial differences between the different stages of its development. During the first conceptual stage of early Quenya c. 1910 to c. 1920, the language was called Elfin in English and Eldarissa in Qenya proper. While its development was a continuous process, Quenya underwent a number of major revisions in its grammar, mostly in conjugation and the pronominal system. The vocabulary, however, was not subject to sudden or extreme change. Tolkien sometimes changed the meaning of a word, but he almost never discarded it once invented, and he kept on refining its meaning, and countlessly forged new synonyms. Moreover, Elvish etymology was in constant flux. Tolkien delighted in inventing new etymons for his Quenya vocabulary. But after the publication of The Lord of the Rings (finished c. 1949–1950, published in 1954–1955), the grammar rules of Quenya went through very few changes and this version was then defined as late Quenya (c. 1950–1973).

The spelling Qenya is sometimes used to distinguish early Quenya from later versions. Qenya differs from late Quenya by having different internal history, vocabulary, and grammar rules as described in the "Qenyaqetsa".[7] Examples include a different accusative or the abolition of final consonant clusters in later Quenya.[8] Fimi suggests that Qenya as it appears in the "Qenyaqetsa" was supposed to be a mystic language, as the Lexicon contains a number of words with clear Christian religious connotations, such as anatarwesta "crucifixion" and evandilyon "gospel" – these words were not part of late Quenya.[9]

In the early 1930s, Tolkien decided that the proto-language of the Elves was Valarin, the tongue of the gods or Valar as he called them: "The language of the Elves derived in the beginning from the Valar, but they changed it even in the learning, and moreover modified and enriched it constantly at all times by their own invention."[T 7] In the Comparative Tables[T 7] the mechanisms of sound change were described by Tolkien for the following daughter languages: Qenya, Lindarin (a dialect of Qenya), Telerin, Old Noldorin (or Fëanorian), Noldorin (or Gondolinian), Ilkorin (especially of Doriath), Danian of Ossiriand, East Danian, Taliska, West Lemberin, North Lemberin, and East Lemberin. For this proto-language of the Elves, Tolkien appears to have borrowed the five-part plosive system of Proto-Indo-European, the ancestor of Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and others; namely, one labial, one coronal, and three velar plosives (palatal, plain, and labial). The first table below provides some of the "Primary Initial Combinations" from the Comparative Tables.[T 7]

1. Comparative table of initial nasal consonants in Elven languages[T 7]
Valarin Qenya Lindarin Telerin
mb m, umb m, umb m, emb
nd n, and n, and n, end
ŋg ŋ > n, ing n, ing ŋg, eng
ŋgj ny, iny, indy ñ, ind g, ang
ŋgw ŋw > nw, ungw m, ungw m, emb

Another characteristic of Quenya reminiscent of ancient natural languages like Old Greek, Old English or Sanskrit is the dual grammatical number which is used in addition to singular and plural. It has been suggested that Tolkien used the dual to give Quenya an "archaic feel" in its role as an ancient language of the Elves.[10]

About ten years later, Tolkien changed his mind about the origin of the Elvish proto-language. Instead of learning from the Valar, the Elves had created an original language Quenderin which had become the proto-language of the Elven language family.[T 8] For this new language, Tolkien kept the many roots he had invented for Valarin in the 1930s, which then became "Quenderin roots". The Eldarin family of languages comprises Quenya, Telerin, Sindarin and Nandorin. The evolution in Quenya and Telerin of the nasalised initial groups of Quenderin is described thus in Tolkien's Outline of Phonology:

These groups in Quenya normally became simplified to nasals initially. (In Telerin they became b, d, g.)

Thus:

  1. mb- > m, as in *mbar- > Q. már 'habitation'.
  2. nd- > n, as in *ndōrē > Q. nóre 'country'.
  3. ñg- > ñ, as in *ñgolodō > Q. Ñoldo 'Noldo, Gnome'.
  4. ñgy > ny, as in *ñgyar- > Q. nyare 'recites'.
  5. ñgw > ñw, as in *ñgwar- > Q. ñware (pronounced [ˈŋwärɛ]) 'frets, wears away'.[T 9]

In contrast to early Qenya, the grammar of Quenya was influenced by Finnish,[8] an agglutinative language, but much more by Latin, a synthetic and fusional language, and also Greek,[T 10] from which he probably took the idea of the diglossia of Quenya with its highly codified variety: the Parmaquesta, used only in certain situations such as literature. The phonology of Quenya was also inspired by certain aspects of Finnish, but this is not easily recognised.[8]

Tolkien almost never borrowed words directly from real languages into Quenya. The major exception is the name Earendel/Eärendil, which he found in an Old English poem by Cynewulf.[11] Yet the Finnish influence extended sometimes also to the vocabulary. A few Quenya words, such as tul- "come" and anta- "give", clearly have a Finnish origin. Other forms that appear to have been borrowed are actually coincidental, such as Finnish kirja "book", and Quenya cirya "ship". Tolkien invented the Valarin/Quenderin root kir- from which sprang his Quenya word cirya. The Latin aure "dawn", and Quenya aure "moment of special meaning, special day, festival day" are unrelated. Instead, Quenya aurë comes from the Valarin/Quenderin root ur-. Germanic influence can more be seen in grammar (the -r nominative plural ending is reminiscent of the Scandinavian languages) or phonology, than in words: Arda, the Quenya name for "region", just happened to resemble Germanic Erde "earth", while it actually comes from the Valarin/Quenderin root gar-. According to Tom DuBois and Scott Mellor, the name of Quenya itself may have been influenced by the name Kven, a language closely related to Finnish, but Tolkien never mentioned this.[12]

Some linguists have argued that Quenya can be understood as an example of a particular kind of artificial language that helps to create a fictional world. Other such languages would include Robert Jordan's Old Tongue and the Klingon language of the Star Trek series invented by Marc Okrand. It was observed that they form "a sociolinguistic context within which group and individual identities can be created."[13]

Publication of linguistic papers edit

Two journals, Vinyar Tengwar from issue No. 39 (July 1998), and Parma Eldalamberon from issue No. 11 (1995), have been exclusively devoted to the editing and publishing of Tolkien's mass of unpublished linguistic papers.[14][15] Important grammatical texts, alluded to in the History of Middle-earth series and described as almost unreadable or quite incomprehensible, have been published in these two journals. The "Early Qenya Grammar", written by Tolkien c. 1925, was edited and published in Parma Eldalamberon No. 14.[T 11]

Scholarship edit

In 1992, according to the linguist Helge Fauskanger, the Tolkien scholar Anthony Appleyard made "the first comprehensive attempt ... to systematize Quenya grammar in light of the new information published in The History of Middle-earth, particularly The Etymologies, in his article 'Quenya Grammar Reexamined'."[16][17] Hostetter commented that Appleyard's work was by 2007 useful mainly for summarising the attitudes to Tolkien's languages at that time. He characterised it as:[16]

  1. seeking to label and describe a unique function for each "grammatical inflection", such as the so-called "respective case"[16]
  2. seeking to "fill in gaps" that a linguist of English or Latin might expect[16]
  3. seeking to avoid "(supposed) 'clashes' and 'ambiguities'"[16]
  4. being willing "to reject or even ascribe to authorial error" grammatical forms that did not seem to fit in[16]
  5. seeking to complete or extend the languages by creating new forms[16]
  6. being willing to declare Tolkien's early words or forms "obsolete" if later forms seemed to have the same meanings[16]
  7. being willing to conflate forms from different Tolkien stages when these seemed to be "useful"[16]

In 2008, the computational linguist Paul Strack created the Elvish Data Model (abbreviated to "Eldamo") to provide a lexicon – both a dictionary and an analysis of language development – of all Tolkien's languages (despite the name, not limited to Elvish). Eldamo groups Tolkien's creative work into three real-world periods: up to 1930 ("Early"); from then to 1950 ("Middle"); and from then to 1973 ("Late"). Forms of Quenya occur in each of these periods, as follows:[18]

Paul Strack's grouping of Quenya variants by period[18]
Early (1910 to 1930) Middle (to 1950) Late (to 1973)

Early Primitive Elvish
Early Quenya

Middle Primitive Elvish
Middle Ancient Quenya
Middle Quenya
Lindarin

Primitive Elvish
Ancient Quenya
Quenya
Vanyarin

The linguist Alexander Stainton published an analysis of Quenya's prosodic structure in 2022.[19]

Use of Quenya edit

Attempts by fans to write in Quenya began in the 1970s, when the total corpus of published Elvish comprised only a few hundred words. Since then, the use of Elvish has flourished in poems and texts, phrases and names, and even tattoos. But Tolkien himself never made his languages complete enough for conversation. As a result, newly invented Elvish texts require conjecture and sometimes the coinage of new words.[20] The use of Quenya has expanded over the years as new words have been created, forming a Neo-Quenya language that is based on Tolkien's original Quenya but incorporates many new elements.[21]

Internal history edit

The Elvish languages are a family of several related languages and dialects. The following is a brief overview of the fictional internal history of late Quenya as conceived by Tolkien. Tolkien imagined an Elven society with a vernacular language for every-day use, Tarquesta, and a more educated language for use in ceremonies and lore, Parmaquesta.[22]

The Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger observed that the "degree of proximity" to the light of the Valar affected the development of both languages in terms of phonology, morphology and semantics. The division between Light Elves and Dark Elves that took place during the Sundering of the Elves is reflected in their respective languages.[23]

Primitive Quendian edit

The Elves at first shared a common language, Primitive Quendian, called Quenderin in Quenya. Among the Eldar, i.e. those Elves who undertook the Great March to Valinor and Eldamar, Primitive Quendian developed into Common Eldarin. Some of the Eldar remained in Beleriand and became the Grey Elves; their language developed into Sindarin. Most of the other Eldar continued to Eldamar ('Elvenhome') in Aman and founded the great city of Tirion, where they developed Quenya.[T 12][T 13][T 14]

Quenya's older form, first recorded in the sarati of Rúmil, is called Old or Ancient Quenya (Yára-Quenya in Quenya). In Eldamar, the Noldor and Vanyar spoke two slightly different though mutually intelligible dialects of Tarquesta: Noldorin Quenya and Vanyarin Quenya.[T 15] Later Noldorin Quenya became Exilic Quenya, when most of the Noldor Elves followed their leader Fëanor into exile from Eldamar and back to Middle-earth, where the immortal Elves first awoke.[T 16]

Use by Elves, Valar, and Men edit

Quenya was used by the godlike Valar. The Elves derived some loanwords from the Valar's language, which was called Valarin in Quenya, although these were more numerous in the Vanyarin dialect than in Noldorin. This was probably because of the enduringly close relationship the Vanyarin Elves had with the Valar. The Quenya as used by the Vanyar also incorporated several words from Valarin that were not found in the Noldorin dialect, such as tulka ("yellow", from Valarin tulukha(n)), ulban ("blue", presumably from the same root as Valarin ul(l)u meaning "water"), and nasar ("red", original Valarin not given).[T 17]

According to "Quendi and Eldar: Essekenta Eldarinwa", Quendya was the usual Vanyarin name given to the Quenya language, since in Vanyarin, the consonant groups ndy and ny remained quite distinct.[T 18] In Noldorin, ndy eventually became ny. Tolkien explained that "the word Quenya itself has been cited as an exempla (e.g. by Ælfwine), but this is a mistake due to supposition that kwenya was properly kwendya and directly derived from the name Quendi 'Elves'. This appears not to be the case. The word is Quenya in Vanyarin, and always so in Parmaquesta."[T 19]

The Elves of the Third Clan, or Teleri, who reached Eldamar later than the Noldor and the Vanyar, spoke a different but closely related tongue, usually called Telerin. It was seen by some Elves to be just another dialect of Quenya. This was not the case with the Teleri for whom their tongue was distinct from Quenya. After the Vanyar left the city of Túna, Telerin and Noldorin Quenya grew closer.[24]

The rebellious Noldor, who followed their leader Fëanor to Middle-earth, spoke only Quenya. But Elu Thingol, King of the Sindar of Beleriand, forbade the use of Quenya in his realm when he learned of the slaying of Telerin Elves by the Noldor.[T 20] By doing so, he both restricted the possibility of the Sindar to enhance and brighten their language with influences from Quenya and accelerated the "dimininution and spiritual impoverishment" of the Noldorin culture.[25] The Noldor at this time had fully mastered Sindarin, while the Sindar were slow to learn Quenya. Quenya in Middle-earth became known as Exilic Quenya when the Noldor eventually adopted the Sindarin language as their native speech after Thingol's ruling. It differed from Amanian Quenya mostly in vocabulary, having some loanwords from Sindarin. It differed also in pronunciation, representing the recognition of sound-changes which had begun among the Noldor before the exile and had caused Noldorin Quenya to diverge from Vanyarin Quenya. The change of z (< old intervocalic s) to r was the latest in Noldorin, belonging to early Exilic Quenya. The grammatical changes were only small though since the features of their "old language" were carefully taught.[T 21]

From the Second Age on, Quenya was used ceremonially by the Men of Númenor and their descendants in Gondor and Arnor for the official names of kings and queens; this practice was resumed by Aragorn when he took the crown as Elessar Telcontar. Quenya in the Third Age had almost the same status as the Latin language had in medieval Europe, and was called Elven-latin by Tolkien.[T 22]

Phonology edit

Tolkien described the pronunciation of the Elvish languages by Elves, Men and Hobbits in a variety of sources. The documentation about late Quenya phonology is contained in the Appendix E of the Lord of the Rings and the "Outline of Phonology", one of Tolkien's texts, published in Parma Eldalamberon No. 19.[T 23]

Tolkien based Quenya pronunciation more on Latin than on Finnish. Thus, Quenya lacks the vowel harmony and consonant gradation present in Finnish, and accent is not always on the first syllable of a word. Typical Finnish elements like the front vowels ö, ä and y are lacking in Quenya, but phonological similarities include the absence of aspirated unvoiced stops or the development of the syllables ti > si in both languages.[8] The combination of a Latin basis with Finnish phonological rules resulted in a product that resembles Italian in many respects, which was Tolkien's favourite modern Romance language.[T 24]

The tables below list the consonants (Q. ólamar) and vowels of late colloquial Noldorin Quenya, i.e. Quenya as spoken among the Exiled Noldor in Middle-earth. They are written using the International Phonetic Alphabet, unless otherwise noted.[T 23]

Consonants edit

The Quenya consonant system has 6 major places of articulation: labial (involving the lips), dental (involving the tongue and the back of the teeth), alveolar (involving the tongue and the alveolar ridge of the jaw), palatal (involving the tongue and the middle part of the roof of the mouth), velar (involving the back of the tongue and the back part of the roof of the mouth), and glottal (involving the vocal folds). The dental fricative (/θ/) and the voiced alveolar fricative (/z/) occur in the Vanyarin varieties, but were gradually replaced with /s/ and /r/ respectively in Noldorin Quenya.[26] Notably, voiced plosives only occur after nasals and liquids, i.e. there is no simple /b, d, ɡ/ but only the clusters /mb, (lb,) nd, ld, rd, ŋɡ/, and these occur only between vowels. (This may not be true in Vanyarin Quenya, given the word Aldudénië, the name of a lament for the death of the Two Trees of Valinor composed by Elemmírë of the Vanyar.)[27][28] Prenasalised consonants are prominent in Quenya, and include their own tengwar. The following table presents the inventory of classic Noldorin consonants. Grouping of consonants occurs only in the central parts of a word, except for combinations with the semivowels /w/ and /j/.[29]

Quenya orthography (using the Latin script) follows the IPA, but uses ⟨c⟩ as an alternative to ⟨k⟩, writes [ŋ] not followed by another velar as ⟨ñ⟩ (in early Quenya when this still can occur, as in Ñoldor; otherwise it is written ⟨n⟩), and represents the consonants ʍ] using the digraphs ⟨hy hw⟩. Similarly, the digraphs ⟨ty ndy⟩ may represent palatal stop allophones of [t ⁿd], namely [c ⁿɟ], although they are not independent phonemes. In addition, ⟨h⟩ in the cluster ⟨ht⟩ represents [ç] after ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩ and [x] after other vowels. In some instances ⟨x⟩ was used for the combination /ks/ as in Helcaraxë.[T 23]

Morphophonemics and allophony edit

Some consonants are realised differently when they occur in clusters with certain other consonants. This particularly concerns clusters that involve the approximants /w, j/ or the glottal fricative /h/. Clusters where the second consonant was /j/ are realised as palatalised consonants, and clusters where the second consonant was /w/ are realised as labialised. Consonant clusters where the initial consonant is /h/ are realised as preaspirated and devoiced.[T 23]

Palatal clusters edit

The pronunciation of the consonant cluster ⟨hy⟩ is [ç] in Noldorin Quenya, which is a "strong voiceless y, similar to, but more frictional than the initial sound in English huge".[T 26] In Vanyarin Quenya, ⟨hy⟩ is pronounced [ʃ].[T 26]

According to Tolkien, the cluster /cj/ ⟨ty⟩ is pronounced as "a 'front explosive' [c], as e.g. Hungarian ty, but it is followed by an appreciable partly unvoiced y-offglide".[T 27]

Tolkien stated that the cluster ⟨ny⟩ is pronounced as in English "new" [njuː].[T 28] In the Vanyarin dialect, ⟨ty⟩, ⟨dy⟩, and ⟨hy⟩ were realised as [tʃ], [dʒ], and [ʃ] respectively. Tolkien wrote about ⟨py⟩: "In Vanyarin Quenya and among some Ñoldor the cluster ⟨py⟩ was sounded with voiceless y, sc. as [pç], which later in Vanyarin became [pʃ]";[T 29] cf. Hungarian lopj [lopç] 'steal'.[T 23]

Labial clusters edit

The cluster ⟨hw⟩ is realised as [ʍ], a "spirantal voiceless w. It has more tense with closer lip-aperture and more friction than the voiceless wh of English".[T 26] According to Tolkien, the graph ⟨q⟩ or ⟨qu⟩ is pronounced as "a lip-rounded 'k' followed by a partly unvoiced w-offglide",[T 27] that is /kʷ/.[T 23]

Glottal clusters edit

The clusters ⟨hl⟩ and ⟨hr⟩ are realised as [ɬ] and [r̥], the same as ⟨lh⟩ and ⟨rh⟩ in Sindarin. These, like their Sindarin equivalents, derived from Primitive Elvish sl- and sr-. The primitive consonant clusters sm- and sn- came out in Quenya as ⟨m⟩ and ⟨n⟩; it has been suggested that there was an intermediate stage of ⟨hm⟩ and ⟨hn⟩, the voiceless versions [m̥] and [n̥], in Common Eldarin; these soon merged with the voiced ⟨m⟩ and ⟨n⟩. Voiceless hl and hr have a complex history which Tolkien describes thus: "Among the Noldor hr, hl became voiced to r, l before the Exile, and the use of r, l in these cases was normal in Tarquesta, as spoken, tho' the spelling was usually maintained. Since later the Exiles were familiar with voiceless hr, hl in their Sindarin speech many of them restored this sound in Tarquesta, according to the traditional spelling. The learned had, of course, at all times retained hr, hl in reading or reciting Parmaquesta."[T 30]

Simplification of clusters edit

In the late Ancient Quenya period, when vowels were lost in long compound words, the clusters thus created, or the consonants that became final, were as a rule changed or reduced:[T 23]

-m > -n;
all stops > -t;
-d > -r;
-th > -t;
-nd > -n;
-mb, -ng > -n;
-ñ > -n;
any combination with s (as -ts, -st, -ss) > -s;
any combination with -ht > -t.

Vowels edit

3. Quenya vowels
Front Back
Close i(ː) u(ː)
Close-mid
Open-mid ɛ ɔ
Open a(ː)

Quenya has five vowels (Quenya ómar), and a distinction of length. The short vowels are /a, e, i, o, u/ and the long ones are written with an acute accent as /á, é, í, ó, ú/. The precise quality of the vowels is not known, but their pronunciation is likely closer to the "pure" vowels of Italian and Spanish than to the diphthongised English ones.[28] According to Pesch, for the vowels /a, i, u/ the short and long forms have the same vowel quality, similar to the vowels of Finnish or Polish. But for the vowels /e, o/, the short vowels are pronounced slightly lower and closer to [ɛ] and [ɔ], respectively, whereas the long ones are pronounced as high-mid vowels [eː] and [oː].[30] This interpretation is based on a statement by Tolkien, saying that é and ó, when correctly pronounced by Elves, were just a little "tenser and 'closer'" than their short counterparts: "neither very tense and close, nor very slack and open".[T 31] This interpretation results in a vowel system with 7 different vowel qualities and a length distinction in the high and low vowels only; this system is depicted in table 3.[31]

Late Noldorin Quenya has 6 diphthongs (Quenya ohloni): /iu, eu, ai, au, oi, ui/. All of these are falling, except for /iu/ ([ju]) which is rising.[32] In Old Quenya, all diphthongs were falling. Tolkien wrote: "It is probable that before the Exile Vanyarin and Noldorin [Quenya] in common shifted iu, ui to rising diphthongs,[T 32] (...) but only /iu/ is reported as a rising diphthong [ju] similar to the beginning of English yule [juːɫ]. On the other hand, ui remained in Exilic Quenya a falling diphthong as reported".[T 32]

4. Late Quenya diphthongs
Offglide
Front Back
i ju
e ew
a aj aw
o oj
u uj

Syllables and stress edit

In Quenya, the stressing of a syllable is predictable and non-phonemic (i.e. the meaning of a word never changes depending on the stress), but it is partly determined by syllable weight. Words of two syllables are stressed on the first syllable. In words of three or more syllables, the stress is on the penultimate syllable if this is heavy, otherwise on the antepenultimate syllable, i.e. the third-to-last syllable. This stress rule is the same as the stress-pattern found in Latin. In Quenya, heavy syllables are syllables that contain either a long vowel, a diphthong, or a final consonant (thus an intervocalic consonant cluster: ll, ld, mm, ss, ny, ry, etc.). Medially hy and hw close a syllable in Parmaquesta, but not colloquially in Tarquesta. Quenya has also a secondary accent. The placement of stress and the distinction between heavy and light syllables is important in Quenya verse.[T 33]

Phonotactics edit

Tolkien also devised phonotactical rules for late Quenya, governing the way in which the sounds could be combined to form words:

  • Only the following consonants have phonemically geminated forms, i.e. elongated consonants:
pp, tt, cc, mm, nn, ss, ll, rr. (However, Quenya for "death" is effírië,[33] featuring a geminated f.)
These occur only medially.[T 34] The geminated occlusives pp, tt, cc are aspirated.
  • Tolkien wrote that in Common Eldarin as final consonants only the "dentals t, s, d, th, n, r, l (all frequent except th) and the labial nasal m (frequent). In addition the combination -nt (though usually a coalescence of more than one inflexional element) seems also to have been permitted; possibly also st. No other consonant groups were tolerated. y, w are not included, since they naturally took the syllabic forms i, u as suffixed elements."[T 35] These evolved from Common Eldarin to Quenya Tolkien explains on the same page thus: m > n ; t, n, r and s remained without change ; final C.E. th became Quenya t and final d > r, and so: "the list of 'permissible finals':
n, r, l, s, t, nt
remained constant in Quenya speech-feeling".
  • Quenya tolerates only the following initial consonants:
p, t, c, f, s, h, hy, hw, m, n, ñ, v, l, hl, r, hr, y, w.[T 36]
  • Quenya tolerates only the following initial groups:
x, ps, ty, ny, ly, qu, ñw (became nw in Noldorin Quenya)[T 36]
  • Quenya tolerates only the following medial biconsonantal groups (those especially common are bolded):
ht, lc, ld, lf, lm, lp, lqu, lt, lv, lw, ly, mb, mn, mp, my, nc, nd, ng, nt, nw (ñw initial only), ny, ps, pt, qu, rc, rd, rm, rn, rp, rt, rs, rv, rw, ry, sc, st, sw, ts, tw, ty, x.[28]
  • Quenya does not tolerate triconsonantal (or longer) combinations, except c, h, g followed by w, or h, t, d followed by y. So, Quenya permits the following 12 triconsonantal groups only:
nqu, lqu, rqu, squ, ngw, rhw, nty, lty, hty, rty, sty, lhy.
Differences in triconsonant pronunciation:
hty [çc] in Noldorin Quenya, [ʃt͡ʃ] in Vanyarin Quenya,[T 37]
sty [sc] in Noldorin Quenya, [ʃt͡ʃ] in Vanyarin Quenya (cf. ść vs. szcz in Polish),[T 38]
In all other cases y, and w became syllabic i, u after the consonant groups.[T 39]
  • Quenya does not tolerate the combination of two different occlusives. "Where these anciently occurred, as in pt, ct, one of the two, or both, became opened and spirantal."[T 39]
  • As in Sindarin, the combination ft is avoided.[T 37]

Grammar edit

The grammar of Quenya is agglutinative and mostly suffixing, i.e. different word particles are joined by appending them. It has basic word classes of verbs, nouns and pronouns/determiners, adjectives and prepositions. Nouns are inflected for case and number. Verbs are inflected for tense and aspect, and for agreement with subject and object. In early Quenya, adjectives agree with the noun they modify in case and number, but not in later Quenya, where this agreement disappears.[8] The basic word order is subject–verb–object. Unless otherwise noted, samples in this section refer to Late Quenya as conceived by Tolkien after 1951.

Nouns edit

Quenya nouns can have up to four numbers: singular, general plural ("plural 1"), particular/partitive plural ("plural 2"), and dual.[34] In late Quenya Tarquesta, the plural is formed by a suffix to the subjective form of the noun: for plural 1 the suffix is -i or -r; for plural 2 the suffix is -li.[T 40] Quenya nouns are declined for case. Parmaquesta Quenya has ten cases. These include the four primary cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, and instrumental; three adverbial cases: allative (of which the dative is a shortened form), locative (also with a shortened form), and ablative; and a possessive or adjectival case.[35] The accusative was however only used for Parmaquesta and had been replaced by nominative in late colloquial Quenya.[36]

Adjectives edit

In late Quenya, the singular endings are -a, -ë, -ëa, and a rare form -in that may be seen as a shortened form of -ina. The corresponding plural forms are -ë, ,-i, ië, and possibly -inë. The latter version is however not attested.[37] Quenya adjectives may be freely used as nouns,[T 41] in which case they are also inflected like a noun: e.g. vinya, "new", may be used as vinyar, "news".[38]

Prepositions and adverbs edit

In Quenya, there are many similarities in form between prepositions and adverbs since the grammatical case already determines the relation of verb and object. Thus:[39]

an i falmali = i falmalinna(r) "upon the many waves"

The preposition an is related to the -nna case ending.

Pronouns edit

As with all parts of Quenya grammar, the pronominal system was subject to many revisions throughout Tolkien's life, and the available corpus was not systematic until a list of endings was published in Vinyar Tengwar No. 49 in 2007.[40] In late Quenya, pronouns have both separate or independent forms, and suffix forms.[T 42][T 43]

The separate pronouns have both a short and long form that are used for emphatic and normal pronouns respectively. Examples of the emphatic form include: emmë, elyë, entë (1st to 3rd person plural).[41] Such emphatic disjunctive pronouns, were already present in early Quenya but differed from the later versions (e.g. plural: tûto, sîse, atta).[42]

"I love him" (or "her") can be expressed in Quenya as Melinyes or Melin sé.[T 44] "I love them" would be then Melinyet or Melin té (these two forms are reconstructed). If a pronoun is the subject of a sentence, it becomes tied to the verb either as separate word directly before the verb, or as a suffix after the inflected verb. In the suffixed form, an -s (singular) and a -t (plural and dual) may be added to the long subjective pronouns as objectives of the 3rd person:[T 45][43]

utúvie-nye-s, literally "have found-I-it",[44] "I have found it" (cf. Aragorn's outcry when he finds the sapling of the White Tree.[T 46])
utúvie-lye-s, "You have found it/him/her".
utúvie-lye-t, "You have found them".

It is debated whether certain attested special male and female pronouns that were exclusively used for the description of persons are still applicable to late Quenya as found in The Lord of the Rings.[45]

Possessive determiners edit

The possessive determiners (analogous to English my, his, etc.) are used to indicate the possessor of the noun they determine. They mark the person and number of the possessor, and are inflected to agree with the noun they are attached in number and case. While the English language distinguishes between masculine and feminine singular possessors (his vs. her), late Quenya generally does not.[46]

"Since by Quenya idiom in describing the parts of body of several persons the number proper to each individual is used, the plural of parts existing in pairs (as hands, eyes, ears, feet) is seldom required. Thus mánta "their hand" would be used, (they raised) their hands (one each), mántat, (they raised) their hands (each both), and mánte could not occur".[T 47]

Ortanentë manta. "They raised their hands."
Ortaner manta. "They raised their hands."
Varda ortanë máryat. "Varda has uplifted her (two) hands."[T 48]

The usual plural ending is -r, hildinyar, "my heirs".[47]

Demonstrative edit

The demonstrative makes a three-way distinction between entities the speaker is referring to:

sina, "this";
tana, "that (over there)";
enta, "that (over there, away from both of us)".[48]

Verbs edit

According to Tolkien, "the inflections of [Qenya] verbs are always pretty regular",[T 49] and Quenya verbs are either in a personal form or an impersonal form. Usually in linguistics, an impersonal verb is a verb that cannot take a true subject, because it does not represent an action, occurrence, or state-of-being of any specific person, place, or thing. This is not how Tolkien intended the use of "impersonal." An impersonal verb form is a verb to which no pronoun has been attached, as carë (sg.) or carir (pl.); carin, "I do (habitually)", is a personal form (with -n, a short suffix for "I, me"). As explained by Tolkien, verbs in Quenya are negated by using a "negative verb" ua- in front of the proper verb in the impersonal tense form.[T 50]

Tolkien noted that "when the emphatic pronoun is used separately the verb has no inflexion (save for number)."[T 51]

Finwë cára. "Finwë is making (right now)."
Quendi cárar. "The Elves are making."
Cáranyë. "I am making."
Cárammë. "We are making."
Essë cára. "He/She is (really) making."
Emmë cárar. "We are (really) making."

Late Quenya verbs have also a dual agreement morpheme -t:

Nai siluvat elen atta. "May two stars shine."[T 52]

In the imperative mood, plurality and duality are not expressed. There is no agreement. The verb stays singular.[T 53]

The copula in late Quenya is the verb na-. Tolkien stated that it was used only in joining adjectives, nouns, and pronouns in statements (or wishes) asserting (or desiring) a thing to have certain quality, or to be same as another, and also that the copula was not used when the meaning was clear.[T 54] Otherwise, the copula is left out, which may provide for ambiguous tenses when there is no further context:

Eldar ataformaiti, can be translated in English either as "Elves are ambidexters", or "Elves were ambidexters".[T 55]
A mára. "A is good", or "A was good".[T 54]

Syntax edit

Quenya allows for a flexible word order because it is an inflectional language like Latin. Nevertheless, it has word order rules. The usual syntax structure is subject-verb-object. The adjective can be placed before or after the noun that it modifies.[49]

Vocabulary edit

Because many of Tolkien's writings on the Elvish languages remain unpublished it is difficult to know how large a vocabulary he devised. By 2008, about 25,000 Elvish words had been published.[50]

5. Basic vocabulary in Quenya and Sindarin
English Quenya Sindarin equivalent
earth ambar, cemen amar, ceven
sky menel menel
water nén nen
fire nár naur
man (male) nér benn
female nís bess
eat mat- mad-
drink suc- sog-
tall, great alta, halla beleg, daer
small pitya, titta niben, tithen
night lóme
day aurë, aur

Proper nouns edit

Quenya's proper nouns are names of people and things in Middle-earth.[T 45][T 56]

Estë "Rest"; Indis "Bride"; Melcor "He who Arises in Might"; Nessa "Youth"; Varda "Sublime"; Voronwë "Steadfast one."[T 56]
Aicanáro "Fell Fire"; Ancalimë "Most Bright Lady"; Curumo "Cunning Man"; Fëanáro "Spirit of Fire"; {{Olórin}} "(?)Dreamer"; {{Sauron}} "The Abhorred."[T 56]
Ainulindalë "Music of the Ainur"; Eldamar "Home of the Eldar"; Helcaraxë "Jaws of Ice"; Ilúvatar "Father of All"; Oron Oiolossë "Ever Snow-white Peak"; Ondolindë "Rock of Song"; Turambar "Master of Doom"; Valinor "land of the Vali", sc. Valar; Vingilot "Foam-flower"; Yavanna "Giver of fruits."[T 56]
Mar-nu-Falmar "Land under the Waves"; Mindon Eldaliéva "Lofty Tower of the Elvish-people"; Quenta Silmarillion "Tale of the Silmarils."[T 56]

Some prepositions and adverbs edit

  • ala: [place] beyond; [time] after.
  • ama: up(wards).
  • an: towards, upon.
  • et: forth, out of [with the complement noun in ablative case]
  • haila: [static] far beyond.
  • haiya: far, far off, far away.
  • han: [addition] beyond ; over and above, in addition to.
  • : [not touching] beneath, under.
  • no: 1. under. 2. upon. 3. after (of place), behind.
  • nu: under, beneath.
  • ono: 1. in front of, ahead, before [in all relation but time]. 2, after [of time only].

Greetings edit

The word used as a form of polite address to an Elf (male or female) is Tar. Among the Númenoreans it became "King/Queen" and used as a form of address for a superior, especially a King or a Queen; cf. Tarinya, used by Prince Aldarion to address his father, King Tar-Meneldur.[T 57]

  • Namárië [naˈmaːri.ɛ] is a reduced form of Quenya á na márië, literally "be well". It is a formula used in Tarquesta for greetings and also for farewell.[T 58]
  • The most usual formula used by the Noldor for greeting each other is (Hara) máriessë! "(Stay) in happiness!"[T 58]
In The Lord of the Rings, the hobbit Frodo Baggins used another address of welcome: Elen síla lúmenn' omentielmo!, corrected by Tolkien in the Second Edition to Elen síla lúmenn' omentielvo! This was a traditional formula in an elevated style, used between people going on crossing paths: "A star shines upon the hour of the meeting of our ways".[T 59]
  • The most usual formula used by the Noldor in farewells is Áva márië! "Go happily!", or Márienna! "To happiness!".[T 58]

Numerals edit

According to Christopher Tolkien, "the Eldar used two systems of numerals one of sixes (or twelves), and one of fives. (or tens)."[51] That is a duodecimal counting (base 12), and a decimal system. The Quenya word made by J. R. R. Tolkien for the 'decimal system of counting' is maquanotië - "hand counting".[T 60]

The known numbers for 1–20 are presented below; those from early Quenya ("Early Qenya Grammar") are in bold.

6. Numerals from 1 to 20
Cardinal numbers Ordinal numbers Fractional numbers
No. Quenya English No. Quenya English No. Quenya English
1 min One 1st minya First 1/1 kaina, quanta Whole
2 atta, tata Two 2nd attëa, tatya Second 1/2 peresta, perta Half
3 neldë, nel Three 3rd neldëa, nelya Third 1/3 nelesta, neldesta, nelta, nelsa Third
4 canta, can Four 4th cantëa Fourth 1/4 canasta, casta, cansat Fourth, quarter
5 lempë, lemen, maqua Five 5th lempëa Fifth 1/5 lepesta, lepsat Fifth
6 enquë Six 6th enquëa Sixth 1/6 enquesta Sixth
7 otso Seven 7th otsëa Seventh 1/7 otosta, osta, otsat Seventh
8 toldo, tolto Eight 8th toldëa, toltëa Eighth 1/8 tolosta, tosta, tolsat Eighth
9 nertë Nine 9th nertëa Ninth 1/9 neresta, nesta, nersat Ninth
10 quëan, quain, maquat Ten 10th quainëa Tenth 1/10 *quaista, caista Tenth
11 minque Eleven 11th *minquëa, minquenya Eleventh 1/11 minquesta Eleventh
12 yunquë, rasta Twelve 12th *yunquëa, *rastëa Twelfth 1/12 yunquesta, *rastasta Twelfth
13 *nelquë, quainel, yunquenta Thirteen 13th *nelquëa, *yunquentëa Thirteenth 1/13 *nelquesta, *yunquentesta Thirteenth
14 canquë, quaican Fourteen 14th *canquëa Fourteenth 1/14 *canquesta Fourteenth
15 lepenquë, quailepen Fifteen 15th *lepenquëa Fifteenth 1/15 *lepenquesta Fifteenth
16 enenquë, quainquë Sixteen 16th *enenquëa Sixteenth 1/16 *enenquesta Sixteenth
17 otoquë Seventeen 17th *otoquëa Seventeenth 1/17 *otoquesta Seventeenth
18 tolquë, nahta Eighteen 18th *tolquëa Eighteenth 1/18 *tolquesta Eighteenth
19 neterquë, húkea Nineteen 19th *neterquëa, hukaiya Nineteenth 1/19 *neterquesta Nineteenth
20 *yuquain, yukainen Twenty 20th *yuquainëa, yukainenya Twentieth 1/20 *yuquaista, yukainentya Twentieth

Other attested number words include esta and inga for 'first'. Tolkien was dissatisfied with esta, the definition is marked with a query in the "Etymologies".[T 61] Maqua means specifically a group of five objects, like the English word "pentad"; similarly maquat "pair of fives" refers to a group of ten objects. The word yunquenta for thirteen literally means "12 and one more".[T 62]

Quenya English Quenya English
Min elen
Er elen
One star
A single star
Min Eleno
Er eleno
Of one star
Of a single star
Elen atta Two stars Elen atto Of two stars
Eleni neldë Three stars Elenion neldë Of three stars
Eleni canta Four stars Elenion canta Of four stars
7. "Qenya" numerals 20 onwards & Quenya reconstruction
No. "Qenya" Quenya
Cardinal Ordinal Fractional
20 yukainen *yuquain *yuquainëa *yuquaista
21 min(ya) yukainen *min yuquain *min yuquainëa *min yuquaista
2_ _ yukainen *_ yuquain *_ yuquainëa *_ yuquaista
30 nel(de)kainen *nelquain *nelquainëa *nelquaista
40 kan(ta)kainen *canquain *canquainëa *canquaista
50 leminkainen *lepenquain *lepenquainëa *lepenquaista
60 enekkainen *(en)enquain *(en)enquainëa *(en)enquaista
70 otsokainen *otoquain *otoquainëa *otoquaista
80 tol(to)kainen *tolquain *tolquainëa *tolquaista
90 huekainen *neterquain *neterquainëa *neterquaista
100 tuksa pínea (lit. small gross) *tuxa *tuxëa *tuxasta
100/144 tuksa
200 yúyo tuksa *tuxa atta *tuxëa atta *tuxasta atta
_00 _ tukse *tuxar _
*tuxe _
*tuxëa _ *tuxasta _
1k
103
húmë
tuksa kainen,
tuksainen
*húmë
*quaituxa
*húmëa
*quaituxëa
*húmesta
*quaituxasta
2k yúyo húmi *húmë atta *húmëa atta *húmesta atta
_k _ húmi *húmi _ *húmëa _ *húmesta _
106 mindóre, sóra (Large number) *mindórë *mindórëa *mindóresta
109 yundóre *yundórë *yundórëa *yundóresta
1012 neldóre *neldórë *neldórëa *neldóresta
1015 kantóre *candórë *candórëa *candóresta
1018 lemindóre *lependórë *lependórëa *lependóresta
1021 enqendóre *enquendórë *enquendórëa *enquendóresta
1024 otsondóre *otondórë *otondórëa *otondóresta

"Qenya" numerals above twenty show that the smaller units come first, min yukainen "21" being "one-twenty", and also reflects in how it's written in Tengwar.[52]

Writing systems edit

Most of the time, Tolkien wrote his invented languages using the Latin script,[53] but he devised his own writing systems to match the internal histories of his languages.[54]

Elvish writing systems edit

 
The word quenya written in tengwar of Fëanor using the classical mode

Tolkien imagined many writing systems for his Elves. The best-known is the "Tengwar of Fëanor" but the first one he created c. 1919 was the "Tengwar of Rumil", also called the sarati. He decided that, prior to their Exile, the Noldorin Elves first used the sarati of Rúmil to record Ancient Quenya. In Middle-earth, Quenya appears to have been rarely written using the "Elvish runes" or cirth, named certar in Quenya.[54]

Latin script edit

Tolkien's spelling in Latin script of Quenya was largely phonemic, with each letter corresponding to a specific phoneme in the language. However, the vowels varied in pronunciation depending upon their length.[55] Specific rules for consonants were provided in Appendix E of The Lord of the Rings, e.g. the letter c is always pronounced k, qu stands for kw,[T 63] Orqui is Orkwi. Tolkien's standard orthography for Quenya uses all the letters of the Latin script except j, k, and z, together with the acute and diaeresis marks on vowels; the letters ñ, þ and z only appear in early Quenya. Occasionally, Tolkien wrote Quenya with a "Finnish-style" orthography (rather than the standard Latin-Romance version), in which c is replaced by k, y with j, and long vowels written double. The acute accent marks long vowels, while the diaeresis indicates that a vowel is not part of a diphthong, for example in ëa or ëo, while final e is marked with a diaeresis to remind English-speakers that it is not silent.[56]

Corpus edit

The poem "Namárië" is the longest piece of Quenya found in The Lord of the Rings, yet the first sentence in Quenya is uttered by a Hobbit; namely Frodo's greeting to the Elves: elen síla lúmenn' omentielvo. Other examples include Elendil's words spoken upon reaching Middle-earth, and repeated by Aragorn at his coronation: Et Eärello Endorenna utúlien. Sinomë maruvan ar Hildinyar tenn' Ambar-metta! "Out of the Great Sea to Middle-earth I am come. In this place I will abide, and my heirs, unto the ending of the world!"[T 46] Treebeard's greeting to Celeborn and Galadriel is also spoken in Quenya: A vanimar, vanimálion nostari "O beautiful ones, parents of beautiful children".[T 64] Another fragment is Sam's cry when he uses Galadriel's phial against Shelob: Aiya Eärendil Elenion Ancalima! "Hail Eärendil, brightest of stars!"[T 65] And in The Silmarillion, the phrase Utúlie'n aurë! Aiya Eldalië ar Atanatári, utúlie'n aurë! "The day has come! Behold, people of the Eldar and Fathers of Men, the day has come!", is cried by Fingon before the Battle of Unnumbered Tears.[T 66]

Other Quenya poems spoken by Tolkien in public but never published in his lifetime are Oilima Markirya ("The Last Ark"), Nieninqe, and Earendel in his lecture A Secret Vice, and published in 1983 in The Monsters and the Critics. A faulty fragment of the poem "Narqelion", written in early Quenya or Elfin between November 1915 and March 1916, was published by Humphrey Carpenter in his Biography. A facsimile of the entire poem was published only in 1999.[57]

See also edit

References edit

Primary edit

The entries in the journals Parma Eldalamberon and Vinyar Tengwar contain Tolkien's previously-unpublished accounts of the language, annotated by scholars, so these are not purely primary sources.
  1. ^ Tolkien wrote in his "Outline of Phonology" (in Parma Eldalamberon 19, p. 74) dedicated to the phonology of Quenya: ⟨ny⟩ is "a sound as in English new". In Quenya ⟨ny⟩ is a combination of consonants, ibidem., p. 81.
  2. ^ a b Letter #163, The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien.
  3. ^ a b From a letter to W. R. Matthews, dated 13–15 June 1964, published in Parma Eldalamberon (17), p. 135.
  4. ^ a b Tolkien, J. R. R. The Lord of the Rings "Foreword to the Second Edition".
  5. ^ Tolkien, J. R. R. 1997. The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays. p. 212
  6. ^ J. R. R. Tolkien, letter to a reader, Parma Eldalamberon (17), p. 61.
  7. ^ a b c d Tolkien 2010, Parma Eldalamberon No. 19, pp. 18–28
  8. ^ J. R. R. Tolkien, "Lambion Ontale: Descent of Tongues", Tengwesta Qenderinwa 2, Parma Eldalamberon (18), p. 71: "The Elves began to make in the beginning of their being [a language] and it is one with their being, since it was of their nature and the first of all their gift to devise names and words."
  9. ^ Tolkien 2010, Parma Eldalamberon No. 19, p. 76.
  10. ^ Tolkien wrote about Quenya: "It might be said to be composed on a Latin basis with two other (main) ingredients that happen to give me 'phonaesthetic' pleasure: Finnish, and Greek". Letter No. 144. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien.
  11. ^ Parma Eldalamberon No. 14.
  12. ^ J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, ch. 6 "Of Feanor and the Unchaining of Melkor", see also "Quenya" in the annotated Index p. 346
  13. ^ J. R. R. Tolkien, "Tengwesta Qenderinwa", Parma Eldalamberon 18, p. 72. "The most ancient structure of the tongue common to all the Qendelie [Elvish race] is ... not known to the Elves, through some things may be guessed or discovered by those who will compare one with another the written forms of Eldarin languages of Valinor, together with such records of the Avari as we here in Eressëa have set down in these later days."
  14. ^ Tolkien 1994, p. 421.
  15. ^ J. R. R. Tolkien, "Tengwesta Qenderinwa 2", Parma Eldalamberon (18), p. 75.
  16. ^ J. R. R. Tolkien, "Words, Phrases and Passages", Parma Eldalamberon 17, p. 128.
  17. ^ Tolkien 1994, "Part Four. Quendi and Eldar: Appendix D. *Kwen, Quenya, and the Elvish (especially Ñoldorin) words for 'Language': Note on the 'Language of the Valar'", p. 398
  18. ^ Tolkien 1994, p. 361.
  19. ^ Tolkien 2010, Parma Eldalamberon No. 19, p. 93.
  20. ^ The Silmarillion, chapter 15
  21. ^ Parma Eldalamberon (17), p. 129.
  22. ^ J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Appendix F: "Of the Elves".
  23. ^ a b c d e f g Tolkien 2010, Parma Eldalamberon No. 19, pages 68-107
  24. ^ The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, #223: "I remain in love with Italian, and feel quite lorn without a chance of trying to speak it."
  25. ^ Only phonemic consonants are listed. /ç/ and /ʍ/ are phonemic in Tarquesta, being distinguished from/hj/ and/hw/ in that they are not treated as long consonants, but are treated so in Parmaquesta and hence there may be considered the realization of the clusters /hj/ and /hw/>Tolkien 2010, Parma Eldalamberon No. 19, p. 88.
  26. ^ a b c Tolkien 2010, Parma Eldalamberon No. 19, p. 75
  27. ^ a b J. R. R. Tolkien, "Quenya Consonants", Parma Eldalamberon (22), p. 66.
  28. ^ Tolkien 2010, Parma Eldalamberon No. 19, p. 74.
  29. ^ Tolkien 2010, Parma Eldalamberon No. 19, p. 86.
  30. ^ Tolkien 2010, Parma Eldalamberon No. 19, p. 79.
  31. ^ Tolkien 2010, Parma Eldalamberon No. 19, p. 106.
  32. ^ a b Tolkien 2010, Parma Eldalamberon No. 19, p. 107.
  33. ^ Tolkien 2010, Parma Eldalamberon No. 19, p. 88.
  34. ^ Tolkien 2010, Parma Eldalamberon No. 19, p. 81.
  35. ^ Tolkien 2010, Parma Eldalamberon No. 19, p. 80.
  36. ^ a b Tolkien 2010, Parma Eldalamberon No. 19, p. 103.
  37. ^ a b Tolkien 2010, Parma Eldalamberon No. 19, p. 84.
  38. ^ Tolkien 2010, Parma Eldalamberon No. 19, p. 87.
  39. ^ a b Tolkien 2010, Parma Eldalamberon No. 19, p. 82.
  40. ^ J. R. R. Tolkien, "Words, Phrases and Passages in Various Tongues in The Lord of the Rings", Parma Eldalamberon (17), p. 135.
  41. ^ J. R. R. Tolkien, "Early Qenya Grammar", Parma Eldalamberon (14), p. 77,
  42. ^ "Quenya Pronominal Elements", Vinyar Tengwar (49), p. 51.
  43. ^ Parma Eldalamberon (17), p. 57.
  44. ^ Vinyar Tengwar (49), p. 15.
  45. ^ a b J. R. R. Tolkien, "Words, Phrases and Passages in Various Tongues in The Lord of the Rings", Parma Eldalamberon (17), p. 110.
  46. ^ a b J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King, "The Steward and the King".
  47. ^ Parma Eldalamberon (17), p. 161.
  48. ^ From the "Namárië" poem by J. R. R. Tolkien.
  49. ^ J. R. R. Tolkien, "Early Qenya Grammar", Parma Eldalamberon (14), p. 56.
  50. ^ Parma Eldalamberon (17), p. 144.
  51. ^ Parma Eldalamberon, (17), p. 76.
  52. ^ Vinyar Tengwar (49), p. 43.
  53. ^ J. R. R. Tolkien, "Words, Phrases and Passages in Various Tongues in The Lord of the Rings", Parma Eldalamberon (17), pp. 93–94.
  54. ^ a b Vinyar Tengwar (49), p. 9.
  55. ^ Vinyar Tengwar (49), p. 7.
  56. ^ a b c d e The Silmarillion, "Index" (annotated by Christopher Tolkien as a glossary), pp. 313-365
  57. ^ The Silmarillion, "Appendix: Elements in Quenya and Sindarin Names", tar-.
  58. ^ a b c Parma Eldalamberon (17), p. 162.
  59. ^ Tolkien 1994, p. 367.
  60. ^ J. R. R. Tolkien "HFN – The words for 'hand' – The fingers", Vinyar Tengwar, n° 47, p. 10.
  61. ^ J. R. R. Tolkien, "The Etymologies" in The Lost Road, p. 356.
  62. ^ J. R. R. Tolkien, "NKE: manuscript text on neter 9, kanat 4, and enek 6", Vinyar Tengwar n° 47, p. 15.
  63. ^ J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Appendix E, part I.
  64. ^ The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, #230.
  65. ^ The Return of the King, ch. 1
  66. ^ J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion, chapter 20

Secondary edit

  1. ^ Conley, Tim; Cain, Stephen (2006). Encyclopedia of Fictional and Fantastic Languages. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-313-33188-6.
  2. ^ Solopova 2009, p. 76
  3. ^ Fimi 2009, pp. 95–99
  4. ^ Solopova 2009, p. 75
  5. ^ Solopova 2009, pp. 75–76
  6. ^ Fimi 2009, p. 97
  7. ^ "Qenyaqetsa: The Qenya Phonology and Lexicon by J. R. R. Tolkien", published in Parma Eldalamberon No. 12.
  8. ^ a b c d e Tikka, Petri (2007). "The Finnicization of Quenya". Arda Philology: Proceedings of the First International Conference on J. R. R. Tolkien's Invented Languages, Omientielva Minya, Stockholm 2005. Arda Philology. Vol. 1. Arda Society. pp. 1–20. ISBN 978-9197350013.
  9. ^ Fimi 2009, p. 98
  10. ^ Solopova 2009, p. 77
  11. ^ Carpenter, Humphrey (2000). J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography. New York: Houghton Mifflin. p. 79. ISBN 978-0-618-05702-3.
  12. ^ DuBois, Tom; Mellor, Scott (2002). "The Nordic Roots of Tolkien's Middle Earth". Scandinavian Review. The American-Scandinavian Foundation (Summer).
  13. ^ Barnes, Lawrie; Van Heerden, Chantelle (2006). "Virtual languages in science fiction and fantasy literature". Language Matters: Studies in the Languages of Southern Africa. 37 (1): 102–107. doi:10.1080/10228190608566254. S2CID 144894796.
  14. ^ Solopova 2009, p. 90 "There are several journals devoted to the study of Tolkien's languages: Parma Eldalamberon (...), Quettar (...), Tengwestië (...), Vinyar Tengwar (...)."
  15. ^ Bracken, James K. (1998). "J(ohn) R(onald) R(euel) Tolkien, 1892–1973. Journals". In Rettig, James (ed.). Reference works in British and American literature (2nd ed.). Libraries Unlimited. p. 525. ISBN 1-56308-518-6.
  16. ^ a b c d e f g h i Hostetter, Carl F. (2007). "Tolkienian Linguistics: The First Fifty Years". Tolkien Studies. Project MUSE. 4: 1–46. doi:10.1353/tks.2007.0022. S2CID 170601512.
  17. ^ Appleyard, Anthony (7 March 1995). "Quenya Grammar Reexamined". Tolklang.quettar.org. Retrieved 16 February 2023.
  18. ^ a b Strack, Paul (11 December 2022) [2008]. "Eldamo – An Elvish Lexicon". Eldamo.org. Retrieved 16 February 2023. v0.8.4.2
  19. ^ Stainton, Alexander (2022). "Quenya Prosodic Structure". Western Papers in Linguistics. 5 (1).
  20. ^ Fauskanger, Helge K. (2009). "Practical Neo-Quenya". Arda Philology: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on J. R. R. Tolkien's Invented Languages, Omientielva Tatya, Antwerp 2007. Arda Philology. Vol. 2. Arda Society. pp. 16–55. ISBN 9789197350020.
  21. ^ Scull, Christina; Hammond, Wayne G. (2006). The J. R. R. Tolkien Companion and Guide. Vol. 2 Reader's Guide. Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin. pp. 476–82.
  22. ^ Garth, John (2011). "Quenya Phonology: Comparative Tables, Outline of Phonetic Development, Outline of Phonology". Tolkien Studies. 8 (1): 107–114. doi:10.1353/tks.2011.0013. S2CID 170945020.
  23. ^ Flieger 2002, p. 87
  24. ^ Dickerson, Matthew (2013) [2007]. "Elves: Kindreds and Migrations". In Drout, Michael D. C. (ed.). J. R. R. Tolkien Encyclopedia. Routledge. pp. 152–154. ISBN 978-0-415-86511-1.
  25. ^ Flieger 2002, p. 136
  26. ^ Renk, Thorsten. . Archived from the original on 15 August 2013. Retrieved 1 September 2013.
  27. ^ Pesch 2003, p. 75
  28. ^ a b c Fauskanger, Helge K. "Quenya – the Ancient Tongue. Elementary Phonology". University of Bergen.
  29. ^ Pesch 2003, pp. 75, 188
  30. ^ Pesch, Helmut W. (2004). Helmut W. Pesch: Elbisch. Lern- und Übungsbuch der Elben-Sprachen von J. R. R. Tolkien (in German). Bastei Lübbe. ISBN 3-404-20498-0.
  31. ^ Gebhardt, Matthias (2007). Wie kann Deutsch und Elbisch kontrastiv verglichen werden? Tolkiens Versuch der Entwicklung einer Kunstsprache (in German). GRIN Verlag. p. 45. ISBN 978-3-638-71087-9.
  32. ^ Pesch 2003, p. 76
  33. ^ "Quenya-English Dictionary" (PDF). Ambar Eldaron. April 2009. p. 12.
  34. ^ Pesch 2003, pp. 78–79
  35. ^ Pesch 2003, pp. 79–80
  36. ^ Pesch 2003, p. 80
  37. ^ Pesch 2003, p. 87
  38. ^ Fauskanger, Helge K. "Quenya – The Ancient Tongue: The Adjective". Ardalambion. University of Bergen. Retrieved 13 January 2013.
  39. ^ Pesch 2003, p. 90
  40. ^ Fauskanger, Helge K. "Quenya – the Ancient Tongue: Pronouns". Ardalambion. University of Bergen. Retrieved 11 January 2013.
  41. ^ Pesch 2003, pp. 91–92
  42. ^ Renk, Thorsten. "The Quenya Pronominal System – a summary". Tengwesta eldalambion – Investigations into Elvish grammar. from the original on 15 September 2015. Retrieved 7 August 2023.
  43. ^ Pesch 2003, p. 98
  44. ^ Pesch 2003, p. 100
  45. ^ Pesch 2003, p. 93
  46. ^ Pesch 2003, p. 94
  47. ^ Pesch 2003, p. 95
  48. ^ Pesch 2003, p. 91
  49. ^ Pesch 2003, pp. 117–119
  50. ^ Kloczko, Edward (2008). L'Encyclopédie des Elfes [The Encyclopedia of Elves] (in French). Le Pré aux Clercs. p. 145. ISBN 978-2-84228-325-4.
  51. ^ Quettar n° 13, p. 9.
  52. ^ Omentielva: Arda Philology 2 http://www.omentielva.com/ardaph2.htm
  53. ^ Solopova, Elizabeth (2009). Languages, Myths and History: An Introduction to the Linguistic and Literary Background of J. R. R. Tolkien's Fiction. New York City: North Landing Books. ISBN 978-0-9816607-1-4., p. 88.
  54. ^ a b De Rosario Martínez, Helios (2011). "A Methodological Study of the Elvish Writing Systems". Arda Philology: Proceedings of the Third International Conference on J. R. R. Tolkien's Invented Languages, Omientielva Nelya, Whitehaven 2009. Vol. 3. Arda Society. pp. 1–25. ISBN 9789197350037.
  55. ^ Krege 2003, p. 36
  56. ^ See the version E1b of his poem Eärendel, published in Parma Eldalamberon (16), p. 104.
  57. ^ Vinyar Tengwar No. 40, April 1999

Sources edit

Further reading edit

External links edit

  • The Elvish Linguistic Fellowship
  • Parma Eldalamberon
  • Vinyar Tengwar
  • Ardalambion – Helge Fauskanger's site on Tolkien languages, with Quenya course and materials
  • Thorsten Renk's page on Elvish Languages
    • Thorsten Renk's Quetin i lambë eldaiva - a Quenya Course (gz archive)
  • "The s-case" – Ales Bican examines the evidence for the shortened form of the locative (-s).
  • Quenya–English dictionary

quenya, valinorean, redirects, here, language, valar, valarin, pronounced, ˈkʷwɛɲja, constructed, language, those, devised, tolkien, elves, middle, earth, fiction, eldarincreated, tolkiendatec, 1910, 1973setting, usagethe, fictional, world, middle, earthpurpos. Valinorean redirects here For the language of the Valar see Valarin Quenya pronounced ˈkʷwɛɲja T 1 is a constructed language one of those devised by J R R Tolkien for the Elves in his Middle earth fiction QuenyaEldarinCreated byJ R R TolkienDatec 1910 1973Setting and usageThe fictional world of Middle earthPurposeconstructed languages artistic languagesfictional languagesQuenyaWriting systemLatinTengwarCirthSaratiLanguage codesISO 639 3 a href https iso639 3 sil org code qya class extiw title iso639 3 qya qya a Linguist ListqyaGlottologquen1234Ah like gold fall the leaves in the wind long years numberless as the wings of trees The beginning of the Quenya poem Namarie written in Tengwar and in Latin scriptThis article contains IPA phonetic symbols Without proper rendering support you may see question marks boxes or other symbols instead of Unicode characters For an introductory guide on IPA symbols see Help IPA Tolkien began devising the language around 1910 and restructured its grammar several times until it reached its final state The vocabulary remained relatively stable throughout the creation process He successively changed the language s name from Elfin and Qenya to the eventual Quenya Finnish had been a major source of inspiration but Tolkien was also fluent in Latin and Old English and was familiar with Greek Welsh the latter being the primary inspiration for Sindarin Tolkien s other major Elvish language and other ancient Germanic languages particularly Gothic during his development of Quenya A notable feature of Tolkien s Elvish languages was his development of a complex internal history of characters to speak those tongues in their own fictional universe He felt that his languages changed and developed over time as with the historical languages which he studied professionally not in a vacuum but as a result of the migrations and interactions of the peoples who spoke them Within Tolkien s legendarium Quenya is one of the many Elvish languages spoken by the immortal Elves called Quendi speakers in Quenya Quenya translates as simply language or in contrast to other tongues that the Elves met later in their long history elf language After the Elves divided Quenya originated as the speech of two clans of High Elves or Eldar the Noldor and the Vanyar who left Middle earth to live in Eldamar Elvenhome in Valinor the land of the immortal and God like Valar Of these two groups of Elves most of the Noldor returned to Middle earth where they met the Sindarin speaking Grey elves The Noldor eventually adopted Sindarin and used Quenya primarily as a ritual or poetic language whereas the Vanyar who stayed behind in Eldamar retained the use of Quenya In this way the Quenya language was symbolic of the high status of the Elves the firstborn of the races of Middle earth because of their close connection to Valinor and its decreasing use also became symbolic of the slowly declining Elven culture in Middle earth In the Second Age of Middle earth s chronology the Men of Numenor learnt the Quenya tongue In the Third Age the time of the setting of The Lord of the Rings Quenya was learnt as a second language by all Elves of Noldorin origin and it continued to be used in spoken and written form but their mother tongue was the Sindarin of the Grey elves As the Noldor remained in Middle earth their Noldorin dialect of Quenya also gradually diverged from the Vanyarin dialect spoken in Valinor undergoing both sound changes and grammatical changes The Quenya language featured prominently in Tolkien s The Lord of the Rings as well as in his posthumously published history of Middle earth The Silmarillion The longest text in Quenya published by Tolkien during his lifetime is the poem Namarie other published texts are no longer than a few sentences At his death Tolkien left behind a number of unpublished writings on Quenya and later Tolkien scholars have prepared his notes and unpublished manuscripts for publication in the journals Parma Eldalamberon and Vinyar Tengwar also publishing scholarly and linguistic analyses of the language Tolkien never created enough vocabulary to make it possible to converse in Quenya although fans have been writing poetry and prose in Quenya since the 1970s This has required conjecture and the need to devise new words in effect developing a kind of neo Quenya language Contents 1 External history 1 1 Development 1 2 Publication of linguistic papers 1 3 Scholarship 1 4 Use of Quenya 2 Internal history 2 1 Primitive Quendian 2 2 Use by Elves Valar and Men 3 Phonology 3 1 Consonants 3 2 Morphophonemics and allophony 3 2 1 Palatal clusters 3 2 2 Labial clusters 3 2 3 Glottal clusters 3 2 4 Simplification of clusters 3 3 Vowels 3 4 Syllables and stress 3 5 Phonotactics 4 Grammar 4 1 Nouns 4 2 Adjectives 4 3 Prepositions and adverbs 4 4 Pronouns 4 5 Possessive determiners 4 6 Demonstrative 4 7 Verbs 4 8 Syntax 5 Vocabulary 5 1 Proper nouns 5 2 Some prepositions and adverbs 5 3 Greetings 5 4 Numerals 6 Writing systems 6 1 Elvish writing systems 6 2 Latin script 7 Corpus 8 See also 9 References 9 1 Primary 9 2 Secondary 9 3 Sources 10 Further reading 11 External linksExternal history editJ R R Tolkien began to construct his first Elven tongue c 1910 1911 while he was at the King Edward s School Birmingham 1 He later called it Qenya c 1915 and later changed the spelling to Quenya He was then already familiar with Latin Greek Spanish and several ancient Germanic languages such as Gothic Old Norse and Old English T 2 He had invented several cryptographic codes and two or three constructed languages Tolkien took an interest in the Finnish mythology of the Kalevala then became acquainted with Finnish which he found to provide an aesthetically pleasing inspiration for his High elven language Many years later he wrote It was like discovering a complete wine cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before It quite intoxicated me T 2 Regarding the inspiration for Quenya Tolkien wrote that The ingredients in Quenya are various but worked out into a self consistent character not precisely like any language that I know Finnish which I came across when I had first begun to construct a mythology was a dominant influence but that has been much reduced now in late Quenya It survives in some features such as the absence of any consonant combinations initially the absence of the voiced stops b d g except in mb nd ng ld rd which are favoured and the fondness for the ending inen ainen oinen also in some points of grammar such as the inflexional endings sse rest at or in nna movement to towards and llo movement from the personal possessives are also expressed by suffixes there is no gender T 3 Tolkien never intended Quenya or any of his constructed languages to be used in everyday life as an international auxiliary language 2 although he was in favour of the idea of Esperanto as an auxiliary language within Europe 3 With his Quenya Tolkien pursued a double aesthetic goal classical and inflected T 3 This urge in fact was the motivation for his creation of a mythology While the language developed Tolkien felt that it needed speakers including their own history and mythology which he thought would give a language its individual flavour T 4 4 The Lord of the Rings according to Tolkien was primarily linguistic in inspiration and was begun in order to provide the necessary background of history for Elvish tongues T 4 This process of first inventing a language and then creating a background setting for its fictional speakers has been described as unique 5 Dimitra Fimi a Tolkien scholar argues that Tolkien s invention of Qenya started as a quest for the ideal language to match the moral and aesthetic objectives that were part of his project of creating a mythology for England Fimi argues that Tolkien deliberately used sound symbolism to unify sound and meaning and make the language appear as an ideal language fit to be spoken in the utopian realm of the Elves and fairies of Valinor 6 Tolkien considered Quenya to be the one language which has been designed to give play to my own most normal phonetic taste T 5 From the onset Tolkien used comparative philology and the tree model as his major tools in his constructed languages He usually started with the phonological system of the proto language and then proceeded by inventing for each daughter language the necessary sequence of sound changes I find the construction and the interrelation of the languages an aesthetic pleasure in itself quite apart from The Lord of the Rings of which it was is in fact independent T 6 Development edit In his lifetime Tolkien experimented ceaselessly with his constructed languages and they were subjected to many revisions Quenya had many grammars with substantial differences between the different stages of its development During the first conceptual stage of early Quenya c 1910 to c 1920 the language was called Elfin in English and Eldarissa in Qenya proper While its development was a continuous process Quenya underwent a number of major revisions in its grammar mostly in conjugation and the pronominal system The vocabulary however was not subject to sudden or extreme change Tolkien sometimes changed the meaning of a word but he almost never discarded it once invented and he kept on refining its meaning and countlessly forged new synonyms Moreover Elvish etymology was in constant flux Tolkien delighted in inventing new etymons for his Quenya vocabulary But after the publication of The Lord of the Rings finished c 1949 1950 published in 1954 1955 the grammar rules of Quenya went through very few changes and this version was then defined as late Quenya c 1950 1973 The spelling Qenya is sometimes used to distinguish early Quenya from later versions Qenya differs from late Quenya by having different internal history vocabulary and grammar rules as described in the Qenyaqetsa 7 Examples include a different accusative or the abolition of final consonant clusters in later Quenya 8 Fimi suggests that Qenya as it appears in the Qenyaqetsa was supposed to be a mystic language as the Lexicon contains a number of words with clear Christian religious connotations such as anatarwesta crucifixion and evandilyon gospel these words were not part of late Quenya 9 In the early 1930s Tolkien decided that the proto language of the Elves was Valarin the tongue of the gods or Valar as he called them The language of the Elves derived in the beginning from the Valar but they changed it even in the learning and moreover modified and enriched it constantly at all times by their own invention T 7 In the Comparative Tables T 7 the mechanisms of sound change were described by Tolkien for the following daughter languages Qenya Lindarin a dialect of Qenya Telerin Old Noldorin or Feanorian Noldorin or Gondolinian Ilkorin especially of Doriath Danian of Ossiriand East Danian Taliska West Lemberin North Lemberin and East Lemberin For this proto language of the Elves Tolkien appears to have borrowed the five part plosive system of Proto Indo European the ancestor of Sanskrit Greek Latin and others namely one labial one coronal and three velar plosives palatal plain and labial The first table below provides some of the Primary Initial Combinations from the Comparative Tables T 7 1 Comparative table of initial nasal consonants in Elven languages T 7 Valarin Qenya Lindarin Telerinmb m umb m umb m embnd n and n and n endŋg ŋ gt n ing n ing ŋg engŋgj ny iny indy n ind g angŋgw ŋw gt nw ungw m ungw m embAnother characteristic of Quenya reminiscent of ancient natural languages like Old Greek Old English or Sanskrit is the dual grammatical number which is used in addition to singular and plural It has been suggested that Tolkien used the dual to give Quenya an archaic feel in its role as an ancient language of the Elves 10 About ten years later Tolkien changed his mind about the origin of the Elvish proto language Instead of learning from the Valar the Elves had created an original language Quenderin which had become the proto language of the Elven language family T 8 For this new language Tolkien kept the many roots he had invented for Valarin in the 1930s which then became Quenderin roots The Eldarin family of languages comprises Quenya Telerin Sindarin and Nandorin The evolution in Quenya and Telerin of the nasalised initial groups of Quenderin is described thus in Tolkien s Outline of Phonology These groups in Quenya normally became simplified to nasals initially In Telerin they became b d g Thus mb gt m as in mbar gt Q mar habitation nd gt n as in ndōre gt Q nore country ng gt n as in ngolodō gt Q Noldo Noldo Gnome ngy gt ny as in ngyar gt Q nyare recites ngw gt nw as in ngwar gt Q nware pronounced ˈŋwarɛ frets wears away T 9 In contrast to early Qenya the grammar of Quenya was influenced by Finnish 8 an agglutinative language but much more by Latin a synthetic and fusional language and also Greek T 10 from which he probably took the idea of the diglossia of Quenya with its highly codified variety the Parmaquesta used only in certain situations such as literature The phonology of Quenya was also inspired by certain aspects of Finnish but this is not easily recognised 8 Tolkien almost never borrowed words directly from real languages into Quenya The major exception is the name Earendel Earendil which he found in an Old English poem by Cynewulf 11 Yet the Finnish influence extended sometimes also to the vocabulary A few Quenya words such as tul come and anta give clearly have a Finnish origin Other forms that appear to have been borrowed are actually coincidental such as Finnish kirja book and Quenya cirya ship Tolkien invented the Valarin Quenderin root kir from which sprang his Quenya word cirya The Latin aure dawn and Quenya aure moment of special meaning special day festival day are unrelated Instead Quenya aure comes from the Valarin Quenderin root ur Germanic influence can more be seen in grammar the r nominative plural ending is reminiscent of the Scandinavian languages or phonology than in words Arda the Quenya name for region just happened to resemble Germanic Erde earth while it actually comes from the Valarin Quenderin root gar According to Tom DuBois and Scott Mellor the name of Quenya itself may have been influenced by the name Kven a language closely related to Finnish but Tolkien never mentioned this 12 Some linguists have argued that Quenya can be understood as an example of a particular kind of artificial language that helps to create a fictional world Other such languages would include Robert Jordan s Old Tongue and the Klingon language of the Star Trek series invented by Marc Okrand It was observed that they form a sociolinguistic context within which group and individual identities can be created 13 Publication of linguistic papers edit Two journals Vinyar Tengwar from issue No 39 July 1998 and Parma Eldalamberon from issue No 11 1995 have been exclusively devoted to the editing and publishing of Tolkien s mass of unpublished linguistic papers 14 15 Important grammatical texts alluded to in the History of Middle earth series and described as almost unreadable or quite incomprehensible have been published in these two journals The Early Qenya Grammar written by Tolkien c 1925 was edited and published in Parma Eldalamberon No 14 T 11 Scholarship edit In 1992 according to the linguist Helge Fauskanger the Tolkien scholar Anthony Appleyard made the first comprehensive attempt to systematize Quenya grammar in light of the new information published in The History of Middle earth particularly The Etymologies in his article Quenya Grammar Reexamined 16 17 Hostetter commented that Appleyard s work was by 2007 useful mainly for summarising the attitudes to Tolkien s languages at that time He characterised it as 16 seeking to label and describe a unique function for each grammatical inflection such as the so called respective case 16 seeking to fill in gaps that a linguist of English or Latin might expect 16 seeking to avoid supposed clashes and ambiguities 16 being willing to reject or even ascribe to authorial error grammatical forms that did not seem to fit in 16 seeking to complete or extend the languages by creating new forms 16 being willing to declare Tolkien s early words or forms obsolete if later forms seemed to have the same meanings 16 being willing to conflate forms from different Tolkien stages when these seemed to be useful 16 In 2008 the computational linguist Paul Strack created the Elvish Data Model abbreviated to Eldamo to provide a lexicon both a dictionary and an analysis of language development of all Tolkien s languages despite the name not limited to Elvish Eldamo groups Tolkien s creative work into three real world periods up to 1930 Early from then to 1950 Middle and from then to 1973 Late Forms of Quenya occur in each of these periods as follows 18 Paul Strack s grouping of Quenya variants by period 18 Early 1910 to 1930 Middle to 1950 Late to 1973 Early Primitive Elvish Early Quenya Middle Primitive Elvish Middle Ancient Quenya Middle Quenya Lindarin Primitive Elvish Ancient Quenya Quenya VanyarinThe linguist Alexander Stainton published an analysis of Quenya s prosodic structure in 2022 19 Use of Quenya edit Attempts by fans to write in Quenya began in the 1970s when the total corpus of published Elvish comprised only a few hundred words Since then the use of Elvish has flourished in poems and texts phrases and names and even tattoos But Tolkien himself never made his languages complete enough for conversation As a result newly invented Elvish texts require conjecture and sometimes the coinage of new words 20 The use of Quenya has expanded over the years as new words have been created forming a Neo Quenya language that is based on Tolkien s original Quenya but incorporates many new elements 21 Internal history editThe Elvish languages are a family of several related languages and dialects The following is a brief overview of the fictional internal history of late Quenya as conceived by Tolkien Tolkien imagined an Elven society with a vernacular language for every day use Tarquesta and a more educated language for use in ceremonies and lore Parmaquesta 22 The Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger observed that the degree of proximity to the light of the Valar affected the development of both languages in terms of phonology morphology and semantics The division between Light Elves and Dark Elves that took place during the Sundering of the Elves is reflected in their respective languages 23 Primitive Quendian edit The Elves at first shared a common language Primitive Quendian called Quenderin in Quenya Among the Eldar i e those Elves who undertook the Great March to Valinor and Eldamar Primitive Quendian developed into Common Eldarin Some of the Eldar remained in Beleriand and became the Grey Elves their language developed into Sindarin Most of the other Eldar continued to Eldamar Elvenhome in Aman and founded the great city of Tirion where they developed Quenya T 12 T 13 T 14 Quenya s older form first recorded in the sarati of Rumil is called Old or Ancient Quenya Yara Quenya in Quenya In Eldamar the Noldor and Vanyar spoke two slightly different though mutually intelligible dialects of Tarquesta Noldorin Quenya and Vanyarin Quenya T 15 Later Noldorin Quenya became Exilic Quenya when most of the Noldor Elves followed their leader Feanor into exile from Eldamar and back to Middle earth where the immortal Elves first awoke T 16 Use by Elves Valar and Men edit Quenya was used by the godlike Valar The Elves derived some loanwords from the Valar s language which was called Valarin in Quenya although these were more numerous in the Vanyarin dialect than in Noldorin This was probably because of the enduringly close relationship the Vanyarin Elves had with the Valar The Quenya as used by the Vanyar also incorporated several words from Valarin that were not found in the Noldorin dialect such as tulka yellow from Valarin tulukha n ulban blue presumably from the same root as Valarin ul l u meaning water and nasar red original Valarin not given T 17 According to Quendi and Eldar Essekenta Eldarinwa Quendya was the usual Vanyarin name given to the Quenya language since in Vanyarin the consonant groups ndy and ny remained quite distinct T 18 In Noldorin ndy eventually became ny Tolkien explained that the word Quenya itself has been cited as an exempla e g by AElfwine but this is a mistake due to supposition that kwenya was properly kwendya and directly derived from the name Quendi Elves This appears not to be the case The word is Quenya in Vanyarin and always so in Parmaquesta T 19 The Elves of the Third Clan or Teleri who reached Eldamar later than the Noldor and the Vanyar spoke a different but closely related tongue usually called Telerin It was seen by some Elves to be just another dialect of Quenya This was not the case with the Teleri for whom their tongue was distinct from Quenya After the Vanyar left the city of Tuna Telerin and Noldorin Quenya grew closer 24 The rebellious Noldor who followed their leader Feanor to Middle earth spoke only Quenya But Elu Thingol King of the Sindar of Beleriand forbade the use of Quenya in his realm when he learned of the slaying of Telerin Elves by the Noldor T 20 By doing so he both restricted the possibility of the Sindar to enhance and brighten their language with influences from Quenya and accelerated the dimininution and spiritual impoverishment of the Noldorin culture 25 The Noldor at this time had fully mastered Sindarin while the Sindar were slow to learn Quenya Quenya in Middle earth became known as Exilic Quenya when the Noldor eventually adopted the Sindarin language as their native speech after Thingol s ruling It differed from Amanian Quenya mostly in vocabulary having some loanwords from Sindarin It differed also in pronunciation representing the recognition of sound changes which had begun among the Noldor before the exile and had caused Noldorin Quenya to diverge from Vanyarin Quenya The change of z lt old intervocalic s to r was the latest in Noldorin belonging to early Exilic Quenya The grammatical changes were only small though since the features of their old language were carefully taught T 21 From the Second Age on Quenya was used ceremonially by the Men of Numenor and their descendants in Gondor and Arnor for the official names of kings and queens this practice was resumed by Aragorn when he took the crown as Elessar Telcontar Quenya in the Third Age had almost the same status as the Latin language had in medieval Europe and was called Elven latin by Tolkien T 22 Phonology editFurther information Finnish influences on Tolkien Tolkien described the pronunciation of the Elvish languages by Elves Men and Hobbits in a variety of sources The documentation about late Quenya phonology is contained in the Appendix E of the Lord of the Rings and the Outline of Phonology one of Tolkien s texts published in Parma Eldalamberon No 19 T 23 Tolkien based Quenya pronunciation more on Latin than on Finnish Thus Quenya lacks the vowel harmony and consonant gradation present in Finnish and accent is not always on the first syllable of a word Typical Finnish elements like the front vowels o a and y are lacking in Quenya but phonological similarities include the absence of aspirated unvoiced stops or the development of the syllables ti gt si in both languages 8 The combination of a Latin basis with Finnish phonological rules resulted in a product that resembles Italian in many respects which was Tolkien s favourite modern Romance language T 24 The tables below list the consonants Q olamar and vowels of late colloquial Noldorin Quenya i e Quenya as spoken among the Exiled Noldor in Middle earth They are written using the International Phonetic Alphabet unless otherwise noted T 23 Consonants edit The Quenya consonant system has 6 major places of articulation labial involving the lips dental involving the tongue and the back of the teeth alveolar involving the tongue and the alveolar ridge of the jaw palatal involving the tongue and the middle part of the roof of the mouth velar involving the back of the tongue and the back part of the roof of the mouth and glottal involving the vocal folds The dental fricative 8 and the voiced alveolar fricative z occur in the Vanyarin varieties but were gradually replaced with s and r respectively in Noldorin Quenya 26 Notably voiced plosives only occur after nasals and liquids i e there is no simple b d ɡ but only the clusters mb lb nd ld rd ŋɡ and these occur only between vowels This may not be true in Vanyarin Quenya given the word Aldudenie the name of a lament for the death of the Two Trees of Valinor composed by Elemmire of the Vanyar 27 28 Prenasalised consonants are prominent in Quenya and include their own tengwar The following table presents the inventory of classic Noldorin consonants Grouping of consonants occurs only in the central parts of a word except for combinations with the semivowels w and j 29 2 Quenya consonants T 25 Labial Alveolar Palatal Velar GlottalNasal m n ŋPlosive p b t d k ɡFricative f v s c x hTrill rSemivowel ʍ w jLateral lQuenya orthography using the Latin script follows the IPA but uses c as an alternative to k writes ŋ not followed by another velar as n in early Quenya when this still can occur as in Noldor otherwise it is written n and represents the consonants c ʍ using the digraphs hy hw Similarly the digraphs ty ndy may represent palatal stop allophones of t ⁿd namely c ⁿɟ although they are not independent phonemes In addition h in the cluster ht represents c after e or i and x after other vowels In some instances x was used for the combination ks as in Helcaraxe T 23 Morphophonemics and allophony edit Some consonants are realised differently when they occur in clusters with certain other consonants This particularly concerns clusters that involve the approximants w j or the glottal fricative h Clusters where the second consonant was j are realised as palatalised consonants and clusters where the second consonant was w are realised as labialised Consonant clusters where the initial consonant is h are realised as preaspirated and devoiced T 23 Palatal clusters edit The pronunciation of the consonant cluster hy is c in Noldorin Quenya which is a strong voiceless y similar to but more frictional than the initial sound in English huge T 26 In Vanyarin Quenya hy is pronounced ʃ T 26 According to Tolkien the cluster cj ty is pronounced as a front explosive c as e g Hungarian ty but it is followed by an appreciable partly unvoiced y offglide T 27 Tolkien stated that the cluster ny is pronounced as in English new njuː T 28 In the Vanyarin dialect ty dy and hy were realised as tʃ dʒ and ʃ respectively Tolkien wrote about py In Vanyarin Quenya and among some Noldor the cluster py was sounded with voiceless y sc as pc which later in Vanyarin became pʃ T 29 cf Hungarian lopj lopc steal T 23 Labial clusters edit The cluster hw is realised as ʍ a spirantal voiceless w It has more tense with closer lip aperture and more friction than the voiceless wh of English T 26 According to Tolkien the graph q or qu is pronounced as a lip rounded k followed by a partly unvoiced w offglide T 27 that is kʷ T 23 Glottal clusters edit The clusters hl and hr are realised as ɬ and r the same as lh and rh in Sindarin These like their Sindarin equivalents derived from Primitive Elvish sl and sr The primitive consonant clusters sm and sn came out in Quenya as m and n it has been suggested that there was an intermediate stage of hm and hn the voiceless versions m and n in Common Eldarin these soon merged with the voiced m and n Voiceless hl and hr have a complex history which Tolkien describes thus Among the Noldor hr hl became voiced to r l before the Exile and the use of r l in these cases was normal in Tarquesta as spoken tho the spelling was usually maintained Since later the Exiles were familiar with voiceless hr hl in their Sindarin speech many of them restored this sound in Tarquesta according to the traditional spelling The learned had of course at all times retained hr hl in reading or reciting Parmaquesta T 30 Simplification of clusters edit In the late Ancient Quenya period when vowels were lost in long compound words the clusters thus created or the consonants that became final were as a rule changed or reduced T 23 m gt n all stops gt t d gt r th gt t nd gt n mb ng gt n n gt n any combination with s as ts st ss gt s any combination with ht gt t Vowels edit 3 Quenya vowels Front BackClose i ː u ː Close mid eː oːOpen mid ɛ ɔOpen a ː Quenya has five vowels Quenya omar and a distinction of length The short vowels are a e i o u and the long ones are written with an acute accent as a e i o u The precise quality of the vowels is not known but their pronunciation is likely closer to the pure vowels of Italian and Spanish than to the diphthongised English ones 28 According to Pesch for the vowels a i u the short and long forms have the same vowel quality similar to the vowels of Finnish or Polish But for the vowels e o the short vowels are pronounced slightly lower and closer to ɛ and ɔ respectively whereas the long ones are pronounced as high mid vowels eː and oː 30 This interpretation is based on a statement by Tolkien saying that e and o when correctly pronounced by Elves were just a little tenser and closer than their short counterparts neither very tense and close nor very slack and open T 31 This interpretation results in a vowel system with 7 different vowel qualities and a length distinction in the high and low vowels only this system is depicted in table 3 31 Late Noldorin Quenya has 6 diphthongs Quenya ohloni iu eu ai au oi ui All of these are falling except for iu ju which is rising 32 In Old Quenya all diphthongs were falling Tolkien wrote It is probable that before the Exile Vanyarin and Noldorin Quenya in common shifted iu ui to rising diphthongs T 32 but only iu is reported as a rising diphthong ju similar to the beginning of English yule juːɫ On the other hand ui remained in Exilic Quenya a falling diphthong as reported T 32 4 Late Quenya diphthongs OffglideFront Backi jue ewa aj awo oju ujSyllables and stress edit In Quenya the stressing of a syllable is predictable and non phonemic i e the meaning of a word never changes depending on the stress but it is partly determined by syllable weight Words of two syllables are stressed on the first syllable In words of three or more syllables the stress is on the penultimate syllable if this is heavy otherwise on the antepenultimate syllable i e the third to last syllable This stress rule is the same as the stress pattern found in Latin In Quenya heavy syllables are syllables that contain either a long vowel a diphthong or a final consonant thus an intervocalic consonant cluster ll ld mm ss ny ry etc Medially hy and hw close a syllable in Parmaquesta but not colloquially in Tarquesta Quenya has also a secondary accent The placement of stress and the distinction between heavy and light syllables is important in Quenya verse T 33 Phonotactics edit Tolkien also devised phonotactical rules for late Quenya governing the way in which the sounds could be combined to form words Only the following consonants have phonemically geminated forms i e elongated consonants pp tt cc mm nn ss ll rr However Quenya for death is effirie 33 featuring a geminated f dd These occur only medially T 34 The geminated occlusives pp tt cc are aspirated Tolkien wrote that in Common Eldarin as final consonants only the dentals t s d th n r l all frequent except th and the labial nasal m frequent In addition the combination nt though usually a coalescence of more than one inflexional element seems also to have been permitted possibly also st No other consonant groups were tolerated y w are not included since they naturally took the syllabic forms i u as suffixed elements T 35 These evolved from Common Eldarin to Quenya Tolkien explains on the same page thus m gt n t n r and s remained without change final C E th became Quenya t and final d gt r and so the list of permissible finals n r l s t nt dd remained constant in Quenya speech feeling Quenya tolerates only the following initial consonants p t c f s h hy hw m n n v l hl r hr y w T 36 dd Quenya tolerates only the following initial groups x ps ty ny ly qu nw became nw in Noldorin Quenya T 36 dd Quenya tolerates only the following medial biconsonantal groups those especially common are bolded ht lc ld lf lm lp lqu lt lv lw ly mb mn mp my nc nd ng nt nw nw initial only ny ps pt qu rc rd rm rn rp rt rs rv rw ry sc st sw ts tw ty x 28 dd Quenya does not tolerate triconsonantal or longer combinations except c h g followed by w or h t d followed by y So Quenya permits the following 12 triconsonantal groups only nqu lqu rqu squ ngw rhw nty lty hty rty sty lhy dd Differences in triconsonant pronunciation hty cc in Noldorin Quenya ʃt ʃ in Vanyarin Quenya T 37 sty sc in Noldorin Quenya ʃt ʃ in Vanyarin Quenya cf sc vs szcz in Polish T 38 In all other cases y and w became syllabic i u after the consonant groups T 39 dd Quenya does not tolerate the combination of two different occlusives Where these anciently occurred as in pt ct one of the two or both became opened and spirantal T 39 As in Sindarin the combination ft is avoided T 37 Grammar editMain article Quenya grammar The grammar of Quenya is agglutinative and mostly suffixing i e different word particles are joined by appending them It has basic word classes of verbs nouns and pronouns determiners adjectives and prepositions Nouns are inflected for case and number Verbs are inflected for tense and aspect and for agreement with subject and object In early Quenya adjectives agree with the noun they modify in case and number but not in later Quenya where this agreement disappears 8 The basic word order is subject verb object Unless otherwise noted samples in this section refer to Late Quenya as conceived by Tolkien after 1951 Nouns edit Main article Quenya grammar Nouns Quenya nouns can have up to four numbers singular general plural plural 1 particular partitive plural plural 2 and dual 34 In late Quenya Tarquesta the plural is formed by a suffix to the subjective form of the noun for plural 1 the suffix is i or r for plural 2 the suffix is li T 40 Quenya nouns are declined for case Parmaquesta Quenya has ten cases These include the four primary cases nominative accusative genitive and instrumental three adverbial cases allative of which the dative is a shortened form locative also with a shortened form and ablative and a possessive or adjectival case 35 The accusative was however only used for Parmaquesta and had been replaced by nominative in late colloquial Quenya 36 Adjectives edit In late Quenya the singular endings are a e ea and a rare form in that may be seen as a shortened form of ina The corresponding plural forms are e i ie and possibly ine The latter version is however not attested 37 Quenya adjectives may be freely used as nouns T 41 in which case they are also inflected like a noun e g vinya new may be used as vinyar news 38 Prepositions and adverbs edit In Quenya there are many similarities in form between prepositions and adverbs since the grammatical case already determines the relation of verb and object Thus 39 an i falmali i falmalinna r upon the many waves The preposition an is related to the nna case ending Pronouns edit As with all parts of Quenya grammar the pronominal system was subject to many revisions throughout Tolkien s life and the available corpus was not systematic until a list of endings was published in Vinyar Tengwar No 49 in 2007 40 In late Quenya pronouns have both separate or independent forms and suffix forms T 42 T 43 The separate pronouns have both a short and long form that are used for emphatic and normal pronouns respectively Examples of the emphatic form include emme elye ente 1st to 3rd person plural 41 Such emphatic disjunctive pronouns were already present in early Quenya but differed from the later versions e g plural tuto sise atta 42 I love him or her can be expressed in Quenya as Melinyes or Melin se T 44 I love them would be then Melinyet or Melin te these two forms are reconstructed If a pronoun is the subject of a sentence it becomes tied to the verb either as separate word directly before the verb or as a suffix after the inflected verb In the suffixed form an s singular and a t plural and dual may be added to the long subjective pronouns as objectives of the 3rd person T 45 43 utuvie nye s literally have found I it 44 I have found it cf Aragorn s outcry when he finds the sapling of the White Tree T 46 utuvie lye s You have found it him her utuvie lye t You have found them It is debated whether certain attested special male and female pronouns that were exclusively used for the description of persons are still applicable to late Quenya as found in The Lord of the Rings 45 Possessive determiners edit The possessive determiners analogous to English my his etc are used to indicate the possessor of the noun they determine They mark the person and number of the possessor and are inflected to agree with the noun they are attached in number and case While the English language distinguishes between masculine and feminine singular possessors his vs her late Quenya generally does not 46 Since by Quenya idiom in describing the parts of body of several persons the number proper to each individual is used the plural of parts existing in pairs as hands eyes ears feet is seldom required Thus manta their hand would be used they raised their hands one each mantat they raised their hands each both and mante could not occur T 47 Ortanente manta They raised their hands Ortaner manta They raised their hands Varda ortane maryat Varda has uplifted her two hands T 48 The usual plural ending is r hildinyar my heirs 47 Demonstrative edit The demonstrative makes a three way distinction between entities the speaker is referring to sina this tana that over there enta that over there away from both of us 48 Verbs edit According to Tolkien the inflections of Qenya verbs are always pretty regular T 49 and Quenya verbs are either in a personal form or an impersonal form Usually in linguistics an impersonal verb is a verb that cannot take a true subject because it does not represent an action occurrence or state of being of any specific person place or thing This is not how Tolkien intended the use of impersonal An impersonal verb form is a verb to which no pronoun has been attached as care sg or carir pl carin I do habitually is a personal form with n a short suffix for I me As explained by Tolkien verbs in Quenya are negated by using a negative verb ua in front of the proper verb in the impersonal tense form T 50 Tolkien noted that when the emphatic pronoun is used separately the verb has no inflexion save for number T 51 Finwe cara Finwe is making right now Quendi carar The Elves are making Caranye I am making Caramme We are making Esse cara He She is really making Emme carar We are really making Late Quenya verbs have also a dual agreement morpheme t Nai siluvat elen atta May two stars shine T 52 In the imperative mood plurality and duality are not expressed There is no agreement The verb stays singular T 53 The copula in late Quenya is the verb na Tolkien stated that it was used only in joining adjectives nouns and pronouns in statements or wishes asserting or desiring a thing to have certain quality or to be same as another and also that the copula was not used when the meaning was clear T 54 Otherwise the copula is left out which may provide for ambiguous tenses when there is no further context Eldar ataformaiti can be translated in English either as Elves are ambidexters or Elves were ambidexters T 55 A mara A is good or A was good T 54 Syntax edit Quenya allows for a flexible word order because it is an inflectional language like Latin Nevertheless it has word order rules The usual syntax structure is subject verb object The adjective can be placed before or after the noun that it modifies 49 Vocabulary editBecause many of Tolkien s writings on the Elvish languages remain unpublished it is difficult to know how large a vocabulary he devised By 2008 about 25 000 Elvish words had been published 50 5 Basic vocabulary in Quenya and Sindarin English Quenya Sindarin equivalentearth ambar cemen amar cevensky menel menelwater nen nenfire nar naurman male ner bennfemale nis besseat mat mad drink suc sog tall great alta halla beleg daersmall pitya titta niben tithennight lome duday aure re aurProper nouns edit Quenya s proper nouns are names of people and things in Middle earth T 45 T 56 Este Rest Indis Bride Melcor He who Arises in Might Nessa Youth Varda Sublime Voronwe Steadfast one T 56 Aicanaro Fell Fire Ancalime Most Bright Lady Curumo Cunning Man Feanaro Spirit of Fire Olorin Dreamer Sauron The Abhorred T 56 Ainulindale Music of the Ainur Eldamar Home of the Eldar Helcaraxe Jaws of Ice Iluvatar Father of All Oron Oiolosse Ever Snow white Peak Ondolinde Rock of Song Turambar Master of Doom Valinor land of the Vali sc Valar Vingilot Foam flower Yavanna Giver of fruits T 56 Mar nu Falmar Land under the Waves Mindon Eldalieva Lofty Tower of the Elvish people Quenta Silmarillion Tale of the Silmarils T 56 Some prepositions and adverbs edit ala place beyond time after ama up wards an towards upon et forth out of with the complement noun in ablative case haila static far beyond haiya far far off far away han addition beyond over and above in addition to ni not touching beneath under no 1 under 2 upon 3 after of place behind nu under beneath ono 1 in front of ahead before in all relation but time 2 after of time only Greetings edit The word used as a form of polite address to an Elf male or female is Tar Among the Numenoreans it became King Queen and used as a form of address for a superior especially a King or a Queen cf Tarinya used by Prince Aldarion to address his father King Tar Meneldur T 57 Namarie naˈmaːri ɛ is a reduced form of Quenya a na marie literally be well It is a formula used in Tarquesta for greetings and also for farewell T 58 The most usual formula used by the Noldor for greeting each other is Hara mariesse Stay in happiness T 58 In The Lord of the Rings the hobbit Frodo Baggins used another address of welcome Elen sila lumenn omentielmo corrected by Tolkien in the Second Edition to Elen sila lumenn omentielvo This was a traditional formula in an elevated style used between people going on crossing paths A star shines upon the hour of the meeting of our ways T 59 dd The most usual formula used by the Noldor in farewells is Ava marie Go happily or Marienna To happiness T 58 Numerals edit According to Christopher Tolkien the Eldar used two systems of numerals one of sixes or twelves and one of fives or tens 51 That is a duodecimal counting base 12 and a decimal system The Quenya word made by J R R Tolkien for the decimal system of counting is maquanotie hand counting T 60 The known numbers for 1 20 are presented below those from early Quenya Early Qenya Grammar are in bold 6 Numerals from 1 to 20 Cardinal numbers Ordinal numbers Fractional numbersNo Quenya English No Quenya English No Quenya English1 min One 1st minya First 1 1 kaina quanta Whole2 atta tata Two 2nd attea tatya Second 1 2 peresta perta Half3 nelde nel Three 3rd neldea nelya Third 1 3 nelesta neldesta nelta nelsa Third4 canta can Four 4th cantea Fourth 1 4 canasta casta cansat Fourth quarter5 lempe lemen maqua Five 5th lempea Fifth 1 5 lepesta lepsat Fifth6 enque Six 6th enquea Sixth 1 6 enquesta Sixth7 otso Seven 7th otsea Seventh 1 7 otosta osta otsat Seventh8 toldo tolto Eight 8th toldea toltea Eighth 1 8 tolosta tosta tolsat Eighth9 nerte Nine 9th nertea Ninth 1 9 neresta nesta nersat Ninth10 quean quain maquat Ten 10th quainea Tenth 1 10 quaista caista Tenth11 minque Eleven 11th minquea minquenya Eleventh 1 11 minquesta Eleventh12 yunque rasta Twelve 12th yunquea rastea Twelfth 1 12 yunquesta rastasta Twelfth13 nelque quainel yunquenta Thirteen 13th nelquea yunquentea Thirteenth 1 13 nelquesta yunquentesta Thirteenth14 canque quaican Fourteen 14th canquea Fourteenth 1 14 canquesta Fourteenth15 lepenque quailepen Fifteen 15th lepenquea Fifteenth 1 15 lepenquesta Fifteenth16 enenque quainque Sixteen 16th enenquea Sixteenth 1 16 enenquesta Sixteenth17 otoque Seventeen 17th otoquea Seventeenth 1 17 otoquesta Seventeenth18 tolque nahta Eighteen 18th tolquea Eighteenth 1 18 tolquesta Eighteenth19 neterque hukea Nineteen 19th neterquea hukaiya Nineteenth 1 19 neterquesta Nineteenth20 yuquain yukainen Twenty 20th yuquainea yukainenya Twentieth 1 20 yuquaista yukainentya TwentiethOther attested number words include esta and inga for first Tolkien was dissatisfied with esta the definition is marked with a query in the Etymologies T 61 Maqua means specifically a group of five objects like the English word pentad similarly maquat pair of fives refers to a group of ten objects The word yunquenta for thirteen literally means 12 and one more T 62 Quenya English Quenya EnglishMin elenEr elen One starA single star Min ElenoEr eleno Of one starOf a single starElen atta Two stars Elen atto Of two starsEleni nelde Three stars Elenion nelde Of three starsEleni canta Four stars Elenion canta Of four stars7 Qenya numerals 20 onwards amp Quenya reconstruction No Qenya QuenyaCardinal Ordinal Fractional20 yukainen yuquain yuquainea yuquaista21 min ya yukainen min yuquain min yuquainea min yuquaista2 yukainen yuquain yuquainea yuquaista30 nel de kainen nelquain nelquainea nelquaista40 kan ta kainen canquain canquainea canquaista50 leminkainen lepenquain lepenquainea lepenquaista60 enekkainen en enquain en enquainea en enquaista70 otsokainen otoquain otoquainea otoquaista80 tol to kainen tolquain tolquainea tolquaista90 huekainen neterquain neterquainea neterquaista100 tuksa pinea lit small gross tuxa tuxea tuxasta100 144 tuksa200 yuyo tuksa tuxa atta tuxea atta tuxasta atta 00 tukse tuxar tuxe tuxea tuxasta 1k103 humetuksa kainen tuksainen hume quaituxa humea quaituxea humesta quaituxasta2k yuyo humi hume atta humea atta humesta atta k humi humi humea humesta 106 mindore sora Large number mindore mindorea mindoresta109 yundore yundore yundorea yundoresta1012 neldore neldore neldorea neldoresta1015 kantore candore candorea candoresta1018 lemindore lependore lependorea lependoresta1021 enqendore enquendore enquendorea enquendoresta1024 otsondore otondore otondorea otondoresta Qenya numerals above twenty show that the smaller units come first min yukainen 21 being one twenty and also reflects in how it s written in Tengwar 52 Writing systems editMain article Tolkien s scripts Most of the time Tolkien wrote his invented languages using the Latin script 53 but he devised his own writing systems to match the internal histories of his languages 54 Elvish writing systems edit nbsp The word quenya written in tengwar of Feanor using the classical modeTolkien imagined many writing systems for his Elves The best known is the Tengwar of Feanor but the first one he created c 1919 was the Tengwar of Rumil also called the sarati He decided that prior to their Exile the Noldorin Elves first used the sarati of Rumil to record Ancient Quenya In Middle earth Quenya appears to have been rarely written using the Elvish runes or cirth named certar in Quenya 54 Latin script edit Tolkien s spelling in Latin script of Quenya was largely phonemic with each letter corresponding to a specific phoneme in the language However the vowels varied in pronunciation depending upon their length 55 Specific rules for consonants were provided in Appendix E of The Lord of the Rings e g the letter c is always pronounced k qu stands for kw T 63 Orqui is Orkwi Tolkien s standard orthography for Quenya uses all the letters of the Latin script except j k and z together with the acute and diaeresis marks on vowels the letters n th and z only appear in early Quenya Occasionally Tolkien wrote Quenya with a Finnish style orthography rather than the standard Latin Romance version in which c is replaced by k y with j and long vowels written double The acute accent marks long vowels while the diaeresis indicates that a vowel is not part of a diphthong for example in ea or eo while final e is marked with a diaeresis to remind English speakers that it is not silent 56 Corpus editThe poem Namarie is the longest piece of Quenya found in The Lord of the Rings yet the first sentence in Quenya is uttered by a Hobbit namely Frodo s greeting to the Elves elen sila lumenn omentielvo Other examples include Elendil s words spoken upon reaching Middle earth and repeated by Aragorn at his coronation Et Earello Endorenna utulien Sinome maruvan ar Hildinyar tenn Ambar metta Out of the Great Sea to Middle earth I am come In this place I will abide and my heirs unto the ending of the world T 46 Treebeard s greeting to Celeborn and Galadriel is also spoken in Quenya A vanimar vanimalion nostari O beautiful ones parents of beautiful children T 64 Another fragment is Sam s cry when he uses Galadriel s phial against Shelob Aiya Earendil Elenion Ancalima Hail Earendil brightest of stars T 65 And in The Silmarillion the phrase Utulie n aure Aiya Eldalie ar Atanatari utulie n aure The day has come Behold people of the Eldar and Fathers of Men the day has come is cried by Fingon before the Battle of Unnumbered Tears T 66 Other Quenya poems spoken by Tolkien in public but never published in his lifetime are Oilima Markirya The Last Ark Nieninqe and Earendel in his lecture A Secret Vice and published in 1983 in The Monsters and the Critics A faulty fragment of the poem Narqelion written in early Quenya or Elfin between November 1915 and March 1916 was published by Humphrey Carpenter in his Biography A facsimile of the entire poem was published only in 1999 57 See also editElvish languages Middle earth Languages constructed by J R R Tolkien Sarati SindarinReferences editPrimary edit The entries in the journals Parma Eldalamberon and Vinyar Tengwar contain Tolkien s previously unpublished accounts of the language annotated by scholars so these are not purely primary sources Tolkien wrote in his Outline of Phonology in Parma Eldalamberon 19 p 74 dedicated to the phonology of Quenya ny is a sound as in English new In Quenya ny is a combination of consonants ibidem p 81 a b Letter 163 The Letters of J R R Tolkien a b From a letter to W R Matthews dated 13 15 June 1964 published in Parma Eldalamberon 17 p 135 a b Tolkien J R R The Lord of the Rings Foreword to the Second Edition Tolkien J R R 1997 The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays p 212 J R R Tolkien letter to a reader Parma Eldalamberon 17 p 61 a b c d Tolkien 2010 Parma Eldalamberon No 19 pp 18 28 J R R Tolkien Lambion Ontale Descent of Tongues Tengwesta Qenderinwa 2 Parma Eldalamberon 18 p 71 The Elves began to make in the beginning of their being a language and it is one with their being since it was of their nature and the first of all their gift to devise names and words Tolkien 2010 Parma Eldalamberon No 19 p 76 Tolkien wrote about Quenya It might be said to be composed on a Latin basis with two other main ingredients that happen to give me phonaesthetic pleasure Finnish and Greek Letter No 144 The Letters of J R R Tolkien Parma Eldalamberon No 14 J R R Tolkien The Silmarillion ch 6 Of Feanor and the Unchaining of Melkor see also Quenya in the annotated Index p 346 J R R Tolkien Tengwesta Qenderinwa Parma Eldalamberon 18 p 72 The most ancient structure of the tongue common to all the Qendelie Elvish race is not known to the Elves through some things may be guessed or discovered by those who will compare one with another the written forms of Eldarin languages of Valinor together with such records of the Avari as we here in Eressea have set down in these later days Tolkien 1994 p 421 J R R Tolkien Tengwesta Qenderinwa 2 Parma Eldalamberon 18 p 75 J R R Tolkien Words Phrases and Passages Parma Eldalamberon 17 p 128 Tolkien 1994 Part Four Quendi and Eldar Appendix D Kwen Quenya and the Elvish especially Noldorin words for Language Note on the Language of the Valar p 398 Tolkien 1994 p 361 Tolkien 2010 Parma Eldalamberon No 19 p 93 The Silmarillion chapter 15 Parma Eldalamberon 17 p 129 J R R Tolkien The Lord of the Rings Appendix F Of the Elves a b c d e f g Tolkien 2010 Parma Eldalamberon No 19 pages 68 107 The Letters of J R R Tolkien 223 I remain in love with Italian and feel quite lorn without a chance of trying to speak it Only phonemic consonants are listed c and ʍ are phonemic in Tarquesta being distinguished from hj and hw in that they are not treated as long consonants but are treated so in Parmaquesta and hence there may be considered the realization of the clusters hj and hw gt Tolkien 2010 Parma Eldalamberon No 19 p 88 a b c Tolkien 2010 Parma Eldalamberon No 19 p 75 a b J R R Tolkien Quenya Consonants Parma Eldalamberon 22 p 66 Tolkien 2010 Parma Eldalamberon No 19 p 74 Tolkien 2010 Parma Eldalamberon No 19 p 86 Tolkien 2010 Parma Eldalamberon No 19 p 79 Tolkien 2010 Parma Eldalamberon No 19 p 106 a b Tolkien 2010 Parma Eldalamberon No 19 p 107 Tolkien 2010 Parma Eldalamberon No 19 p 88 Tolkien 2010 Parma Eldalamberon No 19 p 81 Tolkien 2010 Parma Eldalamberon No 19 p 80 a b Tolkien 2010 Parma Eldalamberon No 19 p 103 a b Tolkien 2010 Parma Eldalamberon No 19 p 84 Tolkien 2010 Parma Eldalamberon No 19 p 87 a b Tolkien 2010 Parma Eldalamberon No 19 p 82 J R R Tolkien Words Phrases and Passages in Various Tongues in The Lord of the Rings Parma Eldalamberon 17 p 135 J R R Tolkien Early Qenya Grammar Parma Eldalamberon 14 p 77 Quenya Pronominal Elements Vinyar Tengwar 49 p 51 Parma Eldalamberon 17 p 57 Vinyar Tengwar 49 p 15 a b J R R Tolkien Words Phrases and Passages in Various Tongues in The Lord of the Rings Parma Eldalamberon 17 p 110 a b J R R Tolkien The Lord of the Rings The Return of the King The Steward and the King Parma Eldalamberon 17 p 161 From the Namarie poem by J R R Tolkien J R R Tolkien Early Qenya Grammar Parma Eldalamberon 14 p 56 Parma Eldalamberon 17 p 144 Parma Eldalamberon 17 p 76 Vinyar Tengwar 49 p 43 J R R Tolkien Words Phrases and Passages in Various Tongues in The Lord of the Rings Parma Eldalamberon 17 pp 93 94 a b Vinyar Tengwar 49 p 9 Vinyar Tengwar 49 p 7 a b c d e The Silmarillion Index annotated by Christopher Tolkien as a glossary pp 313 365 The Silmarillion Appendix Elements in Quenya and Sindarin Names tar a b c Parma Eldalamberon 17 p 162 Tolkien 1994 p 367 J R R Tolkien HFN The words for hand The fingers Vinyar Tengwar n 47 p 10 J R R Tolkien The Etymologies in The Lost Road p 356 J R R Tolkien NKE manuscript text on neter 9 kanat 4 and enek 6 Vinyar Tengwar n 47 p 15 J R R Tolkien The Lord of the Rings Appendix E part I The Letters of J R R Tolkien 230 The Return of the King ch 1 J R R Tolkien The Silmarillion chapter 20 Secondary edit Conley Tim Cain Stephen 2006 Encyclopedia of Fictional and Fantastic Languages Greenwood Publishing Group ISBN 978 0 313 33188 6 Solopova 2009 p 76 Fimi 2009 pp 95 99 Solopova 2009 p 75 Solopova 2009 pp 75 76 Fimi 2009 p 97 Qenyaqetsa The Qenya Phonology and Lexicon by J R R Tolkien published in Parma Eldalamberon No 12 a b c d e Tikka Petri 2007 The Finnicization of Quenya Arda Philology Proceedings of the First International Conference on J R R Tolkien s Invented Languages Omientielva Minya Stockholm 2005 Arda Philology Vol 1 Arda Society pp 1 20 ISBN 978 9197350013 Fimi 2009 p 98 Solopova 2009 p 77 Carpenter Humphrey 2000 J R R Tolkien A Biography New York Houghton Mifflin p 79 ISBN 978 0 618 05702 3 DuBois Tom Mellor Scott 2002 The Nordic Roots of Tolkien s Middle Earth Scandinavian Review The American Scandinavian Foundation Summer Barnes Lawrie Van Heerden Chantelle 2006 Virtual languages in science fiction and fantasy literature Language Matters Studies in the Languages of Southern Africa 37 1 102 107 doi 10 1080 10228190608566254 S2CID 144894796 Solopova 2009 p 90 There are several journals devoted to the study of Tolkien s languages Parma Eldalamberon Quettar Tengwestie Vinyar Tengwar Bracken James K 1998 J ohn R onald R euel Tolkien 1892 1973 Journals In Rettig James ed Reference works in British and American literature 2nd ed Libraries Unlimited p 525 ISBN 1 56308 518 6 a b c d e f g h i Hostetter Carl F 2007 Tolkienian Linguistics The First Fifty Years Tolkien Studies Project MUSE 4 1 46 doi 10 1353 tks 2007 0022 S2CID 170601512 Appleyard Anthony 7 March 1995 Quenya Grammar Reexamined Tolklang quettar org Retrieved 16 February 2023 a b Strack Paul 11 December 2022 2008 Eldamo An Elvish Lexicon Eldamo org Retrieved 16 February 2023 v0 8 4 2 Stainton Alexander 2022 Quenya Prosodic Structure Western Papers in Linguistics 5 1 Fauskanger Helge K 2009 Practical Neo Quenya Arda Philology Proceedings of the Second International Conference on J R R Tolkien s Invented Languages Omientielva Tatya Antwerp 2007 Arda Philology Vol 2 Arda Society pp 16 55 ISBN 9789197350020 Scull Christina Hammond Wayne G 2006 The J R R Tolkien Companion and Guide Vol 2 Reader s Guide Boston New York Houghton Mifflin pp 476 82 Garth John 2011 Quenya Phonology Comparative Tables Outline of Phonetic Development Outline of Phonology Tolkien Studies 8 1 107 114 doi 10 1353 tks 2011 0013 S2CID 170945020 Flieger 2002 p 87 Dickerson Matthew 2013 2007 Elves Kindreds and Migrations In Drout Michael D C ed J R R Tolkien Encyclopedia Routledge pp 152 154 ISBN 978 0 415 86511 1 Flieger 2002 p 136 Renk Thorsten What is Vanyarin Quenya like Archived from the original on 15 August 2013 Retrieved 1 September 2013 Pesch 2003 p 75 a b c Fauskanger Helge K Quenya the Ancient Tongue Elementary Phonology University of Bergen Pesch 2003 pp 75 188 Pesch Helmut W 2004 Helmut W Pesch Elbisch Lern und Ubungsbuch der Elben Sprachen von J R R Tolkien in German Bastei Lubbe ISBN 3 404 20498 0 Gebhardt Matthias 2007 Wie kann Deutsch und Elbisch kontrastiv verglichen werden Tolkiens Versuch der Entwicklung einer Kunstsprache in German GRIN Verlag p 45 ISBN 978 3 638 71087 9 Pesch 2003 p 76 Quenya English Dictionary PDF Ambar Eldaron April 2009 p 12 Pesch 2003 pp 78 79 Pesch 2003 pp 79 80 Pesch 2003 p 80 Pesch 2003 p 87 Fauskanger Helge K Quenya The Ancient Tongue The Adjective Ardalambion University of Bergen Retrieved 13 January 2013 Pesch 2003 p 90 Fauskanger Helge K Quenya the Ancient Tongue Pronouns Ardalambion University of Bergen Retrieved 11 January 2013 Pesch 2003 pp 91 92 Renk Thorsten The Quenya Pronominal System a summary Tengwesta eldalambion Investigations into Elvish grammar Archived from the original on 15 September 2015 Retrieved 7 August 2023 Pesch 2003 p 98 Pesch 2003 p 100 Pesch 2003 p 93 Pesch 2003 p 94 Pesch 2003 p 95 Pesch 2003 p 91 Pesch 2003 pp 117 119 Kloczko Edward 2008 L Encyclopedie des Elfes The Encyclopedia of Elves in French Le Pre aux Clercs p 145 ISBN 978 2 84228 325 4 Quettar n 13 p 9 Omentielva Arda Philology 2 http www omentielva com ardaph2 htm Solopova Elizabeth 2009 Languages Myths and History An Introduction to the Linguistic and Literary Background of J R R Tolkien s Fiction New York City North Landing Books ISBN 978 0 9816607 1 4 p 88 a b De Rosario Martinez Helios 2011 A Methodological Study of the Elvish Writing Systems Arda Philology Proceedings of the Third International Conference on J R R Tolkien s Invented Languages Omientielva Nelya Whitehaven 2009 Vol 3 Arda Society pp 1 25 ISBN 9789197350037 Krege 2003 p 36 See the version E1b of his poem Earendel published in Parma Eldalamberon 16 p 104 Vinyar Tengwar No 40 April 1999 Sources edit Fimi Dimitra 2009 Tolkien Race and Cultural History From Fairies to Hobbits Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978 0 230 21951 9 Flieger Verlyn 2002 Splintered Light Logos and Languages in Tolkien s World 2nd revised ed Kent State University Press ISBN 0 87338 744 9 Krege Wolfgang 2003 Elbisches Worterbuch in German Klett Cotta ISBN 3 608 93185 6 Pesch Helmut W 2003 Elbisch Grammatik Schrift und Worterbuch der Elbensprache von J R R Tolkien in German Bastei Lubbe ISBN 3 404 20476 X Solopova Elizabeth 2009 Languages Myths and History An Introduction to the Linguistic and Literary Background of J R R Tolkien s Fiction New York City North Landing Books ISBN 978 0 9816607 1 4 Tolkien J R R 1994 Christopher Tolkien ed The War of the Jewels Boston Houghton Mifflin ISBN 0 395 71041 3 Tolkien J R R 2010 Outline of Phonology Parma Eldalamberon 19 Further reading editAppleyard Anthony 1992 Quenya Grammar Re Examined Quettar 43 pp 3 21 Derzhanski Ivan A 1997 E man i yulma oi enquanta men Vinyar Tengwar 38 pp 14 18 Foster Robert and Glen GoodKnight 1971 Sindarin and Quenya Phonology Mythcon I Proceedings 54 56 Los Angeles Mythopoeic Society Gilson Christopher and Carl F Hostetter 1994 The entu ensi enta Declension A Preliminary Analysis Vinyar Tengwar 36 pp 7 29 Gilson Christopher and Patrick Wynne 1991 The Elves at Koivieneni A New Quenya Sentence Mythlore 17 3 pp 23 30 Hostetter Carl F 1992 Si man i yulmar n g win enquatuva A Newly Discovered Tengwar Inscription Vinyar Tengwar 21 pp 6 10 Hostetter Carl F 2006 Qenyaqetsa The Qenya Phonology and Lexicon In Drout Michael D C ed The J R R Tolkien Encyclopedia New York Routledge pp 551 552 ISBN 0 415 96942 5 Kloczko Edward 1995 Dictionnaire des langues elfiques volume 1 Quenya Francais Anglais Quenya French English Toulon Tamise Rautala Helena 1993 Familiarity and Distance Quenya s Relation to Finnish In Battarbee K J ed Scholarship and Fantasy Proceedings Of The Tolkien Phenomenon May 1992 Turku Finland Turku University of Turku pp 21 31 ISBN 951 29 0087 4 Welden Bill 2001 Negation in Quenya Vinyar Tengwar 42 pp 32 34 Wynne Patrick H and Christopher Gilson 1993 Trees of Silver and of Gold A Guide to the Koiveineni Manuscript Vinyar Tengwar 27 pp 7 42 External links edit nbsp Look up Appendix Quenya in Wiktionary the free dictionary nbsp Wikiversity has learning resources about Quenya The Elvish Linguistic Fellowship Parma Eldalamberon Vinyar Tengwar Ardalambion Helge Fauskanger s site on Tolkien languages with Quenya course and materials Thorsten Renk s page on Elvish Languages Thorsten Renk s Quetin i lambe eldaiva a Quenya Course gz archive The s case Ales Bican examines the evidence for the shortened form of the locative s Quenya English dictionary Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Quenya amp oldid 1185553860, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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