Quenya
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Quenya is an artificial language developed by the English philologist & author of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, etc., J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973). The native language of the High Elves, Quenya was inspired by Finnish, Latin, Greek & some smaller elements from other European languages. Tolkien had written Quenya as a kind of 'Elven-Latin' for Middle-Earth, being an ancient language of the High-Elves that was spoken by the Vanyar & Noldor. It persists throughout the history of Middle-Earth as a language of lore among the elves & men.Template:Fix/category[citation needed]
According to Tolkien's writings, Quenya has not been a first language spoken of any elf since the early part of the First Age. This is because King Thingol of Doriath learned of the Noldor's Kinslaying of the Teleri (a grevious and captial offence), as many of his kinfolk were slain among them and thus forbade the use of Quenya in his realm, leading the Noldor to switch to using Sindarin, another Elvin language, for everyday use. Quenya has two known dialects, Vanyarin Quenya, as spoken in Valinor, and Noldorin Quenya (or Exilic Quenya), which developed in Valinor initially with pronunciation changes, but underwent greater changes when the Noldor returned to Middle-Earth, acquiring new words and grammatical changes. Of the two dialects, Exilic Quenya is the most well known & documented.
Vanyarin Quenya is said to be similar to Exilic Quenya, though very little is known to know how it was spoken, with no texts written in Vanyarin Quenya by Tolkien. It's known that kept the archaic sounds and grammar that Exilic Quenya changed & removed respectively; 'th' (þ) & 'z', the accusative case & some words that derive from Valarin, The language spoken by the Valar, e.g.
- nasar red
- tulka yellow
- ezel / ezella green
- ulban blue.
Grammar
[edit | edit source]
- Tenses
- Present tense
- Aorist tense [1]
- Future tense
- Past tense
- Perfect tense
- Infinitive
- Participle
- Gerund
- Negative
- Cases
-
- Accusative[2]
- Personal pronouns
- Possessive pronouns
- Relative pronouns
- Demonstrative pronouns
- Interrogative pronouns
- Indefinite pronouns
- Reflexive pronouns
- Numerals
- ↑ The aorist tense is based upon the Greek tense with the same name.
- ↑ Found in Vanyarin Quenya, replaced by the nominative case in spoken Exilic Quenya, kept in classical writing of the Parmaquesta "Book-language" making a diglossia within Quenya among the Noldor.
Appendices
[edit | edit source]- Phonology - Pronunciation of Quenya
- Tengwar - Quenya's writing system
- Syntaxis - Selection of grammatical terms & definitions
- Declension Paradigms
- Texts in Quenya
Links
[edit | edit source]- Ardalambion
- [1]
- Parma Tyelpelassiva - A collection of works written in Elven languages
- the Council of Elrond - A forum community for Quenya users; There are English-Neo-Quenya & Neo-Quenya-English dictionaries
Disclaimer: This book is about the version of Quenya as it is nowadays used. Some people call this language Neo-Quenya to distinguish it from the research made by Tolkien. He never made a definitive version of Quenya as he kept changing his mind about the details throughout his life.
Lots of facts in this book are derived from only a few examples. It contains some Qenya vocabulary. Qenya is the original language developed by Tolkien, he only later changed the name to the now more familiar Quenya. This book is meant to be used as a reference "as is". It is not meant to be authoritative in any way.