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Lesson Six - Exercises
08:34 Aug 20 2005
Times Read: 594








1. Translate into English (and practice your vocabulary at the same time; most of the words employed in exercises A-H were introduced in earlier lessons):



A. I nér cendanë i parma.

B. I Naucor manter.

C. I aran tultanë i tári.

D. Nís lindanë.

E. I vendi tirner i Elda.

F. I lempë roccor caitaner nu i alta tasar.

G. I eleni siller.

H. I Nauco cennë rocco.

2. Translate into Quenya:



I. A Dwarf found the treasure.

J. The Elf spoke.

K. The horse jumped.

L. The king loved the Elves.

M. A man wrote five books.

N. The queen rose.

O. The kings possessed great treasures.

P. The king and the queen summoned four Elves and five Dwarves.

Lesson Six - Vocabulary
08:27 Aug 20 2005
Times Read: 596








lempë "five"

elen "star"

harma "treasure" (noun)

sil- verb "shine" (with white or silver light, like star-shine or moon-shine)

hir- verb "find"

cap- verb "jump"

tec- verb "write"

quet- verb "speak, say"

mel- verb "love" (as friend; no Quenya word referring to erotic love between the sexes has been published)

cen- verb "see" (related to cenda- "read", which word is derived from a strengthened form of the same stem and meaning, basically, to watch closely).

orta- verb "rise", also used = "raise, lift up".

harya- verb "possess; have" (related to the noun harma "treasure", basically referring to a "possession")

Lesson Six - Summary of Lesson Six
08:27 Aug 20 2005
Times Read: 597








While various irregular formations occur, it would seem that the past tense of Quenya verbs is typically formed according to these rules: A-stem verbs simply receive the ending -në. The "primary" or ending-less verbs can also receive this ending if their last consonant is -r or -m, probably also -n (no examples). If added to a primary verb in -l, the ending -në turns into -lë (resulting in a double ll, e.g. villë as the past tense of vil- "fly"). Primary verbs ending in one of the consonants p, t, c have past tenses constructed by adding the ending -ë combined with nasal-infixion intruding before the last consonant of the verbal stem; the infix manifests as m before p (hence tompë as the past tense of top- "cover"), otherwise as n (hence mantë as the past tense of mat- "eat").

Lesson Six - Past Tense
08:26 Aug 20 2005
Times Read: 598








The previous lesson discussed the Quenya present tense, which is typically used to describe an on-going present action. However, Quenya has different tenses covering the entire trinity of past, present and future, and when recounting past events one will normally use the past tense.



In English, very many past tenses are formed by means of the ending -ed, e.g. filled as the past tense of the verb fill. In Quenya, most past tense forms are likewise formed by means of an ending added to the verbal stem. As far as we know, all past tense verbs end in the vowel -ë (though further endings, such as the plural ending -r that is used in the case of a plural subject, may of course be added after this vowel). In many cases, this vowel -ë is part of the ending -në, that seems to be the most general past tense ending in Quenya.



As discussed in the previous lesson, most Quenya verbs are A-stems, meaning that they end in the vowel -a. The past tenses of these verbs are typically formed simply by adding the ending -në. For instance, the Etymologies mention a verb orta- "raise" (see the entry ORO), and in Namárië in LotR its past tense is seen to be ortanë. (The simplest translation of ortanë is of course "raised"; the somewhat free rendering in LotR employs the translation "has uplifted" instead, but Tolkien's interlinear translation in RGEO:67 reads "lifted up" – which is merely an alternative wording of "raised".) Other examples from Tolkien's notes:



ora- "urge", past tense oranë "urged" (VT41:13, 18)

hehta- "exclude", past tense hehtanë "excluded" (WJ:365)

ulya- "pour", past tense ulyanë "poured" (Etym, entry ULU)

sinta- "fade", past tense sintanë "faded" (Etym, entry THIN)



We may add the verb ahyanë "changed" (or "did change"), only attested like this in the past tense, as part of the question manen lambë Quendion ahyanë[?] "how did the language of the Elves change?" (PM:395). The verb "change" would seem to be ahya-.



Regarding the verb ava- (apparently meaning "refuse, forbid"), Tolkien noted that its past tense avanë "revealed that it was not in origin a 'strong' or basic verbal stem". The latter seems to be more or less the same as a primary verb. He called avanë a "weak" past tense form (WJ:370). That probably goes for all the past tenses so far discussed. (What Tolkien would call a "strong" past tense is not quite clear. Perhaps he would use this term of the past tenses formed by means of nasal-infixion – see below.)



We must also consider the "basic" or "primary", ending-less verbs, verbs that unlike the A-stems do not have a final vowel: verbs like sil- "to shine", tir- "to watch", mat- "to eat".



It seems that the ending -në can be used to form the past tense of some primary verbs as well. Tolkien mentioned tirnë as the past tense of the verb tir- "to watch" (Etym, entry TIR), and he also quoted tamnë as the past tense of the verb tam- "to tap" (Etym, entry TAM). In these cases, adding -në to the verbal stems in question does not produce impossible consonant clusters: Both rn and mn are permitted by Quenya phonology. For this reason, the ending -në can probably also be added to verbal stems ending in -n, since double nn is likewise a wholly acceptable combination in Quenya. For instance, the past tense of the verb cen- "to see" is presumably cennë "saw", though we have no attested example of the past tense of a verb of this shape.



But whenever the stem of a basic verb ends in any consonant other than just -m, -n, or -r, simply adding the ending -në would produce consonant clusters that Quenya cannot have. The past tense forms of verbs like mat- "eat", top- "cover" or tac- "fasten" cannot be **matnë, **topnë, **tacnë, for clusters like tn, pn, cn are not found in the language. So what happens?



The difficult way of describing what occurs is to say that the n of the ending -në is replaced by nasal-infixion intruding before the last consonant of the verbal stem. What is "infixion"? We have already mentioned suffixes, elements added at the end of a word (like the plural ending -r, added to the noun Elda in its plural form Eldar), and prefixes, elements added at the beginning of a word (like the superlative prefix an-, added to the adjective calima "bright" in its superlative form ancalima "brightest"). If you want to add something to a word, there are only so many places you can fit it in; if it is not to be prefixed or suffixed, the final option is to infix it, that is, jam it into the word. For instance, the verb mat- "to eat" has the past tense mantë "ate" (VT39:7), an infixed n turning up before the final consonant of the verbal stem (t becoming nt). Similarly, the verb hat- "break asunder" has the past tense hantë (Etym, entry SKAT).



Before the consonant p, the infix takes the form m rather than n, so that the past tense of top- "to cover" is tompë (Etym, entry TOP). Before c, the infix appears as n (or actually ñ, see below), so that the past tense of tac- "to fasten" is tancë (Etym, entry TAK). The various forms of the infix – n, m or ñ, depending on the environment – are all nasals, sounds pronounced by making the stream of air from the lungs go out through the nose rather than the mouth. Hence nasal-infixion is a fitting term for this phonological process.



As I said, that was the difficult way of stating what happens. Put more simply: if adding the past tense ending -në to a primary verb would result in any of the impossible clusters tn, cn, pn, the n and the consonant before it switch places. Tn and cn simply become nt and nc; what would be np changes to mp to ease pronunciation. (Actually what would be nc similarly changes to ñc, using ñ for ng as in king as Tolkien sometimes did – but according to the spelling conventions here employed, ñc is represented simply as nc.) Hence:



mat- "eat", past tense (**matnë >) mantë "ate"

top- "cover", past tense (**topnë > **tonpë >) tompë "covered"

tac- "fasten", past tense (**tacnë >) tancë "fastened"



This, at least, is an easy way to imagine it for pedagogical purposes. We cannot know for certain whether Tolkien imagined this to be the actual development – a form something like matnë actually occurring at an earlier stage, but later becoming mantë by swapping around the consonants t and n. The linguistic term for such transposing of two sounds is metathesis, and there are other examples of metathesized consonants in the imaginary evolution of Tolkien's languages (see for instance the Etymologies, entry KEL-). However, some clues suggest that Tolkien imagined these past tenses to reflect "genuine" nasal-infixion occurring already in primitive Elvish, not merely a later transposition of consonants. After all, he had one of his characters observe that "nasal-infixion is of considerable importance in Avallonian" (SD:433; Avallonian is another term for Quenya). But this is an academic question.



Primary verbs with -l as their final consonant must be given special attention. The verb vil- "to fly" is said to have the past tense villë (Etym, entry WIL). This double ll probably represents some combination of l and n. Perhaps villë is meant to represent older wilnë with the normal past tense ending (notice that in this case, v comes from older w: root WIL), the group ln turning into ll in Quenya. However, other examples suggest that older ln would rather produce Quenya ld. It may well be that villë is meant to represent older winlë, that is, a nasal-infixed variant of the verb wil- (since nl also became ll in Quenya; for instance, the noun nellë "brook" is said to come from older nen-le: Etym, entry NEN). Whatever development Tolkien may have imagined, primary verbs with l as their final consonant seem to form their past tense form by adding -lë.



NOTE: In Telerin, the sister language of Quenya in the Blessed Realm, a verb formed from a root DEL ("go") is said to have the past tense delle: WJ:364. As pointed out by Ales Bican, this form probably descends from older denle (with nasal-infixion). If it descended from delne, it would likely have remained unchanged in Telerin, since the cluster ln is permitted in this language (cf. a Telerin word like elni "stars", WJ:362). This observation supports the view that past tenses with nasal-infixion did occur already in Primitive Elvish.



The system set out above is what I shall consider the "regular" way of forming the past tense of a verb in Quenya. That is, as long as a verb conforms with this system, I will not explicitly list its past tense when I first mention it. All the past tenses in the exercises below are constructed according to this system, so your task this time is to internalize the rules above. Some irregular forms will be discussed in later lessons, but even so, we will here survey certain "alternative" past tense formations (contrasting them with the more regular forms may actually be helpful in memorizing the normal system – but the student is not expected to memorize this survey as such). So do skim through as much as you can take of the stuff below, and proceed to the exercises when you've had enough.



The past tense of primary verbs with -r as their final consonant is relatively well-attested: Attested examples include car- "make, do", pa.t. carnë (Etym, entry KAR), tir- "watch", pa.t. tirnë (Etym, entry TIR) and tur- "govern", pa.t. turnë (Etym, entry TUR). So above we set out the rule that verbs of this shape have past tense forms that are constructed by adding the suffix -në. But a few verbs behave quite differently. The past tense of the verb rer- "sow" is not **rernë as we might expect, but rendë: See Etym, entry RED. The reason for this is precisely the fact that the original root-word was RED rather than **RER. Thus the verb rer- appeared as red- at an earlier stage, and then the past tense rendë is actually "regular" enough: it is simply formed from red- by means of nasal-infixion + the ending -ë (just like such a regular verb as quet- "say" has the pa.t. quentë). What slightly complicates matters is that in Quenya, original d only survived as part of the clusters ld, nd, and rd; in all other positions it was changed, and following a vowel it normally became r. Hence red- turned into rer-, while the past tense rendë remained unscathed by the phonological changes. In this perspective, the verb is strictly speaking not "irregular" at all; it just behaves differently because it has a special history – and this goes for very many of the "irregularities" in Quenya: As observed by his son, Tolkien's linguistic creations "imagine language not as 'pure structure', without 'before' or 'after', but as growth, in time" (LR:342). Tolkien clearly liked leaving in various testimonials to this imaginary age-long "growth".



We don't know very many verbs in -r that should have past tenses in -ndë because of their special history. From the Etymologies we must presumably include the verbs hyar- "cleave" and ser- "rest" (since these come from roots SYAD and SED, see the relevant entries in Etym – but Tolkien did not actually mention the past tense forms hyandë and sendë). In a post-LotR source we have a verb nir- "press, thrust, force"; again no past tense form has been published, but since the stem is given as NID it should presumably be nindë rather than nirnë (VT41:17). More attested examples could be quoted from early "Qenya" material, but these writings do not have full authority as regards LotR-style Quenya. For instance, the 1915 Qenya Lexicon seems to include the verb nyar- "tell, relate" in this category (past tense nyandë, QL:68). But in later material, Tolkien derived this verb from a root NAR (entry NAR2 in Etym) rather than NAD, so now its past tense would presumably be regular (nyarnë).



Some primary verbs are also seen to use a past tense formation that dispenses with any nasal sounds. The verb does receive the ending -ë, the vowel displayed by all past-tense forms, but instead of adding a nasal sound (infixed or as part of the ending -në), the stem-vowel of the verb is lengthened. For instance, the past tense of the verb lav- "lick" is seen to be lávë (attested in Namárië as part of the verb undulávë "down-licked", that is, "covered"). Likewise, the past tense of the negative verb um- "not do" or "not be" is said to be úmë (Etym, entry UGU/UMU; we will return to this peculiar verb in Lesson Nine). This past tense formation is quite common in the early Qenya Lexicon, and it also turns up in relatively late (but still pre-LotR) sources. Fíriel's Song of ca. 1936 agrees with the 1915 Lexicon that the past tense of the verb car- "make, do" is cárë (QL:45, LR:72; the spelling used in the sources is káre). However, according to the Etymologies (entry KAR), the past tense is carnë – and that is the form we will use here: The Etymologies is, at least in part, slightly younger than Firiel's Song. Following the pattern of cárë, some pre-LotR sources give túlë as the past tense of the verb tul- "come" (LR:47, SD:246), but villë as the past tense of vil- in the Etymologies suggests that the past tense "came" could just as well be tullë (representing older tulne or tunle) instead.



It might seem that Tolkien eventually decided to limit the use of the past tense formation represented by túlë and cárë, though it was never wholly abandoned, as the form undulávë in Namárië in LotR demonstrates. We might actually have expected the past tense of lav- "lick" to be **lambë rather than lávë. A past tense form lambë would be constructed by nasal-infixion of the original root-word LAB (itself listed in Etym): In Quenya, original b normally became v following a vowel, but b persisted unchanged in the group mb. The Qenya Lexicon actually lists ambë as the past tense of a verb av- "depart" (QL:33); this may be an example of this phenomenon. However, **lambë as the past tense of lav- would clash with the noun lambë "tongue, language"; perhaps this is why Tolkien decided to go for the irregular formation lávë instead. Or should we generalize from lav- and let all Quenya primary verbs in -v form their past tense after the pattern of lávë?



Luckily, these verbs are not very numerous. There is a distinct verb lav- meaning "yield, allow, grant" (root DAB, see Etym), possibly a verb tuv- "find" (verbal stem isolated from a longer form), plus tyav- as the verb "taste" (see entry KYAB in Etym). Should the past tense "tasted" be tyambë or tyávë? The latter past tense form is actually attested in the Qenya Lexicon (p. 49), but since the QL is seen to use this formation quite liberally compared to later Quenya, we cannot be sure that the information is valid for the later stages of Tolkien's conception. (Tyávë is attested in a post-LotR source as a noun "taste"; whether this argues against the same form being used as a past tense "tasted" is unclear. In the 1915 Lexicon, Tolkien did have similar-sounding nouns and verbal tenses coexisting; see QL:49, entry KUMU.)



There are some curious cases where even longer, derived verbs (A-stems) drop their ending and have lávë-style past tenses derived directly from the ending-less root. One early example is the verb serta- "tie", past tense sérë (QL:83) rather than **sertanë as we might expect. These formations are far from uncommon in the 1915 Lexicon, but the idea was not wholly obsolete in later Quenya either: The Etymologies of the mid-thirties records that the verb onta- "beget, create" has two possible past tenses: beside the regular form ontanë we also have the irregular form ónë (Etym, entry ONO).



The simplest A-stems, those that add the short ending -a to the root (and not a longer ending like -ta or -ya), may also drop this ending in some past tense formations. Above we quoted the QL form tyávë as an attested past tense of the verb tyav- "taste", but in the 1915 Lexicon, the verb "taste" is actually given as an A-stem tyava-: It is not a primary verb tyav- as it becomes in later sources (QL:49 vs. Etym, entry KYAB). Within the later system, we would expect an A-stem tyava- to have the past tense tyavanë, but the validity of either form in LotR-style Quenya is highly questionable. More commonly, the simplest A-stem verbs have past tenses that are "regular" enough – if you pretend that the final -a does not exist! Above we quoted oranë as an example of the regular past tense of a simple A-stem verb (ora- "urge"), but immediately after writing oranë, Tolkien actually added ornë as a parenthetic alternative (VT41:13). Of course, ornë would be a perfectly regular form if it were the past tense of a primary verb **or- (cf. for instance tur- "govern", pa.t. turnë). In effect, ora- may behave as a primary verb in the past tense, discarding its ending and jumping over into another class. The earliest material has examples of the same phenomenon: In the QL, the past tense forms of the verbs papa- "tremble" and pata- "rap, tap" are given as pampë, pantë (p. 72), not **papanë, **patanë as we would expect according to the "regular" system. The nasal-infixed past tense forms would be perfectly "regular" if we assume that in the past tense, the simple A-stem verbs papa- and pata- are masquerading as primary verbs **pap-, **pat-. Thus we cannot be certain whether the past tense of the verb mapa- "grasp, seize" should be mapanë or mampë; writers have used both. Since Tolkien seems to imply that the past tense of ora- can be both oranë and ornë, perhaps both are permissible.



NOTE: In QL:59, Tolkien actually listed the past tense of mapa- as nampë (sic!) In the 1915 scenario, there were two variant roots, MAPA and NAPA, that shared the past tense nampë. Do we dare to assume that this idea was still valid decades later? The verb mapa- is listed in the Etymologies, but if Tolkien had still imagined its past tense to be as irregular as nampë, I tend to think that it would have been explicitly mentioned in Etym as well. Furthermore, in Etym there is no trace of the alternative root NAPA; we only find MAP (LR:371) corresponding to MAPA in the QL. But on the other hand, the form nampë is attested, so if you like it better than the unattested forms mapanë or mampë, feel free to use it.



The verb lala- "laugh" is another example of one of the simplest A-stems. It may have the past tense lalanë, but it is also possible that it should behave as a primary verb in the past tense. But if so, we must take into account the fact that lala- is to be derived from older g-lada- (PM:359); this is one of the cases where an original d following a vowel turned into l rather than r (influenced by the l earlier in the word). So if lala- has a "short" past tense, it should probably not be lallë, but rather landë – derived from a nasal-infixed form of the original word g-lada-. On the other hand, the similar but distinct verb lala- "deny" found in the Etymologies (LR:367) never contained a d, so its past tense may well be lallë (unless it is lalanë, and I think I lean toward that form).



The Etymologies actually provides a few examples of even more complex A-stems that also drop their ending and in effect transform themselves into primary verbs in the past tense. The verb farya- "to suffice" is said to have the past tense farnë (Etym, entry PHAR); here the whole ending -ya drops out in the past tense, which is formed as if this were a primary verb **fer-. Based on such a regular example as the one we quoted above – namely ulya- "pour", past tense ulyanë – we would of course expect the past tense of ferya- to be **feryanë. But actually even our "regular" example ulya- also has an alternative past tense form ullë (Etym, entry ULU), and this is a particularly interesting example, for Tolkien indicated that the two past tenses ulyanë and ullë were not interchangeable. They had somewhat different meanings. There will be a fuller discussion of this in Lesson Ten; for now it suffices to say that I think most verbs in -ya would retain this ending when the past tense suffix -në is added. (But ullë as one past tense of ulya-, formed directly from ul- rather than the full form of the verb, would seem to confirm that primary verbs in -l normally have past tenses in -lë. Except for ullë, we only have the example vil- "fly", pa.t. villë to go on – so an extra, if indirect, confirmation of this pattern is very welcome!)



Finally we will discuss a strange past tense formation that may occur in the case of verbs in -ta. Perhaps it should not be seen as irregular, for Tolkien actually described one such past tense as "regular...for a -ta verb of this class" (WJ:366). Nonetheless, its formation is less than straightforward. It is exemplified already in the earliest material: The 1915 Lexicon contains a verb lahta- (QL:50; the verb is not clearly glossed), but its past tense is not **lahtanë as we might expect: Instead we find lahantë. In other words, the verb lahta- is reworked into lahat- (the stem-vowel being repeated between the second and the third consonant, breaking up the consonant cluster, whereas the final -a is dropped), and the past tense lahantë is then formed from this lahat- by means of nasal-infixion and an added -ë, in itself a quite regular process familiar from primary verbs.

A much later example can be found in the Etymologies, where the verb orta- "rise, raise" is assigned a past tense form orontë (Etym, entry ORO), though orontë is not there clearly presented as a Quenya form: In Etym, it is actually quite unclear what language it is meant to belong to. However, in some of Tolkien's earlier drafts for Namárië, the past tense of orta- did appear as orontë, not "regular" ortanë as it became in the final version. So what is going on here?



Our only real clue is what Tolkien wrote in WJ:366, where he somewhat surprisingly declared the form oantë – the past tense of auta- "go away, leave" – to be quite regular "for a -ta verb of this class". According to the "regular" system we have tried to make out, oantë instead of **autanë inevitably seems highly irregular. Tolkien derived the verb auta- from a root AWA (WJ:365), so its form in the primitive language is probably meant to be awatâ (my reconstruction). As primitive Elvish evolved towards Quenya as we know it, the second of two identical short vowels in concomitant syllables was often lost; hence awatâ would have been shortened to aw'tâ = autâ, and this in turn is the direct ancestor of Quenya auta-. But it seems that the old past tense of such a verb as awatâ, with a vowel immediately preceding the ending -tâ, was formed by nasal-infixion: Tolkien explicitly gave the past tense of the primitive verb as awantê (WJ:366; the spelling there used is actually áwa-n-tê, the hyphens before and after the n apparently emphasizing that it is an infix – whereas the accent on the initial á here only means that it is stressed, not that the vowel is long).



In the case of a word like awantê, the rule that the second of two identical short vowels is lost could not apply (no **aw'ntê), for such loss does not occur immediately in front of a consonant cluster – and the nasal-infixion has here produced a cluster nt. The "final" Quenya form of awantê, namely oantë, is somewhat obscured because the group awa later became oa in Quenya – but this change has nothing to do with the past tense formation. Now we can explain a form like orontë as the past tense of orta-: In the Etymologies, the original root is given as ORO (LR:379), so Tolkien probably meant the verb orta- to be descended from older orotâ- after the regular loss of the second vowel. But the past tense of this orotâ- was the nasal-infixed form orontê (both are my reconstructions), and this produced Quenya orontë, the second vowel here being preserved because of the following cluster nt (no one wants to say **orntë!)



When Tolkien apparently changed his mind and altered the past tense of orta- from orontë to ortanë (a "regular" form according to the system we have set out), this would seem to suggest that he had now decided that the primitive forms were instead ortâ- with past tense orta-nê: There was never any vowel immediately in front of the ending -tâ after all, and therefore the past tense was not formed by nasal-infixion, but by the independent ending -nê (> Quenya -në). This is not the only example of Tolkien apparently changing his mind about which verbs actually belong to this exclusive "class". The Etymologies lists a verb atalta- "collapse, fall in" (entry TALÁT); no past tense is there mentioned, but in one text we have atalantë (LR:56, translated "down-fell"). This would seem to presuppose that the primitive forms were atalatâ- with past tense atalantê (my reconstructions, but cf. WJ:319 regarding ATALAT as a derivative form of the root TALAT). Yet in Tolkien's later texts the past tense of atalta- becomes ataltanë (LR:47 and SD:247), simply formed by adding the normal ending -në. So now Tolkien had presumably come to envision the primitive forms as ataltâ-, past tense atalta-nê (my reconstructions).



If the apparent revisions orontë > ortanë and atalantë > ataltanë do not reflect changes in his ideas about the primitive Elvish forms, it may be that he imagined a development whereby the Eldar replaced the more complex past tense formations with simpler, analogical forms. For instance, orontë as past tense of orta- could have been replaced by ortanë because of analogy with such straightforward past tense formations as hehta-, pa.t. hehtanë (WJ:365). In the Etymologies, the form orontë is indeed marked with a symbol that indicates that it is "poetic or archaic" (cf. LR:347); is this to suggest that it was ordinarily replaced by the "non-archaic" form ortanë? Especially considering how Tolkien later came to envision the history of the Quenya tongue – that it was used as a ceremonial language in Middle-earth, but was no longer anyone's mother-tongue – we could very plausibly assume that its grammar was somewhat simplified, more complex formations being suppressed and replaced by simpler analogical ones. Indeed oantë rather than **autanë as the past tense of auta- "to leave" is the only verb I can think of where we "must" use this special past tense formation, unless we are to accept some of the earliest "Qenya" material with no reservations (and I have plenty).



With this we conclude our survey of various strange or irregular ways of forming the past tense; as I said above, the exercises below are meant to reflect the regular system instead.



Remember that just like present-tense verbs, a past tense form receives the ending -r if it has a plural subject (or multiple subjects). For instance, the simplest past tense of the verb lanta- "fall" is lantanë, but with a plural subject it becomes lantaner (SD:246). Naturally, he diaeresis over the final -ë disappears, since the vowel is no longer final when the plural ending -r is added after it.

Lesson Five - Exercises
08:14 Aug 20 2005
Times Read: 599








1. Translate into English:



A. I nís lálëa.

B. I antiuca Nauco máta.

C. I tári tíra i aran.

D. I analta oron ná taura.

E. I nér tultëa i anvanya vendë.

F. I aiwë lindëa.

G. I Naucor mápëar i canta Eldar.

H. I antaura aran ná saila.



2. Translate into Quenya:



I. The woman is watching the greatest (/biggest) ship.

J. The most evil (/evilest) men are dead.

K. The Elf is seizing the book.

L. Four men are lying under a tree.

M. The wisest Elf is reading a book (careful: what probably happens to the superlative prefix when it is added to a word like saila "wise"?)

N. The king and the queen are reading the book.

O. The birds are singing.

P. The four Dwarves are watching a bird.

Lesson Five - Vocabulary
08:13 Aug 20 2005
Times Read: 600








canta "four"

Nauco "Dwarf"

parma "book"

tiuca "thick, fat"

mapa- verb "grasp, seize"

tir- verb "watch, guard"

lala- verb "laugh" (so according to a late source, PM:359; in earlier material the verb lala-, of a quite different derivation, has the meaning "deny": See the entry LA in the Etymologies. We needn't discuss whether one obsoletes the other; here we will use lala- for "laugh" only.)

caita- verb "lie" (lie horizontally, not "tell a lie")

tulta- verb "summon"

linda- verb "sing" (cf. the word Ainulindalë or "Music [lit. Singing] of the Ainur")

mat- verb "eat"

cenda- verb "read"

Lesson Five - Summary of Lesson Five
08:09 Aug 20 2005
Times Read: 602








Two major categories of Quenya verbs are the primary verbs, that represent a primitive root with no additions, and the A-stems, that have added an ending including the vowel a to the original root (sometimes -a alone, but more commonly some longer ending like -ya or -ta). The primary verbs form their present tense by lengthening the stem-vowel and adding -a, e.g. síla "is shining" from sil- "to shine". The A-stems form their present tense by somewhat the same rule, but when the ending -a is added to such a stem (already ending in -a), what would be -aa is changed to -ëa. In our one attested example of what may be the present tense of an A-stem, órëa from ora- "to impel", the stem-vowel has been lengthened. However, as far as we understand Quenya phonology, a long vowel cannot normally occur in front of a consonant cluster, and most A-stems do have a consonant cluster following the stem-vowel (e.g. lanta- "to fall", hilya- "to follow"). Presumably such verbs would form their present tense in -ëa, but the stem-vowel would remain short. Only the (relatively few) A-stems that do not have a consonant cluster following the stem-vowel can lengthen it in the present tense.



(NOTE: Some consider all present-tense forms in -ëa speculative, and students should understand that given the scarcity of source material, new publications may significantly alter the picture. The use of such forms in the exercises below should be considered tentative reconstruction or extrapolation, not necessarily "Tolkien fact".) – A verb agrees with its subject in number, receiving the ending -r if the subject is plural: elen síla "a star is shining", eleni sílar "stars are shining".



A superlative form of adjectives can be derived by adding the prefix an-, as in ancalima "brightest" from calima "bright". We must, however, assume that the n of this prefix is in many cases assimilated to the first consonant of the adjective, or consonant clusters that Quenya phonology does not allow would arise. For instance, an- + lauca "warm" may produce allauca for "warmest" (*anlauca being an impossible word).

Lesson Five - More About Adjectives
08:08 Aug 20 2005
Times Read: 603








In English and other European languages, adjectives have special forms that are used in comparison. In English, adjectives have a comparative form that is constructed by adding the ending -er, and a superlative form that is formed with the ending -est. For instance, the adjective tall has the comparative form taller and the superlative form tallest. (In the case of some adjectives, English however resorts to the independent words more and most instead of using the endings, e.g. more intelligent and most intelligent instead of intelligenter and intelligentest, which forms are perceived as cumbersome.) The function of these forms is to facilitate comparison between various parties. If we want to say that one party possesses the quality described by the adjective to a greater extent than some other party, we may use the comparative form: "Peter is taller than Paul." The superlative form is used if we want to say that one party possesses the quality in question more than all others that are considered: "Peter is the tallest boy in the class."



In the first version of this Quenya lesson, as published in December 2000, I wrote: "But when it comes to Quenya, there is not much we can say. The published material includes absolutely no information about comparative forms; we don't even have an independent word for 'more'." Since then, the situation has happily changed; during 2001 a little more information appeared in the journals Tyalië Tyelelliéva (#16) and Vinyar Tengwar. Now we do know a special formula that is used in comparison: "A is brighter than B" may be expressed as "A ná calima lá B", literally "A is bright beyond B" (VT42:32). However, the word lá has other meanings beside "beyond", and it will be more practical to discuss and practice its use in comparison in a later lesson ("The various uses of lá", Lesson Eighteen).



We will here focus on the superlative form of adjectives instead. It is somewhat disquieting to notice that when Tolkien was making a Quenya translation of the Litany of Loreto, he broke off before translating the Latin superlative form purissima "most pure" – as if he himself was not quite certain how to render it (VT44:19). Yet one tiny scrap of evidence regarding the superlative has long been available: In Letters:278-279, Tolkien explained the adjectival form ancalima occurring in LotR. Translating it as "exceedingly bright", he stated that this is calima "shining brilliant" with the element an- added, the latter being a "superlative or intensive prefix". For this reason, many writers have used the prefix an- as the equivalent of the English ending -est, to construct the superlative form of adjectives – e.g. anvanya "fairest" from vanya "fair, beautiful" (but is should be understood that ancalima remains our sole attested example of an- used in this sense).



One may wonder whether the form that is made by prefixing an- really is the equivalent of an English superlative, sc. a form of the adjective that implies having the most of the property involved in comparison with certain others. It may be noted that Tolkien translated ancalima, not as "brightest", but as "exceedingly bright". When he describes an- as a "superlative or intensive prefix", he may almost seem to mean 'superlative or rather intensive prefix'. So perhaps an- implies "very, exceedingly" rather than "most" in comparison with others. It may be noted, though, that the context the in which the word is found does seem to imply a certain amount of "comparison": In LotR, ancalima occurs as part of Frodo's "speaking in tongues" in Shelob's lair (volume 2, Book Four, chapter IX): Aiya Eärendil Elenion Ancalima. No translation is given in the LotR itself, but Tolkien later stated that this means "hail Eärendil brightest of stars" (Letters:385). In Tolkien's mythology, Eärendil carrying the shining Silmaril was set in the heavens as the brightest of the stars. So here, the meaning does seem to be that of a genuine superlative, "brightest" in the full sense of "brighter than all the others". In any case, no other information on how to form the superlative appears in published writings, so we have little choice but to use this formation. We must however be prepared that future publications may provide more information about this, involving alternative superlative formations.



The prefix an- in this form cannot be mechanically prefixed to any Quenya adjective, or consonant clusters that Quenya does not allow would sometimes result. An- can be prefixed "as is" to adjectives beginning in a vowel or in c-, n-, qu-, t-, v-, w-, and y-:



an + alta "great (in size)" = analta "greatest"

an + calima "bright" = ancalima "brightest" (our sole attested example!)

an + norna "tough" = annorna "toughest"

an + quanta "full" = anquanta "fullest"

an + vanya "beautiful" = anvanya "most beautiful"

an + wenya "green" = anwenya "greenest"

an + yára "old" = anyára "oldest"



Perhaps we can also include adjectives in f- and h- (no examples):



an + fána "white" = ?anfána "whitest"

an + halla "tall" = ?anhalla "tallest"



What would happen in other cases we cannot say for certain. Either an extra vowel (likely e or a) would be inserted between the prefix and the adjective to break up what would otherwise be an impossible cluster, or the final -n of the prefix would change, becoming more similar (or wholly similar) to the first consonant of the adjective. Such assimilation is observed elsewhere in our corpus, so this has to be our favourite theory regarding the behavior of an- as well. Before the consonant p-, the n of an would likely be pronounced with the lips closed because the pronunciation of p involves such a closure; hence n would turn into m. (Compare English input often being pronounced imput.) From pitya "small" we would thus have ampitya for "smallest", this being the impossible word anpitya reworked into a permissible form (Quenya does not have np, but the cluster mp is frequent even in unitary words).



Before the consonants l-, r-, s-, and m-, the final n of an- would probably be fully assimilated, that is, it becomes identical to the following consonant:



an + lauca "warm" = allauca "warmest"

an + ringa "cold" = arringa "coldest"

an + sarda "hard" = assarda "hardest"

an + moina "dear" = ammoina "dearest"



Cf. such attested assimilations as nl becoming ll in the compound Númellótë "Flower of the West" (UT:227, transparently a compound of the well-known words númen "west" and lótë "flower"). As for the group nm becoming mm, this development is seen in the name of the Vanyarin Elf Elemmírë mentioned in the Silmarillion: his (her?) name apparently means "Star-jewel" (elen "star" + mírë "jewel").

Lesson Five - The Verb: Present tense & Agreement in Number.
08:07 Aug 20 2005
Times Read: 604








Subject/Object. The superlative form of Adjectives.





As I mentioned at the beginning of the previous lesson, the vocabulary of any language can be separated into various classes of words, or "parts of speech". So far we have explicitly discussed the nouns, which denote things, and adjectives, which are words used to describe nouns (linguists would find these definitions rather simplistic, but they will do for our purpose). Actually we have already touched on a three other parts of speech as well, without discussing them in depth. As part of Lesson Two you hopefully memorized the word nu "under", which is a preposition; prepositions are small words or "particles" like under, on, of, to, in, about etc., often used to provide information about spatial relationships (e.g. "under the tree" = nu i alda), though frequently they are used in more abstract contexts. With the word ar "and" we have also included the most typical representative of the conjunctions, words used to connect (or indeed "conjoin") other words, phrases or sentences, e.g. Anar ar Isil = "the sun and the moon". Still, no thorough discussion of prepositions or conjunctions as such seems necessary: in Quenya they seem to behave pretty much like their English equivalents, so for the most part you simply have to learn the corresponding Quenya words.



Another part of speech that we have already touched on is far more sophisticated and intriguing: the verb. We encountered one verb in the previous lesson: ná "is", with its plural form nar "are". As verbs go, this one is not very exciting; it is used simply to coordinate a noun with some sort of predicate that tells us what the noun "is": Aran ná taura, "a king is mighty", tasar ná alda "a willow is a tree". As I said in the previous lesson, the copula ná doesn't really provide much extra information here, except clarifying the relationship between the various elements of the sentence. Most other verbs (very nearly all other verbs, actually) are however full of meaning. They don't just tell us what someone or something "is", but what someone or something does. The Verb brings action into the language.



In a sentence like "the Elf dances" it is easy to identify "dances" as the action-word, telling us what is going on here. And sure enough, "dances" is a form of the English verb to dance. This verb may appear in other forms as well; instead of "dances" we might say "danced", which moves the action into the past: "The Elf danced." This illustrates an important feature of verbs in European languages: the form of the verb gives information about when the action denoted takes place, in the present or in the past. Some languages also have special future forms. Tolkien built all of these features into Quenya.



The different "time-forms" of the verb are called various tenses; we speak of present tense, past tense and future tense. We will only deal with the present tense in this lesson, and return to the others later. (The trinity of present, past and future does not represent a full list of all the tenses there are. We will discuss a total of five different tenses in this course, and I would be very surprised if unpublished material does not describe even more tenses than the ones we know at present.)



Here I should slip in a warning: We don't have much explicit information about the Quenya verb. In the so-called Plotz Letter, that Tolkien wrote to Dick Plotz at some point in the mid-sixties, he set out the declension of the noun. Apparently similar information about the verb was to follow; it never did. This is of course most unfortunate. Not that Tolkien took this information to his grave; we know that he did write about these matters, but the relevant writings have not been published. For the time being, we must for the most part try to figure out the grammatical rules by ourselves if we would like our Quenya poems to include verbs. Regarding the present tense, some scraps of information luckily appeared in Vinyar Tengwar #41, July 2000. Combining this info with some linguistic deduction, we can probably make out the main features of the system Tolkien had in mind.



As they appear in various sources, Quenya verbs seem to fall into two main categories (though there are some verbs in our corpus that don't readily fit into either, even if we exclude the early "Qenya" material where some really weird things are going on in the verbal system). The first and largest category is what can be termed A-stems, for they all end in -a. Another term for the same is derived verbs, for these verbs never represent a naked primitive "root-word", but are derived by adding endings to this root. The most frequent of these endings are -ya and -ta; much less frequently we see -na or just -a. Examples:



calya- "to illuminate" (root KAL)

tulta- "to send for, to fetch, to summon" (root TUL)

harna- "to wound" (root SKAR; primitive initial sk- became h- in Quenya)

mapa- "to grasp, to seize" (root MAP)



(Convention has it that when you list verbal stems as such, you add a hyphen at the end; Tolkien usually does so in his writings. The "stem" of a verb is a basic form that we start from when deriving other forms, such as different tenses.)



If these A-stems can be termed "derived verbs", the other category consists of the "non-derived" or primary verbs. These are verbs that display no such ending as -ya, -ta, -na or -a. The verbal stems in question can be termed "primary" or "basic" since they essentially represent a primitive root with no additions. For instance, the verb mat- "eat" comes directly from the root MAT- of similar meaning. Tac- "fasten" represents the root TAK- "fix, make fast". Tul- "come" can be identified with the root TUL- "come, approach, move towards" (contrast the derived verb tulta- "send for, summon, fetch" from the same root, derived by means of the ending -ta). In the case of the roots MEL- "love" and SIR- "flow", Tolkien didn't even bother to repeat the glosses for the Quenya verbs mel- and sir- (see LR:372, 385).



When discussing Quenya verbs, we sometimes need to refer to the stem-vowel. This is the vowel of the root-word underlying the verb as it appears in Quenya. In the case of primary verbs like mel- "love", it is of course easy to identify the stem-vowel, since e is the only vowel there is (and sure enough, this is also the vowel of the underlying root MEL-). In the case of derived verbs like pusta- "stop" or ora- "impel", the vowels of the added ending (here -ta and -a) do not count as stem-vowels. Pusta-, for instance, is derived from a root PUS, and its stem-vowel is therefore u, not a. In the vast majority of cases, the stem-vowel is simply the first vowel of the verb (but not necessarily so, there may be some prefixed element).



With this we have the necessary terms in place and can finally start discussing the formation of the present tense. To start with the primary verbs, what seems to be the present tense of the verb mel- "love" is attested in LR:61, Elendil telling his son Herendil: Yonya inyë tye-méla, "I too, my son, I love thee". Here we have the verb describing a present or on-going (in this case quite permanent) action. Another example of a present-tense primary verb can apparently be found in the LotR itself, in the famous greeting elen síla lúmenn' omentielvo, "a star shines [or, is shining] upon the hour of our meeting". Síla would seem to be the present tense of a verb sil- "shine (with white or silver light)", listed in the Silmarillion Appendix. Méla and síla show the same relationship to the simple verbal stems mel- and sil-: the present-tense forms are derived by lengthening the stem-vowel (this is denoted by supplying an accent, of course) and adding the ending -a. This conclusion is supported by an example from VT41:13: The verb quet- "speak, say" there appears in the present tense quéta "is saying".



Though forms like méla and síla may occasionally be translated using the simple present tense in English, hence "love(s)" and "shines", is seems that the Quenya present tense properly denotes a continuous or ongoing action that is best translated using the English "is ...-ing" construction, as in the example quéta just quoted: this is "is saying" rather than just "says". The conclusion that the Quenya present tense properly denotes continuous actions is also supported by other evidence: The Quenya present tense of the primary verb mat- "eat" is nowhere attested in published material. However, Tolkien stated that mâtâ was "the stem of the continuous form", which could be translated "is eating" (VT39:9; â here denotes long a, in Quenya spelt á). Tolkien actually put an asterisk in front of mâtâ to mark it as an "unattested" form, so this should evidently be taken as primitive Elvish rather than Quenya. How Quenya evolved from the primitive language can be inferred from many other examples, so we know that mâtâ would come out as máta. This form would seem to fall into the same pattern as méla, síla and quéta: lengthened stem-vowel and ending -a (and working backwards, we can deduce that Tolkien meant méla, síla, quéta to be descended from primitive Elvish mêlâ, sîlâ, kwêtâ). Presumably these are all "continuous" forms; just like primitive mâtâ "is eating" they apparently emphasize the ongoing nature of the action: Síla may literally be "is shining" rather than just "shines". Perhaps the lengthening of the stem-vowel somehow symbolizes this ongoing or "drawn-out" action. In the case of méla in the sentence inyë tye-méla, it is more natural to translate "I love you" rather than "I am loving you", but the latter would seem to be the most literal meaning.



Then we must consider the second and larger category of verbs, the A-stems. In their case, the information from VT41 is of particular value.



It seems that the A-stems form their present tense by somewhat the same rule as the primary verbs, but the rule needs a little "adaptation" to fit the shape of an A-stem verb. Our sole attested example is the verb ora- "urge" or "impel". VT41:13, 18 indicates that its present tense is órëa ("is urging"). As in the case of primary verbs, the stem-vowel has been lengthened and the ending -a has been added. There is one complication, though: since the verbal stem ora- already ended in -a, this vowel is changed to e so as to avoid two a's in sequence: What would be óra-a manifests as órëa. Hence we must conclude that verbs like mapa- "grasp, seize" and lala- "laugh" appear as mápëa, lálëa in the present tense.



Short A-stems like ora- or mapa- are however of a rather unusual shape, since they add only the simple vowel -a to the original root. As discussed above, A-stems where the final -a is only part of a longer derivational ending (most often -ya or -ta) are much more common. We have already quoted examples like calya- "to illuminate" and tulta- "to summon" (roots KAL, TUL). Such "complex" A-stems have a consonant cluster following the vowel of the original root, like ly and lt in these examples. We have no actual example of the present tense of such a verb. If we were to apply the pattern we deduce to exist from the example órëa "is urging", it would land us on forms like ?cályëa "is illuminating" and ?túltëa "is summoning". However, there seems to be a phonological rule in Quenya prohibiting a long vowel immediately in front of a consonant cluster. It would seem that a word like ?túltëa cannot exist (but frankly I'm not quite sure about ?cályëa, since ly/ny/ry sometimes seem to count as unitary palatalized consonants rather than consonant clusters). Lacking actual examples, we can only assume that in such a case the lengthening of the vowel would simply be dropped, so that the present tense of verbs like calya- and tulta- would be calyëa, tultëa (though as I just indicated, ?cályëa may be possible for all I know). This would apply wherever there is a consonant cluster following the vowel of the verbal stem. Further examples are lanta- "fall", harna- "wound" and pusta- "stop", that would all – presumably – form their present-tense forms in -ëa: Lantëa "is falling", harnëa "is wounding", pustëa "is stopping".



We must assume that this system also applies where there is a diphthong in the verbal stem, since like a vowel in front of a consonant cluster, a diphthong cannot be lengthened in any way. The present-tense forms of verbs like faina- "emit light" or auta- "pass" would presumably be fainëa, autëa.



We now know enough to start building simple sentences:



¤ Isil síla "the Moon is shining" (present tense síla formed from the primary verb sil- "shine")

¤ I Elda lálëa "the Elf is laughing" (present tense formed from the short A-stem lala- "laugh")

¤ Lassë lantëa "a leaf is falling" (present tense formed from the complex A-stem lanta- "fall"; we cannot have *lántëa paralleling lálëa because a long vowel cannot occur in front of a consonant cluster)



NOTE (added September 2002): Some of my deductions above have been criticized by VT editor Carl F. Hostetter. No one disputes the fact that primary verbs form their present or "continuous" tense by lengthening the stem-vowel and adding -a, but the notion that A-stems have present-tense forms in -ëa has proved controversial. Of course, this is based on the one example órëa (from ora- "impel"), and it was Hostetter himself who published this form and suggested that this is an example of the present/continuous tense. However, it may be that the idea of present-tense forms in -ëa represents merely a short-lived fluctuation in Tolkien's evolving conceptions. I have not changed any of the exercises below, but until we know more about Tolkien's precise intentions, writers may opt to avoid the present-tense forms in -ëa in their own compositions. As we will discuss later, there is a way to work around this particular uncertainty.



Some useful terms can be included here. Once you include a verb in the sentence, denoting some kind of action, you must normally devote another part of the sentence to telling who is doing this action. The party that does whatever the verb tells us is being done, constitutes the subject of the sentence. In a sentence like Isil síla "the Moon is shining", it is thus Isil "the Moon" that is the subject, since it is the Moon that does the shining the verb síla tells us about. In a sentence like i Elda máta "the Elf is eating", i Elda "the Elf" is the subject, since the Elf does the eating.



This very sentence, i Elda máta, has possibilities. We can add one more element, like the noun massa "bread", and get i Elda máta massa "the Elf is eating bread". Now what is the function of this added word? It is the "target" of the verbal action, in this case what is eaten. The target of the verbal action is called the object, the passive counterpart of the active subject: The subject does something, but the object is what the subject does something to. The subject "subjects" the object to some kind of action. This "action" may of course be much less dramatic than "subject eats object" as in the example above. For instance, it can be as subtle as in the sentence "the subject sees the object" (fill in with other sense-verbs if you like), where the "action" of the subject does not physically affect the object in any way. That is not the point here. The basic idea of the subject-object dichotomy is simply that the subject does something to the object, though "does something to" must sometimes be understood in a wider sense.



NOTE: Notice, though, that in sentences with the copula ná/nar "is/are", for instance i alda ná tasar "the tree is a willow", tasar "a willow" does not count as the object of i alda "the tree". I alda is the subject all right, since this is the element that "does" what little action there is in this sentence: "the tree is..." But tasar "a willow" is not the object, for in this sentence "the tree" does not do anything to "a willow" – and the hallmark of the object is that something is done to it. Rather than doing anything do a willow, the tree is a willow, and that is another thing altogether: Tasar is here the predicate of i alda, as we discussed in the previous lesson. But if we substitute máta "is eating" for ná "is", we are right back to a subject-verb-object construction: I alda máta tasar, "the tree is eating a willow". If you are unduly troubled by the fact that this sounds somewhat nonsensical, rest assured that the grammar is fine.



In the case of some verbs, there can be no object. In the case of (say) lanta- "to fall", you can have a subject and say i Elda lantëa "the Elf is falling". Here the subject doesn't do anything to an object; it is just the subject itself that is doing something. With a verb like mat- "eat", it is kind of optional if you want to fill out the sentence with an object or not: I Elda máta (massa), "the Elf is eating (bread)"; this works as a complete sentence even without the object. But some verbs by their meaning demand an object, and the sentence would be felt to be incomplete without it. If we say i Elda mápëa "the Elf is seizing", this only raises the question "the Elf is seizing what?" and we must come up with an object to make the sentence complete.



In the Plotz letter, Tolkien indicated that in one variant of Quenya, so-called Book Quenya, nouns would have a special form if they function as objects. Singular nouns ending in a vowel would have this vowel lengthened (for instance, cirya "ship" would become ciryá if it appears as the object of a sentence), and nouns that normally employ the plural ending -r would switch to -i (so "ships", as object, would be ciryai instead of ciryar). This special "object" form, in linguistic terms the accusative case, was supposedly used in (archaic?) written Quenya. However, this accusative does not appear in any actual texts, such as Namárië or even the last version of the Markirya poem, which must be almost contemporaneous with the Plotz letter. Namárië, sung by Galadriel, is perhaps supposed to reflect the usage of spoken Third Age Quenya. Whatever the case, I do not use the distinct accusative in the exercises I have made for this course (or in my own Quenya compositions). It seems clear that the use of the accusative was far from universal, within or without the fictional context. So I would say cirya(r) for "ship(s)" even if the word appears as the object of a sentence.



With the terms subject and object in place, we can discuss another feature of the Quenya verb. Just like adjectives agree in number with the nouns they describe, verbs agree in number with their subjects. Let us have a closer look at the first line of Namárië, laurië lantar lassi "like gold fall the leaves", or literally "golden fall [the] leaves". Here the adjective laurëa "golden" appears in plural form laurië to agree in number with the plural noun lassi "leaves", as we discussed in the previous lesson. But the verb lanta- "to fall" must also agree with its plural subject lassi. The verb lanta therefore takes the ending -r. (The verb itself appears in the so-called aorist tense, to be discussed later; you can think of aorist lantar vs. present tense lantëar as corresponding to English "fall" vs. "are falling", respectively. Some would consider a form like lantëar speculative, but lantar is directly attested in Tolkien's writings.) The plural ending -r we have already met in the case of nouns, as in Eldar "Elves", but nouns may also have plurals in -i, depending on their shape. In the case of verbs, the plural ending -r seems to be universal, no matter what the verb looks like. The ending -r is not restricted to the present tense of verbs, but is seemingly used in all tenses, wherever a plural subject turns up.



Essentially we have already met the verbal plural ending in the verb nar "are", the plural of ná "is". (One may ask why ná does not turn into ?nár with the long vowel intact. The latter form may very well turn out to be valid, but nar "are" with a short a is at least less prone to confusion with the noun nár "flame".)



More than one subject has the same effect on the verb as a (single) plural subject, the verb taking the ending -r in both instances:



I arani mátar "the kings are eating" (sg. i aran máta "the king is eating")

I aran ar i tári mátar "the king and the queen are eating" (if you want the verb mat- "eat" to appear in singular present-tense form máta here, you must get rid of either the king or the queen so that there is just a single subject)



On the other hand, it has no effect on the verb if we have a plural object or multiple objects, e.g. i aran máta massa ar apsa "the king is eating bread and meat" (apsa "cooked food, meat"). The verb agrees in number with the subject only.

It has generally been assumed that the verb has only one plural form, the ending -r being universal. In other words, the verb would take the ending -r not only where the subject noun appears in the "normal" plural (ending -r or -i), but also where it is dual (ending -u or -t) or appears in the "partitive plural" form (ending -li). However, we have no actual examples from LotR-style Quenya, and in particular I will not rule out the possibility that there may be a special dual form of the verb to go with dual subjects (ending -t as for most nouns, like Aldu sílat rather than Aldu sílar for "the Two Trees are shining"???) The published material allows no certain conclusion in this question, so I will simply avoid dual subjects in the exercises I make for this course.



The last thing we must consider when discussing the verb is the question of word order. Where in the sentence does the verb fit in, really? English sentences generally list the subject, the verb and the object (if there is any object) in that order. The attentive reader will have noticed that most of the Quenya sentences above are organized in the same manner. This seems to be the most typical word order in Quenya prose. Examples of the subject and the verb in that order include lassi lantar "leaves fall" and mornië caita "darkness lies [upon the foaming waves]" – both from the prose version of Namárië. But there are also examples of the verb being placed first, e.g. Fingon's cry before the Nirnaeth Arnoediad: Auta i lómë!, literally "Passes the night", but translated "the night is passing!" in the Silmarillion ch. 20. Indeed both of the above-quoted examples of the order subject-verb from the prose Namárië instead show the order verb-subject in the poetic version in LotR: lantar lassi, caita mornië. In English, fronting the verb is one way of turning a declarative statement into a question, e.g. "Elves are beautiful" vs. "are Elves beautiful?", but this way of forming questions evidently doesn't work in Quenya. (Auta i lómë! "passes the night!" for "the night is passing!" is perhaps an example of dramatic style or affectionate speech; the verbal action is evidently considered more important than the subject that performs it. I suspect that in a less dramatic context, one would rather say i lómë auta.)



Namárië also provides an example of a sentence with both subject, verb and object: hísië untúpa Calaciryo míri, "mist [subject] covers [verb] the jewels of Calacirya [this whole phrase being the object]". Yet word order is again quite flexible, especially in poetry, as further examples from Namárië shows. We have object-subject-verb in the sentence máryat Elentári ortanë, literally "her hands (the) Starqueen raised" (in LotR translated "the Queen of the stars...has uplifted her hands"). The sentence ilyë tier undulávë lumbulë, literally "all paths downlicked (i.e. covered) shadow", has the order object-verb-subject (in LotR, Tolkien used the translation "all paths are drowned deep in shadow"). In the prose version of Namárië, Tolkien interestingly reorganized both of these to subject-verb-object constructions: Elentári ortanë máryat, lumbulë undulávë ilyë tier. This is our main basis for assuming that this is the normal order, preferred where there are no poetic or dramatic considerations to be made.



In general, one must be careful about putting the object before the subject, for this could in some cases cause confusion as to which word is the object and which is the subject (since the commonest form of Quenya does not maintain a distinct accusative case to mark the object). Such inversions are however quite permissible when the subject is singular and the object is plural or vice versa. Then the verb, agreeing in number with the subject only, will indirectly identify it. In the sentence ilyë tier undulávë lumbulë we can readily tell that it must be lumbulë "shadow" and not ilyë tier "all paths" that is the subject, because the verb undulávë does not receive the ending -r to agree with the plural word tier. Hence this can't be the subject – but the singular noun lumbulë "shadow" can.

Lesson Four - Exercises
08:04 Aug 20 2005
Times Read: 605








1. Translate into English:



A. Morë rocco.

B. Calimë hendu.

C. Neldë firini neri.

D. Vanyë aiwi.

E. Tári ná taura nís.

F. I oronti nar altë.

G. Aran taura (two possible translations!)

H. I nér ar i nís nar sailë.



2. Translate into Quenya:



I. The white gate.

J. A great ship.

K. The floor is red.

L. One black stone and three white stones.

M. Wise kings are mighty men.

N. The mighty man and the beautiful woman are evil.

O. Elves are beautiful.

P. The Elves are a beautiful people.

Lesson Four - Vocabulary
08:03 Aug 20 2005
Times Read: 606








Except for the two first items, all of these are adjectives. Don't worry about the other words occurring in the exercises below; those you have already memorized carefully, following my instructions in Lesson Two. Right?



neldë "three"

ná "is" (nar "are")

vanya "beautiful, fair"

alta "great" (= big; the word is used of physical size only)

calima "bright"

taura "mighty"

saila "wise" (we will use this form found in late material; a pre-LotR source has saira instead)

úmëa "evil"

carnë "red" (we suspect that Tolkien the Devout Catholic was thinking about cardinals with their red attires; the Italian word carne = "[red] meat" may also be relevant here...)

ninquë "white"

morë "black" (cf. the first element of Sindarin Mordor = Black Land)

firin "dead"

Lesson Four - Summary of Lesson Four
08:03 Aug 20 2005
Times Read: 607








Adjectives are words used to describe various qualities, such as "tall" or "beautiful". They can be combined with nouns, making up phrases like "(a/the) red book" or "tall men", where the adjectives "red" and "tall" describe the nouns "book" and "men" directly; this is called using an adjective attributively. But adjectives can also be used in sentences like "the book is red" or "the men are tall", where the whole point of the sentence is to ascribe a certain quality to a noun; here the adjective is used as a predicate. In such cases English slips in a copula, like "is" or "are" in these examples, to clarify the relationship between the noun and the adjective. Many languages do without this extra device (one would just say what corresponds to "the book red"), and this seems to be permissible in Quenya as well, but the explicit copula ná "is"/nar "are" also occurs in the material. – Most Quenya adjectives end in the vowel -a, some also in -ë; the only ones that end in a consonant are a few that nearly always have the ending -in (apparently shortened from -ina). Quenya adjectives agree in number; if an adjective describes a plural noun or more than one noun, the adjective must be plural as well. Adjectives in -a have plural forms in -ë (for older -ai); notice that if the adjective ends in -ëa it forms its plural in -ië (to avoid -ëe). Adjectives in -ë have plural forms in -i; for the few adjectives in -in we lack examples, but it is normally assumed that they would add -i in the plural.

Lesson Four - The Adjective. The Copula. Adjectival agreement in number.
08:01 Aug 20 2005
Times Read: 608








The vocabulary of any language can be separated into various classes of words – various parts of speech. Tolkien's languages were designed to be "definitely of a European kind in style and structure" (Letters:175), so the parts of speech they contain are not very exotic, but ought to be quite familiar to any schoolchild in Europe or America. We have already mentioned the nouns, which by a somewhat simplified definition are words denoting things. Now we will move on to the adjectives.



Adjectives are words that have assumed the special function of description. If you want to say that someone or something possesses a certain quality, you can often find an adjective that will do the job. In a sentence like the house is red, the word "red" is an adjective. It describes the house. There are adjectives for all sorts of qualities, quite useful if you want to say that someone or something is big, small, holy, blue, silly, rotten, beautiful, thin, nauseous, tall, wonderful, obnoxious or whatever the occasion demands.



One often distinguishes two different ways of using an adjective:



1. You can team it up with a noun which it then describes, resulting in phrases like tall men or (a/the) red book. Such phrases can then be inserted into a full sentence, like tall men scare me or the red book is mine, where the words tall, red simply provide extra information about their companion nouns. This is called using the adjective attributively. The quality in question is presented as an "attribute" of the noun, or is "attributed" to it (tall men – OK, then we know precisely what kind of men we are talking about here, the tall ones, their tallness being their "attribute").



2. But you may also construct sentences where the whole point is that someone or something possesses a specific quality. You don't just "presuppose" the tallness as when you speak of tall men – you want to say that the men are tall, that's the very piece of information you want to convey. This is called using an adjective predicatively: You choose a party you want to say something about, like the men in this case, and then add an adjective to tell what quality this party possesses. The adjective is then called the predicate of this sentence.



As the attentive reader already suspects from the example above, there is one more complication: You don't just say the men tall, but the men are tall. Actually sentences like the men tall would be quite OK in a great number of languages (and Quenya may even be one of them), but in English you have to slip in a word like are or is before the adjective when you use it as a predicate: The book is red. The men are tall. This "is/are" doesn't really add a whole lot of meaning here (there is a reason why so many languages manage without any corresponding word!), but it is used to "couple" the adjective with the words that tell us what we are really talking about here – like the book and the men in our example. Hence "is/are" is called a copula. In sentences like gold is beautiful, I am smart or stones are hard, it can be perceived the prime function of the copula (here variously manifesting as is, am and are) is simply to connect the following adjectives beautiful, smart, hard with the thing(s) or person we are talking about: gold, I, stones. The copula is an integral part of the predicate of the sentence. This is one of the most important constructions speakers or English have at their disposal when they want to say that X possesses the quality Y.



Well, let's get down to Quenya here. When compared to the plethora of shapes that a noun can have, Quenya adjectives are quite restricted in form. The vast majority of Quenya adjectives end in one of two vowels -a or -ë. The latter ending is the less common and typically occurs in colour-adjectives: Ninquë "white", morë "black", carnë "red", varnë "brown" etc. When an adjective does not end in -a or -ë, it virtually always ends in -in, e.g. firin "dead", hwarin "crooked", melin "dear" or latin "open, free, cleared (of land)". The latter adjective is actually listed as latin(a) in Tolkien's writings (LR:368), evidently suggesting that latin is shortened from a longer form latina, both variants occurring in the language. (Perhaps all the adjectives in -in are to be considered shortened forms of full forms in -ina.) Adjectives that do not end in either -a, -ë or -in are extremely rare; there is at least teren "slender" – but even this adjective also has a longer form in -ë (terenë).



Adjectives in -a are by far the most common type. The final vowel -a may appear by itself, as in lára "flat", but it is often part of a longer adjectival ending like -wa, -na (variant -da), -ima or -ya. Examples: helwa "(pale) blue", harna "wounded", melda "beloved, dear", melima "loveable", vanya "beautiful". The word Quenya itself is in its origin a ya-adjective meaning "Elvish, Quendian", though Tolkien decided that it came to be used only as a name of the High-elven language (Letters:176, WJ:360-361, 374).



In Quenya as in English, an adjective can be directly combined with a noun, describing it. We have many attested examples of adjectives being used attributively like this; they include the phrases lintë yuldar "swift draughts" (Namárië), luini tellumar "blue vaults" (prose-style Namárië), fána cirya "a white ship" (Markirya), quantë tengwi "full signs" (a term used by early Elvish linguists; we needn't discuss its precise meaning here; see VT39:5). In these examples, the word order is the same as in English: adjective + noun. This is apparently the normal, preferred order. In Quenya, it is however also permissible to let the adjective follow the noun. For instance, Markirya has anar púrëa for "a bleared sun", literally "(a) sun bleared", and in LR:47 we have mallë téra, literally "road straight", for "a straight road" (cf. LR:43). Perhaps this word order is used if you want to emphasize the adjective: the context in LR:47 indicates that this is a straight road as opposed to a bent one. However, letting the adjective follow the noun may be the normal word order in the case of an adjectival "title" that is used in conjunction with a proper name: In UT:305 cf. 317 we have Elendil Voronda for "Elendil the Faithful" (well, the form found in UT:305 is actually Elendil Vorondo, because the phrase is inflected; we will return to the ending -o here seen in a later lesson). Presumably you could also use the more normal word-order and speak of voronda Elendil, but that – I guess – would simply be a more casual reference to "faithful Elendil", not meaning "Elendil the Faithful" with the adjective used as a regular title. It may be noted that Quenya, unlike English, does not insert the article before an adjective used as a title (not **Elendil i Voronda, at least not necessarily).



What, then, about using adjectives as predicates, like "red" is the predicate of the sentence "the book is red"? (Contrast the attributive use of the adjective in a phrase like "the red book".) The adjective vanwa "lost" is used predicatively in Namárië: Vanwa ná...Valimar "lost is...Valimar" (a place in the Blessed Realm that Galadriel thought she would never see again). This sentence tells us that the Quenya copula "is" has the form ná. Plural "are" seems to be nar, attested in an early version of Namárië recorded by Tolkien on tape (see Jim Allan's An Introduction to Elvish, p. 5). It is generally assumed that these copulas would be used as in English, for instance like this:



I parma ná carnë. "The book is red."

Ulundo ná úmëa. "A monster is evil."

I neri nar hallë. "The men are tall."



In this lesson as originally published in December 2000, I slipped in a warning at this point:



I should add, though, that due to the extreme scarcity of examples we can't be certain what the preferred word order really is. From the example vanwa ná...Valimar "lost is...Valimar" in Namárië one could argue that ná should follow the adjective, so that "the book is red" should rather be i parma carnë ná, "the book red is". It would be interesting to know if ná "is" would still follow vanwa "lost" if we relocated Valimar to the beginning of the sentence; should "Valimar is lost" be Valimar ná vanwa, English-style, or perhaps Valimar vanwa ná? In the examples above and the exercises below I have organized the sentences using the "English" word order, but Tolkien may have had something more exotic up his sleeve. There is no way of telling before more material is published.



I revise this lesson in November 2001, and this summer a few more examples involving the word ná "is" finally became available. There does seem to be a tendency to place ná at the end of the sentence, as in the example lá caritas...alasaila ná (literally, "not to do it unwise is" – VT42:34). Yet the same article that provides this example also cites the formula "A ná calima lá B" (literally, "A is bright beyond B") as the Quenya way of expressing "A is brighter than B" (VT42:32). Notice that this formula employs an English-style word-order, with ná "is" preceding rather than following calima "bright". So it seems that sentences like i parma ná carnë, word by word corresponding to English "the book is red", may be possible after all. Therefore I have not revised any of the examples or exercises of this course, all of which employ the "English" word order as far as the copula ná is concerned. It seems, however, that the order i parma carnë ná "the book red is" must be considered a perfectly valid alternative, and Tolkien may even have intended this to be the more common word order. We must await still more examples.



[New update, January 2002: This month some new examples were indeed published. It seems that the exact word order is simply a matter of taste. The example elyë na manna "thou art blessed" from VT43:26 has an English-style word order, and here the copula "is/art" appears in the short form na rather than ná. I have however maintained ná in the exercises of this course, mainly for the sake of clarity: the word na has several other, quite distinct meanings. But perhaps the short form na- is consistently preferred when some ending is to be added; cf. the plural form nar "are". Of course, the unattested form nár could be equally valid for all I know.]



In Fíriel's Song (a pre-LotR text), the word for "is" appears as ye rather than ná or na, as in írima ye Númenor "lovely is Númenor" (LR:72). However, both the Qenya Lexicon (QL:64) and the Etymologies (LR:374) point to ná instead, and in Namárië we have this word attested in an actual text. Etym and the QL are earlier than Fíriel's Song, but Namárië is later, so would seem that ye was just a passing experiment in Tolkien's evolution of Quenya. In Fíriel's Song we also see an ending for "is", -ië, appended to adjectives and displacing their final vowel: hence in this song we have márië for "(it) is good", derived from the adjective mára "good". This ending -ië is transparently related to the independent word ye. I don't think the system of using the ending -ië for "is" was still valid in LotR-style Quenya, and I wouldn't recommend it to writers. The ending -ië has other meanings in later Quenya.



Another system may well be valid, though: using no copula at all. You simply juxtapose the noun and the adjective, the word "is/are" being understood: Ilu vanya "the World [is] fair" (Fíriel's Song), maller raicar "roads [are] bent" (LR:47). The formula "A is bright beyond B" = "A is brighter than B" referred to above is actually cited as "A (ná) calima lá B" in VT42:32. As suggested by the parentheses, ná could be omitted. The example malle téra "a straight road" mentioned above could also be interpreted "a road [is] straight", if the context allowed it. The final version of Tolkien's Quenya translation of the Hail Mary, published in January 2002, leaves out several copulas: Aistana elyë, ar aistana i yávë mónalyo = "blessed [art] thou, and blessed [is] the fruit of thy womb".



We must assume that the copula ná, nar is not limited to combining nouns and adjectives, but can also be used to equate nouns: Parmar nar engwi "books are things", Fëanáro ná Noldo "Fëanor is a Noldo". (Notice, by the way, that the proper Quenya form of Fëanor's name is Fëanáro; "Fëanor" is a Quenya-Sindarin hybrid form used in Middle-earth after his death.) Again it may be permissible to leave out the copula and retain the same meaning: Parmar engwi, Fëanáro Noldo.



Adjectival agreement in number: Quenya adjectives must agree in number with the noun they escribe. That is, if the noun is plural, the adjective must be, too; if the adjective describes several nouns it must also be plural, even if each of the nouns is singular. English makes no such distinction – its adjectives do not change – but it is not surprising that Tolkien built adjectival agreement in number into Quenya, since this was to be a highly inflected language.



We have no examples of what happens if an adjective is to agree with a noun in the dual form. It is generally assumed, though, that there are no special dual forms of adjectives, but only one plural (or should we say "non-singular") form. The Markirya poem indicates that there is no special form of adjectives to go with the somewhat obscure "partitive plural" form in -li; an adjective describing a noun in -li simply appears in the normal plural form. This may support the theory that adjectives don't have a special dual form, either.



How, then, is the plural form of adjectives constructed? From the examples now available, it can be seen that Tolkien experimented with various systems over the years. In early sources, adjectives in -a form their plural form by adding the ending -r, just like nouns in -a do. For instance, one very early "map" of Tolkien's imaginary world (actually depicted as a symbolic ship) includes a reference to I Nori Landar. This evidently means "The Wide Lands" (LT1:84-85; the adjective landa "wide" occurs in the Etymologies, entry LAD. Christopher Tolkien in LT1:85 suggests the translation "The Great Lands".) Here the plural noun nori "lands" is described by the adjective landa "wide" – another example of an attributive adjective following the noun, by the way – and since the noun is plural, the adjective takes the plural ending -r to agree with it. This way of forming plural adjectives was still valid as late as 1937 or slightly earlier; we have already quoted the example maller raicar "roads [are] bent" from LR:47, where the adjective raica "crooked, bent, wrong" (listed by itself in LR:383) is plural to agree with maller.



However, this system cannot be recommended to writers; the evidence is that in LotR-style Quenya, it had been abandoned. Tolkien in a way reached back into the past and revived a system he had used in what may be the very first "Qenya" poem he ever wrote, Narqelion of 1915-16. In this poem, adjectives in -a form their plurals by means of the ending -i. For instance, the phrase sangar úmëai occurring in this poem apparently means "throngs large" = large throngs; the adjective úmëa "large" is listed in the early Qenya Lexicon (QL:97 – but in later Quenya, the word úmëa means "evil" instead). Later, Tolkien however introduced one more complication: Adjectives in -a had plurals in -ai in archaic Quenya only. In Exilic Quenya, Quenya as spoken by the Noldor after they had returned to Middle-earth, -ai at the end of words of more than one syllable had been reduced to -ë. (Cf. WJ:407 regarding the ending -vë representing "archaic Q -vai".) So while the plural form of, say, quanta "full" was apparently quantai at the older stages of the language, it later became quantë. This form we have already met in one of the examples quoted above: quantë tengwi, "full signs", where quanta appears in the plural form to agree with tengwi "signs" (VT39:5).



There is one special case to be considered: adjectives in -ëa, such as laurëa "golden". In archaic Quenya, we must assume that the plural form was simply laurëai. But when -ai later became -e, what would be ?laurëe did not prove to be a durable form. To avoid the cumbersome combination of two concomitant e's, the first of them was changed to i. Hence the plural form of laurëa in Exilic Quenya appears as laurië, as in the first line of Namárië: Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen... "Ah! golden fall the leaves in the wind..." – the adjective being plural to agree with the noun it describes, lassi "leaves".



As for adjectives in -ë, they seem to behave like most nouns of the same shape: -ë becomes -i in the plural. We don't have very many examples, but the phrase luini tellumar "blue vaults" in the prose version of Namárië seems to incorporate the plural form of an adjective luinë "blue" (actually not attested in this form, but as observed above, there are many colour-adjectives in -ë). Moreover, in the Etymologies Tolkien noted that the an adjective maitë "handy, skilled" has the plural form maisi (LR:371). Evidently the plural form was especially mentioned primarily to illustrate another point: that adjectives in -itë have plural forms in -isi, the consonant t turning into s before i. This particular idea seems to have been dropped later, though: In a much later, post-LotR source, Tolkien wrote hloníti tengwi, not ?hlonísi tengwi, for "phonetic signs" (WJ:395). So perhaps the plural form of maitë could simply be ?maiti as well.



As for the plural form of adjectives ending in a consonant, such as firin "dead", we don't seem to have any examples to guide us. It has traditionally been assumed that they form their plurals in -i, just like nouns of this shape do, and this still seems reasonably plausible. So, say, "dead men" could be firini neri. If any argument can be raised against this assumption, it is that adjectives in -in actually seem to be shortened forms of longer adjectives in -ina. As pointed out above, Tolkien quoted the adjective meaning "open, free, cleared (of land)" as latin(a), indicating double forms latin and latina. The plural form of latina should obviously be latinë, for older latinai. But what about latin? If this is merely a shortened form of latina, perhaps the plural form would still be latinë rather than latini? We cannot know for certain; in the exercises below I have followed the traditional assumption, using plurals in -i. Adjectives ending in a consonant are quite rare anyway, so this uncertainty does not greatly jeopardize the quality of our own Quenya texts.



In what positions do adjectives agree in number? Attested examples like those already quoted, like luini tellumar "blue domes", would seem to indicate that an attributive adjective in front of the noun does show agreement. So does an attributive adjective following the noun; the Markirya poem has i fairi nécë for "the pale phantoms", or literally "the phantoms pale" (néca pl. nécë "vague, faint, dim to see", MC:223). An adjective separated from the noun it describes also agrees in number, hence laurëa "golden" appears in plural form laurië in the first line of Namárië, laurië lantar lassi "golden fall leaves" (the prose Namárië has lassi lantar laurië "leaves fall golden"). As for predicative adjectives, we lack late examples. In German, adjectives do agree in number when they are used attributively, but adjectives used predicatively do not. Yet the old example maller raicar "roads [are] bent" in LR:47 would seem to indicate that in Quenya, adjectives agree in number also when they are used predicatively. In later Quenya we should presumably read maller (nar) raicë, since Tolkien changed the rules for how the plural form of adjectives is constructed.



So in short, we can conclude that adjectives agree in number with the nouns they describe "everywhere" – whether they appear before, after or separated from the noun, whether they are used attributively or predicatively. There are a few examples that don't quite fit in, though. Appendix E of the essay Quendi and Eldar of ca. 1960 contains several "well-behaved" examples of plural adjectives that are used attributively with the plural noun tengwi "signs", making up various phrases used by early Elvish linguists when they tried to analyze the structure of their tongue (as I said above, we needn't concern ourselves with the precise meaning of these terms here). Besides hloníti tengwi "phonetic signs" and quantë tengwi "full signs" already quoted (WJ:395, VT39:5), we have racinë tengwi "stripped signs" and penyë tengwi "lacking signs" (VT39:6; the singular of the latter, penya tengwë "a lacking sign", is attested: VT39:19). In these phrases the adjectives hlonítë "phonetic", quanta "full", racina "stripped, deprived" and penya "lacking, inadequate" all assume their plural forms, beautifully agreeing with tengwi "signs, elements, sounds". So far, so good. But then we turn to the draft material for Appendix E of Quendi and Eldar. Here Tolkien did not let the adjectives agree in number, and we have phrases like lehta tengwi "free/released elements", sarda tengwi "hard sounds" and tapta tengwi "impeded elements" (VT39:17). We would of course expect lehtë tengwi, sardë tengwi, taptë tengwi, but these are not found. Unless we are to assume that there are several classes of adjectives, some that agree in number and others that don't – and I think this is rather far-fetched – it seems that Tolkien in the draft material used a system whereby an attributive adjective immediately in front of its noun does not agree in number. But when he actually wrote the Appendix, he would seem to have introduced agreement in this position as well, and so we have for instance quantë tengwi rather than ?quanta tengwi for "full signs". Elvish grammar could change at lightening speed whenever Tolkien was in his "revision" mood, so this would not be surprising.

The last version of the Markirya poem, which Christopher Tolkien thinks was written at some point in the last decade of his father's life (1963-73), is also relevant here. In the phrase "fallen towers", Tolkien first wrote the adjective atalantëa "ruinous, downfallen" in its plural form atalantië, just like we would expect. Then, according to Christopher Tolkien, he mysteriously changed atalantië to the singular (or rather uninflected) form atalantëa, though the adjacent noun "towers" was left in the plural (MC:222). Again Tolkien seems to be experimenting with a system whereby attributive adjectives immediately in front of the noun they describe do not agree in number, but appear in their uninflected form. A similar system appears in Tolkien's writings on Westron, the "Common Speech" of Middle-earth (a language he only sketched). Perhaps he considered introducing such a system in Quenya as well, and we see this idea flickering on and off, so to speak, in his writings?



However, the system I would recommend to writers is to let adjectives agree in number also in this position. In Namárië in LotR we have the phrase lintë yuldar "swift draughts", and in the interlinear translation in RGEO:66 Tolkien explicitly noted that lintë is a "pl." adjective. We must assume, then, that lintë represents older lintai, the plural form of an adjective linta. If an attributive adjective immediately in front of the noun it describes did not agree in number, "swift draughts" should have been ?linta yuldar instead. The source where Tolkien explicitly identified lintë as a plural form was published during his own lifetime, and moreover as late as in 1968, possibly postdating even the last version of Markirya. So his final decision seems to have been that adjectives do agree in number with their nouns also when the adjective appears immediately in front of the noun. One suspects that he spent many sleepless nights carefully considering the various pros and cons in this important question.



NOTE ON ADJECTIVES USED AS NOUNS: As described above, Tolkien at one stage had adjectives in -a form their plurals in -ar, but later he replaced this with -ë (for older -ai). However, adjectives in -a may still have plural forms in -ar if they are used as nouns, because in such a case they are naturally inflected as nouns. Tolkien noted that instead of saying penyë tengwi "lacking signs" the Elves might simply refer to the penyar or "lacking ones" – "using [the adjective] penya as a technical noun" (VT39:19). A more well-known example is provided by the adjective vanya "fair, beautiful"; this would normally have the plural form vanyë (e.g. vanyë nissi "beautiful women"). However, the adjective vanya can also be used as a noun, "a Vanya" or "Fair One", which was the word used of a member of the First Clan of the Eldar. Then the whole clan is of course called the Vanyar, as in the Silmarillion chapter 3: "The Vanyar were [Ingwë's] people; they are the Fair Elves." Using another (but related) adjective "beautiful", namely vanima, Treebeard employed another noun-style plural when he greeted Celeborn and Galadriel as a vanimar "o beautiful ones" (the translation given in Letters:308).



Adjectives in -ë would however have their usual plural form in -i even if they are used as nouns, since most nouns in -ë also form their plurals in -i.

Lesson Three - Exercises
07:59 Aug 20 2005
Times Read: 609








1. Translate into English:



A. Hendu

B. Atta hendi (and answer: what is the difference between this and hendu above?)

C. Aldu

D. Atta aldar (and answer again: what is the difference between this and Aldu above?)

E. Minë nér ar minë nís.

F. I sardi.

G. Talami.

H. Oronti.



2. Translate into Quenya:



I. Two ships (just any two ships that happen to be seen together)

J. Two ships (that happen to be sister ships)

K. Arms (the two arms of one person)

L. Two mountains (within the same range; Twin Peaks, if you like – use a dual form)

M. Double gate (use a dual form)

N. Two birds (that have formed a pair)

O. Two birds (just any two birds)

P. Men and women.

Lesson Three - Vocabulary
07:58 Aug 20 2005
Times Read: 610








atta "two"

hen (hend-) "eye"

ranco "arm"

ando "gate"

cirya "ship"

aiwë "bird"

talan (talam-) "floor"

nér (ner-) "man" (adult male of any sentient race – Elvish, mortal or otherwise)

nís (niss-) "woman" (similarly: adult female of any sentient race)

sar (sard-) "stone" (a small stone – not "stone" as a substance or material)

alda "tree"

oron (oront-) "mountain"

Lesson Three - Summary of Lesson Three
07:58 Aug 20 2005
Times Read: 611








In addition to the plural form(s), Quenya also has a dual number used for a pair of things forming some kind of natural or logical couple. (We must assume that two things only casually associated would be denoted by a normal plural in conjunction with the numeral atta "two".) The dual is formed with one out of two endings: -t or -u (the latter displaces final vowels; the dual of alda "tree" is therefore aldu rather than aldau). One's first choice seems to be -t, but if the word this ending is to be added to already contains a t or a d, the alternative ending -u is preferred instead (for reasons of euphony – if you like, to avoid "crowding" the word with t's or similar sounds!) However, there seems to be a number of old, "fossilized" dual forms that end in -u even though there is no d or t in the word, such as veru "married pair" and peu "pair of lips". The latter example may suggest that all body-parts occurring in pairs are denoted by dual forms in -u rather than -t, regardless of the shape of the word (though the ending -t is evidently preferred if other endings intrude before the dual ending itself; more on this later).



Quite a few Quenya words subtly change when endings are appended to them, e.g. talan "floor" turning into talam- in the plural form talami. We would then call talam- the stem form of talan. Similarly, the final vowels -o and -ë sometimes appear as -u- and -i-, respectively, if some ending is added; thus lómë "night" has the stem lómi-. In many cases, the stem-form echoes the older shape of words (sounds or combinations that could not survive at the end of a word being preserved where not final), though the stem-form may also represent a contraction.

Lesson Three - Stem Variation
07:57 Aug 20 2005
Times Read: 612








STEM VARIATION



This is a subject we shall have to spend some paragraphs on, since even on this early stage of the course we haven't been able to wholly eschew it. I will go into some detail here, but students can rest assured that they are not expected to remember all the words and examples below; just try to get a feel for what stem variation is all about.



Sometimes the form of a Quenya word subtly changes when you add endings to it. Two such words were mentioned above. If you add an ending to tál "foot", for instance -i for plural or -u for dual, the long vowel á is shortened to a. So the plural "feet" is tali rather than **táli, the dual "a couple of feet" is talu rather than **tálu. In such a case, tál "foot" may be said to have the stem tal-. Likewise, the word hen "eye" has the stem hend-, since its plural is hendi and not just **heni. The "stem" form does not occur by itself, but is the form you add endings to. When presenting a gloss, I will represent such stem variation by listing the independent form first, followed by a parenthetical "stem form" with a hyphen where the ending goes, e.g.: tál (tal-) "foot", hen (hend-) "eye".



In the case of tál vs. tal-, the variation is apparently due to the fact that vowels were often lengthened in words of only one syllable, but when the word had endings the word obviously got to have more than one syllable and so the lengthening did not occur (another example of the same seems to be nér "man" vs. plural neri "men", MR:213/LR:354). Originally, the vowel was short in all forms. It is usually true that the stem form gives away how the word looked at an earlier stage in the long linguistic evolution Tolkien dreamed up in great detail. Hen "eye" in its stem hend- reflects the primitive "base" KHEN-D-E from which it is ultimately derived (LR:364). Quenya could not have -nd at the end of a word and simplified it to -n when the word stands alone (thus, hen in a way represents the impossible "full" form hend), but before an ending the group -nd- was not final and could therefore actually appear. Very often stem variation has to do with clusters or sounds that are not allowed at the end of words, but that may appear elsewhere. Cf. a word like talan "floor". The plural "floors" is not **talani as we might expect, but talami. The stem is talam- because this is the form of the Primitive Elvish root-word: TALAM (LR:390). As Quenya evolved from Primitive Elvish, a rule came into place that only a few consonants were allowed at the end of words, and m was not one of them. The closest "permissible" consonant was n, and so the old word talam was altered to talan – but in the plural form talami (and other forms that added an ending to the word), the m was not final and therefore persisted unchanged. Another, similar case is filit "small bird", that has the stem filic- (e.g. plural filici "small birds"): The primitive root-word was PHILIK (LR:381), but Quenya did not permit -k at the end of a word, so in that position it became -t. When not final it remained k (here spelt c).



In some cases, the "independent" form is a simplified or shortened form of a word, while the stem form reflects the fuller form. For instance, Tolkien apparently imagined that the word merendë "feast, festival" was often shortened to meren, but the stem is still merend- (LR:372). Hence the plural of meren is merendi, not **mereni. When it stands alone, the word nissë "woman" is normally reduced to nis (or nís with a lengthened vowel), but the double S persists before endings: thus the plural "women" is nissi (LR:377, MR:213). A similar case is Silmarillë, the name of one of the legendary jewels created by Fëanor; this is normally shortened to Silmaril, but before endings the double L of the full form is preserved (Silmarill-); hence the plural is always Silmarilli. In the case of compound words, sc. words made up from several other words, the second element in the compound is often reduced, but a fuller form may turn up before an ending. For instance, the noun Sindel "Grey-elf" (WJ:384) incorporates -el as a reduced form of Elda "Elf". The plural of Sindel is not **Sindeli, but Sindeldi preserving the cluster -ld- seen in Elda. (Since the final -a is lost in the compound, we cannot have the plural **Sindeldar.)



In some cases a word may be contracted when you add endings to it. In such cases the stem-form does not reflect the older, more complete form of the word. Such contraction often occurs in two-syllable words containing two identical vowels. For instance, feren "beech-tree" is reduced to fern- before an ending, e.g. plural ferni instead of **fereni. WJ:416 likewise indicates that laman "animal" may be reduced to lamn- before an ending, hence for instance lamni "animals", though the unreduced form lamani was also in use. Occasionally, the contracted forms suffer further change when compared to the unreduced form; as the plural of seler "sister" we might expect **selri, but since lr is not a permissible consonant cluster in Quenya, it is changed to ll – the actual plural "sisters" being selli (cf. the Etymologies, entry THEL-, THELES-).



Another form of stem-variation is very poorly attested as far as nouns are concerned, but there are hints to the effect that the final vowel of some words would change when an ending is added. In Quenya, the final vowels -o and -ë sometimes come from -u and -i in Primitive Elvish. At one stage of the linguistic evolution, original short -i became -e when the vowel was final; in the same environment original short -u became -o. For instance, the primitive word tundu "hill, mound" came out as tundo in Quenya (LR:395). But since this change only occurred when the vowel was final, it is possible that its original quality would be preserved before an ending. The plural "hills" may well be tundur rather than tundor, though neither form is attested. According to SD:415, the Quenya noun lómë "night" has the "stem" lómi-, evidently meaning that the final vowel -ë changes to -i- if you add an ending after it. For instance, adding the dual ending -t to lómë (to express "a couple of nights") would presumably produce lómit rather than lómet. This would be because lómë comes from Primitive Elvish dômi (LR:354), and -i never turned into -e except when final. Some think certain words in Namárië, lírinen and súrinen, are attested examples of this phenomenon: These are forms of lírë "song" and súrë "wind" (the latter is attested by itself in MC:222; the meaning of the ending -nen seen in lírinen and súrinen will be discussed in a later lesson). If this word originally ended in an -i that became -ë only later (and only when final), it may explain why in this word -ë seemingly turns into -i- before an ending. We would then say that súrë has the stem súri-.



There seems to be a similar variation involving the final vowel -o, that in some cases descend from final -u in Primitive Elvish; again the primitive quality of the vowel may be resurrected if an ending is added to it. For instance, rusco "fox" is said to have the stem ruscu-, so if we add the dual ending to speak of a "a couple of foxes", the resulting form should presumably be ruscut rather than ruscot. However, there is no extensive treatment of this phenomenon in Tolkien's published writings; indeed the statements made in SD:415 and VT41:10 that lómë and rusco have stems lómi-, ruscu- are as close as we get to explicit references to it.



The student should not despair, thinking that all sorts of strange things typically happen whenever you add an ending to a Quenya word, so that there is a great potential for making embarrassing mistakes (or at least very much extra stuff to memorize). Most Quenya words seem to be quite well-behaved, with no distinct "stem" form to remember; you just add the ending and that's it. Where a distinct stem-form is known to exist (or where we have good reason to suspect one), this will of course be indicated when I first present the word, if it is relevant for the exercises.

Lesson Three - Dual Number. Stem Variation.
07:55 Aug 20 2005
Times Read: 613








DUAL NUMBER



The previous lesson covered two Quenya plural forms: the somewhat mysterious "partitive plural" in -li, and the "normal" plural in either -r or -i (mostly depending on the shape of the word). Like quite a few "real" languages, Quenya also possesses a dual form, that has no direct counterpart in English. Dual number refers to two things, a couple of things. The dual is formed with one out of two endings: -u or -t.



Within the fictional timeline imagined by Tolkien, these two endings originally had somewhat different meanings, and so were not completely interchangeable. A footnote in Letters:427 provides some information on this. The ending -u (from Primitive Elvish -û) was originally used in the case of natural pairs, of two things or persons somehow belonging together as a logical couple. For instance, according to VT39:9, 11, the word pé "lip" has the dual form peu "lips", referring to one person's pair of lips (and not, for instance, to the upper lip of one person and the lower lip of another, which would be just "two lips" and not a natural pair). The noun veru, meaning "married pair" or "husband and wife", has dual form; in this case there does not seem to be a corresponding singular "spouse" (but we have verno "husband" and vessë "wife" from the same root; see LR:352). The noun alda "tree" occurs in dual form with reference, not to any casual pair of trees, but the Two Trees of Valinor: Aldu.



Notice that if the ending -u is added to a noun ending in a vowel, this vowel is displaced: hence the dual of alda is aldu rather than **aldau – though a word quoted in PM:138, reproducing a draft for the LotR Appendices, seems to suggest that Tolkien for a moment considered precisely the latter form. There is also an old source that has Aldaru, apparently formed by adding the dual ending -u to the normal plural aldar "trees", but this seems to be an early experiment of Tolkien's that was probably long obsolete by the time he wrote LotR. In the dual form peu, the final vowel of pé "lip" is apparently not displaced by the dual ending -u. However, Quenya pé is meant to descend from primitive Elvish peñe, whereas the dual form peu is meant to come from peñû (VT39:9) – so the e of peu was not originally final.



As for the other dual ending, -t, it according to Letters:427 represents an old element ata. This, Tolkien noted, was originally "purely numerative"; it is indeed related to the Quenya word for the numeral "two", atta. By "purely numerative", Tolkien evidently meant that the dual in -t could denote two things only casually related. For instance, ciryat as the dual form of cirya "ship" could refer to any two ships; ciryat would only be a kind of spoken shorthand for the full phrase atta ciryar, "two ships". However, Tolkien further noted that "in later Q[uenya]", the dual forms were "only usual with reference to natural pairs". Precisely what he means by "later" Quenya cannot be determined; it could refer to Quenya as a ritual language in Middle-earth rather than the vernacular of the Eldar in Valinor. In any case, the Third Age Quenya we aim for in this course must certainly be included when Tolkien speaks of "later" Quenya, so here we will follow the rule that any dual form must refer to some kind of natural or logical pair, not to two things only casually related. In other words, the dual in -t came to have just the same "meaning" as a dual in -u. A dual like ciryat "2 ships" (curiously spelt "ciriat" in Letters:427, perhaps a typo) would not in later Quenya be used with reference to any two ships, but only of two ships that somehow form a pair – like two sister ships. If you just want to refer to two ships that do not in any way form a natural or logical pair, like any two ships that happen to be seen together, you would not use the dual form but simply the numeral atta "two" – hence atta ciryar.

Since the two endings -t and -u had come to carry the same meaning, some rule is needed to determine when to use which. Which ending should be used can apparently be inferred from the shape of the word itself (just like the shape of the word normally determines whether the plural ending should be -i or -r). In Letters:427, Tolkien noted that "the choice of t or u [was] decided by euphony", sc. by what sounded well – adding as an example that -u was preferred to -t if the word that is to receive a dual ending already contains a t or the similar sound d. Hence the dual of alda is aldu rather than **aldat. It seems that as far as later Quenya is concerned, -t would be your first option as the dual ending, but if the noun it is to be added to already contains t or d, you opt for -u instead (remembering that this ending displaces any final vowels). The duals Tolkien listed in the Plotz Letter, ciryat "a couple of ships" and lasset "a couple of leaves" (formed from cirya "ship" and lassë "leaf") confirm that a words with no t or d in them take the dual ending -t. Perhaps the ending -u would also be preferred in the case of nouns ending in a consonant, since -t could not be added directly to such a word without producing a final consonant cluster that Quenya phonology wouldn't allow; unfortunately we have no examples. (If the ending -t is to be used anyhow, a vowel would probably have to be inserted before it, producing a longer ending – likely -et. We will eschew this little problem in the exercises below, since nobody really knows the answer.)



It is clear, however, that Quenya has a number of old duals that do not follow the rule that the ending is normally -t, replaced by -u only if there is a d or t in the word it is to be added to. The examples veru "married pair" and peu "lips, pair of lips" are proof of that; here there is no t or d present, but the ending is still -u rather than -t. Presumably these are "fossilized" dual forms reflecting the older system in which only -u denoted a natural or logical pair. The example peu "(pair of) lips" suggests that the ending -u is used in the case of body-parts occurring in pairs, such as eyes, arms, legs. (The other ending -t may however be used if certain other endings intrude before the dual ending itself; we will return to this in a later lesson.) The word for "arm" is ranco; the dual form denoting one person's pair of arms is not attested, but my best guess is that it would be rancu. The compound hendumaica "sharp-eye[d]" mentioned in WJ:337 may incorporate a dual hendu "(pair of) eyes". The Quenya word for "eye" is known to be hen, or hend- before an ending (the Etymologies only mentions the normal plural hendi "eyes", LR:364). In the case of this word the dual ending would be -u rather than -t anyway, since there is a d in hend-. The word for "foot", tál, probably has the dual talu (for the shortening of the vowel, see below).

Lesson Two - Exercises
07:53 Aug 20 2005
Times Read: 614








1. Translate into English (or whatever language you prefer):



A. Roccor

B. Aran (two possible English translations!)

C. I rocco.

D. I roccor.

E. Arani.

F. Minë lië nu minë aran.

G. I aran ar i tári.

H. Vendi.



2. Translate into Quenya:



I. Willows.

J. Elves.

K. The kings.

L. Peoples.

M. The horse under (or, below) the willow.

N. A maiden and a queen.

O. The queen and the maidens.

P. The Sun and the Moon (I promised you that one...)

Lesson Two - Vocabulary
07:52 Aug 20 2005
Times Read: 615








Regarding Frodo hearing Galadriel singing Namárië, the LotR states that "as is the way of Elvish words, they remained graven in his memory". This may be a comforting thought to students attempting to memorize Quenya vocabulary. In the lessons proper, while I discuss various aspects of Quenya, I will normally mention quite a few words – but in the exercises, I will only use words from the "vocabulary" list that is hereafter presented at the end of each lesson. Thus, this is all the student is excepted to carefully memorize (doing the exercises for the next lessons, you will also need vocabulary introduced earlier). We will introduce twelve new words in each lesson: a fitting number, since Tolkien's Elves preferred counting in twelves rather than tens as we do. A unified list of all the vocabulary henceforth employed in the exercises of this course can be downloaded from this URL: http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/q-vocab.rtf



minë "one" (from now on, we will introduce one new number in each lesson)

Anar "(the) Sun"

Isil "(the) Moon"

ar "and" (a most useful word that will allow us to have two exercises in one...translate "the Sun and the Moon", for instance...)

Elda "Elf"

lië "people" (sc. an entire "ethnic group" or even race, as in Eldalië = the People of the Elves).

vendë "maiden" (in archaic Quenya wendë)

rocco "horse" (specifically "swift horse for riding", according to Letters:382)

aran "king"

tári "queen"

tasar "willow" (by its form this could be the plural of **tasa, but no such word exists, and -r is here part of the basic word and not an ending. This word occurs, compounded, in LotR – Treebeard chanting "In the willow-meads of Tasarinan [Willow-vale] I walked in the spring...")

nu "under"

Lesson Two - Summary of Lesson Two
07:51 Aug 20 2005
Times Read: 616








There is a plural ending -li the function of which we don't fully understand, so we will leave it alone for now. The normal plural is formed by adding -r to nouns ending in any of the vowels -a, -i, -o, -u, plus nouns ending in -ië. If, on the other hand, the noun ends in -ë (except, of course, as part of -ië) the plural ending is usually -i (displacing the final -ë); nouns ending in a consonant also form their plurals in -i. The Quenya definite article, corresponding to English "the", is i; there is no indefinite article like English "a, an".

Lesson Two - The Article.
07:50 Aug 20 2005
Times Read: 617








We have time for one more thing in this lesson: the article. An article, linguistically speaking, is such a word as English "the" or "a, an". These little words are used in conjunction with nouns to express such different shades of meaning as "a horse" vs. "the horse". Anyone capable of reading this text in the first place will know what the difference is, so no lengthy explanation is necessary. In short, "a horse" refers to a horse that hasn't been mentioned before, so you slip in the article "a" as a kind of introduction: "Look, there's a horse over there!" You may also use the phrase "a horse" if you want to say something that is true of any horse, as in "a horse is an animal". If, on the other hand, you say "the horse", it usually refers to one definite horse. Hence "the" is termed the definite article, while "a, an", lacking this "definite" aspect, is conversely called the indefinite article.



In this respect at least, Quenya is somewhat simpler than English. Quenya has only one article, corresponding to the English definite article "the" (and since there is no indefinite article it must be distinguished from, we may simply speak of "the article" when discussing Quenya). The Quenya word corresponding to English "the" is i. For instance, Namárië has i eleni for "the stars". As can be inferred from the above, Quenya has no word corresponding to English "a, an". When translating Quenya into English, one simply has to slip in "a" wherever English grammar demands an indefinite article, as in the famous greeting Elen síla lúmenn' omentielvo, "a star shines upon the hour of our meeting". As we see, the first word of the Quenya sentence is simply elen "star", with nothing corresponding to the English indefinite article "a" before it (or anywhere else in the sentence, for that matter). In Quenya, there is no way you can maintain the distinction between "a star" and just "star"; both are simply elen. Luckily there isn't much of a distinction to be maintained anyway. Languages like Arabic, Hebrew and classical Greek employ a similar system: there is a definite article corresponding to English "the", but nothing corresponding to the English indefinite article "a, an" (and this is the system used in Esperanto as well). After all, the absence of the definite article is itself enough to signal that a (common) noun is indefinite, so the indefinite article is in a way superfluous. Tolkien decided to do without it in Quenya, so students only have to worry about i = "the".



Sometimes, Tolkien connects the article to the next word by means of a hyphen or a dot: i-mar "the earth" (Fíriel's Song), i•coimas "the lifebread" (PM:396). However, he did not do so in LotR (we have already quoted the example i eleni "the stars" in Namárië), and neither will we here.



The Quenya article is generally used as in English. However, some nouns that would require the article in English are apparently counted as proper names in Quenya, and so take no article. For instance, the sentence Anar caluva tielyanna is translated "the Sun shall shine upon your path" (UT:22, 51); yet there is no article in the Quenya sentence. "The Sun" is not **i Anar, but simply Anar. Clearly Anar is perceived as a proper name, designating one celestial body only, and you don't have to say "the Anar" any more than an English-speaking person would say "the Mars". The name of "the" Moon, Isil, undoubtedly behaves like Anar in this respect. It may be noted that both words are treated as proper names in the Silmarillion, chapter 11: "Isil was first wrought and made ready, and first rose into the realm of the stars... Anar arose in glory, and the first dawn of the Sun was like a great fire..."

Also notice that before a plural denoting an entire people (or even race), the article is not normally used. WJ:404 mentions a saying Valar valuvar, "the will of the Valar will be done" (or more literally *"the Valar will rule"). Notice that "the Valar" is simply Valar in Quenya, not i Valar. Similarly, PM:395 has lambë Quendion for "language of the Elves" and coimas Eldaron for "coimas [lembas] of the Eldar" – not **lambë i Quendion, **coimas i Eldaron. (The ending -on here appended to the plurals Quendi, Eldar signifies "of"; this ending should not affect whether or not the article has to be present before the word.)



With this usage compare Tolkien's use of "Men" in his narratives to refer to the human race as such: "Men awoke in Hildórien at the rising of the Sun... A darkness lay upon the hearts of Men... Men (it is said) were at first very few in number..." (Silmarillion, chapter 17.) By contrast, "the Men" would refer, not to the entire race, but only to a casual group of "Men" or humans. Quenya plurals denoting entire peoples or races seem to behave in the same way. In a Quenya text there would probably be no article before plurals like Valar, Eldar, Vanyar, Noldor, Lindar, Teleri, Atani etc. as long as the entire race or people is considered, even though Tolkien's English narratives speak of "the Valar", "the Eldar" etc. However, if we replace Eldar with its equivalent "Elves", we see that the article often would often not be required in English, either (e.g. "Elves are beautiful" = Eldar nar vanyë; if you say "the Elves are beautiful" = i Eldar nar vanyë, you are probably describing once particular group of Elves, not the entire race).



Occasionally, especially in poetry, the article seemingly drops out for no special reason. Perhaps it is simply omitted because of metric considerations. The first line of Namárië, ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen, Tolkien translated "ah! like gold fall the leaves..." – though there is no i before lassi "leaves" in the Quenya text. The Markirya poem also leaves out the article in a number of places, if we are to judge by Tolkien's English translation of it.

Lesson Two - Nouns. Plural form. The Article.
07:49 Aug 20 2005
Times Read: 618








Words that denote things, as opposed to for instance actions, are called nouns. The "things" in question may be inanimate (like "stone"), animate (like "person", "woman", "boy"), natural (like "tree"), artificial (like "bridge, house"), concrete (like "stone" again) or wholly abstract (like "hatred"). Names of persons, like "Peter" or "Mary", are also considered nouns. Sometimes a noun may denote, not one clearly distinct object or person, but an entire substance (like "gold" or "water"). So there is much to be included.



In most languages, a noun can be inflected, that is, it appears in various forms to modify its meaning, or to make it fit into a specific grammatical context. For instance, if you want to connect two English nouns like "Mary" and "house" in such a way as to make it clear that Mary owns the house, you modify the form of the noun Mary by adding the ending -'s, producing Mary's, which readily connects with house to make the phrase Mary's house. Or starting with a noun like tree, you may want to make it clear that you are talking about more than one singular tree, and so you modify the word to its plural form by adding the plural ending -s to get trees. In English, a noun doesn't have very many forms at all; there is the singular (e.g. girl), its plural (girls), the form you use when the one denoted by the noun owns something (girl's) and the combination of the plural and this "ownership"-form (written girls' and unfortunately not really distinct from girls or girl's in sound, but speakers of English somehow get along without too many misunderstandings – rest assured that the Quenya equivalents are clearly distinct in form!) So an English noun comes in no more than four different forms.



A Quenya noun, on the other hand, comes in hundreds of different forms. It can receive endings not only for two different kinds of plural, plus endings denoting a pair of things, but also endings expressing meanings that in English would be denoted by placing small words like "for, in/on, from, to, of, with" etc. in front of the noun instead. Finally a Quenya noun can also receive endings denoting who owns it, e.g. -rya- "her" in máryat "her hands" in Namárië (the final -t, by the way, is one of the endings denoting a pair of something – in this case a natural pair of hands).



Having read the above, the student should not succumb to the idea that Quenya is a horribly difficult language ("imagine, hundreds of different forms to learn where English has only four!"), or for that matter start thinking that Quenya must be some kind of super-language ("wow, hundreds of different forms to play with while the poor English-speaking sods have to get along with a pitiful four!") English and Quenya organize the information differently, that is all – the former often preferring a string of short words, the latter rather jumbling the ideas to be expressed into one big mouthful. The hundreds of different forms arise because a much lower number of endings can be combined, so there is no reason to despair. It is a little like counting; you needn't learn two hundred and fifty different numeric symbols to be able to count to 250, but only the ten from 0 to 9.



Most of the endings a noun can take we won't discuss until (much) later lessons. We will start with something that should be familiar enough, found even on the puny list of English noun-forms: Making a noun plural – going from one to several.



In Quenya, there are two different plurals. One is formed by adding the ending -li to the noun. Tolkien called this the "partitive plural" (WJ:388) or a "general pl[ural]" (see the Etymologies, entry TELES). Unfortunately, the function of this plural – sc. how it differs in meaning from the more "normal" plural discussed below – is not fully understood. We have a few examples of this plural in our scarce source material, but they are not very helpful. For a long time it was assumed that this plural implied that there were "many" of the things in question; hence Eldali (formed from Elda "Elf") would mean something like "many Elves". There may be something to this, but in several of the examples we have, there seems to be no implication of "many". It has been suggested that Eldali may rather mean something like "several Elves" or "some Elves", sc. some out of a larger group, some considered as part of this group: The term "partitive plural" may point in the same direction. However, I will for the most part leave the partitive plural alone throughout this course. Its function just isn't well enough understood for me to construct exercises that would only mean feeding some highly tentative interpretation to unsuspecting students. (I present some thoughts about the -li plural in the appendices to this course.)



For now we will deal with the "normal" plural form instead. Any reader of Tolkien's narratives will have encountered plenty of examples of this form; they are especially common in the Silmarillion. Nouns ending in any of the four vowels -a, -o, -i or -u , plus nouns ending in the group -ië, form their plural with the ending -r. Cf. the names of various groups of people mentioned in the Silmarillion:



Elda "Elf", plural Eldar

Vala "god (or technically angel)", pl. Valar

Ainu "spirit of God's first creation", pl. Ainur

Noldo "Noldo, member of the Second Clan of the Eldar", pl. Noldor

Valië "female Vala", pl. Valier



For another example of -ië, cf. tier for "paths" in Namárië; compare singular tië "path". (According to the spelling conventions here employed, the diaeresis in tië is dropped in the plural form tier because the dots are there merely to mark that final -ë is not silent, but in tier, e is not final anymore because an ending has been added – and hence the dots go.) Examples of the plurals of nouns in -i are rare, since nouns with this ending are rare themselves, but in MR:229 we have quendir as the pl. of quendi "Elf-woman" (and also quendur as the pl. of quendu "Elf-man"; nouns in -u are not very numerous either).



This singular word quendi "Elf-woman" must not be confused with the plural word Quendi that many readers of Tolkien's fiction will remember from the Silmarillion, for instance in the description of the awakening of the Elves in chapter 3: "Themselves they named the Quendi, signifying those that speak with voices; for as yet they had met no other living things that spoke or sang." Quendi is the plural form of Quendë "Elf"; nouns ending in -ë typically form their plurals in -i, and as we see, this -i replaces the final -ë instead of being added to it. In WJ:361, Tolkien explicitly refers to "nouns in -e, the majority of which formed their plurals in -i".



As this wording implies, there are exceptions; a few nouns in -ë are seen to use the other plural ending, -r, instead. One exception we have already touched on: where the -ë is part of -ië, we have plurals in -ier, as in tier "paths". Hence we avoid the awkward plural form **tii. Other exceptions cannot be explained as easily. In LotR Appendix E, we have tyeller for "grades", evidently the plural of tyellë. Why tyeller instead of **tyelli? LR:47 likewise indicates that the plural of mallë "road" is maller; why not **malli? It may be that nouns in -lë have plurals in -ler because "regular" **-li might cause confusion with the partitive plural ending -li mentioned above. Unfortunately, we lack more examples that could confirm or disprove this theory (and so I don't dare to construct any exercises based on this assumption, though I would follow this rule in my own Quenya compositions). The form tyeller confused early researchers; with extremely few examples to go on, some wrongly concluded that nouns in -ë regularly have plurals in -er. The name of the early journal Parma Eldalamberon or "Book of Elven-tongues" (sporadically published still) reflects this mistake; the title incorporates **lamber as the presumed plural of lambë "tongue, language", while we now know that the correct plural must be lambi. Though the error was early suspected and is now recognized by everyone, the publisher never bothered to change the name of the journal to the correct form Parma Eldalambion (and so, ever and anon, I get an e-mail from some fresh student wondering why my site is called Ardalambion and not Ardalamberon...) In some cases, Tolkien himself seems uncertain which plural ending should be used. In PM:332, the plural form of Ingwë "Elf of the First Clan [also name of the king of that clan]" is given as Ingwi, just as we would expect; yet a few pages later, in PM:340, we find Ingwer instead (it is there said that the First Clan, the Vanyar, called themselves Ingwer, so perhaps this reflects a special Vanyarin usage?) It may be noted that in Tolkien's earliest "Qenya", more nouns in -ë apparently had plural forms in -er. For instance, the early poem Narqelion has lasser as the plural of lassë "leaf", but in Namárië in LotR Tolkien used the plural form lassi.



As far as I know, the words in the exercises below all follow the normal rule: Nouns ending in -ë, except as a part of -ië, have plurals in -i.



This leaves only one group of nouns to be considered, namely those that end in a consonant. These nouns, just like those that end in -ë, are seen to have plurals in -i. A few examples: Eleni "stars", the plural form of elen "star", occurs in Namárië (and also in WJ:362, where both the singular and the plural form are quoted). The Silmarillion has Atani for "Men" (not "males", but humans as opposed to Elves); this is formed from the singular word Atan. According to WJ:388, the word Casar "Dwarf" has the plural Casari "Dwarves".



Of these two plural endings – r as in Eldar "Elves", but i as in Atani "(Mortal) Men" – Tolkien imagined the latter to be the most ancient. The plural ending -i comes directly from Primitive Elvish -î, a word like Quendi representing primitive Kwendî. The plural ending -r arose later: "For the showing of many the new device of r was brought in and used in all words of a certain shape – and this, it is said, was begun among the Noldor" (PM:402). In primary-world terms, both plural endings were however present in Tolkien's conception from the beginning; already in his earliest work on "Qenya", written during World War I, we find forms like Qendi (as it was then spelt) and Eldar coexisting. The twin plural endings are a feature that evidently survived throughout all the stages of Tolkien's development of Quenya, from 1915 to 1973.



NOTE ON THE DIFFERENT WORDS FOR "ELF": As the attentive reader will have inferred from the above, there is more than one Quenya word for "Elf". The word with the widest application, within the scope of Tolkien's fiction, was Quendë pl. Quendi. This form is at least associated with the word "to speak" (quet-), and Tolkien speculated that ultimately these words were indeed related via a very primitive base KWE- having to do with vocal speech (see WJ:391-392). When the Elves awoke by the mere of Cuiviénen, they called themselves Quendi (or in primitive Elvish actually Kwendî) since for a long time they knew of no other speaking creatures. Eventually the Vala Oromë found them under a starlit sky, and he gave them a new name in the language they themselves had developed: Eldâi, often translated "Starfolk". In Quenya, this primitive word later appeared as Eldar (singular Elda). While the term Eldar (Eldâi) was originally meant to apply to the entire Elvish race, it was later only used of the Elves that accepted the invitation of the Valar to come and dwell in the Blessed Realm of Aman and embarked on the Great March to get there (the term Eldar is also applicable to those who never actually made it all the way to Aman, such as the Sindar or Grey-elves who stayed in Beleriand). Those who refused the invitation were called Avari, "Refusers", and hence all Elves (Quendi) can be subdivided into Eldar and Avari. Only the former play any important part in Tolkien's narratives. So in later Quenya the situation was this: Quendë pl. Quendi remained as the only truly universal term for all Elves of any kind, but this was a technical word primarily used by the Loremasters, not a word that would be used in daily speech. The gender-specific variants of Quendë "Elf", namely masculine quendu and feminine quendi, would presumably be used only if you wanted to speak of a specifically Elvish (wo)man as opposed to a (wo)man of any other sentient race: These are not the normal Quenya words for "man" and "woman" (the normal words are nér and nís, presumably applicable to a man or woman of any sentient race, not just Elves). The normal, everyday Quenya term for "Elf" was Elda, and the fact that this word technically didn't apply to Elves of the obscure Avarin tribes living somewhere far east in Middle-earth was no big problem since none of them was ever seen anyway. Regarding the compound Eldalië (which combines Elda with lië "people, folk") Tolkien wrote that when one of the Elves of Aman used this word, "he meant vaguely all the race of Elves, though he was probably not thinking of the Avari" (WJ:374). – Throughout the exercises found in this course, I have used Elda (rather than Quendë) as the standard translation of English "Elf", regardless of any specialized meaning it may have within Tolkien's mythos. As I said in the Introduction, in these exercises I largely eschew specific references to Tolkien's mythos and narratives.

Lesson One - Exercises
12:28 Aug 16 2005
Times Read: 621








As far as the most critical subtleties of pronunciation are concerned, I unfortunately cannot make any exercises; we are not in a classroom so that I can comment on your pronunciation. But regarding stress (accent) and the pronunciation of h, it is possible to make exercises.





1. Determine which vowel (single vowel or diphthong) receives the accent in the words below. (It is not necessary to indicate where the entire syllable it belongs to begins and ends.)



A. Alcar ("glory")

B. Alcarë (longer variant of the above)

C. Alcarinqua ("glorious")

D. Calima ("bright")

E. Oronti ("mountains")

F. Únótimë ("uncountable, numberless")

G. Envinyatar ("renewer")

H. Ulundë ("flood")

I. Eäruilë ("seaweed")

J. Ercassë ("holly")



Extra exercise on stress: While we hear many Sindarin lines in the movie, one of the few really prominent samples of Quenya in Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring is the scene where "Saruman" (Christopher Lee) standing on the top of Isengard reads an invocation to bring down an avalanche in order to stop the Fellowship. He says to the mountain they are attempting to cross: Nai yarvaxëa rasselya taltuva notto-carinnar! = "may your bloodstained horn collapse upon enemy heads!" (not translated in the movie). The actor accents the words like this: nai yarVAXëa RASSelya TALTuva notto-CARinnar. Are all the words accented as they should be, according to Tolkien's guidelines? If not, what is right and what is wrong?





2. Where the letter h appears in Quenya words as they are spelt in our letters, it may be pronounced in various ways. Ignoring the digraphs hw and hy, the letter h may be pronounced



A) a "breath-h" like English h as in high,

B) more or less as in English huge, human or ideally like ch in German ich,

C) like ch in German ach or Scottish loch (in phonetic writing [x]).

In addition we have alternative

D): the letter h is not really pronounced at all, but merely indicates that the following consonant was unvoiced in archaic Quenya.



Sort the words below into these four categories (A, B, C, D):



K. Ohtar ("warrior")

L. Hrávë ("flesh")

M. Nahta ("a bite")

N. Heru ("lord")

O. Nehtë ("spearhead")

P. Mahalma ("throne")

Q. Hellë ("sky")

R. Tihtala ("blinking")

S. Hlócë ("snake, serpent")

T. Hísië ("mist")

Summary of Lesson One:
12:27 Aug 16 2005
Times Read: 622








The Quenya vowels are a, e, i, o, u; long vowels are marked with an accent: á, é etc. The vowels should be pure, pronounced with their "Italian" values; long á and é should be noticably closer than short a, e. Some vowels may receive a diaeresis (ë, ä etc.), but this does not affect their pronunciation and is only intended as a clarification for people used to English orthography. The diphthongs are ai, au, eu, oi, ui, and iu. The consonant c is always pronounced k; l should be pronounced as a "clear", dental L; r should be trilled; s is always unvoiced; y is only used as a consonant (as in English you). Ideally, the consonants t, p, c should probably be unaspirated. Palatalized consonants are represented by digraphs in -y (ty, ny etc.); labialized consonants are normally written as digraphs in -w (e.g. nw, but what would be cw is spelt qu instead). H is pronounced [x] (German ach-Laut) before t, unless this combination ht is preceded by one of the vowels e or i, in which case h is sounded like German ich-Laut. Otherwise, h may be pronounced like English h; the digraphs hy and hw however represent ich-Laut and unvoiced w (like American English wh), respectively. The combinations hl and hr originally represented unvoiced l, r, but by the Third Age, these sounds had come to be pronounced like normal l and r. In polysyllabic words, the stress falls on the second-to-last syllable when that is long (containing either a long vowel, a diphthong, or a vowel followed by a consonant cluster or a double consonant). If the second-to-last syllable is short, the stress falls on the third syllable from the end (unless the word has only two syllables, in which case the first syllable receives the stress whether it is short or long).

Lesson One - Speed
12:26 Aug 16 2005
Times Read: 623








Finally a brief note on something we know little about: How fast should one talk when speaking Quenya? The few recordings of Tolkien speaking Quenya are not "reliable" in this matter; he inevitably enunciates quite carefully. But regarding Fëanor's mother Míriel he noted that "she spoke swiftly and took pride in this skill" (PM:333). So fast Quenya is evidently good Quenya. When Tolkien also wrote that "the Elves made considerable use of...concomitant gestures" (WJ:416), one remembers that he had a great love for Italian – see Letters:223.

Lesson One - Stress
12:25 Aug 16 2005
Times Read: 624








Whenever a language has polysyllabic words, speakers of this language may enunciate some syllables more forcefully than others. We say that these syllables are stressed or accented. In some languages speakers don't normally emphasize certain syllables more than others. For instance, the Japanese put about the same amount of stress on every syllable, resulting in what unloving foreigners have referred to as "machine gun articulation". But in Western languages, a varying amount of stress is common: Some syllables are stressed, others unstressed.



The rules for which syllables are stressed vary wildly, though. Some languages have a very simple system; in French, words that are to receive any stress are always accented on the final syllable. To the natives, Paris is not "PARis" as in English, but rather "parIS" (actually the French don't pronounce the s, but that has nothing to do with the accent). The Finns also have a very simple system, stressing all words on the first syllable: While some speakers of English may think that Helsinki is most "naturally" pronounced "HelSINKi", the residents of the city will insist on "HELsinki" instead.



Since the Finnish language was evidently Tolkien's foremost inspiration, one might think that he would have copied its simple system of accenting all words on the first syllable over into Quenya. In the "internal" or fictional history of the language, he did indeed envision an early period during which Quenya words were so accented (the so-called retraction period, WJ:366). However, this was replaced by a new system already before the Noldor went into exile, so Quenya as a language of lore in Middle-earth employed different accentuation patterns, carefully described in LotR Appendix E. This is the system we must use. (It seems that Tolkien actually copied it from Latin!)



Words of one syllable, like nat "thing", obviously pose no problem; this one syllable is the sole candidate for receiving the stress. The simplest polysyllabic words, those of two syllables, are no problem either: In LotR Appendix E, Tolkien noted that "in words of two syllables [the accent] falls in practically all cases on the first syllable". As this wording implies, there may be a very few exceptions; the only exception known seems to be the word avá "don't!", that is accented on the final syllable: "aVÁ". (Even this one word also appears in the alternative form áva, stressed on the first syllable according to the normal rule: "ÁVa".) The name of the Blessed Realm, Aman, I sometimes hear people pronounce with the stress on the second rather than the first syllable – but the correct pronunciation must be "AMan", if we can trust the rules set out by Tolkien. ("AmAN" would be Amman, capital of Jordan!)



Longer words, with three or more syllables, are slightly more complex when it comes to stress. Many of them are accented on the second to last syllable. However, in some cases the second-to-last syllable isn't "qualified" to receive the accent: This syllable cannot be accented if it is short. So how do we recognize a short syllable? If it contains no long vowel (no vowel marked with an accent), this is obviously one omen. Then the vowel itself is necessarily short. If this short vowel is followed by only one consonant, or even no consonant at all, this syllable has little chance of receiving the accent. Its one remaining chance of redeeming itself as a long syllable is that instead of a simple short vowel it actually contains one of the Quenya diphthongs: ai, au, eu, oi, ui or iu. Two vowels combined into a diphthong count as having the same "length" as a normal, unitary long vowel (marked by an accent). But if there is no diphthong, no long vowel, and not even a short vowel followed by more than one consonant, the syllable in question is irredeemably short. If this is the second-to-last syllable in a word of three or more syllables, this penultimate syllable has forfeited all its chances to receive the stress. In such a case the stress moves one step ahead, to fall on the third syllable from the end (no matter what this syllable looks like). Tolkien noted that words of such a shape "are favoured in the Eldarin languages, especially Quenya". Examples:



¤ A word like vestalë "wedding" is accented "VESTalë". The second-to-last syllable cannot receive the stress because its vowel (the a) is short and followed by only a single consonant (the l); hence the accent moves one step ahead, to the third syllable from the end. Plural forms like Teleri (the Sea-Elves) and Istari (the Wizards) I sometimes hear people mispronounce as "TeLERi", "IsTARi"; applying Tolkien's rules we have to conclude that he actually intended "TELeri", "ISTari". The short penultimate syllables in these words cannot be accented.



¤ A word like Eressëa (the name of an isle near the Blessed Realm) some speakers of English are tempted to accent on the second-to-last syllable (following the stress-pattern of such a place-name as "Eritrea"!) But since in Er-ess-ë-a the second-to-last syllable is just a short ë not followed by a group of consonants (actually not even one consonant), this syllable cannot be accented and the stress moves to the syllable before it: "ErESSëa". Other words of the same pattern (with no consonant following a short vowel in the second-to-last syllable): Eldalië "the people of the Elves" ("ElDAlië" – though the word Elda "Elf" by itself is of course accented "ELda"), Tilion "The Horned", name of a Maia ("TILion"), laurëa "golden" ("LAURëa"), Yavannië "September" ("YaVANNië"), Silmarillion "[The Story] of the Silmarils" ("SilmaRILLion").



But though such words were "favoured", there is certainly no lack of words where the second-to-last syllable does qualify for receiving the accent. Examples:



¤ Varda's title Elentári "Star-Queen" is pronounced "ElenTÁRi", since the vowel á in the second-to-last syllable is long. (If this had been a short a, it couldn't have been stressed since it is not followed by more than one consonant, and the third syllable from the end would have been accented instead: "ELENtari" – but no such word exists.) The names Númenórë, Valinórë are likewise accented on the long ó in the second-to-last syllable (whereas in the shortened forms Númenor, Valinor the accent must fall on the third syllable from the end: NÚMenor, VALinor).



¤ Words like hastaina "marred" or Valarauco "Power-demon" (Sindarin Balrog) are accented "hasTAINa", "ValaRAUCo" – since diphthongs like ai, au can be counted as long vowels for the purpose of stress.



¤ The names Elendil and Isildur are accented "ElENDil" and "IsILDur", since the vowel in the second-to-last-syllable, though short, is followed by more than one consonant (the groups nd, ld, respectively). A double consonant would have the same effect as a cluster of different consonants; for instance, Elenna ("Starwards", a name of Númenor) is pronounced "ElENNa". (Contrast the adjective elena "stellar, of the stars": this must be accented "ELena" since the second-to-last syllable "en" is short and therefore unable to receive the accent – unlike the long syllable "enn" in Elenna.)



Notice that the one letter x represents two consonants, ks. Therefore, a word like Helcaraxë (a place-name) is accented "HelcarAXë" (not "HelCARaxë" as if there were only one consonant following the a in the second-to-last syllable). Cf. the alternative spelling Helkarakse in the Etymologies, entry KARAK.



As noted above, some combinations should apparently be thought of as single consonants: qu (for cw/kw) represents labialized k, not k + w. Similarly, ny, ty, ly, ry would be palatalized n, t, l, r (the first = Spanish ñ). But in the middle of words, for the purpose of stress, it seems that qu, ly, ny, ty etc. do count as groups of consonants (double consonants or clusters – we cannot be certain precisely what Tolkien intended). In WJ:407, Tolkien indicates that the compound word ciryaquen "shipman, sailor" (made from cirya "ship" + -quen "person") is to be accented "cirYAquen". If qu (= cw/kw) were here thought of as a single consonant, labialized k, there would not be a group of consonants following the a and it could not receive the accent: the word would then have been pronounced "CIRyaquen" instead. So either qu here does count as a cluster k + w, or it represents a long or double labialized k (or even labialized kw followed by w). Bottom line is: pronounce "cirYAquen" and be relieved that the rest is mainly academic meandering. A few other words including the combinations in question: Elenya (first day of the Eldarin six-day week, accented "ElENya"), Calacirya or Calacilya (a place in the Blessed Realm, accented "CalaCIrya", "CalaCIlya").



A word of warning regarding the accent mark: Notice that the accent mark that may appear above vowels (á, é, í, ó, ú) only denotes that the vowel is long. While this symbol is frequently used to indicate the stressed syllable, this is not the case in Tolkien's normal spelling of Quenya. (Some may have noted that Pokémon isn't accented on the é either, so Tolkien isn't wildly idiosyncratic in this department!) A long vowel will often receive the stress, as in the example Elentári above, but not necessarily so: If the long vowel does not appear in the second-to-last syllable, its length (and the accent mark denoting it!) is quite irrelevant for the purpose of stress. In a word like Úlairi, the Quenya name for the Ringwraiths or Nazgûl, the stress falls on the diphthong ai, not on the ú. The spelling palantír has mislead many, making them think that this word is to be accented on "tír". Here is something Ian McKellen, playing Gandalf in the Peter Jackson LotR movie trilogy, wrote as the film was being shot:



...I have to learn a new pronunciation. All this time we have being

saying "palanTÍR" instead of the Old English stress on the first syllable.

Just as the word was about to be committed to the soundtrack, a correction came from Andrew Jack, the Dialect Coach; he taught me a Norfolk accent for Restoration, and for LOTR he supervises accents, languages and all things vocal. Palantír, being strictly of elvish origin should follow Tolkien's rule that the syllable before a double consonant should be stressed – "paLANTír" making a sound which is close to "lantern"...



Andrew Jack was right. Palantír cannot be stressed on the final syllable; virtually no polysyllabic Quenya words are accented in such a way (as I said above, avá "don't!" is the sole known exception). Instead the a in the second-to-last syllable receives the accent because it is followed by the consonant cluster nt (I should not call this a "double consonant" like McKellen does, since I want to reserve that term for a group of two identical consonants, like tt or nn – but for the purpose of stress, double consonants and clusters of different consonants have the same effect). So it is indeed "palANTír". (But in the plural form palantíri, where the long í suddenly appears in the second-to-last syllable, it does receive the accent: "palanTÍRi".)



In the case of long words ending in two short syllables, the last of these syllables may receive a weaker secondary stress. In a word like hísimë "mist", the main stress falls on hís, but the final syllable -më is not wholly unstressed. This secondary stress is much weaker than the main accent, though. (Nonetheless, Tolkien did note that for the purpose of poetry, the secondary stress can be used metrically: RGEO:69.)

Lesson One - Palatalized and Labialized Consonants
12:24 Aug 16 2005
Times Read: 624








In Quenya, we find words like nyarna "tale", tyalië "play" or nwalca "cruel". From these spellings it would seem that such words begin in consonant clusters: n + y, t + y, n + w. However, this would not agree with the explicit statement made in Lowdham's Report that "Adunaic, like Avallonian [= Quenya], does not tolerate more than a single basic consonant initially in any word" (SD:417-418). So how are we to explain this?



The solution seems to be that "combinations" like the ny of nyarna are just single, basic consonants: Ny is not a cluster n + y, but the same unitary sound that is fittingly represented as a single letter "ñ" in Spanish orthography – as in señor. Of course, this sounds very much like "senyor", but "ñ" is really a single consonant. This "ñ" is a palatalized version of n, an n that has been "tinted" in the direction of y. English employs one distinctly palatalized consonant, usually represented by the digraph "sh" (which, of course, is not a cluster s + h); this can be described as a palatalized s. By carefully comparing the pronunciation of s and sh you can perceive the palatalization mechanism operating in your own mouth: A consonant is palatalized by arching the back of the tongue up towards the roof of the mouth (the palate, hence the term "palatalized consonant"). The relationship between s and sh corresponds to the relationship between n and Quenya ny (or Spanish "ñ").



Besides ny, Quenya also has the palatalized consonants ty, ly, ry (e.g. in tyalië "play", alya "rich", verya "bold"); these are palatalized counterparts of "normal" t, l, r. Regarding ty, Tolkien wrote that it may be pronounced as the "t" of English tune (see for instance SD:418-419 – it should be noted that he is thinking of dialects where this comes out as "tyoon"; this is not the case in all forms of American English). In Gondor, some mortal speakers of Quenya supposedly pronounced ty like ch as in English church, but that was not quite the proper Elvish pronunciation. As for the consonant ly, it would be similar to the "lh" of Portuguese olho ("eye"). In LotR Appendix E, Tolkien noted that l (so spelt) should also "to some degree [be] 'palatalized' between e, i and a consonant, or finally after e, i". The wording "to some degree" seems to suggest that we would not have a regular, "full-blown" palatalized l in these positions (like the sound spelt ly), but in words like Eldar "Elves" or amil "mother", the l should ideally have just a little tint of palatalizing to it.



Besides the palatalized consonants, we have the labialized consonants: nw, gw and qu (= cw). These are not really clusters n + w, g + w, c + w. Rather they represent n, g, c (k) pronounced with pouted lips, as when pronouncing w: By the pouting of the lips, the consonant is "labialized" (this word comes from the Latin term for "lip"). Quenya qu may certainly be pronounced as in English queen, but ideally it should be pronounced as k and w merged together in a single, unitary sound. (True, there does exist one early source where Tolkien states that qu, though originally being simply k "accomp[anied] by lip-rounding", "is now sounded practically exactly as English qu – a liprounded k foll[owed] by a distinct w sound": See Parma Eldalamberon #13, page 63. However, I think this idea may be superseded by information from a much later source, indicating that Quenya had no initial consonant clusters: SD:417-418.) Nw and gw similarly represent "merged" versions of n/w, g/w. – It should be noted that nw is a single, labialized consonant only at the beginning of words, where it represents earlier ngw (sc. what Tolkien might also spell "ñw", using "ñ" for ng as in king). In the middle of words, e.g. in vanwa "gone, lost", nw really is a cluster n + w and is so spelt also in Tengwar orthography. However, the labialized consonants qu and gw also occur in the middle of words. In fact, gw occurs only in that position, and always in the combination ngw (not "ñw" but "ñgw", still using "ñ" as Tolkien did): Lingwë "fish", nangwa "jaw", sungwa "drinking-vessel".



The question of length: It may seem that when they occur medially between vowels, the palatalized and labialized consonants count as long or double consonants (as if the digraphs represented actual consonant clusters after all). Again using the letter "ñ" with its Spanish value of a palatalized n (and not, as Tolkien often did, for ng as in king), one may ask whether a word like atarinya ("my father", LR:61) actually represents "atariñña". If so, the group ny in the middle of words denotes a long palatalized N. Then the very word Quenya would be pronounced "Queñña" rather than "Quen-ya". Another possibility is "Queñya", the n being palatalized all right, but there is still a relatively distinct y-sound following it (which there would not be when ny occurs at the beginning of a word). Tolkien reading a version of Namárië at least once pronounced the word inyar as "iññar" (but the second time it occurred he simply said "inyar" with n + y). In any case, the groups ny, ly, ry, ty and qu (for cw) must be counted as either long consonants or consonant clusters for the purpose of stress (see below) – though it is also clear that sometimes they must be analyzed as single, unitary consonants.

Lesson One - The Question of Aspiration
12:23 Aug 16 2005
Times Read: 625








There is one uncertainty regarding the precise pronunciation the unvoiced stops c (= k), t, p: In English as well as some other languages, these sounds, when occurring before a vowel at the beginning of a word, are normally aspirated. That is, a h-like puff of breath is slipped in after them. In this position they are pronounced a little like genuine sequences k + h, t + h, p + h (as in backhand, outhouse, scrap-heap). The average speaker is not conscious of this at all, not really perceiving the extra h as a distinct sound: It is just the way k, t, p is "expected" to sound at the beginning of words. But in some languages, like French, Russian and (perhaps most importantly) Finnish, there is no such gratuitous h automatically following these consonants when they occur in certain positions.



Should Quenya t, p, c be aspirated as in English, or should they be pronounced as in French or Finnish? This question is not directly addressed anywhere in Tolkien's published writings. It may be observed that Quenya t, p, c descend from Primitive Elvish consonants that were certainly not aspirated, for in the primitive language they contrasted with distinct aspirated sounds: primitive th, ph, kh, which later became s, f, h in Quenya. (Cf. two wholly distinct primitive words like thaurâ "detestable" and taurâ "masterful" – the th of the first word should be sounded the way a speaker of English would most likely mispronounce the t of the latter! The t of taurâ should actually be pronounced French-style, with no aspiration.) So were Quenya t, p, c still unaspirated, since they had been so in the primitive language?



Since the primitive aspirated sounds had been changed, adding aspiration to t, p, c would cause no confusion. It should be noted, though, that in the writing system devised by Fëanor, there were originally distinct letters for aspirated sounds: "The original Fëanorian system also possessed a grade with extended stems, both above and below the line [of writing]. These usually represented aspirated consonants (e.g. t + h, p + h, k + h)" (LotR Appendix E). However, these were not the letters used to spell Quenya t, p, c. So all things considered, I think Quenya t, p, c should ideally be pronounced without aspiration. For people who are used to automatically slip in a h-like puff of breath after these consonants it may be difficult to get rid of it, since they are not really conscious of its presence at all. A phonology teacher once advised me that one way of getting rid of the aspiration is to practice pronouncing t, p, c/k with a burning candle in front of your mouth; the trick is to pronounce these consonants without the flame of the candle flickering (because of the puff of breath that constitutes the aspiration).



The voiced counterparts of t, p and c/k, namely d, b and (hard) g respectively, are not aspirated in English. For this reason, people who are used to hearing the unvoiced sounds pronounced as aspirated variants may (wrongly) perceive unaspirated unvoiced plosives as their voiced counterparts. Pronounced without aspiration, Quenya words like tarya ("stiff"), parma ("book") or calma ("lamp") may sound a little like "darya, barma, galma" to speakers of English (speakers of French, Russian or Finnish would not be confused). When pronouncing such words, one must not introduce vibration in the vocal chords to produce actual voiced sounds d, b, g. – But I should add that the whole aspiration issue is not something a student needs to spend much time on; as I said, the exact pronunciation of Quenya t, p, c is nowhere addressed in published writings. If it is indeed wrong to add aspiration to these consonants, at least one will err little more than Tolkien did himself when reading Namárië.

Lesson One - Pronunciation
12:22 Aug 16 2005
Times Read: 626








Vowels: Quenya vowels are pure. For people who want to pronounce Elvish vowels with some degree of accuracy, Tolkien recommended Italian vowels as a model (as did Zamenhof for Esperanto, by the way). Speakers of English have an ingrained habit of blurring many vowels, especially when they are not fully stressed; hence in a word like banana it is typically only the middle A that comes out as a "proper" A-sound. The two other A's, that are not stressed, are typically made to sound like a blurred, obscure "reduction vowel" that linguists call a schwa (from a Hebrew word for nothingness; English textbooks sometimes prefer the spelling "shwa"). But in Quenya all vowels, in all positions, must be clearly and distinctly pronounced; any tendencies to "blur" them must be strongly resisted.



As we remember, Quenya has both long and short vowels, the long ones being marked with an accent: á, é, ó, ú, í vs. short a, e, o, u, i. Long and short vowels must be kept apart and pronounced clearly distinct. Sometimes vowel length is the only thing that makes otherwise similar words distinct: for instance, cu with a short u means "dove", whereas cú with a long ú means "crescent".

Long á can be sounded as in English father: má "hand", nárë "flame", quáco "crow". However, English does not have anything corresponding to Quenya short a. It is absolutely necessary to master it, for short a is by far the commonest of Quenya vowels. Tolkien noted that it should be more "open" than the long á. What we want is a vowel that by its sound (or quality) is about midway between the a's of English father and English cat – but as for its length (or quantity), it should by all means be short as in the latter word. The vowel heard in Spanish padre will do. Speakers of English may pin down a short a by isolating the first part of the diphthong ai as in aisle.

NOTE: If you have the original Star Wars movie available, listen carefully when Harrison Ford first appears about 45 minutes in and introduces himself as "Han Solo": Ford actually produces a nice Quenya-style short a in "Han", making this syllable sound as it would in Quenya words (e.g. hanu "a male" or handa "intelligent"; apparently there is even a Quenya word han "beyond"). But later in the SW movies, the vowel of "Han" is inconsistently pronounced either with a long a as in English father or with the vowel heard in English cat, which is precisely the vowel to be avoided in Quenya. Linguistic consistency was never the, ahem, force of Star Wars. By the way, do you remember Endor, the green moon where George Lucas placed his reinvented teddy bears in the third movie? Guess what the Quenya word for "Middle-earth" is! Lucas would surely say that his intention was to pay tribute to Tolkien...



UPDATED NOTE: Now that Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring has appeared, I can quote examples from the soundtrack of this movie as well; most people interested in Tolkien's work will surely have seen it, and many are also going to buy it on video or DVD. Good examples of short Elvish a occur in the Sindarin name Caradhras "Redhorn" as pronounced by Christopher Lee ("Saruman") in the scene where his spying crows return to Isengard: "So, Gandalf, you try to lead them over Caradhras..." Lee also gets the short a's more or less right in a scene following shortly afterwards, when he stands on the top of Isengard reading a Quenya invocation: Nai yarvaxëa rasselya taltuva notto-carinnar... (but the last word sounds almost like cárinnar, the first vowel being long – after all, Chris Lee is not a native speaker of Quenya!)



An extra challenge for speakers of English is to pronounce -a as a full vowel at the end of words. Where English orthography has a final -a, it is normally pronounced like a schwa. Contrast the English and the Spanish pronunciation of the final vowel in a name like Sara; in Spanish, the English-style reduction or "blurring" of the -a does not take place. In one very early source, Tolkien actually stated that "Qenya", like English, turned final, unaccented -a into a schwa ("as in English drama", QL:9), but there is nothing to suggest that this idea was still valid decades later when he wrote the LotR. Indeed even the early source just referred to has it that there was one important dialect of "Qenya" where the weakening of final -a did not take place. So speakers should try to pronounce a full a in all positions: neither of the a's in a word like anna "gift" should be pronounced as in the English name Anna.



Long é is another Quenya sound that does not occur in contemporary English. The long e of English became long i (like Quenya í) centuries ago – though because of this descent it is still often spelt ee, as in see. Quenya é has the value of German eh as in Mehr. The pronunciation of ai in English air at least approaches é, but this is really a short e followed by a schwa. Tolkien notes that long é should be closer than short e (see LotR Appendix E), so just lengthening the vowel heard in English end will not be quite sufficient. The quality of the vowel should be about midway between the vowels heard in English end and English see, but it should be long like the latter: nén "water", ré "day", ména "region".



Short e may be pronounced as in English end. In Quenya this sound also occurs in final position. Since word-final e is usually silent in English orthography, Tolkien often used the spelling ë in this position – and throughout this course, this spelling is employed consistently. This is only to remind English readers that in Quenya, this letter is to be distinctly pronounced. But since word-final e never occurs in spoken English, some speakers tend to substitute i or ey (following English practice in the rare cases of a final orthographic "e" being sounded, as when Jesse is pronounced "jessi", or karate is pronounced "karatey"). Quenya e should have the value described above in all positions. It must NOT be pronounced i, nor must there be a y-like sound creeping after it: lómë "night", morë "black", tinwë "sparkle".



Long í is pronounced as in English machine, that same as "ee" in English see: the Quenya word sí ("now") is similar in sound. Other examples include nís "woman" and ríma "edge". This long í must be noticeably longer than short i, which may be pronounced like in English pit: Titta "tiny", imbë "between", vinya "new". In one early source, Tolkien himself quoted the word pit as an example of short "Qenya" i (QL:8). Later writings suggest that the quality of the vowel-sound should be like the i of machine, in English often spelt "ee" – start with this sound and shorten it. (Before unvoiced stops, as in feet, "ee" may be quite short also in English – just make sure there is a distinction of length between i and í.) Notice that i is never pronounced ai as in English fine = "fain". (Quenya finë "larch" has two syllables, the vowels being those heard in pit [ideally a little closer] and pet, respectively.) Of course, this also goes for final -i (usually a plural ending). If the student will forgive another Star Wars reference, George Lucas' Jedi may be "jedai" = "jed-eye", but Tolkien's Quendi are most definitely not "quendai". In Quenya, final -i should rather be pronounced as in Iraqi, Mississippi.



Long ó may be pronounced more or less as in English sore, but preferably a little tenser and "closer" (midway between the vowel-sounds of English sore and English "oo" as in soon): mól "slave", tó "wool", óma "voice". Short o may be pronounced as in English for (when accented), or as in box. The quality of the latter vowel may be just a little too open and A-like according to Tolkien's descriptions. Yet this is the pronunciation he himself used in most cases in the recording of him reading Namárië; it should perhaps be attributed to his English accent. Some words with o: rondo "cave", olos "dream", tolto "eight". Of course, Quenya o is never pronounced "ow" as in English so, also; a word like tolto must NOT come out as "tol-tow". Neither must o ever be reduced to a schwa or dropped altogether; be especially mindful of the ending -on, often found in masculine names (and also in plural genitives like Silmarillion; see later lessons). "English-style" pronunciation of a name like Sauron would result in what a baffled Elf might try to represent in writing as Sór'n (or at best Sóren). The final -on should sound rather like the first syllable of English online, with the vowel fully intact even though it is unaccented in Sauron. In the Jackson movie, the actors usually deliver a good pronunciation of this name; especially listen to how "Gandalf" and "Saruman" pronounce it. Good examples of short Elvish o also occur in the name Mordor as pronounced by the same two actors.



Long ú is the vowel of English brute, in English often spelt "oo" as in fool: Númen "west", cú "crescent", yúyo "both". It must be distinctly longer than short u, which is pronounced somewhat like the vowel of English put (NOT like in English cut). Ideally, Quenya short u should be a little more "rounded" than the vowel of put; it should be simply a shorter version of the long ú or "oo" described above: Cundu "prince", nuru "death", ulundo "monster". Notice that Quenya u is never pronounced "yu" as in English union; ulundo should not become "yulundo".



Speakers of English must be especially mindful of their vowels when a combination vowel + r occurs. In the combinations ar, or, many speakers of English have a tendency to lengthen the vowel even where it should be short (and many would also let the r drop out, especially when it is followed by another consonant). But in Quenya words like narda ("knot") or lorna ("asleep"), the vowel before the r must be short, as indicated by the absence of the accent mark. It is not permissible to let the pronunciation drift towards "ná(r)da", "ló(r)na", no matter how tempting this is to people used to English speech-habits.



Where the groups er, ir, ur occur (e.g. in words like sercë "blood", tirno "watcher", turma "shield"), speakers of English must take care NOT to pronounce the vowels after the fashion of English serve, girl, turn. (I once had an English teacher who described the vowel of "girl" as one of the ugliest sounds of the English language. She taught English at university level, so she should know – though perhaps she wasn't wholly serious...) Short e, i, u should sound just as described above, wholly irrespective of the following r. In LotR Appendix E, Tolkien noted that er, ir, ur should sound, not as in English fern, fir, fur, but rather like air, eer, oor (that is, like it would be natural for a speaker of English to pronounce orthographic "air, eer, oor" – however, it should be understood that this would only be an approximation of the ideal pronunciation). In the Peter Jackson movie, the actors struggle to pronounce the final syllable of the Quenya name Isildur correctly, with variable results. In the flash-back scene where Elrond (played by Hugo Weaving) leads Isildur into Mount Doom and urges him to destroy the Ring, Weaving's pronunciation of the name Isildur is very good – following Tolkien's guidelines to the letter.



Diphthongs: In addition to the "basic", unitary vowel-sounds discussed above (what linguists would call the monophthongs), we have the diphthongs – combinations of two basic vowels that are run together into one syllable, in many ways behaving like a unitary vowel for the purpose of word-building: The Quenya diphthongs are ai, au, eu, iu, oi, and ui.



¤ The diphthong ai is the same that is heard in English aisle. It is NOT like the one in English mail, though English orthographic "ai" usually represents the latter sound (can anyone think of other exceptions than aisle?) The first syllable of faila "just, generous" must not pronounced like the English word fail, since Quenya ai always has the sound of English I, eye: Aica "fell, terrible", caima "bed", aira "holy". Of course, the first syllable of the latter word sounds nothing like English air!



¤ The diphthong au is pronounced as in German Haus, or more or less as the "ow" of English cow: aulë "invention", laurëa "golden", taurë "forest". It is never sounded as in English caught, aura (in which words "au" is pronounced rather like Quenya ó). In his "Note on Pronunciation" appended to the Silmarillion, Christopher Tolkien notes that the first syllable of Sauron should be like English sour, not English sore. (However, the diphthong in sour is in British English followed by a schwa – a faint reminiscence of the otherwise silent final r. This schwa should not be pronounced in Sauron.)



¤ The diphthong eu does not occur in English, but it is not dissimilar to the "o" of English so. The only difference is that while the first part of the diphthong is a schwa in English, it should be a normal e (as in end) in Quenya. In particular, some British upper-class pronunciations of English "o" as in so come close to Quenya eu (but the American pronunciation does not). Quenya examples: leuca "snake", neuma "snare", peu "pair of lips". This diphthong is not very common.



¤ The diphthong iu may be sounded like yu in English yule, according to the usual Third Age Pronunciation. Tolkien imagined that originally, it had rather been a "falling" diphthong like the other Quenya diphthongs, stressed on the first rather than the last element (LotR Appendix E). However, the Third Age pronunciation would be equally "valid" also within the mythos, and for speakers of English it is easier to achieve. This diphthong is in any case very rare; in the Etymologies it is only attested in a handful of words (miulë "whining, mewing", piuta "spit", siulë "incitement" and the group tiuca "thick, fat", tiuco "thigh" and tiuya- "swell, grow fat" – a few more examples of iu could be quoted from Tolkien's early "Qenya" material).



¤ The diphthong oi is easy, corresponding to English "oi" or "oy" as in oil, toy: coirëa "living", soica "thirsty", oira "eternal".



¤ The diphthong ui Tolkien sometimes compared to the sound occurring in English ruin. This is a rather surprising example, for surely the word "ruin" is not normally pronounced as containing a diphthong, but as two distinct syllables: ru-in. Rather think "ooy" as in the English phrase too young: huinë "shadow", cuilë "life", uilë "(long, trailing) plant". Notice that the combination qui does not contain this diphthong; this is just a more visually pleasing way of spelling cwi (e.g. orqui "Orcs" = orcwi).



All other groups of vowels are not diphthongs, but simply vowels belonging to separate syllables, to be pronounced distinctly. In linguistic terms, vowels that are in direct contact without forming diphthongs are said to be in hiatus. Primitive Elvish apparently did not have such combinations, at least not in the middle of words: Tolkien had Fëanor concluding that "our fathers...in building words took the vowels and parted them with the consonants as walls" (VT39:10). But some consonants had been lost in Quenya, so that vowels that were originally so "parted" had come into direct contact (VT39:6). In Quenya we even have polysyllabic all-vowel words like Eä (a name of the universe) or oa ("away"). The most frequent combinations of vowels in hiatus are ea, eo, ie, io, oa; each vowel should be sounded "by itself". Tolkien often emphasizes this fact by adding diaereses or "dots" to one of the vowels, and in the consistent spelling here imposed on the material, we regularly write ëa (Eä), ëo (Eö), oë. Thus there is no excuse for such mistakes as pronouncing ëa as in English heart or please, or oë as in canoe or foetus. (Other distortions are apparently also possible: Cate Blanchett simply reduced Eärendil to "Erendil" the one time her version of Galadriel pronounces this name in the Jackson movie: "I give you the light of E[ä]rendil, our most beloved star..." Can we have an extra vowel for the Director's Cut, please?)



In this course we do not use the diaeresis in the combinations ie (except when final) and oa, but as indicated by the spelling ië and öa in certain Tolkien manuscripts, the vowels must be pronounced distinctly and not drawn together as in English piece (or tie), or English load. In accordance with this, Christopher Tolkien in the Note on Pronunciation that he appended to the Silmarillion indicates that the name Nienna is to be pronounced Ni-enna, not "Neena" as if ie were sounded as in English piece. (Immediately after the line in which she mangles the name Eärendil, Cate Blanchett pronounces the Quenya word namárië, "farewell". I'm glad to say that she did a better job with this word, getting the -ië more or less right!) Some words with vowels in hiatus: fëa "soul", lëo "shade", loëndë "year-middle" (the middle day of the year according to the Elvish calendar), coa "house", tië "path".



Consonants: Most Quenya consonants are easy to pronounce for people used to speaking a Western language. These points may be observed:



¤ C is always pronounced k, never s; indeed Tolkien does use the letter k rather than c in many sources. Celma "channel" or cirya "ship" must not come out as "selma", "sirya". (This goes for Sindarin spelling as well: When Celeborn is pronounced "Seleborn" in the Rankin/Bass animated version of LotR, it clearly shows that the moviemakers never made it to Appendix E.)



¤ In the groups hw, hy, hl, hr, the letter h is not to be pronounced separately. These are just digraphs denoting unitary consonants:



¤ What is spelt hl, hr was originally unvoiced l, r. That is, these sounds were pronounced without vibration in the vocal chords, resulting in what may be described as "whispered" versions of normal l, r. (If you can isolate the l of English please, you will have an unvoiced l – though in this case, it is just "incidentally" unvoiced because of the influence from the unvoiced plosive p immediately preceding it. English never has unvoiced l as an independent sound of speech, as Quenya originally did.) In Quenya, these sounds are quite rare; examples include hrívë "winter" and hlócë "serpent, dragon". However, Tolkien stated that by the Third Age, hr and hl had come to be pronounced as normal voiced r, l, though the spelling hl, hr apparently persisted in writing.



¤ What is spelt hw corresponds to English wh in dialects where this is still distinct from normal w (e.g., witch and which are audibly distinct words – American English, as well as northern British English, normally uphold this distinction, though it has been abandoned in the British Received Pronunciation). Put simply, hw is a (weak) version of the sound you make when you blow out a candle. Hw is not a very frequent sound in Quenya; this seems to be a quite complete list of the known words where it occurs: hwan "sponge, fungus", hwarin "crooked", hwarma "crossbar", hwermë "gesture-code", hwesta "breeze, breath, puff of air" (also as verb: hwesta- "to puff"), hwindë "eddy, whirlpool".



¤ What is spelt hy represents a sound that may occur in English, but that is not normally recognized as a distinct consonant in this language. Hy denotes what by a German term is often referred to as ich-Laut or "ich-sound", since it is exemplified by "ch" in the German word ich ("I"). To speakers of English it may sound much like sh (one imagines Kennedy training long and hard to avoid "Ish bin ein Berliner"). Still, as I said, a (weak) version of the sound in question may often be heard in English as well: In words like hew, huge, human, the h may be pronounced like an (obscure) hy. Cf. SD:418-419, where Tolkien states that in Quenya or "Avallonian", the sound hy is "approximately equivalent to...h in huge". In LotR Appendix E, Tolkien also pointed out that hy has the same relationship to y as hw (discussed above) has to normal w: one is unvoiced, the other voiced. So another way of arriving at hy is to start with the sound of y (as in you) and produce a voiceless, "whispered" variant of it. Once you have the sound pinned down, you only have to strengthen it; it should be pronounced with the same force as English sh: Hyarmen "south", hyalma "shell, conch", hyellë "glass". It seems that hy mostly occurs at the beginning of words; ahya- "change" is presently the sole known example of hy occurring between vowels in the middle of a word. However, h in the combination ht following certain vowels should also be pronounced like hy; see below. – In LotR Appendix E, Tolkien noted that speakers of Westron (the supposed "original language" of the Red Book, that Tolkien "translated" into English) often substituted the sound of sh for Quenya hy. Speakers of English who don't care about subtle phonological details may of course do the same, turning a word like hyalma into "shalma". This would be a pronunciation that existed also within the Middle-earth setting, though it was not quite like the proper Elvish pronunciation (and it does seem best to aim for the latter!) I guess many speakers of English would hardly be able to tell the difference, though. Incidentally, one can achieve a pretty good hy by starting from sh; just make sure that your tongue is not raised (you may press its tip against the lower teeth to be certain of that). If you try to pronounce sh with the tongue in this position, what comes out ought to sound like hy.



¤ Outside the groups hw, hy, hl, hr, the letter h does represent an independent sound, but it is pronounced somewhat differently in different positions. It seems that originally, Quenya h (at least where it comes from Primitive Elvish kh) was typically stronger than English h – that is, a "breath-h" as in high. In Fëanor's day it was apparently pronounced like ch in German ach or Scottish loch, or like Cyrillic X. In phonetic writing, this sound is represented as [x]. But later, at the beginning of words, this [x] was weakened and became a sound like English h. In LotR Appendix E, Tolkien informs us that the Tengwa letter for [x] was originally called harma; naturally this Tengwa was so called because the initial h of this word was an example of the sound the letter denoted, [x]. But when [x] in this position eventually turned into an English-style h, the Tengwa was renamed aha, for in the middle of words, [x] was not weakened. So we can extract these rules: at the beginning of words (before a vowel), the letter h is to be pronounced like English h. But in the middle of words, h is to be pronounced [x]: as between vowels in aha "wrath", and likewise before t in words like pahta "closed", ohta "war", nuhta- "to stunt".



In one late source, Tolkien noted that "in Quenya and Telerin medial [x] eventually became h also in most cases" (VT41:9). It may therefore be permissible to pronounce even words like aha with an English-style breath-h. But the group ht must probably always be pronounced [xt]; the weaker breath-h would be barely audible in this position.



This rule needs one modification. Likely, h before t was originally pronounced [x] in all cases. Following any of the vowels a, o, and u, this pronunciation persisted, as in the examples pahta, ohta, nuhta- above. But following the vowels i and e, the original [x] turned into a sound similar to German ich-Laut (German may indeed be Tolkien's inspiration for this particular development in Quenya phonology). Thus in words like ehtë "spear" or rihta- "to jerk", h should be pronounced just like the hy described above. Again, Tolkien imagined that human (mortal) speakers of Westron had a tendency to substitute a sound like English sh and say "eshtë", "rishta" instead.



¤ Quenya l "represents more or less the sound of English initial l, as in let" (LotR Appendix E). Now why did Tolkien specify that Quenya l is to sound like an initial English l (regardless of its position in a Quenya word)? As Tolkien was well aware, British English l is pronounced somewhat differently in different positions. An initial l, as in let, is pronounced as a so-called "clear" l – and this is the kind of l that should be used in all positions in Quenya (as is also the case in other languages, like German). But when l is not initial, English in most cases employs a so-called "dark" l, which differs from the the "clear" l in that the "dark" variant is pronounced by arching the back of the tongue upwards: Contrast the pronunciation of l in two words like let (clear l) and fill (dark l). Compared to the "clear" l, the "dark" l sounds lower pitched, but this sound is to be avoided in Quenya. This may be something of a problem to Americans, since their L's tend to be rather "dark" in all positions, even initially (at least as perceived by European ears). – Perfectionists should also observe another detail: In Letters:425, Tolkien mentioned l among the Quenya "dentals", sc. sounds that are pronounced with the tip of the tongue touching the (upper) teeth. English normally uses an alveolar l instead, that is, a sound pronounced with the tip of the tongue further back, above the teeth rather than touching them. This again makes for a somewhat "darker" sound. When pronouncing a Quenya l, one should make sure that that the tip of the tongue touches the teeth.



¤ Quenya n is like English n. Usually this sound had been n all along, but in some cases it represents older ng as in English king, ding (notice that there is no distinct g to be heard, despite the spelling). Unlike English, Quenya could also have this sound at the beginning of words. As mentioned in the discussion of spelling conventions, Tolkien sometimes used the letter ñ to represent this older ng, e.g. Ñoldor. In his letters, Tolkien in one case added a footnote to the word Noldor (so spelt), informing the recipient that the initial N was to be pronounced "ng as in ding" (Letters:176). This would however be the "archaic" pronunciation; people speaking Quenya in Frodo's day would simply say Noldor: LotR Appendix E clearly indicates that by the Third Age, initial ñ had come to be pronounced like a normal n, and therefore the Elvish letter for ñ "has been transcribed n". We have adopted the same system here, so the letter n in nearly all cases represents normal English n, regardless of its phonological history in Quenya. I say "in nearly all cases" because n is still pronounced ñ before c (= k), g and qu. This is not much of a problem, for it is natural for speakers of English and many other languages to use this pronunciation anyway. In a word like anca "jaw" the cluster nc is therefore pronounced like "nk" in English tank, and in a word like anga "iron" the ng should be sounded like "ng" in English finger. Notice that Quenya ng occurring in the middle of words should always be pronounced with an audible g (this also goes for the group ngw, as in tengwa "letter"). It is NOT just the simple ñ described above, the "ng" of English king, with no distinct g. (We are of course talking about a hard g here; Quenya ng must never be pronounced "nj" as in English angel, but always as in finger. The sound of "soft" g as in English gin does not occur in Quenya.)



¤ Quenya r "represents a trilled r in all positions; the sound was not lost before consonants (as in [British] English part)" (LotR Appendix E). English r is generally much too weak for Quenya. Its weakness is precisely the reason why it tends to drop out before consonants and at the end of words (except where the next word happens to begin in a vowel – and by analogy, some speakers of English even introduce an R-sound where a word that properly should end in a vowel comes before a word beginning in a vowel. That is when vanilla ice starts coming out as "vanillar ice" – or, if you like, "vanilla rice"! Of course, this must be avoided in Quenya.) Quenya r should be trilled, as in Spanish, Italian, Russian etc., or for that matter as in Scottish English. Certain subtleties of Tengwar spelling suggests that in Quenya, r was somewhat weaker immediately in front of consonants (as opposed to vowels) and at the end of words. Nonetheless, it should be a properly trilled, wholly distinct sound even in these positions: Parma "book", erdë "seed", tasar "willow", Eldar "Elves". The vowel in front of r should not be lengthened or otherwise affected. In the Jackson movie, the actors portraying Gandalf and Saruman normally pronounce the name Mordor correctly, with trilled r's and short vowels (whereas Elijah Wood's "Frodo" invariably says Módó with no trace of any r's!) In the movie, Mordor is Sindarin for Black Land, but by its form and pronunciation, the word could just as well be Quenya mordor = "shadows" or "stains" (the plural form of mordo).



The uvular r that is common in languages like French and German should be avoided in Quenya, for LotR Appendix E states that this was "a sound which the Eldar found distasteful" (it is even suggested that this was how the Orcs pronounced R!)



¤ The consonant s should always be unvoiced, "as in English so, geese" (LotR Appendix E). In English, s is often voiced to z, even though orthography may still show "s". For instance, though the s of English house is unvoiced, it becomes voiced in the plural form houses (for this reason, Tolkien noted that he would have liked the spelling houzes better – see PM:24). When pronouncing Quenya, one should be careful not to add voice to s, turning it into z: Asar "festival", olos "dream", nausë "imagination". Third Age Exilic Quenya did not possess the sound z at all. (Tolkien did imagine that z had occurred at an earlier stage, but it had later turned into r, merging with original r. For instance, UT:396 indicates that the plural of olos "dream" was at one stage olozi, but later it became olori.) Where it occurs between vowels, s often represents earlier þ (more or less = th as in thin); the words asar and nausë mentioned above represent older aþar and nauþë and were so spelt in Tengwar orthography.



¤ On v and w: We must assume that v and w are properly pronounced as in English vine and wine, respectively (but initial nw is strictly not n + w but simply a so-called labialized n; see below). There are some unclear points here, though. LotR Appendix E seems to indicate that in Third Age Quenya, initial w had come to be pronounced v: it is said that the name of the Tengwa letter vilya had earlier been wilya. Likewise, Tolkien indicated that the word véra ("personal, private, own") had been wéra in what he called "Old Quenya" (PM:340). In the Etymologies, the evidence is somewhat divergent. Sometimes Tolkien has primitive stems in W- yield Quenya words in v-, as when the stem WAN yields Quenya vanya- "go, depart, disappear". Sometimes he lists double forms, as when the stem WÂ (or WAWA, WAIWA) yields Quenya vaiwa and waiwa, both meaning "wind". Under the stem WAY Tolkien listed a word for "envelope" as "w- vaia", evidently indicating a double form waia and vaia (all of these examples are found in LR:397). In LR:398, there are further double forms, but in the case of the verb vilin ("I fly") from the stem WIL, Tolkien curiously changed it to wilin. Perhaps he suddenly decided to go for the "Old Quenya" spelling rather than actually rejecting one in favour of the other?



The weight of the evidence seems to be that at the beginning of words, w- had come to be pronounced as normal v- by the Third Age; where Tolkien listed double forms in w- and v-, the former is apparently to be taken as the more archaic form. However, I have not regularized the spelling on this point, though where Tolkien himself used or listed a form in v- rather than w- (either alone or as an alternative to w-), I will use the form in v- in this course. (This also goes for vilin!) It is possible, though, that according to the Third Age pronunciation all initial w's should be sounded as v, the original distinction between initial v and w having been lost in the spoken language. It is unclear whether or not Tolkien meant that this distinction was consistently upheld in Tengwar orthography (as when this writing upheld the distinction between þ and s even after both had come to be pronounced s). If so, the letter called (wilya >) vilya was still used for v representing older w, while another letter (vala) was used for v that had been v all along. – Other than at the beginning of words, the distinction between v and w was upheld even in the Third Age. In the case of the groups lw and lv the distinction could even be emphasized by altering the pronunciation of the latter: "For lv, not for lw, many speakers, especially Elves, used lb" (LotR Appendix E). Hence a word like elvëa "starlike" would often be pronounced "elbëa", and it might also be so written in Tengwar orthography. Though frequent, this would seem to be a non-standard pronunciation, and the spellings employed by Tolkien usually indicates the pronunciation "lv". Cf. for instance Celvar (or "Kelvar", meaning animals) rather than Celbar in the speeches of Yavanna and Manwë in the Silmarillion, chapter 2. In PM:340 Tolkien quotes a Quenya word for "branch" as olba rather than olva, though.



¤ The letter y "is only used as a consonant, as y in E[nglish] Yes": Tolkien singled this out as one of the few major departures from Latin spelling in the spelling conventions he used for Quenya (Letters:176). The vowel y, like German ü or French "u" as in lune, does not occur in Quenya (though it is found in Sindarin).

Lesson One - The Sounds of Quenya
12:21 Aug 16 2005
Times Read: 627








In Quenya, the basic vowels are a, e, i, o, u (short and long). They may also be combined into diphthongs, groups of two basic vowels pronounced together as one syllable: There are three diphthongs in -i (ai, oi, ui) and three in -u (au, eu, iu, though the diphthongs eu and iu are quite rare). The consonants of Third Age Quenya may be listed as c (= k), d, f, g, gw, h, hy, hw, l, ly, m, n, nw, ny, p, qu, r, ry, s, t, ty, v, y and w (this listing is not wholly uncontroversial; the consonant system of Quenya can be plausibly analyzed in more than one way). In Elvish writing, the Tengwar orthography also upholds the distinction between some consonants that by the Third Age had come to be pronounced alike and thus merged altogether (þ merging with s, while initial ñ fell together with n – see the discussion of spelling conventions). In the transcription and spelling employed in this course, the former presence of "lost" distinct consonants is reflected in two cases only: hl and hr, that were originally unvoiced l and r, but later they merged with normal l, r (and are therefore not included on the list of Third Age Quenya consonants above). Thus we will spell, say, hrívë ("winter") in this way despite the fact that Tolkien imagined the typical Third Age pronunciation to be simply "rívë" (with a normal r).



Though the consonants hy, gw, hw, ly, nw, ny, ry, ty, and qu (and hr, hl) must here be written as two letters (as digraphs), they should evidently be taken as unitary sounds: Their pronunciation will be discussed in greater detail below. The digraphs in -w represent labialized consonants, while the digraphs in -y stand for palatalized consonants; again, see below for further discussion of these terms. It should be understood that qu is simply an aesthetic way of spelling what would otherwise be represented as cw (most people will agree that Quenya looks better than Cwenya), so qu, like nw, is a labialized consonant. When counting syllables one must remember that there is no actual vowel u in qu; "u" here stands for w. A word like alqua ("swan") thus has only two syllables: al-qua (= al-cwa). One must not think "al-qu-a" and conclude that there are actually three syllables. In Tengwar writing, qu is denoted by a single letter, and in most early sources, Tolkien also used the single letter q to represent it.



Double consonants: Some consonants also occur in long or double versions; double vs. single consonants may be compared to long vs. short vowels. The "obvious" cases, sc. the double consonants directly represented in orthography, are cc, ll, mm, nn, pp, rr, ss and tt (e.g. ecco "spear", colla "cloak", lamma "sound", anna "gift", lappa "hem of robe", yarra- "to growl", essë "name", atta "two"). The group pp is very rare, only attested in material far predating the LotR. In the Note on Pronunciation appended to the Silmarillion, Christopher Tolkien noted: "Consonants written twice are pronounced long, thus Yavanna has the long n heard in English unnamed, penknife, not the short n in unaimed, penny." Words like ana "towards" vs. anna "gift", tyelë "ceases" vs. tyellë "grade", ata "again" vs. atta "two" should be audibly distinct. – It is possible that some of the consonants written as digraphs must also be counted as double consonants when they occur between vowels; e.g. ny = long or double palatalized n (more on this below).



Consonant clusters (vs. single consonants): It is difficult to pronounce many sequential consonants, so the languages of the word generally confine themselves to relatively small groups (or "clusters") of consonants. The most typical word, from just about any language, is a series of vowels and consonants (single ones or relatively short consonant clusters) alternating – the "core" of each syllable usually being a vowel. Tolkien's Quenya is no exception; this language actually has quite restrictive rules for how consonants and vowels can be combined into syllables and longer words. Even so, consonant clusters are quite common, but they are not distributed as "freely" as in English. While English and for that matter Sindarin allow consonant clusters at the beginning of words, Quenya does not (SD:417-418). A word like scream, commencing with a cluster of no less than three consonants, would be quite impossible in Quenya. Tolkien noted that the name that the "Woses" or Wild Men had for themselves, Drughu, was adapted to Quenya as Rú (UT:385). Quenya could not preserve the initial cluster dr- of the original form of this loan-word (even apart from the fact that Quenya could not have d in this position). Quenya does allow a limited number of consonant clusters medially, between vowels in the middle of words; among "frequent" of "favoured" clusters Tolkien cited ld, mb, mp, nc, nd, ng, ngw, nqu, nt, ps, ts and x (for cs). Hence we have such typical Quenya-style words as Elda "Elf", lambë "tongue", tumpo "hump", ranco "arm" etc. Finally, at the end of words, only five single consonants may occur: only -l, -n, -r, -s, or -t is permitted in this position (Letters:425; however, most Quenya words end in a vowel). Consonant clusters or double consonants are not normally found at the end of words, though they may occur if a final vowel drops out (is elided) because the next word begins in the same or a similar vowel. Hence in LotR we have a "final" nn in the phrase lúmenn' omentielvo ("on the hour of our meeting"), but only because this is reduced from lúmenna omentielvo (this full form occurring in WJ:367 and Letters:424). The only genuine consonant cluster occurring at the end of a word seems to be nt used a specific grammatical ending (dual dative, to be discussed in later lessons) – e.g. ciryant "for a couple of ships", formed from cirya "ship". Tolkien's earliest "Qenya" experiments, as recorded in the Qenya Lexicon of 1915, were more liberal in this respect. "Qenya" allowed more final consonants and even final consonant clusters, but as LotR-style Quenya evolved in Tolkien's notes, he tightened up the phonology. Thus he gave the language a more clearly defined flavour.

Lesson One - Basic Terms
12:14 Aug 16 2005
Times Read: 628








Let us get some basic terms into place (people with linguistic training need not spend much time on this section). The sounds of any language can be divided into two broad categories, vowels and consonants. The vowels are sounds made by letting the air stream "freely" through the mouth: Different vowels are produced by modifying the position of the tongue and the lips, but the stream of air is not directly obstructed. If one draws out various vowels, pronouncing aaaaa... or eeeee... or ooooo..., it is easy to feel how the air streams quite unhindered though the mouth: One merely configures the tongue and lips to "shape" the desired sound. Vowels can be more or less "open" or "closed": You only have to notice the position of the tongue and lower jaw when pronouncing aaah... as contrasted with their position when you pronounce ooooh... to understand what is meant by this. The vowel a (as in English part) is the most open, while the vowel u (as in English rude) is the most closed. Other vowels fall between. Vowels can also be more or less "rounded", mainly depending on the position of the lips; the vowel u (as just described) is said to be rounded because it is pronounced with the lips pouted. A vowel like o (as in English sore) is actually pronounced much like the a of part, but o is rounded and a is not – making the vowels audibly distinct.



When pronouncing vowels, the stream of air is only modified (by means of devices like the ones just described). It is never actually "hindered". In the case of the consonants, the air is however more actively obstructed. Thus, Tolkien can inform us that one early Elvish term for consonant was tapta tengwë or just tapta, meaning "impeded element" or "impeded one" (VT39:7). In the most "extreme" cases the stream of air may even be completely halted for a moment: This is easily perceived in the case of a consonant like p, which is pronounced by bringing the lips into contact, momentarily cutting off the stream of air from the lungs and allowing a pressure to build up inside the mouth. Then the lips are suddenly parted again, releasing the air in a small explosion – and this explosion constitutes a p. Such plosive consonants include t, p, k and their counterparts d, b, g (sc. hard g as in gold, not as in gin). They are all formed by halting and then suddenly releasing the air various places in the mouth. Instead of halting the air completely one may also let it "fizzle through" a small opening, as when f is pronounced by forcing the air out between the lower lip and the upper teeth; such "friction" sounds are called fricatives (or spirants) and include consonants like f, th, v. And there are yet other options on how to manipulate the stream of air, such as rerouting it through the nose to produce nasal consonants like n or m.



The concept of voicing should also be understood. Humans (and, it would seem, Elves) come with a kind of buzzing device installed in their throats, namely the vocal chords. By making the vocal chords vibrate, one may add "voice" to the stream of air before it enters the speech organs proper. The presence or lack of such voicing is what distinguishes sounds like v vs. f. If one draws out a sound like ffff...and suddenly turns it into vvvv... instead, one will feel the "buzzer" in the throat kicking in (put a finger on your glottis – what in men is called the "Adam's apple", less protuberant in women – and you will actually feel the vibration of the vocal chords). In principle, the device of voicing could be used to double the number of sounds we are able to produce, since they could all be pronounced either with vibration in the vocal chords (as voiced sounds) or without such vibration (as unvoiced sounds). In practice, most of the sounds of speech do not appear in unvoiced versions. Many sounds would barely be perceptible without the voicing (n, for instance, would be reduced to little more than a weak snort). Normally all vowels are voiced as well, certainly so in Quenya (though in Japanese, vowels may lose their voicing in certain environments). But I have already referred to d, b, g as the "counterparts" of t, p, k; they are counterparts in the sense that the former are voiced and the latter are not. One characteristic feature of Quenya (at least the Noldorin dialect) is the very limited distribution of the voiced plosives d, b, g; they occur solely in the middle of words, and then only as part of the consonant clusters nd/ld/rd, mb, and ng. Some speakers also pronounced lb instead of lv. (Possibly Tolkien imagined different rules for the poorly attested Vanyarin dialect of Quenya: The Silmarillion refers to a lament called Aldudénië made by a Vanyarin Elf; this word has puzzled researchers since the middle d occurs in a position that would be quite impossible in Noldorin Quenya.)



Syllables: Made up of vowels and consonants, speech is not an undifferentiated outburst of sound. Rather it is perceived to be organized into rhythmic units called syllables. The shortest possible words are necessarily monosyllabic, having only one syllable – like English from or its Quenya equivalent ho. Words of more than one syllable, polysyllabic ones, form longer strings of rhythmic "beats". A word like faster has two syllables (fas-ter), a word like wonderful has three (won-der-ful), a word like geography has four (ge-og-ra-phy), and so on – though obviously we can't go much further before the words would be felt to be impractically long and difficult to pronounce. Some oriental languages, like Vietnamese, show a great preference for monosyllabic words. But as is evident from the English examples just quoted, European languages often employ longer words, and Tolkien's Quenya makes extensive use of big mouthfuls (as does Finnish). Consider words like Ainulindalë or Silmarillion (five syllables: ai-nu-lin-da-lë, sil-ma-ril-li-on). An uninflected Quenya word typically has two or three syllables, and this number is often increased by adding inflectional endings, or by compounding.

Lesson Six - Past Tense
12:12 Aug 16 2005
Times Read: 629








The previous lesson discussed the Quenya present tense, which is typically used to describe an on-going present action. However, Quenya has different tenses covering the entire trinity of past, present and future, and when recounting past events one will normally use the past tense.



In English, very many past tenses are formed by means of the ending -ed, e.g. filled as the past tense of the verb fill. In Quenya, most past tense forms are likewise formed by means of an ending added to the verbal stem. As far as we know, all past tense verbs end in the vowel -ë (though further endings, such as the plural ending -r that is used in the case of a plural subject, may of course be added after this vowel). In many cases, this vowel -ë is part of the ending -në, that seems to be the most general past tense ending in Quenya.



As discussed in the previous lesson, most Quenya verbs are A-stems, meaning that they end in the vowel -a. The past tenses of these verbs are typically formed simply by adding the ending -në. For instance, the Etymologies mention a verb orta- "raise" (see the entry ORO), and in Namárië in LotR its past tense is seen to be ortanë. (The simplest translation of ortanë is of course "raised"; the somewhat free rendering in LotR employs the translation "has uplifted" instead, but Tolkien's interlinear translation in RGEO:67 reads "lifted up" – which is merely an alternative wording of "raised".) Other examples from Tolkien's notes:



ora- "urge", past tense oranë "urged" (VT41:13, 18)

hehta- "exclude", past tense hehtanë "excluded" (WJ:365)

ulya- "pour", past tense ulyanë "poured" (Etym, entry ULU)

sinta- "fade", past tense sintanë "faded" (Etym, entry THIN)



We may add the verb ahyanë "changed" (or "did change"), only attested like this in the past tense, as part of the question manen lambë Quendion ahyanë[?] "how did the language of the Elves change?" (PM:395). The verb "change" would seem to be ahya-.



Regarding the verb ava- (apparently meaning "refuse, forbid"), Tolkien noted that its past tense avanë "revealed that it was not in origin a 'strong' or basic verbal stem". The latter seems to be more or less the same as a primary verb. He called avanë a "weak" past tense form (WJ:370). That probably goes for all the past tenses so far discussed. (What Tolkien would call a "strong" past tense is not quite clear. Perhaps he would use this term of the past tenses formed by means of nasal-infixion – see below.)



We must also consider the "basic" or "primary", ending-less verbs, verbs that unlike the A-stems do not have a final vowel: verbs like sil- "to shine", tir- "to watch", mat- "to eat".



It seems that the ending -në can be used to form the past tense of some primary verbs as well. Tolkien mentioned tirnë as the past tense of the verb tir- "to watch" (Etym, entry TIR), and he also quoted tamnë as the past tense of the verb tam- "to tap" (Etym, entry TAM). In these cases, adding -në to the verbal stems in question does not produce impossible consonant clusters: Both rn and mn are permitted by Quenya phonology. For this reason, the ending -në can probably also be added to verbal stems ending in -n, since double nn is likewise a wholly acceptable combination in Quenya. For instance, the past tense of the verb cen- "to see" is presumably cennë "saw", though we have no attested example of the past tense of a verb of this shape.



But whenever the stem of a basic verb ends in any consonant other than just -m, -n, or -r, simply adding the ending -në would produce consonant clusters that Quenya cannot have. The past tense forms of verbs like mat- "eat", top- "cover" or tac- "fasten" cannot be **matnë, **topnë, **tacnë, for clusters like tn, pn, cn are not found in the language. So what happens?



The difficult way of describing what occurs is to say that the n of the ending -në is replaced by nasal-infixion intruding before the last consonant of the verbal stem. What is "infixion"? We have already mentioned suffixes, elements added at the end of a word (like the plural ending -r, added to the noun Elda in its plural form Eldar), and prefixes, elements added at the beginning of a word (like the superlative prefix an-, added to the adjective calima "bright" in its superlative form ancalima "brightest"). If you want to add something to a word, there are only so many places you can fit it in; if it is not to be prefixed or suffixed, the final option is to infix it, that is, jam it into the word. For instance, the verb mat- "to eat" has the past tense mantë "ate" (VT39:7), an infixed n turning up before the final consonant of the verbal stem (t becoming nt). Similarly, the verb hat- "break asunder" has the past tense hantë (Etym, entry SKAT).



Before the consonant p, the infix takes the form m rather than n, so that the past tense of top- "to cover" is tompë (Etym, entry TOP). Before c, the infix appears as n (or actually ñ, see below), so that the past tense of tac- "to fasten" is tancë (Etym, entry TAK). The various forms of the infix – n, m or ñ, depending on the environment – are all nasals, sounds pronounced by making the stream of air from the lungs go out through the nose rather than the mouth. Hence nasal-infixion is a fitting term for this phonological process.



As I said, that was the difficult way of stating what happens. Put more simply: if adding the past tense ending -në to a primary verb would result in any of the impossible clusters tn, cn, pn, the n and the consonant before it switch places. Tn and cn simply become nt and nc; what would be np changes to mp to ease pronunciation. (Actually what would be nc similarly changes to ñc, using ñ for ng as in king as Tolkien sometimes did – but according to the spelling conventions here employed, ñc is represented simply as nc.) Hence:



mat- "eat", past tense (**matnë >) mantë "ate"

top- "cover", past tense (**topnë > **tonpë >) tompë "covered"

tac- "fasten", past tense (**tacnë >) tancë "fastened"



This, at least, is an easy way to imagine it for pedagogical purposes. We cannot know for certain whether Tolkien imagined this to be the actual development – a form something like matnë actually occurring at an earlier stage, but later becoming mantë by swapping around the consonants t and n. The linguistic term for such transposing of two sounds is metathesis, and there are other examples of metathesized consonants in the imaginary evolution of Tolkien's languages (see for instance the Etymologies, entry KEL-). However, some clues suggest that Tolkien imagined these past tenses to reflect "genuine" nasal-infixion occurring already in primitive Elvish, not merely a later transposition of consonants. After all, he had one of his characters observe that "nasal-infixion is of considerable importance in Avallonian" (SD:433; Avallonian is another term for Quenya). But this is an academic question.



Primary verbs with -l as their final consonant must be given special attention. The verb vil- "to fly" is said to have the past tense villë (Etym, entry WIL). This double ll probably represents some combination of l and n. Perhaps villë is meant to represent older wilnë with the normal past tense ending (notice that in this case, v comes from older w: root WIL), the group ln turning into ll in Quenya. However, other examples suggest that older ln would rather produce Quenya ld. It may well be that villë is meant to represent older winlë, that is, a nasal-infixed variant of the verb wil- (since nl also became ll in Quenya; for instance, the noun nellë "brook" is said to come from older nen-le: Etym, entry NEN). Whatever development Tolkien may have imagined, primary verbs with l as their final consonant seem to form their past tense form by adding -lë.



NOTE: In Telerin, the sister language of Quenya in the Blessed Realm, a verb formed from a root DEL ("go") is said to have the past tense delle: WJ:364. As pointed out by Ales Bican, this form probably descends from older denle (with nasal-infixion). If it descended from delne, it would likely have remained unchanged in Telerin, since the cluster ln is permitted in this language (cf. a Telerin word like elni "stars", WJ:362). This observation supports the view that past tenses with nasal-infixion did occur already in Primitive Elvish.



The system set out above is what I shall consider the "regular" way of forming the past tense of a verb in Quenya. That is, as long as a verb conforms with this system, I will not explicitly list its past tense when I first mention it. All the past tenses in the exercises below are constructed according to this system, so your task this time is to internalize the rules above. Some irregular forms will be discussed in later lessons, but even so, we will here survey certain "alternative" past tense formations (contrasting them with the more regular forms may actually be helpful in memorizing the normal system – but the student is not expected to memorize this survey as such). So do skim through as much as you can take of the stuff below, and proceed to the exercises when you've had enough.



The past tense of primary verbs with -r as their final consonant is relatively well-attested: Attested examples include car- "make, do", pa.t. carnë (Etym, entry KAR), tir- "watch", pa.t. tirnë (Etym, entry TIR) and tur- "govern", pa.t. turnë (Etym, entry TUR). So above we set out the rule that verbs of this shape have past tense forms that are constructed by adding the suffix -në. But a few verbs behave quite differently. The past tense of the verb rer- "sow" is not **rernë as we might expect, but rendë: See Etym, entry RED. The reason for this is precisely the fact that the original root-word was RED rather than **RER. Thus the verb rer- appeared as red- at an earlier stage, and then the past tense rendë is actually "regular" enough: it is simply formed from red- by means of nasal-infixion + the ending -ë (just like such a regular verb as quet- "say" has the pa.t. quentë). What slightly complicates matters is that in Quenya, original d only survived as part of the clusters ld, nd, and rd; in all other positions it was changed, and following a vowel it normally became r. Hence red- turned into rer-, while the past tense rendë remained unscathed by the phonological changes. In this perspective, the verb is strictly speaking not "irregular" at all; it just behaves differently because it has a special history – and this goes for very many of the "irregularities" in Quenya: As observed by his son, Tolkien's linguistic creations "imagine language not as 'pure structure', without 'before' or 'after', but as growth, in time" (LR:342). Tolkien clearly liked leaving in various testimonials to this imaginary age-long "growth".



We don't know very many verbs in -r that should have past tenses in -ndë because of their special history. From the Etymologies we must presumably include the verbs hyar- "cleave" and ser- "rest" (since these come from roots SYAD and SED, see the relevant entries in Etym – but Tolkien did not actually mention the past tense forms hyandë and sendë). In a post-LotR source we have a verb nir- "press, thrust, force"; again no past tense form has been published, but since the stem is given as NID it should presumably be nindë rather than nirnë (VT41:17). More attested examples could be quoted from early "Qenya" material, but these writings do not have full authority as regards LotR-style Quenya. For instance, the 1915 Qenya Lexicon seems to include the verb nyar- "tell, relate" in this category (past tense nyandë, QL:68). But in later material, Tolkien derived this verb from a root NAR (entry NAR2 in Etym) rather than NAD, so now its past tense would presumably be regular (nyarnë).



Some primary verbs are also seen to use a past tense formation that dispenses with any nasal sounds. The verb does receive the ending -ë, the vowel displayed by all past-tense forms, but instead of adding a nasal sound (infixed or as part of the ending -në), the stem-vowel of the verb is lengthened. For instance, the past tense of the verb lav- "lick" is seen to be lávë (attested in Namárië as part of the verb undulávë "down-licked", that is, "covered"). Likewise, the past tense of the negative verb um- "not do" or "not be" is said to be úmë (Etym, entry UGU/UMU; we will return to this peculiar verb in Lesson Nine). This past tense formation is quite common in the early Qenya Lexicon, and it also turns up in relatively late (but still pre-LotR) sources. Fíriel's Song of ca. 1936 agrees with the 1915 Lexicon that the past tense of the verb car- "make, do" is cárë (QL:45, LR:72; the spelling used in the sources is káre). However, according to the Etymologies (entry KAR), the past tense is carnë – and that is the form we will use here: The Etymologies is, at least in part, slightly younger than Firiel's Song. Following the pattern of cárë, some pre-LotR sources give túlë as the past tense of the verb tul- "come" (LR:47, SD:246), but villë as the past tense of vil- in the Etymologies suggests that the past tense "came" could just as well be tullë (representing older tulne or tunle) instead.



It might seem that Tolkien eventually decided to limit the use of the past tense formation represented by túlë and cárë, though it was never wholly abandoned, as the form undulávë in Namárië in LotR demonstrates. We might actually have expected the past tense of lav- "lick" to be **lambë rather than lávë. A past tense form lambë would be constructed by nasal-infixion of the original root-word LAB (itself listed in Etym): In Quenya, original b normally became v following a vowel, but b persisted unchanged in the group mb. The Qenya Lexicon actually lists ambë as the past tense of a verb av- "depart" (QL:33); this may be an example of this phenomenon. However, **lambë as the past tense of lav- would clash with the noun lambë "tongue, language"; perhaps this is why Tolkien decided to go for the irregular formation lávë instead. Or should we generalize from lav- and let all Quenya primary verbs in -v form their past tense after the pattern of lávë?



Luckily, these verbs are not very numerous. There is a distinct verb lav- meaning "yield, allow, grant" (root DAB, see Etym), possibly a verb tuv- "find" (verbal stem isolated from a longer form), plus tyav- as the verb "taste" (see entry KYAB in Etym). Should the past tense "tasted" be tyambë or tyávë? The latter past tense form is actually attested in the Qenya Lexicon (p. 49), but since the QL is seen to use this formation quite liberally compared to later Quenya, we cannot be sure that the information is valid for the later stages of Tolkien's conception. (Tyávë is attested in a post-LotR source as a noun "taste"; whether this argues against the same form being used as a past tense "tasted" is unclear. In the 1915 Lexicon, Tolkien did have similar-sounding nouns and verbal tenses coexisting; see QL:49, entry KUMU.)



There are some curious cases where even longer, derived verbs (A-stems) drop their ending and have lávë-style past tenses derived directly from the ending-less root. One early example is the verb serta- "tie", past tense sérë (QL:83) rather than **sertanë as we might expect. These formations are far from uncommon in the 1915 Lexicon, but the idea was not wholly obsolete in later Quenya either: The Etymologies of the mid-thirties records that the verb onta- "beget, create" has two possible past tenses: beside the regular form ontanë we also have the irregular form ónë (Etym, entry ONO).



The simplest A-stems, those that add the short ending -a to the root (and not a longer ending like -ta or -ya), may also drop this ending in some past tense formations. Above we quoted the QL form tyávë as an attested past tense of the verb tyav- "taste", but in the 1915 Lexicon, the verb "taste" is actually given as an A-stem tyava-: It is not a primary verb tyav- as it becomes in later sources (QL:49 vs. Etym, entry KYAB). Within the later system, we would expect an A-stem tyava- to have the past tense tyavanë, but the validity of either form in LotR-style Quenya is highly questionable. More commonly, the simplest A-stem verbs have past tenses that are "regular" enough – if you pretend that the final -a does not exist! Above we quoted oranë as an example of the regular past tense of a simple A-stem verb (ora- "urge"), but immediately after writing oranë, Tolkien actually added ornë as a parenthetic alternative (VT41:13). Of course, ornë would be a perfectly regular form if it were the past tense of a primary verb **or- (cf. for instance tur- "govern", pa.t. turnë). In effect, ora- may behave as a primary verb in the past tense, discarding its ending and jumping over into another class. The earliest material has examples of the same phenomenon: In the QL, the past tense forms of the verbs papa- "tremble" and pata- "rap, tap" are given as pampë, pantë (p. 72), not **papanë, **patanë as we would expect according to the "regular" system. The nasal-infixed past tense forms would be perfectly "regular" if we assume that in the past tense, the simple A-stem verbs papa- and pata- are masquerading as primary verbs **pap-, **pat-. Thus we cannot be certain whether the past tense of the verb mapa- "grasp, seize" should be mapanë or mampë; writers have used both. Since Tolkien seems to imply that the past tense of ora- can be both oranë and ornë, perhaps both are permissible.



NOTE: In QL:59, Tolkien actually listed the past tense of mapa- as nampë (sic!) In the 1915 scenario, there were two variant roots, MAPA and NAPA, that shared the past tense nampë. Do we dare to assume that this idea was still valid decades later? The verb mapa- is listed in the Etymologies, but if Tolkien had still imagined its past tense to be as irregular as nampë, I tend to think that it would have been explicitly mentioned in Etym as well. Furthermore, in Etym there is no trace of the alternative root NAPA; we only find MAP (LR:371) corresponding to MAPA in the QL. But on the other hand, the form nampë is attested, so if you like it better than the unattested forms mapanë or mampë, feel free to use it.



The verb lala- "laugh" is another example of one of the simplest A-stems. It may have the past tense lalanë, but it is also possible that it should behave as a primary verb in the past tense. But if so, we must take into account the fact that lala- is to be derived from older g-lada- (PM:359); this is one of the cases where an original d following a vowel turned into l rather than r (influenced by the l earlier in the word). So if lala- has a "short" past tense, it should probably not be lallë, but rather landë – derived from a nasal-infixed form of the original word g-lada-. On the other hand, the similar but distinct verb lala- "deny" found in the Etymologies (LR:367) never contained a d, so its past tense may well be lallë (unless it is lalanë, and I think I lean toward that form).



The Etymologies actually provides a few examples of even more complex A-stems that also drop their ending and in effect transform themselves into primary verbs in the past tense. The verb farya- "to suffice" is said to have the past tense farnë (Etym, entry PHAR); here the whole ending -ya drops out in the past tense, which is formed as if this were a primary verb **fer-. Based on such a regular example as the one we quoted above – namely ulya- "pour", past tense ulyanë – we would of course expect the past tense of ferya- to be **feryanë. But actually even our "regular" example ulya- also has an alternative past tense form ullë (Etym, entry ULU), and this is a particularly interesting example, for Tolkien indicated that the two past tenses ulyanë and ullë were not interchangeable. They had somewhat different meanings. There will be a fuller discussion of this in Lesson Ten; for now it suffices to say that I think most verbs in -ya would retain this ending when the past tense suffix -në is added. (But ullë as one past tense of ulya-, formed directly from ul- rather than the full form of the verb, would seem to confirm that primary verbs in -l normally have past tenses in -lë. Except for ullë, we only have the example vil- "fly", pa.t. villë to go on – so an extra, if indirect, confirmation of this pattern is very welcome!)



Finally we will discuss a strange past tense formation that may occur in the case of verbs in -ta. Perhaps it should not be seen as irregular, for Tolkien actually described one such past tense as "regular...for a -ta verb of this class" (WJ:366). Nonetheless, its formation is less than straightforward. It is exemplified already in the earliest material: The 1915 Lexicon contains a verb lahta- (QL:50; the verb is not clearly glossed), but its past tense is not **lahtanë as we might expect: Instead we find lahantë. In other words, the verb lahta- is reworked into lahat- (the stem-vowel being repeated between the second and the third consonant, breaking up the consonant cluster, whereas the final -a is dropped), and the past tense lahantë is then formed from this lahat- by means of nasal-infixion and an added -ë, in itself a quite regular process familiar from primary verbs.

A much later example can be found in the Etymologies, where the verb orta- "rise, raise" is assigned a past tense form orontë (Etym, entry ORO), though orontë is not there clearly presented as a Quenya form: In Etym, it is actually quite unclear what language it is meant to belong to. However, in some of Tolkien's earlier drafts for Namárië, the past tense of orta- did appear as orontë, not "regular" ortanë as it became in the final version. So what is going on here?



Our only real clue is what Tolkien wrote in WJ:366, where he somewhat surprisingly declared the form oantë – the past tense of auta- "go away, leave" – to be quite regular "for a -ta verb of this class". According to the "regular" system we have tried to make out, oantë instead of **autanë inevitably seems highly irregular. Tolkien derived the verb auta- from a root AWA (WJ:365), so its form in the primitive language is probably meant to be awatâ (my reconstruction). As primitive Elvish evolved towards Quenya as we know it, the second of two identical short vowels in concomitant syllables was often lost; hence awatâ would have been shortened to aw'tâ = autâ, and this in turn is the direct ancestor of Quenya auta-. But it seems that the old past tense of such a verb as awatâ, with a vowel immediately preceding the ending -tâ, was formed by nasal-infixion: Tolkien explicitly gave the past tense of the primitive verb as awantê (WJ:366; the spelling there used is actually áwa-n-tê, the hyphens before and after the n apparently emphasizing that it is an infix – whereas the accent on the initial á here only means that it is stressed, not that the vowel is long).



In the case of a word like awantê, the rule that the second of two identical short vowels is lost could not apply (no **aw'ntê), for such loss does not occur immediately in front of a consonant cluster – and the nasal-infixion has here produced a cluster nt. The "final" Quenya form of awantê, namely oantë, is somewhat obscured because the group awa later became oa in Quenya – but this change has nothing to do with the past tense formation. Now we can explain a form like orontë as the past tense of orta-: In the Etymologies, the original root is given as ORO (LR:379), so Tolkien probably meant the verb orta- to be descended from older orotâ- after the regular loss of the second vowel. But the past tense of this orotâ- was the nasal-infixed form orontê (both are my reconstructions), and this produced Quenya orontë, the second vowel here being preserved because of the following cluster nt (no one wants to say **orntë!)



When Tolkien apparently changed his mind and altered the past tense of orta- from orontë to ortanë (a "regular" form according to the system we have set out), this would seem to suggest that he had now decided that the primitive forms were instead ortâ- with past tense orta-nê: There was never any vowel immediately in front of the ending -tâ after all, and therefore the past tense was not formed by nasal-infixion, but by the independent ending -nê (> Quenya -në). This is not the only example of Tolkien apparently changing his mind about which verbs actually belong to this exclusive "class". The Etymologies lists a verb atalta- "collapse, fall in" (entry TALÁT); no past tense is there mentioned, but in one text we have atalantë (LR:56, translated "down-fell"). This would seem to presuppose that the primitive forms were atalatâ- with past tense atalantê (my reconstructions, but cf. WJ:319 regarding ATALAT as a derivative form of the root TALAT). Yet in Tolkien's later texts the past tense of atalta- becomes ataltanë (LR:47 and SD:247), simply formed by adding the normal ending -në. So now Tolkien had presumably come to envision the primitive forms as ataltâ-, past tense atalta-nê (my reconstructions).



If the apparent revisions orontë > ortanë and atalantë > ataltanë do not reflect changes in his ideas about the primitive Elvish forms, it may be that he imagined a development whereby the Eldar replaced the more complex past tense formations with simpler, analogical forms. For instance, orontë as past tense of orta- could have been replaced by ortanë because of analogy with such straightforward past tense formations as hehta-, pa.t. hehtanë (WJ:365). In the Etymologies, the form orontë is indeed marked with a symbol that indicates that it is "poetic or archaic" (cf. LR:347); is this to suggest that it was ordinarily replaced by the "non-archaic" form ortanë? Especially considering how Tolkien later came to envision the history of the Quenya tongue – that it was used as a ceremonial language in Middle-earth, but was no longer anyone's mother-tongue – we could very plausibly assume that its grammar was somewhat simplified, more complex formations being suppressed and replaced by simpler analogical ones. Indeed oantë rather than **autanë as the past tense of auta- "to leave" is the only verb I can think of where we "must" use this special past tense formation, unless we are to accept some of the earliest "Qenya" material with no reservations (and I have plenty).



With this we conclude our survey of various strange or irregular ways of forming the past tense; as I said above, the exercises below are meant to reflect the regular system instead.



Remember that just like present-tense verbs, a past tense form receives the ending -r if it has a plural subject (or multiple subjects). For instance, the simplest past tense of the verb lanta- "fall" is lantanë, but with a plural subject it becomes lantaner (SD:246). Naturally, he diaeresis over the final -ë disappears, since the vowel is no longer final when the plural ending -r is added after it.







Lesson Six - Summary of Lesson Six







While various irregular formations occur, it would seem that the past tense of Quenya verbs is typically formed according to these rules: A-stem verbs simply receive the ending -në. The "primary" or ending-less verbs can also receive this ending if their last consonant is -r or -m, probably also -n (no examples). If added to a primary verb in -l, the ending -në turns into -lë (resulting in a double ll, e.g. villë as the past tense of vil- "fly"). Primary verbs ending in one of the consonants p, t, c have past tenses constructed by adding the ending -ë combined with nasal-infixion intruding before the last consonant of the verbal stem; the infix manifests as m before p (hence tompë as the past tense of top- "cover"), otherwise as n (hence mantë as the past tense of mat- "eat").







Lesson Six - Vocabulary







lempë "five"

elen "star"

harma "treasure" (noun)

sil- verb "shine" (with white or silver light, like star-shine or moon-shine)

hir- verb "find"

cap- verb "jump"

tec- verb "write"

quet- verb "speak, say"

mel- verb "love" (as friend; no Quenya word referring to erotic love between the sexes has been published)

cen- verb "see" (related to cenda- "read", which word is derived from a strengthened form of the same stem and meaning, basically, to watch closely).

orta- verb "rise", also used = "raise, lift up".

harya- verb "possess; have" (related to the noun harma "treasure", basically referring to a "possession")







Lesson Six - Exercises







1. Translate into English (and practice your vocabulary at the same time; most of the words employed in exercises A-H were introduced in earlier lessons):



A. I nér cendanë i parma.

B. I Naucor manter.

C. I aran tultanë i tári.

D. Nís lindanë.

E. I vendi tirner i Elda.

F. I lempë roccor caitaner nu i alta tasar.

G. I eleni siller.

H. I Nauco cennë rocco.

2. Translate into Quenya:



I. A Dwarf found the treasure.

J. The Elf spoke.

K. The horse jumped.

L. The king loved the Elves.

M. A man wrote five books.

N. The queen rose.

O. The kings possessed great treasures.

P. The king and the queen summoned four Elves and five Dwarves.

Lesson Five - The Verb: Present tense & Agreement in Number.
12:09 Aug 16 2005
Times Read: 630




Subject/Object. The superlative form of Adjectives.





As I mentioned at the beginning of the previous lesson, the vocabulary of any language can be separated into various classes of words, or "parts of speech". So far we have explicitly discussed the nouns, which denote things, and adjectives, which are words used to describe nouns (linguists would find these definitions rather simplistic, but they will do for our purpose). Actually we have already touched on a three other parts of speech as well, without discussing them in depth. As part of Lesson Two you hopefully memorized the word nu "under", which is a preposition; prepositions are small words or "particles" like under, on, of, to, in, about etc., often used to provide information about spatial relationships (e.g. "under the tree" = nu i alda), though frequently they are used in more abstract contexts. With the word ar "and" we have also included the most typical representative of the conjunctions, words used to connect (or indeed "conjoin") other words, phrases or sentences, e.g. Anar ar Isil = "the sun and the moon". Still, no thorough discussion of prepositions or conjunctions as such seems necessary: in Quenya they seem to behave pretty much like their English equivalents, so for the most part you simply have to learn the corresponding Quenya words.



Another part of speech that we have already touched on is far more sophisticated and intriguing: the verb. We encountered one verb in the previous lesson: ná "is", with its plural form nar "are". As verbs go, this one is not very exciting; it is used simply to coordinate a noun with some sort of predicate that tells us what the noun "is": Aran ná taura, "a king is mighty", tasar ná alda "a willow is a tree". As I said in the previous lesson, the copula ná doesn't really provide much extra information here, except clarifying the relationship between the various elements of the sentence. Most other verbs (very nearly all other verbs, actually) are however full of meaning. They don't just tell us what someone or something "is", but what someone or something does. The Verb brings action into the language.



In a sentence like "the Elf dances" it is easy to identify "dances" as the action-word, telling us what is going on here. And sure enough, "dances" is a form of the English verb to dance. This verb may appear in other forms as well; instead of "dances" we might say "danced", which moves the action into the past: "The Elf danced." This illustrates an important feature of verbs in European languages: the form of the verb gives information about when the action denoted takes place, in the present or in the past. Some languages also have special future forms. Tolkien built all of these features into Quenya.



The different "time-forms" of the verb are called various tenses; we speak of present tense, past tense and future tense. We will only deal with the present tense in this lesson, and return to the others later. (The trinity of present, past and future does not represent a full list of all the tenses there are. We will discuss a total of five different tenses in this course, and I would be very surprised if unpublished material does not describe even more tenses than the ones we know at present.)



Here I should slip in a warning: We don't have much explicit information about the Quenya verb. In the so-called Plotz Letter, that Tolkien wrote to Dick Plotz at some point in the mid-sixties, he set out the declension of the noun. Apparently similar information about the verb was to follow; it never did. This is of course most unfortunate. Not that Tolkien took this information to his grave; we know that he did write about these matters, but the relevant writings have not been published. For the time being, we must for the most part try to figure out the grammatical rules by ourselves if we would like our Quenya poems to include verbs. Regarding the present tense, some scraps of information luckily appeared in Vinyar Tengwar #41, July 2000. Combining this info with some linguistic deduction, we can probably make out the main features of the system Tolkien had in mind.



As they appear in various sources, Quenya verbs seem to fall into two main categories (though there are some verbs in our corpus that don't readily fit into either, even if we exclude the early "Qenya" material where some really weird things are going on in the verbal system). The first and largest category is what can be termed A-stems, for they all end in -a. Another term for the same is derived verbs, for these verbs never represent a naked primitive "root-word", but are derived by adding endings to this root. The most frequent of these endings are -ya and -ta; much less frequently we see -na or just -a. Examples:



calya- "to illuminate" (root KAL)

tulta- "to send for, to fetch, to summon" (root TUL)

harna- "to wound" (root SKAR; primitive initial sk- became h- in Quenya)

mapa- "to grasp, to seize" (root MAP)



(Convention has it that when you list verbal stems as such, you add a hyphen at the end; Tolkien usually does so in his writings. The "stem" of a verb is a basic form that we start from when deriving other forms, such as different tenses.)



If these A-stems can be termed "derived verbs", the other category consists of the "non-derived" or primary verbs. These are verbs that display no such ending as -ya, -ta, -na or -a. The verbal stems in question can be termed "primary" or "basic" since they essentially represent a primitive root with no additions. For instance, the verb mat- "eat" comes directly from the root MAT- of similar meaning. Tac- "fasten" represents the root TAK- "fix, make fast". Tul- "come" can be identified with the root TUL- "come, approach, move towards" (contrast the derived verb tulta- "send for, summon, fetch" from the same root, derived by means of the ending -ta). In the case of the roots MEL- "love" and SIR- "flow", Tolkien didn't even bother to repeat the glosses for the Quenya verbs mel- and sir- (see LR:372, 385).



When discussing Quenya verbs, we sometimes need to refer to the stem-vowel. This is the vowel of the root-word underlying the verb as it appears in Quenya. In the case of primary verbs like mel- "love", it is of course easy to identify the stem-vowel, since e is the only vowel there is (and sure enough, this is also the vowel of the underlying root MEL-). In the case of derived verbs like pusta- "stop" or ora- "impel", the vowels of the added ending (here -ta and -a) do not count as stem-vowels. Pusta-, for instance, is derived from a root PUS, and its stem-vowel is therefore u, not a. In the vast majority of cases, the stem-vowel is simply the first vowel of the verb (but not necessarily so, there may be some prefixed element).



With this we have the necessary terms in place and can finally start discussing the formation of the present tense. To start with the primary verbs, what seems to be the present tense of the verb mel- "love" is attested in LR:61, Elendil telling his son Herendil: Yonya inyë tye-méla, "I too, my son, I love thee". Here we have the verb describing a present or on-going (in this case quite permanent) action. Another example of a present-tense primary verb can apparently be found in the LotR itself, in the famous greeting elen síla lúmenn' omentielvo, "a star shines [or, is shining] upon the hour of our meeting". Síla would seem to be the present tense of a verb sil- "shine (with white or silver light)", listed in the Silmarillion Appendix. Méla and síla show the same relationship to the simple verbal stems mel- and sil-: the present-tense forms are derived by lengthening the stem-vowel (this is denoted by supplying an accent, of course) and adding the ending -a. This conclusion is supported by an example from VT41:13: The verb quet- "speak, say" there appears in the present tense quéta "is saying".



Though forms like méla and síla may occasionally be translated using the simple present tense in English, hence "love(s)" and "shines", is seems that the Quenya present tense properly denotes a continuous or ongoing action that is best translated using the English "is ...-ing" construction, as in the example quéta just quoted: this is "is saying" rather than just "says". The conclusion that the Quenya present tense properly denotes continuous actions is also supported by other evidence: The Quenya present tense of the primary verb mat- "eat" is nowhere attested in published material. However, Tolkien stated that mâtâ was "the stem of the continuous form", which could be translated "is eating" (VT39:9; â here denotes long a, in Quenya spelt á). Tolkien actually put an asterisk in front of mâtâ to mark it as an "unattested" form, so this should evidently be taken as primitive Elvish rather than Quenya. How Quenya evolved from the primitive language can be inferred from many other examples, so we know that mâtâ would come out as máta. This form would seem to fall into the same pattern as méla, síla and quéta: lengthened stem-vowel and ending -a (and working backwards, we can deduce that Tolkien meant méla, síla, quéta to be descended from primitive Elvish mêlâ, sîlâ, kwêtâ). Presumably these are all "continuous" forms; just like primitive mâtâ "is eating" they apparently emphasize the ongoing nature of the action: Síla may literally be "is shining" rather than just "shines". Perhaps the lengthening of the stem-vowel somehow symbolizes this ongoing or "drawn-out" action. In the case of méla in the sentence inyë tye-méla, it is more natural to translate "I love you" rather than "I am loving you", but the latter would seem to be the most literal meaning.



Then we must consider the second and larger category of verbs, the A-stems. In their case, the information from VT41 is of particular value.



It seems that the A-stems form their present tense by somewhat the same rule as the primary verbs, but the rule needs a little "adaptation" to fit the shape of an A-stem verb. Our sole attested example is the verb ora- "urge" or "impel". VT41:13, 18 indicates that its present tense is órëa ("is urging"). As in the case of primary verbs, the stem-vowel has been lengthened and the ending -a has been added. There is one complication, though: since the verbal stem ora- already ended in -a, this vowel is changed to e so as to avoid two a's in sequence: What would be óra-a manifests as órëa. Hence we must conclude that verbs like mapa- "grasp, seize" and lala- "laugh" appear as mápëa, lálëa in the present tense.



Short A-stems like ora- or mapa- are however of a rather unusual shape, since they add only the simple vowel -a to the original root. As discussed above, A-stems where the final -a is only part of a longer derivational ending (most often -ya or -ta) are much more common. We have already quoted examples like calya- "to illuminate" and tulta- "to summon" (roots KAL, TUL). Such "complex" A-stems have a consonant cluster following the vowel of the original root, like ly and lt in these examples. We have no actual example of the present tense of such a verb. If we were to apply the pattern we deduce to exist from the example órëa "is urging", it would land us on forms like ?cályëa "is illuminating" and ?túltëa "is summoning". However, there seems to be a phonological rule in Quenya prohibiting a long vowel immediately in front of a consonant cluster. It would seem that a word like ?túltëa cannot exist (but frankly I'm not quite sure about ?cályëa, since ly/ny/ry sometimes seem to count as unitary palatalized consonants rather than consonant clusters). Lacking actual examples, we can only assume that in such a case the lengthening of the vowel would simply be dropped, so that the present tense of verbs like calya- and tulta- would be calyëa, tultëa (though as I just indicated, ?cályëa may be possible for all I know). This would apply wherever there is a consonant cluster following the vowel of the verbal stem. Further examples are lanta- "fall", harna- "wound" and pusta- "stop", that would all – presumably – form their present-tense forms in -ëa: Lantëa "is falling", harnëa "is wounding", pustëa "is stopping".



We must assume that this system also applies where there is a diphthong in the verbal stem, since like a vowel in front of a consonant cluster, a diphthong cannot be lengthened in any way. The present-tense forms of verbs like faina- "emit light" or auta- "pass" would presumably be fainëa, autëa.



We now know enough to start building simple sentences:



¤ Isil síla "the Moon is shining" (present tense síla formed from the primary verb sil- "shine")

¤ I Elda lálëa "the Elf is laughing" (present tense formed from the short A-stem lala- "laugh")

¤ Lassë lantëa "a leaf is falling" (present tense formed from the complex A-stem lanta- "fall"; we cannot have *lántëa paralleling lálëa because a long vowel cannot occur in front of a consonant cluster)



NOTE (added September 2002): Some of my deductions above have been criticized by VT editor Carl F. Hostetter. No one disputes the fact that primary verbs form their present or "continuous" tense by lengthening the stem-vowel and adding -a, but the notion that A-stems have present-tense forms in -ëa has proved controversial. Of course, this is based on the one example órëa (from ora- "impel"), and it was Hostetter himself who published this form and suggested that this is an example of the present/continuous tense. However, it may be that the idea of present-tense forms in -ëa represents merely a short-lived fluctuation in Tolkien's evolving conceptions. I have not changed any of the exercises below, but until we know more about Tolkien's precise intentions, writers may opt to avoid the present-tense forms in -ëa in their own compositions. As we will discuss later, there is a way to work around this particular uncertainty.



Some useful terms can be included here. Once you include a verb in the sentence, denoting some kind of action, you must normally devote another part of the sentence to telling who is doing this action. The party that does whatever the verb tells us is being done, constitutes the subject of the sentence. In a sentence like Isil síla "the Moon is shining", it is thus Isil "the Moon" that is the subject, since it is the Moon that does the shining the verb síla tells us about. In a sentence like i Elda máta "the Elf is eating", i Elda "the Elf" is the subject, since the Elf does the eating.



This very sentence, i Elda máta, has possibilities. We can add one more element, like the noun massa "bread", and get i Elda máta massa "the Elf is eating bread". Now what is the function of this added word? It is the "target" of the verbal action, in this case what is eaten. The target of the verbal action is called the object, the passive counterpart of the active subject: The subject does something, but the object is what the subject does something to. The subject "subjects" the object to some kind of action. This "action" may of course be much less dramatic than "subject eats object" as in the example above. For instance, it can be as subtle as in the sentence "the subject sees the object" (fill in with other sense-verbs if you like), where the "action" of the subject does not physically affect the object in any way. That is not the point here. The basic idea of the subject-object dichotomy is simply that the subject does something to the object, though "does something to" must sometimes be understood in a wider sense.



NOTE: Notice, though, that in sentences with the copula ná/nar "is/are", for instance i alda ná tasar "the tree is a willow", tasar "a willow" does not count as the object of i alda "the tree". I alda is the subject all right, since this is the element that "does" what little action there is in this sentence: "the tree is..." But tasar "a willow" is not the object, for in this sentence "the tree" does not do anything to "a willow" – and the hallmark of the object is that something is done to it. Rather than doing anything do a willow, the tree is a willow, and that is another thing altogether: Tasar is here the predicate of i alda, as we discussed in the previous lesson. But if we substitute máta "is eating" for ná "is", we are right back to a subject-verb-object construction: I alda máta tasar, "the tree is eating a willow". If you are unduly troubled by the fact that this sounds somewhat nonsensical, rest assured that the grammar is fine.



In the case of some verbs, there can be no object. In the case of (say) lanta- "to fall", you can have a subject and say i Elda lantëa "the Elf is falling". Here the subject doesn't do anything to an object; it is just the subject itself that is doing something. With a verb like mat- "eat", it is kind of optional if you want to fill out the sentence with an object or not: I Elda máta (massa), "the Elf is eating (bread)"; this works as a complete sentence even without the object. But some verbs by their meaning demand an object, and the sentence would be felt to be incomplete without it. If we say i Elda mápëa "the Elf is seizing", this only raises the question "the Elf is seizing what?" and we must come up with an object to make the sentence complete.



In the Plotz letter, Tolkien indicated that in one variant of Quenya, so-called Book Quenya, nouns would have a special form if they function as objects. Singular nouns ending in a vowel would have this vowel lengthened (for instance, cirya "ship" would become ciryá if it appears as the object of a sentence), and nouns that normally employ the plural ending -r would switch to -i (so "ships", as object, would be ciryai instead of ciryar). This special "object" form, in linguistic terms the accusative case, was supposedly used in (archaic?) written Quenya. However, this accusative does not appear in any actual texts, such as Namárië or even the last version of the Markirya poem, which must be almost contemporaneous with the Plotz letter. Namárië, sung by Galadriel, is perhaps supposed to reflect the usage of spoken Third Age Quenya. Whatever the case, I do not use the distinct accusative in the exercises I have made for this course (or in my own Quenya compositions). It seems clear that the use of the accusative was far from universal, within or without the fictional context. So I would say cirya(r) for "ship(s)" even if the word appears as the object of a sentence.



With the terms subject and object in place, we can discuss another feature of the Quenya verb. Just like adjectives agree in number with the nouns they describe, verbs agree in number with their subjects. Let us have a closer look at the first line of Namárië, laurië lantar lassi "like gold fall the leaves", or literally "golden fall [the] leaves". Here the adjective laurëa "golden" appears in plural form laurië to agree in number with the plural noun lassi "leaves", as we discussed in the previous lesson. But the verb lanta- "to fall" must also agree with its plural subject lassi. The verb lanta therefore takes the ending -r. (The verb itself appears in the so-called aorist tense, to be discussed later; you can think of aorist lantar vs. present tense lantëar as corresponding to English "fall" vs. "are falling", respectively. Some would consider a form like lantëar speculative, but lantar is directly attested in Tolkien's writings.) The plural ending -r we have already met in the case of nouns, as in Eldar "Elves", but nouns may also have plurals in -i, depending on their shape. In the case of verbs, the plural ending -r seems to be universal, no matter what the verb looks like. The ending -r is not restricted to the present tense of verbs, but is seemingly used in all tenses, wherever a plural subject turns up.



Essentially we have already met the verbal plural ending in the verb nar "are", the plural of ná "is". (One may ask why ná does not turn into ?nár with the long vowel intact. The latter form may very well turn out to be valid, but nar "are" with a short a is at least less prone to confusion with the noun nár "flame".)



More than one subject has the same effect on the verb as a (single) plural subject, the verb taking the ending -r in both instances:



I arani mátar "the kings are eating" (sg. i aran máta "the king is eating")

I aran ar i tári mátar "the king and the queen are eating" (if you want the verb mat- "eat" to appear in singular present-tense form máta here, you must get rid of either the king or the queen so that there is just a single subject)



On the other hand, it has no effect on the verb if we have a plural object or multiple objects, e.g. i aran máta massa ar apsa "the king is eating bread and meat" (apsa "cooked food, meat"). The verb agrees in number with the subject only.

It has generally been assumed that the verb has only one plural form, the ending -r being universal. In other words, the verb would take the ending -r not only where the subject noun appears in the "normal" plural (ending -r or -i), but also where it is dual (ending -u or -t) or appears in the "partitive plural" form (ending -li). However, we have no actual examples from LotR-style Quenya, and in particular I will not rule out the possibility that there may be a special dual form of the verb to go with dual subjects (ending -t as for most nouns, like Aldu sílat rather than Aldu sílar for "the Two Trees are shining"???) The published material allows no certain conclusion in this question, so I will simply avoid dual subjects in the exercises I make for this course.



The last thing we must consider when discussing the verb is the question of word order. Where in the sentence does the verb fit in, really? English sentences generally list the subject, the verb and the object (if there is any object) in that order. The attentive reader will have noticed that most of the Quenya sentences above are organized in the same manner. This seems to be the most typical word order in Quenya prose. Examples of the subject and the verb in that order include lassi lantar "leaves fall" and mornië caita "darkness lies [upon the foaming waves]" – both from the prose version of Namárië. But there are also examples of the verb being placed first, e.g. Fingon's cry before the Nirnaeth Arnoediad: Auta i lómë!, literally "Passes the night", but translated "the night is passing!" in the Silmarillion ch. 20. Indeed both of the above-quoted examples of the order subject-verb from the prose Namárië instead show the order verb-subject in the poetic version in LotR: lantar lassi, caita mornië. In English, fronting the verb is one way of turning a declarative statement into a question, e.g. "Elves are beautiful" vs. "are Elves beautiful?", but this way of forming questions evidently doesn't work in Quenya. (Auta i lómë! "passes the night!" for "the night is passing!" is perhaps an example of dramatic style or affectionate speech; the verbal action is evidently considered more important than the subject that performs it. I suspect that in a less dramatic context, one would rather say i lómë auta.)



Namárië also provides an example of a sentence with both subject, verb and object: hísië untúpa Calaciryo míri, "mist [subject] covers [verb] the jewels of Calacirya [this whole phrase being the object]". Yet word order is again quite flexible, especially in poetry, as further examples from Namárië shows. We have object-subject-verb in the sentence máryat Elentári ortanë, literally "her hands (the) Starqueen raised" (in LotR translated "the Queen of the stars...has uplifted her hands"). The sentence ilyë tier undulávë lumbulë, literally "all paths downlicked (i.e. covered) shadow", has the order object-verb-subject (in LotR, Tolkien used the translation "all paths are drowned deep in shadow"). In the prose version of Namárië, Tolkien interestingly reorganized both of these to subject-verb-object constructions: Elentári ortanë máryat, lumbulë undulávë ilyë tier. This is our main basis for assuming that this is the normal order, preferred where there are no poetic or dramatic considerations to be made.



In general, one must be careful about putting the object before the subject, for this could in some cases cause confusion as to which word is the object and which is the subject (since the commonest form of Quenya does not maintain a distinct accusative case to mark the object). Such inversions are however quite permissible when the subject is singular and the object is plural or vice versa. Then the verb, agreeing in number with the subject only, will indirectly identify it. In the sentence ilyë tier undulávë lumbulë we can readily tell that it must be lumbulë "shadow" and not ilyë tier "all paths" that is the subject, because the verb undulávë does not receive the ending -r to agree with the plural word tier. Hence this can't be the subject – but the singular noun lumbulë "shadow" can.







Lesson Five - More About Adjectives







In English and other European languages, adjectives have special forms that are used in comparison. In English, adjectives have a comparative form that is constructed by adding the ending -er, and a superlative form that is formed with the ending -est. For instance, the adjective tall has the comparative form taller and the superlative form tallest. (In the case of some adjectives, English however resorts to the independent words more and most instead of using the endings, e.g. more intelligent and most intelligent instead of intelligenter and intelligentest, which forms are perceived as cumbersome.) The function of these forms is to facilitate comparison between various parties. If we want to say that one party possesses the quality described by the adjective to a greater extent than some other party, we may use the comparative form: "Peter is taller than Paul." The superlative form is used if we want to say that one party possesses the quality in question more than all others that are considered: "Peter is the tallest boy in the class."



In the first version of this Quenya lesson, as published in December 2000, I wrote: "But when it comes to Quenya, there is not much we can say. The published material includes absolutely no information about comparative forms; we don't even have an independent word for 'more'." Since then, the situation has happily changed; during 2001 a little more information appeared in the journals Tyalië Tyelelliéva (#16) and Vinyar Tengwar. Now we do know a special formula that is used in comparison: "A is brighter than B" may be expressed as "A ná calima lá B", literally "A is bright beyond B" (VT42:32). However, the word lá has other meanings beside "beyond", and it will be more practical to discuss and practice its use in comparison in a later lesson ("The various uses of lá", Lesson Eighteen).



We will here focus on the superlative form of adjectives instead. It is somewhat disquieting to notice that when Tolkien was making a Quenya translation of the Litany of Loreto, he broke off before translating the Latin superlative form purissima "most pure" – as if he himself was not quite certain how to render it (VT44:19). Yet one tiny scrap of evidence regarding the superlative has long been available: In Letters:278-279, Tolkien explained the adjectival form ancalima occurring in LotR. Translating it as "exceedingly bright", he stated that this is calima "shining brilliant" with the element an- added, the latter being a "superlative or intensive prefix". For this reason, many writers have used the prefix an- as the equivalent of the English ending -est, to construct the superlative form of adjectives – e.g. anvanya "fairest" from vanya "fair, beautiful" (but is should be understood that ancalima remains our sole attested example of an- used in this sense).



One may wonder whether the form that is made by prefixing an- really is the equivalent of an English superlative, sc. a form of the adjective that implies having the most of the property involved in comparison with certain others. It may be noted that Tolkien translated ancalima, not as "brightest", but as "exceedingly bright". When he describes an- as a "superlative or intensive prefix", he may almost seem to mean 'superlative or rather intensive prefix'. So perhaps an- implies "very, exceedingly" rather than "most" in comparison with others. It may be noted, though, that the context the in which the word is found does seem to imply a certain amount of "comparison": In LotR, ancalima occurs as part of Frodo's "speaking in tongues" in Shelob's lair (volume 2, Book Four, chapter IX): Aiya Eärendil Elenion Ancalima. No translation is given in the LotR itself, but Tolkien later stated that this means "hail Eärendil brightest of stars" (Letters:385). In Tolkien's mythology, Eärendil carrying the shining Silmaril was set in the heavens as the brightest of the stars. So here, the meaning does seem to be that of a genuine superlative, "brightest" in the full sense of "brighter than all the others". In any case, no other information on how to form the superlative appears in published writings, so we have little choice but to use this formation. We must however be prepared that future publications may provide more information about this, involving alternative superlative formations.



The prefix an- in this form cannot be mechanically prefixed to any Quenya adjective, or consonant clusters that Quenya does not allow would sometimes result. An- can be prefixed "as is" to adjectives beginning in a vowel or in c-, n-, qu-, t-, v-, w-, and y-:



an + alta "great (in size)" = analta "greatest"

an + calima "bright" = ancalima "brightest" (our sole attested example!)

an + norna "tough" = annorna "toughest"

an + quanta "full" = anquanta "fullest"

an + vanya "beautiful" = anvanya "most beautiful"

an + wenya "green" = anwenya "greenest"

an + yára "old" = anyára "oldest"



Perhaps we can also include adjectives in f- and h- (no examples):



an + fána "white" = ?anfána "whitest"

an + halla "tall" = ?anhalla "tallest"



What would happen in other cases we cannot say for certain. Either an extra vowel (likely e or a) would be inserted between the prefix and the adjective to break up what would otherwise be an impossible cluster, or the final -n of the prefix would change, becoming more similar (or wholly similar) to the first consonant of the adjective. Such assimilation is observed elsewhere in our corpus, so this has to be our favourite theory regarding the behavior of an- as well. Before the consonant p-, the n of an would likely be pronounced with the lips closed because the pronunciation of p involves such a closure; hence n would turn into m. (Compare English input often being pronounced imput.) From pitya "small" we would thus have ampitya for "smallest", this being the impossible word anpitya reworked into a permissible form (Quenya does not have np, but the cluster mp is frequent even in unitary words).



Before the consonants l-, r-, s-, and m-, the final n of an- would probably be fully assimilated, that is, it becomes identical to the following consonant:



an + lauca "warm" = allauca "warmest"

an + ringa "cold" = arringa "coldest"

an + sarda "hard" = assarda "hardest"

an + moina "dear" = ammoina "dearest"



Cf. such attested assimilations as nl becoming ll in the compound Númellótë "Flower of the West" (UT:227, transparently a compound of the well-known words númen "west" and lótë "flower"). As for the group nm becoming mm, this development is seen in the name of the Vanyarin Elf Elemmírë mentioned in the Silmarillion: his (her?) name apparently means "Star-jewel" (elen "star" + mírë "jewel").







Lesson Five - Summary of Lesson Five







Two major categories of Quenya verbs are the primary verbs, that represent a primitive root with no additions, and the A-stems, that have added an ending including the vowel a to the original root (sometimes -a alone, but more commonly some longer ending like -ya or -ta). The primary verbs form their present tense by lengthening the stem-vowel and adding -a, e.g. síla "is shining" from sil- "to shine". The A-stems form their present tense by somewhat the same rule, but when the ending -a is added to such a stem (already ending in -a), what would be -aa is changed to -ëa. In our one attested example of what may be the present tense of an A-stem, órëa from ora- "to impel", the stem-vowel has been lengthened. However, as far as we understand Quenya phonology, a long vowel cannot normally occur in front of a consonant cluster, and most A-stems do have a consonant cluster following the stem-vowel (e.g. lanta- "to fall", hilya- "to follow"). Presumably such verbs would form their present tense in -ëa, but the stem-vowel would remain short. Only the (relatively few) A-stems that do not have a consonant cluster following the stem-vowel can lengthen it in the present tense.



(NOTE: Some consider all present-tense forms in -ëa speculative, and students should understand that given the scarcity of source material, new publications may significantly alter the picture. The use of such forms in the exercises below should be considered tentative reconstruction or extrapolation, not necessarily "Tolkien fact".) – A verb agrees with its subject in number, receiving the ending -r if the subject is plural: elen síla "a star is shining", eleni sílar "stars are shining".



A superlative form of adjectives can be derived by adding the prefix an-, as in ancalima "brightest" from calima "bright". We must, however, assume that the n of this prefix is in many cases assimilated to the first consonant of the adjective, or consonant clusters that Quenya phonology does not allow would arise. For instance, an- + lauca "warm" may produce allauca for "warmest" (*anlauca being an impossible word).







Lesson Five - Vocabulary







canta "four"

Nauco "Dwarf"

parma "book"

tiuca "thick, fat"

mapa- verb "grasp, seize"

tir- verb "watch, guard"

lala- verb "laugh" (so according to a late source, PM:359; in earlier material the verb lala-, of a quite different derivation, has the meaning "deny": See the entry LA in the Etymologies. We needn't discuss whether one obsoletes the other; here we will use lala- for "laugh" only.)

caita- verb "lie" (lie horizontally, not "tell a lie")

tulta- verb "summon"

linda- verb "sing" (cf. the word Ainulindalë or "Music [lit. Singing] of the Ainur")

mat- verb "eat"

cenda- verb "read"







Lesson Five - Exercises







1. Translate into English:



A. I nís lálëa.

B. I antiuca Nauco máta.

C. I tári tíra i aran.

D. I analta oron ná taura.

E. I nér tultëa i anvanya vendë.

F. I aiwë lindëa.

G. I Naucor mápëar i canta Eldar.

H. I antaura aran ná saila.



2. Translate into Quenya:



I. The woman is watching the greatest (/biggest) ship.

J. The most evil (/evilest) men are dead.

K. The Elf is seizing the book.

L. Four men are lying under a tree.

M. The wisest Elf is reading a book (careful: what probably happens to the superlative prefix when it is added to a word like saila "wise"?)

N. The king and the queen are reading the book.

O. The birds are singing.

P. The four Dwarves are watching a bird.

Lesson Four - The Adjective. The Copula. Adjectival agreement in number.
12:04 Aug 16 2005
Times Read: 632




The vocabulary of any language can be separated into various classes of words – various parts of speech. Tolkien's languages were designed to be "definitely of a European kind in style and structure" (Letters:175), so the parts of speech they contain are not very exotic, but ought to be quite familiar to any schoolchild in Europe or America. We have already mentioned the nouns, which by a somewhat simplified definition are words denoting things. Now we will move on to the adjectives.



Adjectives are words that have assumed the special function of description. If you want to say that someone or something possesses a certain quality, you can often find an adjective that will do the job. In a sentence like the house is red, the word "red" is an adjective. It describes the house. There are adjectives for all sorts of qualities, quite useful if you want to say that someone or something is big, small, holy, blue, silly, rotten, beautiful, thin, nauseous, tall, wonderful, obnoxious or whatever the occasion demands.



One often distinguishes two different ways of using an adjective:



1. You can team it up with a noun which it then describes, resulting in phrases like tall men or (a/the) red book. Such phrases can then be inserted into a full sentence, like tall men scare me or the red book is mine, where the words tall, red simply provide extra information about their companion nouns. This is called using the adjective attributively. The quality in question is presented as an "attribute" of the noun, or is "attributed" to it (tall men – OK, then we know precisely what kind of men we are talking about here, the tall ones, their tallness being their "attribute").



2. But you may also construct sentences where the whole point is that someone or something possesses a specific quality. You don't just "presuppose" the tallness as when you speak of tall men – you want to say that the men are tall, that's the very piece of information you want to convey. This is called using an adjective predicatively: You choose a party you want to say something about, like the men in this case, and then add an adjective to tell what quality this party possesses. The adjective is then called the predicate of this sentence.



As the attentive reader already suspects from the example above, there is one more complication: You don't just say the men tall, but the men are tall. Actually sentences like the men tall would be quite OK in a great number of languages (and Quenya may even be one of them), but in English you have to slip in a word like are or is before the adjective when you use it as a predicate: The book is red. The men are tall. This "is/are" doesn't really add a whole lot of meaning here (there is a reason why so many languages manage without any corresponding word!), but it is used to "couple" the adjective with the words that tell us what we are really talking about here – like the book and the men in our example. Hence "is/are" is called a copula. In sentences like gold is beautiful, I am smart or stones are hard, it can be perceived the prime function of the copula (here variously manifesting as is, am and are) is simply to connect the following adjectives beautiful, smart, hard with the thing(s) or person we are talking about: gold, I, stones. The copula is an integral part of the predicate of the sentence. This is one of the most important constructions speakers or English have at their disposal when they want to say that X possesses the quality Y.



Well, let's get down to Quenya here. When compared to the plethora of shapes that a noun can have, Quenya adjectives are quite restricted in form. The vast majority of Quenya adjectives end in one of two vowels -a or -ë. The latter ending is the less common and typically occurs in colour-adjectives: Ninquë "white", morë "black", carnë "red", varnë "brown" etc. When an adjective does not end in -a or -ë, it virtually always ends in -in, e.g. firin "dead", hwarin "crooked", melin "dear" or latin "open, free, cleared (of land)". The latter adjective is actually listed as latin(a) in Tolkien's writings (LR:368), evidently suggesting that latin is shortened from a longer form latina, both variants occurring in the language. (Perhaps all the adjectives in -in are to be considered shortened forms of full forms in -ina.) Adjectives that do not end in either -a, -ë or -in are extremely rare; there is at least teren "slender" – but even this adjective also has a longer form in -ë (terenë).



Adjectives in -a are by far the most common type. The final vowel -a may appear by itself, as in lára "flat", but it is often part of a longer adjectival ending like -wa, -na (variant -da), -ima or -ya. Examples: helwa "(pale) blue", harna "wounded", melda "beloved, dear", melima "loveable", vanya "beautiful". The word Quenya itself is in its origin a ya-adjective meaning "Elvish, Quendian", though Tolkien decided that it came to be used only as a name of the High-elven language (Letters:176, WJ:360-361, 374).



In Quenya as in English, an adjective can be directly combined with a noun, describing it. We have many attested examples of adjectives being used attributively like this; they include the phrases lintë yuldar "swift draughts" (Namárië), luini tellumar "blue vaults" (prose-style Namárië), fána cirya "a white ship" (Markirya), quantë tengwi "full signs" (a term used by early Elvish linguists; we needn't discuss its precise meaning here; see VT39:5). In these examples, the word order is the same as in English: adjective + noun. This is apparently the normal, preferred order. In Quenya, it is however also permissible to let the adjective follow the noun. For instance, Markirya has anar púrëa for "a bleared sun", literally "(a) sun bleared", and in LR:47 we have mallë téra, literally "road straight", for "a straight road" (cf. LR:43). Perhaps this word order is used if you want to emphasize the adjective: the context in LR:47 indicates that this is a straight road as opposed to a bent one. However, letting the adjective follow the noun may be the normal word order in the case of an adjectival "title" that is used in conjunction with a proper name: In UT:305 cf. 317 we have Elendil Voronda for "Elendil the Faithful" (well, the form found in UT:305 is actually Elendil Vorondo, because the phrase is inflected; we will return to the ending -o here seen in a later lesson). Presumably you could also use the more normal word-order and speak of voronda Elendil, but that – I guess – would simply be a more casual reference to "faithful Elendil", not meaning "Elendil the Faithful" with the adjective used as a regular title. It may be noted that Quenya, unlike English, does not insert the article before an adjective used as a title (not **Elendil i Voronda, at least not necessarily).



What, then, about using adjectives as predicates, like "red" is the predicate of the sentence "the book is red"? (Contrast the attributive use of the adjective in a phrase like "the red book".) The adjective vanwa "lost" is used predicatively in Namárië: Vanwa ná...Valimar "lost is...Valimar" (a place in the Blessed Realm that Galadriel thought she would never see again). This sentence tells us that the Quenya copula "is" has the form ná. Plural "are" seems to be nar, attested in an early version of Namárië recorded by Tolkien on tape (see Jim Allan's An Introduction to Elvish, p. 5). It is generally assumed that these copulas would be used as in English, for instance like this:



I parma ná carnë. "The book is red."

Ulundo ná úmëa. "A monster is evil."

I neri nar hallë. "The men are tall."



In this lesson as originally published in December 2000, I slipped in a warning at this point:



I should add, though, that due to the extreme scarcity of examples we can't be certain what the preferred word order really is. From the example vanwa ná...Valimar "lost is...Valimar" in Namárië one could argue that ná should follow the adjective, so that "the book is red" should rather be i parma carnë ná, "the book red is". It would be interesting to know if ná "is" would still follow vanwa "lost" if we relocated Valimar to the beginning of the sentence; should "Valimar is lost" be Valimar ná vanwa, English-style, or perhaps Valimar vanwa ná? In the examples above and the exercises below I have organized the sentences using the "English" word order, but Tolkien may have had something more exotic up his sleeve. There is no way of telling before more material is published.



I revise this lesson in November 2001, and this summer a few more examples involving the word ná "is" finally became available. There does seem to be a tendency to place ná at the end of the sentence, as in the example lá caritas...alasaila ná (literally, "not to do it unwise is" – VT42:34). Yet the same article that provides this example also cites the formula "A ná calima lá B" (literally, "A is bright beyond B") as the Quenya way of expressing "A is brighter than B" (VT42:32). Notice that this formula employs an English-style word-order, with ná "is" preceding rather than following calima "bright". So it seems that sentences like i parma ná carnë, word by word corresponding to English "the book is red", may be possible after all. Therefore I have not revised any of the examples or exercises of this course, all of which employ the "English" word order as far as the copula ná is concerned. It seems, however, that the order i parma carnë ná "the book red is" must be considered a perfectly valid alternative, and Tolkien may even have intended this to be the more common word order. We must await still more examples.



[New update, January 2002: This month some new examples were indeed published. It seems that the exact word order is simply a matter of taste. The example elyë na manna "thou art blessed" from VT43:26 has an English-style word order, and here the copula "is/art" appears in the short form na rather than ná. I have however maintained ná in the exercises of this course, mainly for the sake of clarity: the word na has several other, quite distinct meanings. But perhaps the short form na- is consistently preferred when some ending is to be added; cf. the plural form nar "are". Of course, the unattested form nár could be equally valid for all I know.]



In Fíriel's Song (a pre-LotR text), the word for "is" appears as ye rather than ná or na, as in írima ye Númenor "lovely is Númenor" (LR:72). However, both the Qenya Lexicon (QL:64) and the Etymologies (LR:374) point to ná instead, and in Namárië we have this word attested in an actual text. Etym and the QL are earlier than Fíriel's Song, but Namárië is later, so would seem that ye was just a passing experiment in Tolkien's evolution of Quenya. In Fíriel's Song we also see an ending for "is", -ië, appended to adjectives and displacing their final vowel: hence in this song we have márië for "(it) is good", derived from the adjective mára "good". This ending -ië is transparently related to the independent word ye. I don't think the system of using the ending -ië for "is" was still valid in LotR-style Quenya, and I wouldn't recommend it to writers. The ending -ië has other meanings in later Quenya.



Another system may well be valid, though: using no copula at all. You simply juxtapose the noun and the adjective, the word "is/are" being understood: Ilu vanya "the World [is] fair" (Fíriel's Song), maller raicar "roads [are] bent" (LR:47). The formula "A is bright beyond B" = "A is brighter than B" referred to above is actually cited as "A (ná) calima lá B" in VT42:32. As suggested by the parentheses, ná could be omitted. The example malle téra "a straight road" mentioned above could also be interpreted "a road [is] straight", if the context allowed it. The final version of Tolkien's Quenya translation of the Hail Mary, published in January 2002, leaves out several copulas: Aistana elyë, ar aistana i yávë mónalyo = "blessed [art] thou, and blessed [is] the fruit of thy womb".



We must assume that the copula ná, nar is not limited to combining nouns and adjectives, but can also be used to equate nouns: Parmar nar engwi "books are things", Fëanáro ná Noldo "Fëanor is a Noldo". (Notice, by the way, that the proper Quenya form of Fëanor's name is Fëanáro; "Fëanor" is a Quenya-Sindarin hybrid form used in Middle-earth after his death.) Again it may be permissible to leave out the copula and retain the same meaning: Parmar engwi, Fëanáro Noldo.



Adjectival agreement in number: Quenya adjectives must agree in number with the noun they escribe. That is, if the noun is plural, the adjective must be, too; if the adjective describes several nouns it must also be plural, even if each of the nouns is singular. English makes no such distinction – its adjectives do not change – but it is not surprising that Tolkien built adjectival agreement in number into Quenya, since this was to be a highly inflected language.



We have no examples of what happens if an adjective is to agree with a noun in the dual form. It is generally assumed, though, that there are no special dual forms of adjectives, but only one plural (or should we say "non-singular") form. The Markirya poem indicates that there is no special form of adjectives to go with the somewhat obscure "partitive plural" form in -li; an adjective describing a noun in -li simply appears in the normal plural form. This may support the theory that adjectives don't have a special dual form, either.



How, then, is the plural form of adjectives constructed? From the examples now available, it can be seen that Tolkien experimented with various systems over the years. In early sources, adjectives in -a form their plural form by adding the ending -r, just like nouns in -a do. For instance, one very early "map" of Tolkien's imaginary world (actually depicted as a symbolic ship) includes a reference to I Nori Landar. This evidently means "The Wide Lands" (LT1:84-85; the adjective landa "wide" occurs in the Etymologies, entry LAD. Christopher Tolkien in LT1:85 suggests the translation "The Great Lands".) Here the plural noun nori "lands" is described by the adjective landa "wide" – another example of an attributive adjective following the noun, by the way – and since the noun is plural, the adjective takes the plural ending -r to agree with it. This way of forming plural adjectives was still valid as late as 1937 or slightly earlier; we have already quoted the example maller raicar "roads [are] bent" from LR:47, where the adjective raica "crooked, bent, wrong" (listed by itself in LR:383) is plural to agree with maller.



However, this system cannot be recommended to writers; the evidence is that in LotR-style Quenya, it had been abandoned. Tolkien in a way reached back into the past and revived a system he had used in what may be the very first "Qenya" poem he ever wrote, Narqelion of 1915-16. In this poem, adjectives in -a form their plurals by means of the ending -i. For instance, the phrase sangar úmëai occurring in this poem apparently means "throngs large" = large throngs; the adjective úmëa "large" is listed in the early Qenya Lexicon (QL:97 – but in later Quenya, the word úmëa means "evil" instead). Later, Tolkien however introduced one more complication: Adjectives in -a had plurals in -ai in archaic Quenya only. In Exilic Quenya, Quenya as spoken by the Noldor after they had returned to Middle-earth, -ai at the end of words of more than one syllable had been reduced to -ë. (Cf. WJ:407 regarding the ending -vë representing "archaic Q -vai".) So while the plural form of, say, quanta "full" was apparently quantai at the older stages of the language, it later became quantë. This form we have already met in one of the examples quoted above: quantë tengwi, "full signs", where quanta appears in the plural form to agree with tengwi "signs" (VT39:5).



There is one special case to be considered: adjectives in -ëa, such as laurëa "golden". In archaic Quenya, we must assume that the plural form was simply laurëai. But when -ai later became -e, what would be ?laurëe did not prove to be a durable form. To avoid the cumbersome combination of two concomitant e's, the first of them was changed to i. Hence the plural form of laurëa in Exilic Quenya appears as laurië, as in the first line of Namárië: Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen... "Ah! golden fall the leaves in the wind..." – the adjective being plural to agree with the noun it describes, lassi "leaves".



As for adjectives in -ë, they seem to behave like most nouns of the same shape: -ë becomes -i in the plural. We don't have very many examples, but the phrase luini tellumar "blue vaults" in the prose version of Namárië seems to incorporate the plural form of an adjective luinë "blue" (actually not attested in this form, but as observed above, there are many colour-adjectives in -ë). Moreover, in the Etymologies Tolkien noted that the an adjective maitë "handy, skilled" has the plural form maisi (LR:371). Evidently the plural form was especially mentioned primarily to illustrate another point: that adjectives in -itë have plural forms in -isi, the consonant t turning into s before i. This particular idea seems to have been dropped later, though: In a much later, post-LotR source, Tolkien wrote hloníti tengwi, not ?hlonísi tengwi, for "phonetic signs" (WJ:395). So perhaps the plural form of maitë could simply be ?maiti as well.



As for the plural form of adjectives ending in a consonant, such as firin "dead", we don't seem to have any examples to guide us. It has traditionally been assumed that they form their plurals in -i, just like nouns of this shape do, and this still seems reasonably plausible. So, say, "dead men" could be firini neri. If any argument can be raised against this assumption, it is that adjectives in -in actually seem to be shortened forms of longer adjectives in -ina. As pointed out above, Tolkien quoted the adjective meaning "open, free, cleared (of land)" as latin(a), indicating double forms latin and latina. The plural form of latina should obviously be latinë, for older latinai. But what about latin? If this is merely a shortened form of latina, perhaps the plural form would still be latinë rather than latini? We cannot know for certain; in the exercises below I have followed the traditional assumption, using plurals in -i. Adjectives ending in a consonant are quite rare anyway, so this uncertainty does not greatly jeopardize the quality of our own Quenya texts.



In what positions do adjectives agree in number? Attested examples like those already quoted, like luini tellumar "blue domes", would seem to indicate that an attributive adjective in front of the noun does show agreement. So does an attributive adjective following the noun; the Markirya poem has i fairi nécë for "the pale phantoms", or literally "the phantoms pale" (néca pl. nécë "vague, faint, dim to see", MC:223). An adjective separated from the noun it describes also agrees in number, hence laurëa "golden" appears in plural form laurië in the first line of Namárië, laurië lantar lassi "golden fall leaves" (the prose Namárië has lassi lantar laurië "leaves fall golden"). As for predicative adjectives, we lack late examples. In German, adjectives do agree in number when they are used attributively, but adjectives used predicatively do not. Yet the old example maller raicar "roads [are] bent" in LR:47 would seem to indicate that in Quenya, adjectives agree in number also when they are used predicatively. In later Quenya we should presumably read maller (nar) raicë, since Tolkien changed the rules for how the plural form of adjectives is constructed.



So in short, we can conclude that adjectives agree in number with the nouns they describe "everywhere" – whether they appear before, after or separated from the noun, whether they are used attributively or predicatively. There are a few examples that don't quite fit in, though. Appendix E of the essay Quendi and Eldar of ca. 1960 contains several "well-behaved" examples of plural adjectives that are used attributively with the plural noun tengwi "signs", making up various phrases used by early Elvish linguists when they tried to analyze the structure of their tongue (as I said above, we needn't concern ourselves with the precise meaning of these terms here). Besides hloníti tengwi "phonetic signs" and quantë tengwi "full signs" already quoted (WJ:395, VT39:5), we have racinë tengwi "stripped signs" and penyë tengwi "lacking signs" (VT39:6; the singular of the latter, penya tengwë "a lacking sign", is attested: VT39:19). In these phrases the adjectives hlonítë "phonetic", quanta "full", racina "stripped, deprived" and penya "lacking, inadequate" all assume their plural forms, beautifully agreeing with tengwi "signs, elements, sounds". So far, so good. But then we turn to the draft material for Appendix E of Quendi and Eldar. Here Tolkien did not let the adjectives agree in number, and we have phrases like lehta tengwi "free/released elements", sarda tengwi "hard sounds" and tapta tengwi "impeded elements" (VT39:17). We would of course expect lehtë tengwi, sardë tengwi, taptë tengwi, but these are not found. Unless we are to assume that there are several classes of adjectives, some that agree in number and others that don't – and I think this is rather far-fetched – it seems that Tolkien in the draft material used a system whereby an attributive adjective immediately in front of its noun does not agree in number. But when he actually wrote the Appendix, he would seem to have introduced agreement in this position as well, and so we have for instance quantë tengwi rather than ?quanta tengwi for "full signs". Elvish grammar could change at lightening speed whenever Tolkien was in his "revision" mood, so this would not be surprising.

The last version of the Markirya poem, which Christopher Tolkien thinks was written at some point in the last decade of his father's life (1963-73), is also relevant here. In the phrase "fallen towers", Tolkien first wrote the adjective atalantëa "ruinous, downfallen" in its plural form atalantië, just like we would expect. Then, according to Christopher Tolkien, he mysteriously changed atalantië to the singular (or rather uninflected) form atalantëa, though the adjacent noun "towers" was left in the plural (MC:222). Again Tolkien seems to be experimenting with a system whereby attributive adjectives immediately in front of the noun they describe do not agree in number, but appear in their uninflected form. A similar system appears in Tolkien's writings on Westron, the "Common Speech" of Middle-earth (a language he only sketched). Perhaps he considered introducing such a system in Quenya as well, and we see this idea flickering on and off, so to speak, in his writings?



However, the system I would recommend to writers is to let adjectives agree in number also in this position. In Namárië in LotR we have the phrase lintë yuldar "swift draughts", and in the interlinear translation in RGEO:66 Tolkien explicitly noted that lintë is a "pl." adjective. We must assume, then, that lintë represents older lintai, the plural form of an adjective linta. If an attributive adjective immediately in front of the noun it describes did not agree in number, "swift draughts" should have been ?linta yuldar instead. The source where Tolkien explicitly identified lintë as a plural form was published during his own lifetime, and moreover as late as in 1968, possibly postdating even the last version of Markirya. So his final decision seems to have been that adjectives do agree in number with their nouns also when the adjective appears immediately in front of the noun. One suspects that he spent many sleepless nights carefully considering the various pros and cons in this important question.



NOTE ON ADJECTIVES USED AS NOUNS: As described above, Tolkien at one stage had adjectives in -a form their plurals in -ar, but later he replaced this with -ë (for older -ai). However, adjectives in -a may still have plural forms in -ar if they are used as nouns, because in such a case they are naturally inflected as nouns. Tolkien noted that instead of saying penyë tengwi "lacking signs" the Elves might simply refer to the penyar or "lacking ones" – "using [the adjective] penya as a technical noun" (VT39:19). A more well-known example is provided by the adjective vanya "fair, beautiful"; this would normally have the plural form vanyë (e.g. vanyë nissi "beautiful women"). However, the adjective vanya can also be used as a noun, "a Vanya" or "Fair One", which was the word used of a member of the First Clan of the Eldar. Then the whole clan is of course called the Vanyar, as in the Silmarillion chapter 3: "The Vanyar were [Ingwë's] people; they are the Fair Elves." Using another (but related) adjective "beautiful", namely vanima, Treebeard employed another noun-style plural when he greeted Celeborn and Galadriel as a vanimar "o beautiful ones" (the translation given in Letters:308).



Adjectives in -ë would however have their usual plural form in -i even if they are used as nouns, since most nouns in -ë also form their plurals in -i.







Lesson Four - Summary of Lesson Four







Adjectives are words used to describe various qualities, such as "tall" or "beautiful". They can be combined with nouns, making up phrases like "(a/the) red book" or "tall men", where the adjectives "red" and "tall" describe the nouns "book" and "men" directly; this is called using an adjective attributively. But adjectives can also be used in sentences like "the book is red" or "the men are tall", where the whole point of the sentence is to ascribe a certain quality to a noun; here the adjective is used as a predicate. In such cases English slips in a copula, like "is" or "are" in these examples, to clarify the relationship between the noun and the adjective. Many languages do without this extra device (one would just say what corresponds to "the book red"), and this seems to be permissible in Quenya as well, but the explicit copula ná "is"/nar "are" also occurs in the material. – Most Quenya adjectives end in the vowel -a, some also in -ë; the only ones that end in a consonant are a few that nearly always have the ending -in (apparently shortened from -ina). Quenya adjectives agree in number; if an adjective describes a plural noun or more than one noun, the adjective must be plural as well. Adjectives in -a have plural forms in -ë (for older -ai); notice that if the adjective ends in -ëa it forms its plural in -ië (to avoid -ëe). Adjectives in -ë have plural forms in -i; for the few adjectives in -in we lack examples, but it is normally assumed that they would add -i in the plural.







Lesson Four - Vocabulary







Except for the two first items, all of these are adjectives. Don't worry about the other words occurring in the exercises below; those you have already memorized carefully, following my instructions in Lesson Two. Right?



neldë "three"

ná "is" (nar "are")

vanya "beautiful, fair"

alta "great" (= big; the word is used of physical size only)

calima "bright"

taura "mighty"

saila "wise" (we will use this form found in late material; a pre-LotR source has saira instead)

úmëa "evil"

carnë "red" (we suspect that Tolkien the Devout Catholic was thinking about cardinals with their red attires; the Italian word carne = "[red] meat" may also be relevant here...)

ninquë "white"

morë "black" (cf. the first element of Sindarin Mordor = Black Land)

firin "dead"







Lesson Four - Exercises







1. Translate into English:



A. Morë rocco.

B. Calimë hendu.

C. Neldë firini neri.

D. Vanyë aiwi.

E. Tári ná taura nís.

F. I oronti nar altë.

G. Aran taura (two possible translations!)

H. I nér ar i nís nar sailë.



2. Translate into Quenya:



I. The white gate.

J. A great ship.

K. The floor is red.

L. One black stone and three white stones.

M. Wise kings are mighty men.

N. The mighty man and the beautiful woman are evil.

O. Elves are beautiful.

P. The Elves are a beautiful people.

Lesson Three - Dual Number. Stem Variation.
08:42 Aug 13 2005
Times Read: 636


Dual Number







The previous lesson covered two Quenya plural forms: the somewhat mysterious "partitive plural" in -li, and the "normal" plural in either -r or -i (mostly depending on the shape of the word). Like quite a few "real" languages, Quenya also possesses a dual form, that has no direct counterpart in English. Dual number refers to two things, a couple of things. The dual is formed with one out of two endings: -u or -t.



Within the fictional timeline imagined by Tolkien, these two endings originally had somewhat different meanings, and so were not completely interchangeable. A footnote in Letters:427 provides some information on this. The ending -u (from Primitive Elvish -û) was originally used in the case of natural pairs, of two things or persons somehow belonging together as a logical couple. For instance, according to VT39:9, 11, the word pé "lip" has the dual form peu "lips", referring to one person's pair of lips (and not, for instance, to the upper lip of one person and the lower lip of another, which would be just "two lips" and not a natural pair). The noun veru, meaning "married pair" or "husband and wife", has dual form; in this case there does not seem to be a corresponding singular "spouse" (but we have verno "husband" and vessë "wife" from the same root; see LR:352). The noun alda "tree" occurs in dual form with reference, not to any casual pair of trees, but the Two Trees of Valinor: Aldu.



Notice that if the ending -u is added to a noun ending in a vowel, this vowel is displaced: hence the dual of alda is aldu rather than **aldau – though a word quoted in PM:138, reproducing a draft for the LotR Appendices, seems to suggest that Tolkien for a moment considered precisely the latter form. There is also an old source that has Aldaru, apparently formed by adding the dual ending -u to the normal plural aldar "trees", but this seems to be an early experiment of Tolkien's that was probably long obsolete by the time he wrote LotR. In the dual form peu, the final vowel of pé "lip" is apparently not displaced by the dual ending -u. However, Quenya pé is meant to descend from primitive Elvish peñe, whereas the dual form peu is meant to come from peñû (VT39:9) – so the e of peu was not originally final.



As for the other dual ending, -t, it according to Letters:427 represents an old element ata. This, Tolkien noted, was originally "purely numerative"; it is indeed related to the Quenya word for the numeral "two", atta. By "purely numerative", Tolkien evidently meant that the dual in -t could denote two things only casually related. For instance, ciryat as the dual form of cirya "ship" could refer to any two ships; ciryat would only be a kind of spoken shorthand for the full phrase atta ciryar, "two ships". However, Tolkien further noted that "in later Q[uenya]", the dual forms were "only usual with reference to natural pairs". Precisely what he means by "later" Quenya cannot be determined; it could refer to Quenya as a ritual language in Middle-earth rather than the vernacular of the Eldar in Valinor. In any case, the Third Age Quenya we aim for in this course must certainly be included when Tolkien speaks of "later" Quenya, so here we will follow the rule that any dual form must refer to some kind of natural or logical pair, not to two things only casually related. In other words, the dual in -t came to have just the same "meaning" as a dual in -u. A dual like ciryat "2 ships" (curiously spelt "ciriat" in Letters:427, perhaps a typo) would not in later Quenya be used with reference to any two ships, but only of two ships that somehow form a pair – like two sister ships. If you just want to refer to two ships that do not in any way form a natural or logical pair, like any two ships that happen to be seen together, you would not use the dual form but simply the numeral atta "two" – hence atta ciryar.

Since the two endings -t and -u had come to carry the same meaning, some rule is needed to determine when to use which. Which ending should be used can apparently be inferred from the shape of the word itself (just like the shape of the word normally determines whether the plural ending should be -i or -r). In Letters:427, Tolkien noted that "the choice of t or u [was] decided by euphony", sc. by what sounded well – adding as an example that -u was preferred to -t if the word that is to receive a dual ending already contains a t or the similar sound d. Hence the dual of alda is aldu rather than **aldat. It seems that as far as later Quenya is concerned, -t would be your first option as the dual ending, but if the noun it is to be added to already contains t or d, you opt for -u instead (remembering that this ending displaces any final vowels). The duals Tolkien listed in the Plotz Letter, ciryat "a couple of ships" and lasset "a couple of leaves" (formed from cirya "ship" and lassë "leaf") confirm that a words with no t or d in them take the dual ending -t. Perhaps the ending -u would also be preferred in the case of nouns ending in a consonant, since -t could not be added directly to such a word without producing a final consonant cluster that Quenya phonology wouldn't allow; unfortunately we have no examples. (If the ending -t is to be used anyhow, a vowel would probably have to be inserted before it, producing a longer ending – likely -et. We will eschew this little problem in the exercises below, since nobody really knows the answer.)



It is clear, however, that Quenya has a number of old duals that do not follow the rule that the ending is normally -t, replaced by -u only if there is a d or t in the word it is to be added to. The examples veru "married pair" and peu "lips, pair of lips" are proof of that; here there is no t or d present, but the ending is still -u rather than -t. Presumably these are "fossilized" dual forms reflecting the older system in which only -u denoted a natural or logical pair. The example peu "(pair of) lips" suggests that the ending -u is used in the case of body-parts occurring in pairs, such as eyes, arms, legs. (The other ending -t may however be used if certain other endings intrude before the dual ending itself; we will return to this in a later lesson.) The word for "arm" is ranco; the dual form denoting one person's pair of arms is not attested, but my best guess is that it would be rancu. The compound hendumaica "sharp-eye[d]" mentioned in WJ:337 may incorporate a dual hendu "(pair of) eyes". The Quenya word for "eye" is known to be hen, or hend- before an ending (the Etymologies only mentions the normal plural hendi "eyes", LR:364). In the case of this word the dual ending would be -u rather than -t anyway, since there is a d in hend-. The word for "foot", tál, probably has the dual talu (for the shortening of the vowel, see below).







Lesson Three - Stem Variation







This is a subject we shall have to spend some paragraphs on, since even on this early stage of the course we haven't been able to wholly eschew it. I will go into some detail here, but students can rest assured that they are not expected to remember all the words and examples below; just try to get a feel for what stem variation is all about.



Sometimes the form of a Quenya word subtly changes when you add endings to it. Two such words were mentioned above. If you add an ending to tál "foot", for instance -i for plural or -u for dual, the long vowel á is shortened to a. So the plural "feet" is tali rather than **táli, the dual "a couple of feet" is talu rather than **tálu. In such a case, tál "foot" may be said to have the stem tal-. Likewise, the word hen "eye" has the stem hend-, since its plural is hendi and not just **heni. The "stem" form does not occur by itself, but is the form you add endings to. When presenting a gloss, I will represent such stem variation by listing the independent form first, followed by a parenthetical "stem form" with a hyphen where the ending goes, e.g.: tál (tal-) "foot", hen (hend-) "eye".



In the case of tál vs. tal-, the variation is apparently due to the fact that vowels were often lengthened in words of only one syllable, but when the word had endings the word obviously got to have more than one syllable and so the lengthening did not occur (another example of the same seems to be nér "man" vs. plural neri "men", MR:213/LR:354). Originally, the vowel was short in all forms. It is usually true that the stem form gives away how the word looked at an earlier stage in the long linguistic evolution Tolkien dreamed up in great detail. Hen "eye" in its stem hend- reflects the primitive "base" KHEN-D-E from which it is ultimately derived (LR:364). Quenya could not have -nd at the end of a word and simplified it to -n when the word stands alone (thus, hen in a way represents the impossible "full" form hend), but before an ending the group -nd- was not final and could therefore actually appear. Very often stem variation has to do with clusters or sounds that are not allowed at the end of words, but that may appear elsewhere. Cf. a word like talan "floor". The plural "floors" is not **talani as we might expect, but talami. The stem is talam- because this is the form of the Primitive Elvish root-word: TALAM (LR:390). As Quenya evolved from Primitive Elvish, a rule came into place that only a few consonants were allowed at the end of words, and m was not one of them. The closest "permissible" consonant was n, and so the old word talam was altered to talan – but in the plural form talami (and other forms that added an ending to the word), the m was not final and therefore persisted unchanged. Another, similar case is filit "small bird", that has the stem filic- (e.g. plural filici "small birds"): The primitive root-word was PHILIK (LR:381), but Quenya did not permit -k at the end of a word, so in that position it became -t. When not final it remained k (here spelt c).



In some cases, the "independent" form is a simplified or shortened form of a word, while the stem form reflects the fuller form. For instance, Tolkien apparently imagined that the word merendë "feast, festival" was often shortened to meren, but the stem is still merend- (LR:372). Hence the plural of meren is merendi, not **mereni. When it stands alone, the word nissë "woman" is normally reduced to nis (or nís with a lengthened vowel), but the double S persists before endings: thus the plural "women" is nissi (LR:377, MR:213). A similar case is Silmarillë, the name of one of the legendary jewels created by Fëanor; this is normally shortened to Silmaril, but before endings the double L of the full form is preserved (Silmarill-); hence the plural is always Silmarilli. In the case of compound words, sc. words made up from several other words, the second element in the compound is often reduced, but a fuller form may turn up before an ending. For instance, the noun Sindel "Grey-elf" (WJ:384) incorporates -el as a reduced form of Elda "Elf". The plural of Sindel is not **Sindeli, but Sindeldi preserving the cluster -ld- seen in Elda. (Since the final -a is lost in the compound, we cannot have the plural **Sindeldar.)



In some cases a word may be contracted when you add endings to it. In such cases the stem-form does not reflect the older, more complete form of the word. Such contraction often occurs in two-syllable words containing two identical vowels. For instance, feren "beech-tree" is reduced to fern- before an ending, e.g. plural ferni instead of **fereni. WJ:416 likewise indicates that laman "animal" may be reduced to lamn- before an ending, hence for instance lamni "animals", though the unreduced form lamani was also in use. Occasionally, the contracted forms suffer further change when compared to the unreduced form; as the plural of seler "sister" we might expect **selri, but since lr is not a permissible consonant cluster in Quenya, it is changed to ll – the actual plural "sisters" being selli (cf. the Etymologies, entry THEL-, THELES-).



Another form of stem-variation is very poorly attested as far as nouns are concerned, but there are hints to the effect that the final vowel of some words would change when an ending is added. In Quenya, the final vowels -o and -ë sometimes come from -u and -i in Primitive Elvish. At one stage of the linguistic evolution, original short -i became -e when the vowel was final; in the same environment original short -u became -o. For instance, the primitive word tundu "hill, mound" came out as tundo in Quenya (LR:395). But since this change only occurred when the vowel was final, it is possible that its original quality would be preserved before an ending. The plural "hills" may well be tundur rather than tundor, though neither form is attested. According to SD:415, the Quenya noun lómë "night" has the "stem" lómi-, evidently meaning that the final vowel -ë changes to -i- if you add an ending after it. For instance, adding the dual ending -t to lómë (to express "a couple of nights") would presumably produce lómit rather than lómet. This would be because lómë comes from Primitive Elvish dômi (LR:354), and -i never turned into -e except when final. Some think certain words in Namárië, lírinen and súrinen, are attested examples of this phenomenon: These are forms of lírë "song" and súrë "wind" (the latter is attested by itself in MC:222; the meaning of the ending -nen seen in lírinen and súrinen will be discussed in a later lesson). If this word originally ended in an -i that became -ë only later (and only when final), it may explain why in this word -ë seemingly turns into -i- before an ending. We would then say that súrë has the stem súri-.



There seems to be a similar variation involving the final vowel -o, that in some cases descend from final -u in Primitive Elvish; again the primitive quality of the vowel may be resurrected if an ending is added to it. For instance, rusco "fox" is said to have the stem ruscu-, so if we add the dual ending to speak of a "a couple of foxes", the resulting form should presumably be ruscut rather than ruscot. However, there is no extensive treatment of this phenomenon in Tolkien's published writings; indeed the statements made in SD:415 and VT41:10 that lómë and rusco have stems lómi-, ruscu- are as close as we get to explicit references to it.



The student should not despair, thinking that all sorts of strange things typically happen whenever you add an ending to a Quenya word, so that there is a great potential for making embarrassing mistakes (or at least very much extra stuff to memorize). Most Quenya words seem to be quite well-behaved, with no distinct "stem" form to remember; you just add the ending and that's it. Where a distinct stem-form is known to exist (or where we have good reason to suspect one), this will of course be indicated when I first present the word, if it is relevant for the exercises.







Lesson Three - Summary of Lesson Three







In addition to the plural form(s), Quenya also has a dual number used for a pair of things forming some kind of natural or logical couple. (We must assume that two things only casually associated would be denoted by a normal plural in conjunction with the numeral atta "two".) The dual is formed with one out of two endings: -t or -u (the latter displaces final vowels; the dual of alda "tree" is therefore aldu rather than aldau). One's first choice seems to be -t, but if the word this ending is to be added to already contains a t or a d, the alternative ending -u is preferred instead (for reasons of euphony – if you like, to avoid "crowding" the word with t's or similar sounds!) However, there seems to be a number of old, "fossilized" dual forms that end in -u even though there is no d or t in the word, such as veru "married pair" and peu "pair of lips". The latter example may suggest that all body-parts occurring in pairs are denoted by dual forms in -u rather than -t, regardless of the shape of the word (though the ending -t is evidently preferred if other endings intrude before the dual ending itself; more on this later).



Quite a few Quenya words subtly change when endings are appended to them, e.g. talan "floor" turning into talam- in the plural form talami. We would then call talam- the stem form of talan. Similarly, the final vowels -o and -ë sometimes appear as -u- and -i-, respectively, if some ending is added; thus lómë "night" has the stem lómi-. In many cases, the stem-form echoes the older shape of words (sounds or combinations that could not survive at the end of a word being preserved where not final), though the stem-form may also represent a contraction.







Lesson Three - Vocabulary







atta "two"

hen (hend-) "eye"

ranco "arm"

ando "gate"

cirya "ship"

aiwë "bird"

talan (talam-) "floor"

nér (ner-) "man" (adult male of any sentient race – Elvish, mortal or otherwise)

nís (niss-) "woman" (similarly: adult female of any sentient race)

sar (sard-) "stone" (a small stone – not "stone" as a substance or material)

alda "tree"

oron (oront-) "mountain"







Lesson Three - Exercises







1. Translate into English:



A. Hendu

B. Atta hendi (and answer: what is the difference between this and hendu above?)

C. Aldu

D. Atta aldar (and answer again: what is the difference between this and Aldu above?)

E. Minë nér ar minë nís.

F. I sardi.

G. Talami.

H. Oronti.



2. Translate into Quenya:



I. Two ships (just any two ships that happen to be seen together)

J. Two ships (that happen to be sister ships)

K. Arms (the two arms of one person)

L. Two mountains (within the same range; Twin Peaks, if you like – use a dual form)

M. Double gate (use a dual form)

N. Two birds (that have formed a pair)

O. Two birds (just any two birds)

P. Men and women.

Lesson Two - Nouns. Plural form. The Article.
08:40 Aug 13 2005
Times Read: 637

Words that denote things, as opposed to for instance actions, are called nouns. The "things" in question may be inanimate (like "stone"), animate (like "person", "woman", "boy"), natural (like "tree"), artificial (like "bridge, house"), concrete (like "stone" again) or wholly abstract (like "hatred"). Names of persons, like "Peter" or "Mary", are also considered nouns. Sometimes a noun may denote, not one clearly distinct object or person, but an entire substance (like "gold" or "water"). So there is much to be included.



In most languages, a noun can be inflected, that is, it appears in various forms to modify its meaning, or to make it fit into a specific grammatical context. For instance, if you want to connect two English nouns like "Mary" and "house" in such a way as to make it clear that Mary owns the house, you modify the form of the noun Mary by adding the ending -'s, producing Mary's, which readily connects with house to make the phrase Mary's house. Or starting with a noun like tree, you may want to make it clear that you are talking about more than one singular tree, and so you modify the word to its plural form by adding the plural ending -s to get trees. In English, a noun doesn't have very many forms at all; there is the singular (e.g. girl), its plural (girls), the form you use when the one denoted by the noun owns something (girl's) and the combination of the plural and this "ownership"-form (written girls' and unfortunately not really distinct from girls or girl's in sound, but speakers of English somehow get along without too many misunderstandings – rest assured that the Quenya equivalents are clearly distinct in form!) So an English noun comes in no more than four different forms.



A Quenya noun, on the other hand, comes in hundreds of different forms. It can receive endings not only for two different kinds of plural, plus endings denoting a pair of things, but also endings expressing meanings that in English would be denoted by placing small words like "for, in/on, from, to, of, with" etc. in front of the noun instead. Finally a Quenya noun can also receive endings denoting who owns it, e.g. -rya- "her" in máryat "her hands" in Namárië (the final -t, by the way, is one of the endings denoting a pair of something – in this case a natural pair of hands).



Having read the above, the student should not succumb to the idea that Quenya is a horribly difficult language ("imagine, hundreds of different forms to learn where English has only four!"), or for that matter start thinking that Quenya must be some kind of super-language ("wow, hundreds of different forms to play with while the poor English-speaking sods have to get along with a pitiful four!") English and Quenya organize the information differently, that is all – the former often preferring a string of short words, the latter rather jumbling the ideas to be expressed into one big mouthful. The hundreds of different forms arise because a much lower number of endings can be combined, so there is no reason to despair. It is a little like counting; you needn't learn two hundred and fifty different numeric symbols to be able to count to 250, but only the ten from 0 to 9.



Most of the endings a noun can take we won't discuss until (much) later lessons. We will start with something that should be familiar enough, found even on the puny list of English noun-forms: Making a noun plural – going from one to several.



In Quenya, there are two different plurals. One is formed by adding the ending -li to the noun. Tolkien called this the "partitive plural" (WJ:388) or a "general pl[ural]" (see the Etymologies, entry TELES). Unfortunately, the function of this plural – sc. how it differs in meaning from the more "normal" plural discussed below – is not fully understood. We have a few examples of this plural in our scarce source material, but they are not very helpful. For a long time it was assumed that this plural implied that there were "many" of the things in question; hence Eldali (formed from Elda "Elf") would mean something like "many Elves". There may be something to this, but in several of the examples we have, there seems to be no implication of "many". It has been suggested that Eldali may rather mean something like "several Elves" or "some Elves", sc. some out of a larger group, some considered as part of this group: The term "partitive plural" may point in the same direction. However, I will for the most part leave the partitive plural alone throughout this course. Its function just isn't well enough understood for me to construct exercises that would only mean feeding some highly tentative interpretation to unsuspecting students. (I present some thoughts about the -li plural in the appendices to this course.)



For now we will deal with the "normal" plural form instead. Any reader of Tolkien's narratives will have encountered plenty of examples of this form; they are especially common in the Silmarillion. Nouns ending in any of the four vowels -a, -o, -i or -u , plus nouns ending in the group -ië, form their plural with the ending -r. Cf. the names of various groups of people mentioned in the Silmarillion:



Elda "Elf", plural Eldar

Vala "god (or technically angel)", pl. Valar

Ainu "spirit of God's first creation", pl. Ainur

Noldo "Noldo, member of the Second Clan of the Eldar", pl. Noldor

Valië "female Vala", pl. Valier



For another example of -ië, cf. tier for "paths" in Namárië; compare singular tië "path". (According to the spelling conventions here employed, the diaeresis in tië is dropped in the plural form tier because the dots are there merely to mark that final -ë is not silent, but in tier, e is not final anymore because an ending has been added – and hence the dots go.) Examples of the plurals of nouns in -i are rare, since nouns with this ending are rare themselves, but in MR:229 we have quendir as the pl. of quendi "Elf-woman" (and also quendur as the pl. of quendu "Elf-man"; nouns in -u are not very numerous either).



This singular word quendi "Elf-woman" must not be confused with the plural word Quendi that many readers of Tolkien's fiction will remember from the Silmarillion, for instance in the description of the awakening of the Elves in chapter 3: "Themselves they named the Quendi, signifying those that speak with voices; for as yet they had met no other living things that spoke or sang." Quendi is the plural form of Quendë "Elf"; nouns ending in -ë typically form their plurals in -i, and as we see, this -i replaces the final -ë instead of being added to it. In WJ:361, Tolkien explicitly refers to "nouns in -e, the majority of which formed their plurals in -i".



As this wording implies, there are exceptions; a few nouns in -ë are seen to use the other plural ending, -r, instead. One exception we have already touched on: where the -ë is part of -ië, we have plurals in -ier, as in tier "paths". Hence we avoid the awkward plural form **tii. Other exceptions cannot be explained as easily. In LotR Appendix E, we have tyeller for "grades", evidently the plural of tyellë. Why tyeller instead of **tyelli? LR:47 likewise indicates that the plural of mallë "road" is maller; why not **malli? It may be that nouns in -lë have plurals in -ler because "regular" **-li might cause confusion with the partitive plural ending -li mentioned above. Unfortunately, we lack more examples that could confirm or disprove this theory (and so I don't dare to construct any exercises based on this assumption, though I would follow this rule in my own Quenya compositions). The form tyeller confused early researchers; with extremely few examples to go on, some wrongly concluded that nouns in -ë regularly have plurals in -er. The name of the early journal Parma Eldalamberon or "Book of Elven-tongues" (sporadically published still) reflects this mistake; the title incorporates **lamber as the presumed plural of lambë "tongue, language", while we now know that the correct plural must be lambi. Though the error was early suspected and is now recognized by everyone, the publisher never bothered to change the name of the journal to the correct form Parma Eldalambion (and so, ever and anon, I get an e-mail from some fresh student wondering why my site is called Ardalambion and not Ardalamberon...) In some cases, Tolkien himself seems uncertain which plural ending should be used. In PM:332, the plural form of Ingwë "Elf of the First Clan [also name of the king of that clan]" is given as Ingwi, just as we would expect; yet a few pages later, in PM:340, we find Ingwer instead (it is there said that the First Clan, the Vanyar, called themselves Ingwer, so perhaps this reflects a special Vanyarin usage?) It may be noted that in Tolkien's earliest "Qenya", more nouns in -ë apparently had plural forms in -er. For instance, the early poem Narqelion has lasser as the plural of lassë "leaf", but in Namárië in LotR Tolkien used the plural form lassi.



As far as I know, the words in the exercises below all follow the normal rule: Nouns ending in -ë, except as a part of -ië, have plurals in -i.



This leaves only one group of nouns to be considered, namely those that end in a consonant. These nouns, just like those that end in -ë, are seen to have plurals in -i. A few examples: Eleni "stars", the plural form of elen "star", occurs in Namárië (and also in WJ:362, where both the singular and the plural form are quoted). The Silmarillion has Atani for "Men" (not "males", but humans as opposed to Elves); this is formed from the singular word Atan. According to WJ:388, the word Casar "Dwarf" has the plural Casari "Dwarves".



Of these two plural endings – r as in Eldar "Elves", but i as in Atani "(Mortal) Men" – Tolkien imagined the latter to be the most ancient. The plural ending -i comes directly from Primitive Elvish -î, a word like Quendi representing primitive Kwendî. The plural ending -r arose later: "For the showing of many the new device of r was brought in and used in all words of a certain shape – and this, it is said, was begun among the Noldor" (PM:402). In primary-world terms, both plural endings were however present in Tolkien's conception from the beginning; already in his earliest work on "Qenya", written during World War I, we find forms like Qendi (as it was then spelt) and Eldar coexisting. The twin plural endings are a feature that evidently survived throughout all the stages of Tolkien's development of Quenya, from 1915 to 1973.



NOTE ON THE DIFFERENT WORDS FOR "ELF": As the attentive reader will have inferred from the above, there is more than one Quenya word for "Elf". The word with the widest application, within the scope of Tolkien's fiction, was Quendë pl. Quendi. This form is at least associated with the word "to speak" (quet-), and Tolkien speculated that ultimately these words were indeed related via a very primitive base KWE- having to do with vocal speech (see WJ:391-392). When the Elves awoke by the mere of Cuiviénen, they called themselves Quendi (or in primitive Elvish actually Kwendî) since for a long time they knew of no other speaking creatures. Eventually the Vala Oromë found them under a starlit sky, and he gave them a new name in the language they themselves had developed: Eldâi, often translated "Starfolk". In Quenya, this primitive word later appeared as Eldar (singular Elda). While the term Eldar (Eldâi) was originally meant to apply to the entire Elvish race, it was later only used of the Elves that accepted the invitation of the Valar to come and dwell in the Blessed Realm of Aman and embarked on the Great March to get there (the term Eldar is also applicable to those who never actually made it all the way to Aman, such as the Sindar or Grey-elves who stayed in Beleriand). Those who refused the invitation were called Avari, "Refusers", and hence all Elves (Quendi) can be subdivided into Eldar and Avari. Only the former play any important part in Tolkien's narratives. So in later Quenya the situation was this: Quendë pl. Quendi remained as the only truly universal term for all Elves of any kind, but this was a technical word primarily used by the Loremasters, not a word that would be used in daily speech. The gender-specific variants of Quendë "Elf", namely masculine quendu and feminine quendi, would presumably be used only if you wanted to speak of a specifically Elvish (wo)man as opposed to a (wo)man of any other sentient race: These are not the normal Quenya words for "man" and "woman" (the normal words are nér and nís, presumably applicable to a man or woman of any sentient race, not just Elves). The normal, everyday Quenya term for "Elf" was Elda, and the fact that this word technically didn't apply to Elves of the obscure Avarin tribes living somewhere far east in Middle-earth was no big problem since none of them was ever seen anyway. Regarding the compound Eldalië (which combines Elda with lië "people, folk") Tolkien wrote that when one of the Elves of Aman used this word, "he meant vaguely all the race of Elves, though he was probably not thinking of the Avari" (WJ:374). – Throughout the exercises found in this course, I have used Elda (rather than Quendë) as the standard translation of English "Elf", regardless of any specialized meaning it may have within Tolkien's mythos. As I said in the Introduction, in these exercises I largely eschew specific references to Tolkien's mythos and narratives.

Lesson Two - The Article.







We have time for one more thing in this lesson: the article. An article, linguistically speaking, is such a word as English "the" or "a, an". These little words are used in conjunction with nouns to express such different shades of meaning as "a horse" vs. "the horse". Anyone capable of reading this text in the first place will know what the difference is, so no lengthy explanation is necessary. In short, "a horse" refers to a horse that hasn't been mentioned before, so you slip in the article "a" as a kind of introduction: "Look, there's a horse over there!" You may also use the phrase "a horse" if you want to say something that is true of any horse, as in "a horse is an animal". If, on the other hand, you say "the horse", it usually refers to one definite horse. Hence "the" is termed the definite article, while "a, an", lacking this "definite" aspect, is conversely called the indefinite article.



In this respect at least, Quenya is somewhat simpler than English. Quenya has only one article, corresponding to the English definite article "the" (and since there is no indefinite article it must be distinguished from, we may simply speak of "the article" when discussing Quenya). The Quenya word corresponding to English "the" is i. For instance, Namárië has i eleni for "the stars". As can be inferred from the above, Quenya has no word corresponding to English "a, an". When translating Quenya into English, one simply has to slip in "a" wherever English grammar demands an indefinite article, as in the famous greeting Elen síla lúmenn' omentielvo, "a star shines upon the hour of our meeting". As we see, the first word of the Quenya sentence is simply elen "star", with nothing corresponding to the English indefinite article "a" before it (or anywhere else in the sentence, for that matter). In Quenya, there is no way you can maintain the distinction between "a star" and just "star"; both are simply elen. Luckily there isn't much of a distinction to be maintained anyway. Languages like Arabic, Hebrew and classical Greek employ a similar system: there is a definite article corresponding to English "the", but nothing corresponding to the English indefinite article "a, an" (and this is the system used in Esperanto as well). After all, the absence of the definite article is itself enough to signal that a (common) noun is indefinite, so the indefinite article is in a way superfluous. Tolkien decided to do without it in Quenya, so students only have to worry about i = "the".



Sometimes, Tolkien connects the article to the next word by means of a hyphen or a dot: i-mar "the earth" (Fíriel's Song), i•coimas "the lifebread" (PM:396). However, he did not do so in LotR (we have already quoted the example i eleni "the stars" in Namárië), and neither will we here.



The Quenya article is generally used as in English. However, some nouns that would require the article in English are apparently counted as proper names in Quenya, and so take no article. For instance, the sentence Anar caluva tielyanna is translated "the Sun shall shine upon your path" (UT:22, 51); yet there is no article in the Quenya sentence. "The Sun" is not **i Anar, but simply Anar. Clearly Anar is perceived as a proper name, designating one celestial body only, and you don't have to say "the Anar" any more than an English-speaking person would say "the Mars". The name of "the" Moon, Isil, undoubtedly behaves like Anar in this respect. It may be noted that both words are treated as proper names in the Silmarillion, chapter 11: "Isil was first wrought and made ready, and first rose into the realm of the stars... Anar arose in glory, and the first dawn of the Sun was like a great fire..."

Also notice that before a plural denoting an entire people (or even race), the article is not normally used. WJ:404 mentions a saying Valar valuvar, "the will of the Valar will be done" (or more literally *"the Valar will rule"). Notice that "the Valar" is simply Valar in Quenya, not i Valar. Similarly, PM:395 has lambë Quendion for "language of the Elves" and coimas Eldaron for "coimas [lembas] of the Eldar" – not **lambë i Quendion, **coimas i Eldaron. (The ending -on here appended to the plurals Quendi, Eldar signifies "of"; this ending should not affect whether or not the article has to be present before the word.)



With this usage compare Tolkien's use of "Men" in his narratives to refer to the human race as such: "Men awoke in Hildórien at the rising of the Sun... A darkness lay upon the hearts of Men... Men (it is said) were at first very few in number..." (Silmarillion, chapter 17.) By contrast, "the Men" would refer, not to the entire race, but only to a casual group of "Men" or humans. Quenya plurals denoting entire peoples or races seem to behave in the same way. In a Quenya text there would probably be no article before plurals like Valar, Eldar, Vanyar, Noldor, Lindar, Teleri, Atani etc. as long as the entire race or people is considered, even though Tolkien's English narratives speak of "the Valar", "the Eldar" etc. However, if we replace Eldar with its equivalent "Elves", we see that the article often would often not be required in English, either (e.g. "Elves are beautiful" = Eldar nar vanyë; if you say "the Elves are beautiful" = i Eldar nar vanyë, you are probably describing once particular group of Elves, not the entire race).



Occasionally, especially in poetry, the article seemingly drops out for no special reason. Perhaps it is simply omitted because of metric considerations. The first line of Namárië, ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen, Tolkien translated "ah! like gold fall the leaves..." – though there is no i before lassi "leaves" in the Quenya text. The Markirya poem also leaves out the article in a number of places, if we are to judge by Tolkien's English translation of it.







Lesson Two - Summary of Lesson Two







There is a plural ending -li the function of which we don't fully understand, so we will leave it alone for now. The normal plural is formed by adding -r to nouns ending in any of the vowels -a, -i, -o, -u, plus nouns ending in -ië. If, on the other hand, the noun ends in -ë (except, of course, as part of -ië) the plural ending is usually -i (displacing the final -ë); nouns ending in a consonant also form their plurals in -i. The Quenya definite article, corresponding to English "the", is i; there is no indefinite article like English "a, an".







Lesson Two - Vocabulary







Regarding Frodo hearing Galadriel singing Namárië, the LotR states that "as is the way of Elvish words, they remained graven in his memory". This may be a comforting thought to students attempting to memorize Quenya vocabulary. In the lessons proper, while I discuss various aspects of Quenya, I will normally mention quite a few words – but in the exercises, I will only use words from the "vocabulary" list that is hereafter presented at the end of each lesson. Thus, this is all the student is excepted to carefully memorize (doing the exercises for the next lessons, you will also need vocabulary introduced earlier). We will introduce twelve new words in each lesson: a fitting number, since Tolkien's Elves preferred counting in twelves rather than tens as we do. A unified list of all the vocabulary henceforth employed in the exercises of this course can be downloaded from this URL: http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/q-vocab.rtf



minë "one" (from now on, we will introduce one new number in each lesson)

Anar "(the) Sun"

Isil "(the) Moon"

ar "and" (a most useful word that will allow us to have two exercises in one...translate "the Sun and the Moon", for instance...)

Elda "Elf"

lië "people" (sc. an entire "ethnic group" or even race, as in Eldalië = the People of the Elves).

vendë "maiden" (in archaic Quenya wendë)

rocco "horse" (specifically "swift horse for riding", according to Letters:382)

aran "king"

tári "queen"

tasar "willow" (by its form this could be the plural of **tasa, but no such word exists, and -r is here part of the basic word and not an ending. This word occurs, compounded, in LotR – Treebeard chanting "In the willow-meads of Tasarinan [Willow-vale] I walked in the spring...")

nu "under"







Lesson Two - Exercises







1. Translate into English (or whatever language you prefer):



A. Roccor

B. Aran (two possible English translations!)

C. I rocco.

D. I roccor.

E. Arani.

F. Minë lië nu minë aran.

G. I aran ar i tári.

H. Vendi.



2. Translate into Quenya:



I. Willows.

J. Elves.

K. The kings.

L. Peoples.

M. The horse under (or, below) the willow.

N. A maiden and a queen.

O. The queen and the maidens.

P. The Sun and the Moon (I promised you that one...)

Lesson One (The Sounds of Quenya) Pronunciation and accentuation.
07:03 Aug 13 2005
Times Read: 638








GENERAL REMARKS







Quenya as an actual entity in our own world exists primarily as a written language: Quenya enthusiasts tend to be widely scattered and must generally share their compositions via some written medium only (indeed I shall normally refer to users of Quenya as "writers" rather than "speakers"). Nonetheless, any student should obviously know what pronunciation Tolkien imagined, as well as his intentions can be approximated now.



There exist a very few recordings of Tolkien himself reading Quenya texts. In a late TV interview, Tolkien writes out and pronounces the greeting elen síla lúmenn' omentielvo. More notably, he made two different recordings of Namárië (sung and spoken). The spoken version is also available on the net: http://www.salon.com/audio/2000/10/05/tolkien_elvish/index.html (under "Poem in Elvish"). A few lines of this version of Namárië differ from their LotR counterparts: The recorded version has inyar únóti nar ve rámar aldaron / inyar ve lintë yulmar vánier instead of yéni únótimë ve rámar aldaron! / yéni ve lintë yuldar (a)vánier as in LotR. The recording was made before the book was published (and hence before the final revisions). A much later recording, with the same text as in the book, also exists. I have not heard it, so I cannot comment further.



The very few extant recordings are interesting, but they are not our chief source of information. Most of what we know about Quenya pronunciation is based on Tolkien's written notes about how his languages should be pronounced, predominantly the information provided in LotR Appendix E. (Indeed Tolkien's actual pronunciation in the recordings is not always quite flawless according to his own technical descriptions, but then he was not a native speaker of Quenya.)



Any natural language has a phonology, a set of rules defining what sounds are used, how they vary and behave, and how they can be combined. This goes for any well-made invented language as well. Quenya is most definitely not a haphazard jumble of sounds; Tolkien carefully constructed its phonology – both as an evolving entity (classical Quenya gradually developing from Primitive Elvish) and as a "fixed" form (defining the kind of Quenya that was used as a language of lore and ceremony in Middle-earth). Tolkien had Pengolodh, the sage of Gondolin, observe that Elvish tongues tended to use relatively few sounds – "for the Eldar being skilled in craft are not wasteful nor prodigal to small purpose, admiring in a tongue rather the skilled and harmonious use of a few well-balanced sounds than profusion ill-ordered" (PM:398). None of the sounds used in Quenya are particularly exotic from a European viewpoint, but they are combined in an exquisitely tidy manner. Compared to Tolkien's Elvish, many "real" languages indeed appear rather messy.







Lesson One - Basic Terms







Let us get some basic terms into place (people with linguistic training need not spend much time on this section). The sounds of any language can be divided into two broad categories, vowels and consonants. The vowels are sounds made by letting the air stream "freely" through the mouth: Different vowels are produced by modifying the position of the tongue and the lips, but the stream of air is not directly obstructed. If one draws out various vowels, pronouncing aaaaa... or eeeee... or ooooo..., it is easy to feel how the air streams quite unhindered though the mouth: One merely configures the tongue and lips to "shape" the desired sound. Vowels can be more or less "open" or "closed": You only have to notice the position of the tongue and lower jaw when pronouncing aaah... as contrasted with their position when you pronounce ooooh... to understand what is meant by this. The vowel a (as in English part) is the most open, while the vowel u (as in English rude) is the most closed. Other vowels fall between. Vowels can also be more or less "rounded", mainly depending on the position of the lips; the vowel u (as just described) is said to be rounded because it is pronounced with the lips pouted. A vowel like o (as in English sore) is actually pronounced much like the a of part, but o is rounded and a is not – making the vowels audibly distinct.



When pronouncing vowels, the stream of air is only modified (by means of devices like the ones just described). It is never actually "hindered". In the case of the consonants, the air is however more actively obstructed. Thus, Tolkien can inform us that one early Elvish term for consonant was tapta tengwë or just tapta, meaning "impeded element" or "impeded one" (VT39:7). In the most "extreme" cases the stream of air may even be completely halted for a moment: This is easily perceived in the case of a consonant like p, which is pronounced by bringing the lips into contact, momentarily cutting off the stream of air from the lungs and allowing a pressure to build up inside the mouth. Then the lips are suddenly parted again, releasing the air in a small explosion – and this explosion constitutes a p. Such plosive consonants include t, p, k and their counterparts d, b, g (sc. hard g as in gold, not as in gin). They are all formed by halting and then suddenly releasing the air various places in the mouth. Instead of halting the air completely one may also let it "fizzle through" a small opening, as when f is pronounced by forcing the air out between the lower lip and the upper teeth; such "friction" sounds are called fricatives (or spirants) and include consonants like f, th, v. And there are yet other options on how to manipulate the stream of air, such as rerouting it through the nose to produce nasal consonants like n or m.



The concept of voicing should also be understood. Humans (and, it would seem, Elves) come with a kind of buzzing device installed in their throats, namely the vocal chords. By making the vocal chords vibrate, one may add "voice" to the stream of air before it enters the speech organs proper. The presence or lack of such voicing is what distinguishes sounds like v vs. f. If one draws out a sound like ffff...and suddenly turns it into vvvv... instead, one will feel the "buzzer" in the throat kicking in (put a finger on your glottis – what in men is called the "Adam's apple", less protuberant in women – and you will actually feel the vibration of the vocal chords). In principle, the device of voicing could be used to double the number of sounds we are able to produce, since they could all be pronounced either with vibration in the vocal chords (as voiced sounds) or without such vibration (as unvoiced sounds). In practice, most of the sounds of speech do not appear in unvoiced versions. Many sounds would barely be perceptible without the voicing (n, for instance, would be reduced to little more than a weak snort). Normally all vowels are voiced as well, certainly so in Quenya (though in Japanese, vowels may lose their voicing in certain environments). But I have already referred to d, b, g as the "counterparts" of t, p, k; they are counterparts in the sense that the former are voiced and the latter are not. One characteristic feature of Quenya (at least the Noldorin dialect) is the very limited distribution of the voiced plosives d, b, g; they occur solely in the middle of words, and then only as part of the consonant clusters nd/ld/rd, mb, and ng. Some speakers also pronounced lb instead of lv. (Possibly Tolkien imagined different rules for the poorly attested Vanyarin dialect of Quenya: The Silmarillion refers to a lament called Aldudénië made by a Vanyarin Elf; this word has puzzled researchers since the middle d occurs in a position that would be quite impossible in Noldorin Quenya.)



Syllables: Made up of vowels and consonants, speech is not an undifferentiated outburst of sound. Rather it is perceived to be organized into rhythmic units called syllables. The shortest possible words are necessarily monosyllabic, having only one syllable – like English from or its Quenya equivalent ho. Words of more than one syllable, polysyllabic ones, form longer strings of rhythmic "beats". A word like faster has two syllables (fas-ter), a word like wonderful has three (won-der-ful), a word like geography has four (ge-og-ra-phy), and so on – though obviously we can't go much further before the words would be felt to be impractically long and difficult to pronounce. Some oriental languages, like Vietnamese, show a great preference for monosyllabic words. But as is evident from the English examples just quoted, European languages often employ longer words, and Tolkien's Quenya makes extensive use of big mouthfuls (as does Finnish). Consider words like Ainulindalë or Silmarillion (five syllables: ai-nu-lin-da-lë, sil-ma-ril-li-on). An uninflected Quenya word typically has two or three syllables, and this number is often increased by adding inflectional endings, or by compounding.







Lesson One - The Sounds of Quenya







In Quenya, the basic vowels are a, e, i, o, u (short and long). They may also be combined into diphthongs, groups of two basic vowels pronounced together as one syllable: There are three diphthongs in -i (ai, oi, ui) and three in -u (au, eu, iu, though the diphthongs eu and iu are quite rare). The consonants of Third Age Quenya may be listed as c (= k), d, f, g, gw, h, hy, hw, l, ly, m, n, nw, ny, p, qu, r, ry, s, t, ty, v, y and w (this listing is not wholly uncontroversial; the consonant system of Quenya can be plausibly analyzed in more than one way). In Elvish writing, the Tengwar orthography also upholds the distinction between some consonants that by the Third Age had come to be pronounced alike and thus merged altogether (þ merging with s, while initial ñ fell together with n – see the discussion of spelling conventions). In the transcription and spelling employed in this course, the former presence of "lost" distinct consonants is reflected in two cases only: hl and hr, that were originally unvoiced l and r, but later they merged with normal l, r (and are therefore not included on the list of Third Age Quenya consonants above). Thus we will spell, say, hrívë ("winter") in this way despite the fact that Tolkien imagined the typical Third Age pronunciation to be simply "rívë" (with a normal r).



Though the consonants hy, gw, hw, ly, nw, ny, ry, ty, and qu (and hr, hl) must here be written as two letters (as digraphs), they should evidently be taken as unitary sounds: Their pronunciation will be discussed in greater detail below. The digraphs in -w represent labialized consonants, while the digraphs in -y stand for palatalized consonants; again, see below for further discussion of these terms. It should be understood that qu is simply an aesthetic way of spelling what would otherwise be represented as cw (most people will agree that Quenya looks better than Cwenya), so qu, like nw, is a labialized consonant. When counting syllables one must remember that there is no actual vowel u in qu; "u" here stands for w. A word like alqua ("swan") thus has only two syllables: al-qua (= al-cwa). One must not think "al-qu-a" and conclude that there are actually three syllables. In Tengwar writing, qu is denoted by a single letter, and in most early sources, Tolkien also used the single letter q to represent it.



Double consonants: Some consonants also occur in long or double versions; double vs. single consonants may be compared to long vs. short vowels. The "obvious" cases, sc. the double consonants directly represented in orthography, are cc, ll, mm, nn, pp, rr, ss and tt (e.g. ecco "spear", colla "cloak", lamma "sound", anna "gift", lappa "hem of robe", yarra- "to growl", essë "name", atta "two"). The group pp is very rare, only attested in material far predating the LotR. In the Note on Pronunciation appended to the Silmarillion, Christopher Tolkien noted: "Consonants written twice are pronounced long, thus Yavanna has the long n heard in English unnamed, penknife, not the short n in unaimed, penny." Words like ana "towards" vs. anna "gift", tyelë "ceases" vs. tyellë "grade", ata "again" vs. atta "two" should be audibly distinct. – It is possible that some of the consonants written as digraphs must also be counted as double consonants when they occur between vowels; e.g. ny = long or double palatalized n (more on this below).



Consonant clusters (vs. single consonants): It is difficult to pronounce many sequential consonants, so the languages of the word generally confine themselves to relatively small groups (or "clusters") of consonants. The most typical word, from just about any language, is a series of vowels and consonants (single ones or relatively short consonant clusters) alternating – the "core" of each syllable usually being a vowel. Tolkien's Quenya is no exception; this language actually has quite restrictive rules for how consonants and vowels can be combined into syllables and longer words. Even so, consonant clusters are quite common, but they are not distributed as "freely" as in English. While English and for that matter Sindarin allow consonant clusters at the beginning of words, Quenya does not (SD:417-418). A word like scream, commencing with a cluster of no less than three consonants, would be quite impossible in Quenya. Tolkien noted that the name that the "Woses" or Wild Men had for themselves, Drughu, was adapted to Quenya as Rú (UT:385). Quenya could not preserve the initial cluster dr- of the original form of this loan-word (even apart from the fact that Quenya could not have d in this position). Quenya does allow a limited number of consonant clusters medially, between vowels in the middle of words; among "frequent" of "favoured" clusters Tolkien cited ld, mb, mp, nc, nd, ng, ngw, nqu, nt, ps, ts and x (for cs). Hence we have such typical Quenya-style words as Elda "Elf", lambë "tongue", tumpo "hump", ranco "arm" etc. Finally, at the end of words, only five single consonants may occur: only -l, -n, -r, -s, or -t is permitted in this position (Letters:425; however, most Quenya words end in a vowel). Consonant clusters or double consonants are not normally found at the end of words, though they may occur if a final vowel drops out (is elided) because the next word begins in the same or a similar vowel. Hence in LotR we have a "final" nn in the phrase lúmenn' omentielvo ("on the hour of our meeting"), but only because this is reduced from lúmenna omentielvo (this full form occurring in WJ:367 and Letters:424). The only genuine consonant cluster occurring at the end of a word seems to be nt used a specific grammatical ending (dual dative, to be discussed in later lessons) – e.g. ciryant "for a couple of ships", formed from cirya "ship". Tolkien's earliest "Qenya" experiments, as recorded in the Qenya Lexicon of 1915, were more liberal in this respect. "Qenya" allowed more final consonants and even final consonant clusters, but as LotR-style Quenya evolved in Tolkien's notes, he tightened up the phonology. Thus he gave the language a more clearly defined flavour.







Lesson One - Pronunciation







Vowels: Quenya vowels are pure. For people who want to pronounce Elvish vowels with some degree of accuracy, Tolkien recommended Italian vowels as a model (as did Zamenhof for Esperanto, by the way). Speakers of English have an ingrained habit of blurring many vowels, especially when they are not fully stressed; hence in a word like banana it is typically only the middle A that comes out as a "proper" A-sound. The two other A's, that are not stressed, are typically made to sound like a blurred, obscure "reduction vowel" that linguists call a schwa (from a Hebrew word for nothingness; English textbooks sometimes prefer the spelling "shwa"). But in Quenya all vowels, in all positions, must be clearly and distinctly pronounced; any tendencies to "blur" them must be strongly resisted.



As we remember, Quenya has both long and short vowels, the long ones being marked with an accent: á, é, ó, ú, í vs. short a, e, o, u, i. Long and short vowels must be kept apart and pronounced clearly distinct. Sometimes vowel length is the only thing that makes otherwise similar words distinct: for instance, cu with a short u means "dove", whereas cú with a long ú means "crescent".

Long á can be sounded as in English father: má "hand", nárë "flame", quáco "crow". However, English does not have anything corresponding to Quenya short a. It is absolutely necessary to master it, for short a is by far the commonest of Quenya vowels. Tolkien noted that it should be more "open" than the long á. What we want is a vowel that by its sound (or quality) is about midway between the a's of English father and English cat – but as for its length (or quantity), it should by all means be short as in the latter word. The vowel heard in Spanish padre will do. Speakers of English may pin down a short a by isolating the first part of the diphthong ai as in aisle.

NOTE: If you have the original Star Wars movie available, listen carefully when Harrison Ford first appears about 45 minutes in and introduces himself as "Han Solo": Ford actually produces a nice Quenya-style short a in "Han", making this syllable sound as it would in Quenya words (e.g. hanu "a male" or handa "intelligent"; apparently there is even a Quenya word han "beyond"). But later in the SW movies, the vowel of "Han" is inconsistently pronounced either with a long a as in English father or with the vowel heard in English cat, which is precisely the vowel to be avoided in Quenya. Linguistic consistency was never the, ahem, force of Star Wars. By the way, do you remember Endor, the green moon where George Lucas placed his reinvented teddy bears in the third movie? Guess what the Quenya word for "Middle-earth" is! Lucas would surely say that his intention was to pay tribute to Tolkien...



UPDATED NOTE: Now that Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring has appeared, I can quote examples from the soundtrack of this movie as well; most people interested in Tolkien's work will surely have seen it, and many are also going to buy it on video or DVD. Good examples of short Elvish a occur in the Sindarin name Caradhras "Redhorn" as pronounced by Christopher Lee ("Saruman") in the scene where his spying crows return to Isengard: "So, Gandalf, you try to lead them over Caradhras..." Lee also gets the short a's more or less right in a scene following shortly afterwards, when he stands on the top of Isengard reading a Quenya invocation: Nai yarvaxëa rasselya taltuva notto-carinnar... (but the last word sounds almost like cárinnar, the first vowel being long – after all, Chris Lee is not a native speaker of Quenya!)



An extra challenge for speakers of English is to pronounce -a as a full vowel at the end of words. Where English orthography has a final -a, it is normally pronounced like a schwa. Contrast the English and the Spanish pronunciation of the final vowel in a name like Sara; in Spanish, the English-style reduction or "blurring" of the -a does not take place. In one very early source, Tolkien actually stated that "Qenya", like English, turned final, unaccented -a into a schwa ("as in English drama", QL:9), but there is nothing to suggest that this idea was still valid decades later when he wrote the LotR. Indeed even the early source just referred to has it that there was one important dialect of "Qenya" where the weakening of final -a did not take place. So speakers should try to pronounce a full a in all positions: neither of the a's in a word like anna "gift" should be pronounced as in the English name Anna.



Long é is another Quenya sound that does not occur in contemporary English. The long e of English became long i (like Quenya í) centuries ago – though because of this descent it is still often spelt ee, as in see. Quenya é has the value of German eh as in Mehr. The pronunciation of ai in English air at least approaches é, but this is really a short e followed by a schwa. Tolkien notes that long é should be closer than short e (see LotR Appendix E), so just lengthening the vowel heard in English end will not be quite sufficient. The quality of the vowel should be about midway between the vowels heard in English end and English see, but it should be long like the latter: nén "water", ré "day", ména "region".



Short e may be pronounced as in English end. In Quenya this sound also occurs in final position. Since word-final e is usually silent in English orthography, Tolkien often used the spelling ë in this position – and throughout this course, this spelling is employed consistently. This is only to remind English readers that in Quenya, this letter is to be distinctly pronounced. But since word-final e never occurs in spoken English, some speakers tend to substitute i or ey (following English practice in the rare cases of a final orthographic "e" being sounded, as when Jesse is pronounced "jessi", or karate is pronounced "karatey"). Quenya e should have the value described above in all positions. It must NOT be pronounced i, nor must there be a y-like sound creeping after it: lómë "night", morë "black", tinwë "sparkle".



Long í is pronounced as in English machine, that same as "ee" in English see: the Quenya word sí ("now") is similar in sound. Other examples include nís "woman" and ríma "edge". This long í must be noticeably longer than short i, which may be pronounced like in English pit: Titta "tiny", imbë "between", vinya "new". In one early source, Tolkien himself quoted the word pit as an example of short "Qenya" i (QL:8). Later writings suggest that the quality of the vowel-sound should be like the i of machine, in English often spelt "ee" – start with this sound and shorten it. (Before unvoiced stops, as in feet, "ee" may be quite short also in English – just make sure there is a distinction of length between i and í.) Notice that i is never pronounced ai as in English fine = "fain". (Quenya finë "larch" has two syllables, the vowels being those heard in pit [ideally a little closer] and pet, respectively.) Of course, this also goes for final -i (usually a plural ending). If the student will forgive another Star Wars reference, George Lucas' Jedi may be "jedai" = "jed-eye", but Tolkien's Quendi are most definitely not "quendai". In Quenya, final -i should rather be pronounced as in Iraqi, Mississippi.



Long ó may be pronounced more or less as in English sore, but preferably a little tenser and "closer" (midway between the vowel-sounds of English sore and English "oo" as in soon): mól "slave", tó "wool", óma "voice". Short o may be pronounced as in English for (when accented), or as in box. The quality of the latter vowel may be just a little too open and A-like according to Tolkien's descriptions. Yet this is the pronunciation he himself used in most cases in the recording of him reading Namárië; it should perhaps be attributed to his English accent. Some words with o: rondo "cave", olos "dream", tolto "eight". Of course, Quenya o is never pronounced "ow" as in English so, also; a word like tolto must NOT come out as "tol-tow". Neither must o ever be reduced to a schwa or dropped altogether; be especially mindful of the ending -on, often found in masculine names (and also in plural genitives like Silmarillion; see later lessons). "English-style" pronunciation of a name like Sauron would result in what a baffled Elf might try to represent in writing as Sór'n (or at best Sóren). The final -on should sound rather like the first syllable of English online, with the vowel fully intact even though it is unaccented in Sauron. In the Jackson movie, the actors usually deliver a good pronunciation of this name; especially listen to how "Gandalf" and "Saruman" pronounce it. Good examples of short Elvish o also occur in the name Mordor as pronounced by the same two actors.



Long ú is the vowel of English brute, in English often spelt "oo" as in fool: Númen "west", cú "crescent", yúyo "both". It must be distinctly longer than short u, which is pronounced somewhat like the vowel of English put (NOT like in English cut). Ideally, Quenya short u should be a little more "rounded" than the vowel of put; it should be simply a shorter version of the long ú or "oo" described above: Cundu "prince", nuru "death", ulundo "monster". Notice that Quenya u is never pronounced "yu" as in English union; ulundo should not become "yulundo".



Speakers of English must be especially mindful of their vowels when a combination vowel + r occurs. In the combinations ar, or, many speakers of English have a tendency to lengthen the vowel even where it should be short (and many would also let the r drop out, especially when it is followed by another consonant). But in Quenya words like narda ("knot") or lorna ("asleep"), the vowel before the r must be short, as indicated by the absence of the accent mark. It is not permissible to let the pronunciation drift towards "ná(r)da", "ló(r)na", no matter how tempting this is to people used to English speech-habits.



Where the groups er, ir, ur occur (e.g. in words like sercë "blood", tirno "watcher", turma "shield"), speakers of English must take care NOT to pronounce the vowels after the fashion of English serve, girl, turn. (I once had an English teacher who described the vowel of "girl" as one of the ugliest sounds of the English language. She taught English at university level, so she should know – though perhaps she wasn't wholly serious...) Short e, i, u should sound just as described above, wholly irrespective of the following r. In LotR Appendix E, Tolkien noted that er, ir, ur should sound, not as in English fern, fir, fur, but rather like air, eer, oor (that is, like it would be natural for a speaker of English to pronounce orthographic "air, eer, oor" – however, it should be understood that this would only be an approximation of the ideal pronunciation). In the Peter Jackson movie, the actors struggle to pronounce the final syllable of the Quenya name Isildur correctly, with variable results. In the flash-back scene where Elrond (played by Hugo Weaving) leads Isildur into Mount Doom and urges him to destroy the Ring, Weaving's pronunciation of the name Isildur is very good – following Tolkien's guidelines to the letter.



Diphthongs: In addition to the "basic", unitary vowel-sounds discussed above (what linguists would call the monophthongs), we have the diphthongs – combinations of two basic vowels that are run together into one syllable, in many ways behaving like a unitary vowel for the purpose of word-building: The Quenya diphthongs are ai, au, eu, iu, oi, and ui.



¤ The diphthong ai is the same that is heard in English aisle. It is NOT like the one in English mail, though English orthographic "ai" usually represents the latter sound (can anyone think of other exceptions than aisle?) The first syllable of faila "just, generous" must not pronounced like the English word fail, since Quenya ai always has the sound of English I, eye: Aica "fell, terrible", caima "bed", aira "holy". Of course, the first syllable of the latter word sounds nothing like English air!



¤ The diphthong au is pronounced as in German Haus, or more or less as the "ow" of English cow: aulë "invention", laurëa "golden", taurë "forest". It is never sounded as in English caught, aura (in which words "au" is pronounced rather like Quenya ó). In his "Note on Pronunciation" appended to the Silmarillion, Christopher Tolkien notes that the first syllable of Sauron should be like English sour, not English sore. (However, the diphthong in sour is in British English followed by a schwa – a faint reminiscence of the otherwise silent final r. This schwa should not be pronounced in Sauron.)



¤ The diphthong eu does not occur in English, but it is not dissimilar to the "o" of English so. The only difference is that while the first part of the diphthong is a schwa in English, it should be a normal e (as in end) in Quenya. In particular, some British upper-class pronunciations of English "o" as in so come close to Quenya eu (but the American pronunciation does not). Quenya examples: leuca "snake", neuma "snare", peu "pair of lips". This diphthong is not very common.



¤ The diphthong iu may be sounded like yu in English yule, according to the usual Third Age Pronunciation. Tolkien imagined that originally, it had rather been a "falling" diphthong like the other Quenya diphthongs, stressed on the first rather than the last element (LotR Appendix E). However, the Third Age pronunciation would be equally "valid" also within the mythos, and for speakers of English it is easier to achieve. This diphthong is in any case very rare; in the Etymologies it is only attested in a handful of words (miulë "whining, mewing", piuta "spit", siulë "incitement" and the group tiuca "thick, fat", tiuco "thigh" and tiuya- "swell, grow fat" – a few more examples of iu could be quoted from Tolkien's early "Qenya" material).



¤ The diphthong oi is easy, corresponding to English "oi" or "oy" as in oil, toy: coirëa "living", soica "thirsty", oira "eternal".



¤ The diphthong ui Tolkien sometimes compared to the sound occurring in English ruin. This is a rather surprising example, for surely the word "ruin" is not normally pronounced as containing a diphthong, but as two distinct syllables: ru-in. Rather think "ooy" as in the English phrase too young: huinë "shadow", cuilë "life", uilë "(long, trailing) plant". Notice that the combination qui does not contain this diphthong; this is just a more visually pleasing way of spelling cwi (e.g. orqui "Orcs" = orcwi).



All other groups of vowels are not diphthongs, but simply vowels belonging to separate syllables, to be pronounced distinctly. In linguistic terms, vowels that are in direct contact without forming diphthongs are said to be in hiatus. Primitive Elvish apparently did not have such combinations, at least not in the middle of words: Tolkien had Fëanor concluding that "our fathers...in building words took the vowels and parted them with the consonants as walls" (VT39:10). But some consonants had been lost in Quenya, so that vowels that were originally so "parted" had come into direct contact (VT39:6). In Quenya we even have polysyllabic all-vowel words like Eä (a name of the universe) or oa ("away"). The most frequent combinations of vowels in hiatus are ea, eo, ie, io, oa; each vowel should be sounded "by itself". Tolkien often emphasizes this fact by adding diaereses or "dots" to one of the vowels, and in the consistent spelling here imposed on the material, we regularly write ëa (Eä), ëo (Eö), oë. Thus there is no excuse for such mistakes as pronouncing ëa as in English heart or please, or oë as in canoe or foetus. (Other distortions are apparently also possible: Cate Blanchett simply reduced Eärendil to "Erendil" the one time her version of Galadriel pronounces this name in the Jackson movie: "I give you the light of E[ä]rendil, our most beloved star..." Can we have an extra vowel for the Director's Cut, please?)



In this course we do not use the diaeresis in the combinations ie (except when final) and oa, but as indicated by the spelling ië and öa in certain Tolkien manuscripts, the vowels must be pronounced distinctly and not drawn together as in English piece (or tie), or English load. In accordance with this, Christopher Tolkien in the Note on Pronunciation that he appended to the Silmarillion indicates that the name Nienna is to be pronounced Ni-enna, not "Neena" as if ie were sounded as in English piece. (Immediately after the line in which she mangles the name Eärendil, Cate Blanchett pronounces the Quenya word namárië, "farewell". I'm glad to say that she did a better job with this word, getting the -ië more or less right!) Some words with vowels in hiatus: fëa "soul", lëo "shade", loëndë "year-middle" (the middle day of the year according to the Elvish calendar), coa "house", tië "path".



Consonants: Most Quenya consonants are easy to pronounce for people used to speaking a Western language. These points may be observed:



¤ C is always pronounced k, never s; indeed Tolkien does use the letter k rather than c in many sources. Celma "channel" or cirya "ship" must not come out as "selma", "sirya". (This goes for Sindarin spelling as well: When Celeborn is pronounced "Seleborn" in the Rankin/Bass animated version of LotR, it clearly shows that the moviemakers never made it to Appendix E.)



¤ In the groups hw, hy, hl, hr, the letter h is not to be pronounced separately. These are just digraphs denoting unitary consonants:



¤ What is spelt hl, hr was originally unvoiced l, r. That is, these sounds were pronounced without vibration in the vocal chords, resulting in what may be described as "whispered" versions of normal l, r. (If you can isolate the l of English please, you will have an unvoiced l – though in this case, it is just "incidentally" unvoiced because of the influence from the unvoiced plosive p immediately preceding it. English never has unvoiced l as an independent sound of speech, as Quenya originally did.) In Quenya, these sounds are quite rare; examples include hrívë "winter" and hlócë "serpent, dragon". However, Tolkien stated that by the Third Age, hr and hl had come to be pronounced as normal voiced r, l, though the spelling hl, hr apparently persisted in writing.



¤ What is spelt hw corresponds to English wh in dialects where this is still distinct from normal w (e.g., witch and which are audibly distinct words – American English, as well as northern British English, normally uphold this distinction, though it has been abandoned in the British Received Pronunciation). Put simply, hw is a (weak) version of the sound you make when you blow out a candle. Hw is not a very frequent sound in Quenya; this seems to be a quite complete list of the known words where it occurs: hwan "sponge, fungus", hwarin "crooked", hwarma "crossbar", hwermë "gesture-code", hwesta "breeze, breath, puff of air" (also as verb: hwesta- "to puff"), hwindë "eddy, whirlpool".



¤ What is spelt hy represents a sound that may occur in English, but that is not normally recognized as a distinct consonant in this language. Hy denotes what by a German term is often referred to as ich-Laut or "ich-sound", since it is exemplified by "ch" in the German word ich ("I"). To speakers of English it may sound much like sh (one imagines Kennedy training long and hard to avoid "Ish bin ein Berliner"). Still, as I said, a (weak) version of the sound in question may often be heard in English as well: In words like hew, huge, human, the h may be pronounced like an (obscure) hy. Cf. SD:418-419, where Tolkien states that in Quenya or "Avallonian", the sound hy is "approximately equivalent to...h in huge". In LotR Appendix E, Tolkien also pointed out that hy has the same relationship to y as hw (discussed above) has to normal w: one is unvoiced, the other voiced. So another way of arriving at hy is to start with the sound of y (as in you) and produce a voiceless, "whispered" variant of it. Once you have the sound pinned down, you only have to strengthen it; it should be pronounced with the same force as English sh: Hyarmen "south", hyalma "shell, conch", hyellë "glass". It seems that hy mostly occurs at the beginning of words; ahya- "change" is presently the sole known example of hy occurring between vowels in the middle of a word. However, h in the combination ht following certain vowels should also be pronounced like hy; see below. – In LotR Appendix E, Tolkien noted that speakers of Westron (the supposed "original language" of the Red Book, that Tolkien "translated" into English) often substituted the sound of sh for Quenya hy. Speakers of English who don't care about subtle phonological details may of course do the same, turning a word like hyalma into "shalma". This would be a pronunciation that existed also within the Middle-earth setting, though it was not quite like the proper Elvish pronunciation (and it does seem best to aim for the latter!) I guess many speakers of English would hardly be able to tell the difference, though. Incidentally, one can achieve a pretty good hy by starting from sh; just make sure that your tongue is not raised (you may press its tip against the lower teeth to be certain of that). If you try to pronounce sh with the tongue in this position, what comes out ought to sound like hy.



¤ Outside the groups hw, hy, hl, hr, the letter h does represent an independent sound, but it is pronounced somewhat differently in different positions. It seems that originally, Quenya h (at least where it comes from Primitive Elvish kh) was typically stronger than English h – that is, a "breath-h" as in high. In Fëanor's day it was apparently pronounced like ch in German ach or Scottish loch, or like Cyrillic X. In phonetic writing, this sound is represented as [x]. But later, at the beginning of words, this [x] was weakened and became a sound like English h. In LotR Appendix E, Tolkien informs us that the Tengwa letter for [x] was originally called harma; naturally this Tengwa was so called because the initial h of this word was an example of the sound the letter denoted, [x]. But when [x] in this position eventually turned into an English-style h, the Tengwa was renamed aha, for in the middle of words, [x] was not weakened. So we can extract these rules: at the beginning of words (before a vowel), the letter h is to be pronounced like English h. But in the middle of words, h is to be pronounced [x]: as between vowels in aha "wrath", and likewise before t in words like pahta "closed", ohta "war", nuhta- "to stunt".



In one late source, Tolkien noted that "in Quenya and Telerin medial [x] eventually became h also in most cases" (VT41:9). It may therefore be permissible to pronounce even words like aha with an English-style breath-h. But the group ht must probably always be pronounced [xt]; the weaker breath-h would be barely audible in this position.



This rule needs one modification. Likely, h before t was originally pronounced [x] in all cases. Following any of the vowels a, o, and u, this pronunciation persisted, as in the examples pahta, ohta, nuhta- above. But following the vowels i and e, the original [x] turned into a sound similar to German ich-Laut (German may indeed be Tolkien's inspiration for this particular development in Quenya phonology). Thus in words like ehtë "spear" or rihta- "to jerk", h should be pronounced just like the hy described above. Again, Tolkien imagined that human (mortal) speakers of Westron had a tendency to substitute a sound like English sh and say "eshtë", "rishta" instead.



¤ Quenya l "represents more or less the sound of English initial l, as in let" (LotR Appendix E). Now why did Tolkien specify that Quenya l is to sound like an initial English l (regardless of its position in a Quenya word)? As Tolkien was well aware, British English l is pronounced somewhat differently in different positions. An initial l, as in let, is pronounced as a so-called "clear" l – and this is the kind of l that should be used in all positions in Quenya (as is also the case in other languages, like German). But when l is not initial, English in most cases employs a so-called "dark" l, which differs from the the "clear" l in that the "dark" variant is pronounced by arching the back of the tongue upwards: Contrast the pronunciation of l in two words like let (clear l) and fill (dark l). Compared to the "clear" l, the "dark" l sounds lower pitched, but this sound is to be avoided in Quenya. This may be something of a problem to Americans, since their L's tend to be rather "dark" in all positions, even initially (at least as perceived by European ears). – Perfectionists should also observe another detail: In Letters:425, Tolkien mentioned l among the Quenya "dentals", sc. sounds that are pronounced with the tip of the tongue touching the (upper) teeth. English normally uses an alveolar l instead, that is, a sound pronounced with the tip of the tongue further back, above the teeth rather than touching them. This again makes for a somewhat "darker" sound. When pronouncing a Quenya l, one should make sure that that the tip of the tongue touches the teeth.



¤ Quenya n is like English n. Usually this sound had been n all along, but in some cases it represents older ng as in English king, ding (notice that there is no distinct g to be heard, despite the spelling). Unlike English, Quenya could also have this sound at the beginning of words. As mentioned in the discussion of spelling conventions, Tolkien sometimes used the letter ñ to represent this older ng, e.g. Ñoldor. In his letters, Tolkien in one case added a footnote to the word Noldor (so spelt), informing the recipient that the initial N was to be pronounced "ng as in ding" (Letters:176). This would however be the "archaic" pronunciation; people speaking Quenya in Frodo's day would simply say Noldor: LotR Appendix E clearly indicates that by the Third Age, initial ñ had come to be pronounced like a normal n, and therefore the Elvish letter for ñ "has been transcribed n". We have adopted the same system here, so the letter n in nearly all cases represents normal English n, regardless of its phonological history in Quenya. I say "in nearly all cases" because n is still pronounced ñ before c (= k), g and qu. This is not much of a problem, for it is natural for speakers of English and many other languages to use this pronunciation anyway. In a word like anca "jaw" the cluster nc is therefore pronounced like "nk" in English tank, and in a word like anga "iron" the ng should be sounded like "ng" in English finger. Notice that Quenya ng occurring in the middle of words should always be pronounced with an audible g (this also goes for the group ngw, as in tengwa "letter"). It is NOT just the simple ñ described above, the "ng" of English king, with no distinct g. (We are of course talking about a hard g here; Quenya ng must never be pronounced "nj" as in English angel, but always as in finger. The sound of "soft" g as in English gin does not occur in Quenya.)



¤ Quenya r "represents a trilled r in all positions; the sound was not lost before consonants (as in [British] English part)" (LotR Appendix E). English r is generally much too weak for Quenya. Its weakness is precisely the reason why it tends to drop out before consonants and at the end of words (except where the next word happens to begin in a vowel – and by analogy, some speakers of English even introduce an R-sound where a word that properly should end in a vowel comes before a word beginning in a vowel. That is when vanilla ice starts coming out as "vanillar ice" – or, if you like, "vanilla rice"! Of course, this must be avoided in Quenya.) Quenya r should be trilled, as in Spanish, Italian, Russian etc., or for that matter as in Scottish English. Certain subtleties of Tengwar spelling suggests that in Quenya, r was somewhat weaker immediately in front of consonants (as opposed to vowels) and at the end of words. Nonetheless, it should be a properly trilled, wholly distinct sound even in these positions: Parma "book", erdë "seed", tasar "willow", Eldar "Elves". The vowel in front of r should not be lengthened or otherwise affected. In the Jackson movie, the actors portraying Gandalf and Saruman normally pronounce the name Mordor correctly, with trilled r's and short vowels (whereas Elijah Wood's "Frodo" invariably says Módó with no trace of any r's!) In the movie, Mordor is Sindarin for Black Land, but by its form and pronunciation, the word could just as well be Quenya mordor = "shadows" or "stains" (the plural form of mordo).



The uvular r that is common in languages like French and German should be avoided in Quenya, for LotR Appendix E states that this was "a sound which the Eldar found distasteful" (it is even suggested that this was how the Orcs pronounced R!)



¤ The consonant s should always be unvoiced, "as in English so, geese" (LotR Appendix E). In English, s is often voiced to z, even though orthography may still show "s". For instance, though the s of English house is unvoiced, it becomes voiced in the plural form houses (for this reason, Tolkien noted that he would have liked the spelling houzes better – see PM:24). When pronouncing Quenya, one should be careful not to add voice to s, turning it into z: Asar "festival", olos "dream", nausë "imagination". Third Age Exilic Quenya did not possess the sound z at all. (Tolkien did imagine that z had occurred at an earlier stage, but it had later turned into r, merging with original r. For instance, UT:396 indicates that the plural of olos "dream" was at one stage olozi, but later it became olori.) Where it occurs between vowels, s often represents earlier þ (more or less = th as in thin); the words asar and nausë mentioned above represent older aþar and nauþë and were so spelt in Tengwar orthography.



¤ On v and w: We must assume that v and w are properly pronounced as in English vine and wine, respectively (but initial nw is strictly not n + w but simply a so-called labialized n; see below). There are some unclear points here, though. LotR Appendix E seems to indicate that in Third Age Quenya, initial w had come to be pronounced v: it is said that the name of the Tengwa letter vilya had earlier been wilya. Likewise, Tolkien indicated that the word véra ("personal, private, own") had been wéra in what he called "Old Quenya" (PM:340). In the Etymologies, the evidence is somewhat divergent. Sometimes Tolkien has primitive stems in W- yield Quenya words in v-, as when the stem WAN yields Quenya vanya- "go, depart, disappear". Sometimes he lists double forms, as when the stem WÂ (or WAWA, WAIWA) yields Quenya vaiwa and waiwa, both meaning "wind". Under the stem WAY Tolkien listed a word for "envelope" as "w- vaia", evidently indicating a double form waia and vaia (all of these examples are found in LR:397). In LR:398, there are further double forms, but in the case of the verb vilin ("I fly") from the stem WIL, Tolkien curiously changed it to wilin. Perhaps he suddenly decided to go for the "Old Quenya" spelling rather than actually rejecting one in favour of the other?



The weight of the evidence seems to be that at the beginning of words, w- had come to be pronounced as normal v- by the Third Age; where Tolkien listed double forms in w- and v-, the former is apparently to be taken as the more archaic form. However, I have not regularized the spelling on this point, though where Tolkien himself used or listed a form in v- rather than w- (either alone or as an alternative to w-), I will use the form in v- in this course. (This also goes for vilin!) It is possible, though, that according to the Third Age pronunciation all initial w's should be sounded as v, the original distinction between initial v and w having been lost in the spoken language. It is unclear whether or not Tolkien meant that this distinction was consistently upheld in Tengwar orthography (as when this writing upheld the distinction between þ and s even after both had come to be pronounced s). If so, the letter called (wilya >) vilya was still used for v representing older w, while another letter (vala) was used for v that had been v all along. – Other than at the beginning of words, the distinction between v and w was upheld even in the Third Age. In the case of the groups lw and lv the distinction could even be emphasized by altering the pronunciation of the latter: "For lv, not for lw, many speakers, especially Elves, used lb" (LotR Appendix E). Hence a word like elvëa "starlike" would often be pronounced "elbëa", and it might also be so written in Tengwar orthography. Though frequent, this would seem to be a non-standard pronunciation, and the spellings employed by Tolkien usually indicates the pronunciation "lv". Cf. for instance Celvar (or "Kelvar", meaning animals) rather than Celbar in the speeches of Yavanna and Manwë in the Silmarillion, chapter 2. In PM:340 Tolkien quotes a Quenya word for "branch" as olba rather than olva, though.



¤ The letter y "is only used as a consonant, as y in E[nglish] Yes": Tolkien singled this out as one of the few major departures from Latin spelling in the spelling conventions he used for Quenya (Letters:176). The vowel y, like German ü or French "u" as in lune, does not occur in Quenya (though it is found in Sindarin).







Lesson One - The Question of Aspiration







There is one uncertainty regarding the precise pronunciation the unvoiced stops c (= k), t, p: In English as well as some other languages, these sounds, when occurring before a vowel at the beginning of a word, are normally aspirated. That is, a h-like puff of breath is slipped in after them. In this position they are pronounced a little like genuine sequences k + h, t + h, p + h (as in backhand, outhouse, scrap-heap). The average speaker is not conscious of this at all, not really perceiving the extra h as a distinct sound: It is just the way k, t, p is "expected" to sound at the beginning of words. But in some languages, like French, Russian and (perhaps most importantly) Finnish, there is no such gratuitous h automatically following these consonants when they occur in certain positions.



Should Quenya t, p, c be aspirated as in English, or should they be pronounced as in French or Finnish? This question is not directly addressed anywhere in Tolkien's published writings. It may be observed that Quenya t, p, c descend from Primitive Elvish consonants that were certainly not aspirated, for in the primitive language they contrasted with distinct aspirated sounds: primitive th, ph, kh, which later became s, f, h in Quenya. (Cf. two wholly distinct primitive words like thaurâ "detestable" and taurâ "masterful" – the th of the first word should be sounded the way a speaker of English would most likely mispronounce the t of the latter! The t of taurâ should actually be pronounced French-style, with no aspiration.) So were Quenya t, p, c still unaspirated, since they had been so in the primitive language?



Since the primitive aspirated sounds had been changed, adding aspiration to t, p, c would cause no confusion. It should be noted, though, that in the writing system devised by Fëanor, there were originally distinct letters for aspirated sounds: "The original Fëanorian system also possessed a grade with extended stems, both above and below the line [of writing]. These usually represented aspirated consonants (e.g. t + h, p + h, k + h)" (LotR Appendix E). However, these were not the letters used to spell Quenya t, p, c. So all things considered, I think Quenya t, p, c should ideally be pronounced without aspiration. For people who are used to automatically slip in a h-like puff of breath after these consonants it may be difficult to get rid of it, since they are not really conscious of its presence at all. A phonology teacher once advised me that one way of getting rid of the aspiration is to practice pronouncing t, p, c/k with a burning candle in front of your mouth; the trick is to pronounce these consonants without the flame of the candle flickering (because of the puff of breath that constitutes the aspiration).



The voiced counterparts of t, p and c/k, namely d, b and (hard) g respectively, are not aspirated in English. For this reason, people who are used to hearing the unvoiced sounds pronounced as aspirated variants may (wrongly) perceive unaspirated unvoiced plosives as their voiced counterparts. Pronounced without aspiration, Quenya words like tarya ("stiff"), parma ("book") or calma ("lamp") may sound a little like "darya, barma, galma" to speakers of English (speakers of French, Russian or Finnish would not be confused). When pronouncing such words, one must not introduce vibration in the vocal chords to produce actual voiced sounds d, b, g. – But I should add that the whole aspiration issue is not something a student needs to spend much time on; as I said, the exact pronunciation of Quenya t, p, c is nowhere addressed in published writings. If it is indeed wrong to add aspiration to these consonants, at least one will err little more than Tolkien did himself when reading Namárië.







Lesson One - Palatalized and Labialized Consonants







In Quenya, we find words like nyarna "tale", tyalië "play" or nwalca "cruel". From these spellings it would seem that such words begin in consonant clusters: n + y, t + y, n + w. However, this would not agree with the explicit statement made in Lowdham's Report that "Adunaic, like Avallonian [= Quenya], does not tolerate more than a single basic consonant initially in any word" (SD:417-418). So how are we to explain this?



The solution seems to be that "combinations" like the ny of nyarna are just single, basic consonants: Ny is not a cluster n + y, but the same unitary sound that is fittingly represented as a single letter "ñ" in Spanish orthography – as in señor. Of course, this sounds very much like "senyor", but "ñ" is really a single consonant. This "ñ" is a palatalized version of n, an n that has been "tinted" in the direction of y. English employs one distinctly palatalized consonant, usually represented by the digraph "sh" (which, of course, is not a cluster s + h); this can be described as a palatalized s. By carefully comparing the pronunciation of s and sh you can perceive the palatalization mechanism operating in your own mouth: A consonant is palatalized by arching the back of the tongue up towards the roof of the mouth (the palate, hence the term "palatalized consonant"). The relationship between s and sh corresponds to the relationship between n and Quenya ny (or Spanish "ñ").



Besides ny, Quenya also has the palatalized consonants ty, ly, ry (e.g. in tyalië "play", alya "rich", verya "bold"); these are palatalized counterparts of "normal" t, l, r. Regarding ty, Tolkien wrote that it may be pronounced as the "t" of English tune (see for instance SD:418-419 – it should be noted that he is thinking of dialects where this comes out as "tyoon"; this is not the case in all forms of American English). In Gondor, some mortal speakers of Quenya supposedly pronounced ty like ch as in English church, but that was not quite the proper Elvish pronunciation. As for the consonant ly, it would be similar to the "lh" of Portuguese olho ("eye"). In LotR Appendix E, Tolkien noted that l (so spelt) should also "to some degree [be] 'palatalized' between e, i and a consonant, or finally after e, i". The wording "to some degree" seems to suggest that we would not have a regular, "full-blown" palatalized l in these positions (like the sound spelt ly), but in words like Eldar "Elves" or amil "mother", the l should ideally have just a little tint of palatalizing to it.



Besides the palatalized consonants, we have the labialized consonants: nw, gw and qu (= cw). These are not really clusters n + w, g + w, c + w. Rather they represent n, g, c (k) pronounced with pouted lips, as when pronouncing w: By the pouting of the lips, the consonant is "labialized" (this word comes from the Latin term for "lip"). Quenya qu may certainly be pronounced as in English queen, but ideally it should be pronounced as k and w merged together in a single, unitary sound. (True, there does exist one early source where Tolkien states that qu, though originally being simply k "accomp[anied] by lip-rounding", "is now sounded practically exactly as English qu – a liprounded k foll[owed] by a distinct w sound": See Parma Eldalamberon #13, page 63. However, I think this idea may be superseded by information from a much later source, indicating that Quenya had no initial consonant clusters: SD:417-418.) Nw and gw similarly represent "merged" versions of n/w, g/w. – It should be noted that nw is a single, labialized consonant only at the beginning of words, where it represents earlier ngw (sc. what Tolkien might also spell "ñw", using "ñ" for ng as in king). In the middle of words, e.g. in vanwa "gone, lost", nw really is a cluster n + w and is so spelt also in Tengwar orthography. However, the labialized consonants qu and gw also occur in the middle of words. In fact, gw occurs only in that position, and always in the combination ngw (not "ñw" but "ñgw", still using "ñ" as Tolkien did): Lingwë "fish", nangwa "jaw", sungwa "drinking-vessel".



The question of length: It may seem that when they occur medially between vowels, the palatalized and labialized consonants count as long or double consonants (as if the digraphs represented actual consonant clusters after all). Again using the letter "ñ" with its Spanish value of a palatalized n (and not, as Tolkien often did, for ng as in king), one may ask whether a word like atarinya ("my father", LR:61) actually represents "atariñña". If so, the group ny in the middle of words denotes a long palatalized N. Then the very word Quenya would be pronounced "Queñña" rather than "Quen-ya". Another possibility is "Queñya", the n being palatalized all right, but there is still a relatively distinct y-sound following it (which there would not be when ny occurs at the beginning of a word). Tolkien reading a version of Namárië at least once pronounced the word inyar as "iññar" (but the second time it occurred he simply said "inyar" with n + y). In any case, the groups ny, ly, ry, ty and qu (for cw) must be counted as either long consonants or consonant clusters for the purpose of stress (see below) – though it is also clear that sometimes they must be analyzed as single, unitary consonants.







Lesson One - Stress







Whenever a language has polysyllabic words, speakers of this language may enunciate some syllables more forcefully than others. We say that these syllables are stressed or accented. In some languages speakers don't normally emphasize certain syllables more than others. For instance, the Japanese put about the same amount of stress on every syllable, resulting in what unloving foreigners have referred to as "machine gun articulation". But in Western languages, a varying amount of stress is common: Some syllables are stressed, others unstressed.



The rules for which syllables are stressed vary wildly, though. Some languages have a very simple system; in French, words that are to receive any stress are always accented on the final syllable. To the natives, Paris is not "PARis" as in English, but rather "parIS" (actually the French don't pronounce the s, but that has nothing to do with the accent). The Finns also have a very simple system, stressing all words on the first syllable: While some speakers of English may think that Helsinki is most "naturally" pronounced "HelSINKi", the residents of the city will insist on "HELsinki" instead.



Since the Finnish language was evidently Tolkien's foremost inspiration, one might think that he would have copied its simple system of accenting all words on the first syllable over into Quenya. In the "internal" or fictional history of the language, he did indeed envision an early period during which Quenya words were so accented (the so-called retraction period, WJ:366). However, this was replaced by a new system already before the Noldor went into exile, so Quenya as a language of lore in Middle-earth employed different accentuation patterns, carefully described in LotR Appendix E. This is the system we must use. (It seems that Tolkien actually copied it from Latin!)



Words of one syllable, like nat "thing", obviously pose no problem; this one syllable is the sole candidate for receiving the stress. The simplest polysyllabic words, those of two syllables, are no problem either: In LotR Appendix E, Tolkien noted that "in words of two syllables [the accent] falls in practically all cases on the first syllable". As this wording implies, there may be a very few exceptions; the only exception known seems to be the word avá "don't!", that is accented on the final syllable: "aVÁ". (Even this one word also appears in the alternative form áva, stressed on the first syllable according to the normal rule: "ÁVa".) The name of the Blessed Realm, Aman, I sometimes hear people pronounce with the stress on the second rather than the first syllable – but the correct pronunciation must be "AMan", if we can trust the rules set out by Tolkien. ("AmAN" would be Amman, capital of Jordan!)



Longer words, with three or more syllables, are slightly more complex when it comes to stress. Many of them are accented on the second to last syllable. However, in some cases the second-to-last syllable isn't "qualified" to receive the accent: This syllable cannot be accented if it is short. So how do we recognize a short syllable? If it contains no long vowel (no vowel marked with an accent), this is obviously one omen. Then the vowel itself is necessarily short. If this short vowel is followed by only one consonant, or even no consonant at all, this syllable has little chance of receiving the accent. Its one remaining chance of redeeming itself as a long syllable is that instead of a simple short vowel it actually contains one of the Quenya diphthongs: ai, au, eu, oi, ui or iu. Two vowels combined into a diphthong count as having the same "length" as a normal, unitary long vowel (marked by an accent). But if there is no diphthong, no long vowel, and not even a short vowel followed by more than one consonant, the syllable in question is irredeemably short. If this is the second-to-last syllable in a word of three or more syllables, this penultimate syllable has forfeited all its chances to receive the stress. In such a case the stress moves one step ahead, to fall on the third syllable from the end (no matter what this syllable looks like). Tolkien noted that words of such a shape "are favoured in the Eldarin languages, especially Quenya". Examples:



¤ A word like vestalë "wedding" is accented "VESTalë". The second-to-last syllable cannot receive the stress because its vowel (the a) is short and followed by only a single consonant (the l); hence the accent moves one step ahead, to the third syllable from the end. Plural forms like Teleri (the Sea-Elves) and Istari (the Wizards) I sometimes hear people mispronounce as "TeLERi", "IsTARi"; applying Tolkien's rules we have to conclude that he actually intended "TELeri", "ISTari". The short penultimate syllables in these words cannot be accented.



¤ A word like Eressëa (the name of an isle near the Blessed Realm) some speakers of English are tempted to accent on the second-to-last syllable (following the stress-pattern of such a place-name as "Eritrea"!) But since in Er-ess-ë-a the second-to-last syllable is just a short ë not followed by a group of consonants (actually not even one consonant), this syllable cannot be accented and the stress moves to the syllable before it: "ErESSëa". Other words of the same pattern (with no consonant following a short vowel in the second-to-last syllable): Eldalië "the people of the Elves" ("ElDAlië" – though the word Elda "Elf" by itself is of course accented "ELda"), Tilion "The Horned", name of a Maia ("TILion"), laurëa "golden" ("LAURëa"), Yavannië "September" ("YaVANNië"), Silmarillion "[The Story] of the Silmarils" ("SilmaRILLion").



But though such words were "favoured", there is certainly no lack of words where the second-to-last syllable does qualify for receiving the accent. Examples:



¤ Varda's title Elentári "Star-Queen" is pronounced "ElenTÁRi", since the vowel á in the second-to-last syllable is long. (If this had been a short a, it couldn't have been stressed since it is not followed by more than one consonant, and the third syllable from the end would have been accented instead: "ELENtari" – but no such word exists.) The names Númenórë, Valinórë are likewise accented on the long ó in the second-to-last syllable (whereas in the shortened forms Númenor, Valinor the accent must fall on the third syllable from the end: NÚMenor, VALinor).



¤ Words like hastaina "marred" or Valarauco "Power-demon" (Sindarin Balrog) are accented "hasTAINa", "ValaRAUCo" – since diphthongs like ai, au can be counted as long vowels for the purpose of stress.



¤ The names Elendil and Isildur are accented "ElENDil" and "IsILDur", since the vowel in the second-to-last-syllable, though short, is followed by more than one consonant (the groups nd, ld, respectively). A double consonant would have the same effect as a cluster of different consonants; for instance, Elenna ("Starwards", a name of Númenor) is pronounced "ElENNa". (Contrast the adjective elena "stellar, of the stars": this must be accented "ELena" since the second-to-last syllable "en" is short and therefore unable to receive the accent – unlike the long syllable "enn" in Elenna.)



Notice that the one letter x represents two consonants, ks. Therefore, a word like Helcaraxë (a place-name) is accented "HelcarAXë" (not "HelCARaxë" as if there were only one consonant following the a in the second-to-last syllable). Cf. the alternative spelling Helkarakse in the Etymologies, entry KARAK.



As noted above, some combinations should apparently be thought of as single consonants: qu (for cw/kw) represents labialized k, not k + w. Similarly, ny, ty, ly, ry would be palatalized n, t, l, r (the first = Spanish ñ). But in the middle of words, for the purpose of stress, it seems that qu, ly, ny, ty etc. do count as groups of consonants (double consonants or clusters – we cannot be certain precisely what Tolkien intended). In WJ:407, Tolkien indicates that the compound word ciryaquen "shipman, sailor" (made from cirya "ship" + -quen "person") is to be accented "cirYAquen". If qu (= cw/kw) were here thought of as a single consonant, labialized k, there would not be a group of consonants following the a and it could not receive the accent: the word would then have been pronounced "CIRyaquen" instead. So either qu here does count as a cluster k + w, or it represents a long or double labialized k (or even labialized kw followed by w). Bottom line is: pronounce "cirYAquen" and be relieved that the rest is mainly academic meandering. A few other words including the combinations in question: Elenya (first day of the Eldarin six-day week, accented "ElENya"), Calacirya or Calacilya (a place in the Blessed Realm, accented "CalaCIrya", "CalaCIlya").



A word of warning regarding the accent mark: Notice that the accent mark that may appear above vowels (á, é, í, ó, ú) only denotes that the vowel is long. While this symbol is frequently used to indicate the stressed syllable, this is not the case in Tolkien's normal spelling of Quenya. (Some may have noted that Pokémon isn't accented on the é either, so Tolkien isn't wildly idiosyncratic in this department!) A long vowel will often receive the stress, as in the example Elentári above, but not necessarily so: If the long vowel does not appear in the second-to-last syllable, its length (and the accent mark denoting it!) is quite irrelevant for the purpose of stress. In a word like Úlairi, the Quenya name for the Ringwraiths or Nazgûl, the stress falls on the diphthong ai, not on the ú. The spelling palantír has mislead many, making them think that this word is to be accented on "tír". Here is something Ian McKellen, playing Gandalf in the Peter Jackson LotR movie trilogy, wrote as the film was being shot:



...I have to learn a new pronunciation. All this time we have being

saying "palanTÍR" instead of the Old English stress on the first syllable.

Just as the word was about to be committed to the soundtrack, a correction came from Andrew Jack, the Dialect Coach; he taught me a Norfolk accent for Restoration, and for LOTR he supervises accents, languages and all things vocal. Palantír, being strictly of elvish origin should follow Tolkien's rule that the syllable before a double consonant should be stressed – "paLANTír" making a sound which is close to "lantern"...



Andrew Jack was right. Palantír cannot be stressed on the final syllable; virtually no polysyllabic Quenya words are accented in such a way (as I said above, avá "don't!" is the sole known exception). Instead the a in the second-to-last syllable receives the accent because it is followed by the consonant cluster nt (I should not call this a "double consonant" like McKellen does, since I want to reserve that term for a group of two identical consonants, like tt or nn – but for the purpose of stress, double consonants and clusters of different consonants have the same effect). So it is indeed "palANTír". (But in the plural form palantíri, where the long í suddenly appears in the second-to-last syllable, it does receive the accent: "palanTÍRi".)



In the case of long words ending in two short syllables, the last of these syllables may receive a weaker secondary stress. In a word like hísimë "mist", the main stress falls on hís, but the final syllable -më is not wholly unstressed. This secondary stress is much weaker than the main accent, though. (Nonetheless, Tolkien did note that for the purpose of poetry, the secondary stress can be used metrically: RGEO:69.)







Lesson One - Speed







Finally a brief note on something we know little about: How fast should one talk when speaking Quenya? The few recordings of Tolkien speaking Quenya are not "reliable" in this matter; he inevitably enunciates quite carefully. But regarding Fëanor's mother Míriel he noted that "she spoke swiftly and took pride in this skill" (PM:333). So fast Quenya is evidently good Quenya. When Tolkien also wrote that "the Elves made considerable use of...concomitant gestures" (WJ:416), one remembers that he had a great love for Italian – see Letters:223.







Summary of Lesson One:







The Quenya vowels are a, e, i, o, u; long vowels are marked with an accent: á, é etc. The vowels should be pure, pronounced with their "Italian" values; long á and é should be noticably closer than short a, e. Some vowels may receive a diaeresis (ë, ä etc.), but this does not affect their pronunciation and is only intended as a clarification for people used to English orthography. The diphthongs are ai, au, eu, oi, ui, and iu. The consonant c is always pronounced k; l should be pronounced as a "clear", dental L; r should be trilled; s is always unvoiced; y is only used as a consonant (as in English you). Ideally, the consonants t, p, c should probably be unaspirated. Palatalized consonants are represented by digraphs in -y (ty, ny etc.); labialized consonants are normally written as digraphs in -w (e.g. nw, but what would be cw is spelt qu instead). H is pronounced [x] (German ach-Laut) before t, unless this combination ht is preceded by one of the vowels e or i, in which case h is sounded like German ich-Laut. Otherwise, h may be pronounced like English h; the digraphs hy and hw however represent ich-Laut and unvoiced w (like American English wh), respectively. The combinations hl and hr originally represented unvoiced l, r, but by the Third Age, these sounds had come to be pronounced like normal l and r. In polysyllabic words, the stress falls on the second-to-last syllable when that is long (containing either a long vowel, a diphthong, or a vowel followed by a consonant cluster or a double consonant). If the second-to-last syllable is short, the stress falls on the third syllable from the end (unless the word has only two syllables, in which case the first syllable receives the stress whether it is short or long).







Lesson One - Exercises







As far as the most critical subtleties of pronunciation are concerned, I unfortunately cannot make any exercises; we are not in a classroom so that I can comment on your pronunciation. But regarding stress (accent) and the pronunciation of h, it is possible to make exercises.





1. Determine which vowel (single vowel or diphthong) receives the accent in the words below. (It is not necessary to indicate where the entire syllable it belongs to begins and ends.)



A. Alcar ("glory")

B. Alcarë (longer variant of the above)

C. Alcarinqua ("glorious")

D. Calima ("bright")

E. Oronti ("mountains")

F. Únótimë ("uncountable, numberless")

G. Envinyatar ("renewer")

H. Ulundë ("flood")

I. Eäruilë ("seaweed")

J. Ercassë ("holly")



Extra exercise on stress: While we hear many Sindarin lines in the movie, one of the few really prominent samples of Quenya in Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring is the scene where "Saruman" (Christopher Lee) standing on the top of Isengard reads an invocation to bring down an avalanche in order to stop the Fellowship. He says to the mountain they are attempting to cross: Nai yarvaxëa rasselya taltuva notto-carinnar! = "may your bloodstained horn collapse upon enemy heads!" (not translated in the movie). The actor accents the words like this: nai yarVAXëa RASSelya TALTuva notto-CARinnar. Are all the words accented as they should be, according to Tolkien's guidelines? If not, what is right and what is wrong?





2. Where the letter h appears in Quenya words as they are spelt in our letters, it may be pronounced in various ways. Ignoring the digraphs hw and hy, the letter h may be pronounced



A) a "breath-h" like English h as in high,

B) more or less as in English huge, human or ideally like ch in German ich,

C) like ch in German ach or Scottish loch (in phonetic writing [x]).

In addition we have alternative

D): the letter h is not really pronounced at all, but merely indicates that the following consonant was unvoiced in archaic Quenya.



Sort the words below into these four categories (A, B, C, D):



K. Ohtar ("warrior")

L. Hrávë ("flesh")

M. Nahta ("a bite")

N. Heru ("lord")

O. Nehtë ("spearhead")

P. Mahalma ("throne")

Q. Hellë ("sky")

R. Tihtala ("blinking")

S. Hlócë ("snake, serpent")

T. Hísië ("mist")

Table of Contents
06:52 Aug 13 2005
Times Read: 639
















Introduction







It is long, but skip it at your peril! Subjects discussed: Why study Quenya? -The question of copyright - What is Quenya like? - The sources - A word of warning regarding parts of the corpus-Spelling conventions.



Lesson 1: The sounds of Quenya. Pronunciation and accentuation.



Lesson 2: Nouns. Plural form. The article.



Lesson 3: Dual number. Stem variation.



Lesson 4: The Adjective. The Copula. Adjectival agreement in number.



Lesson 5: The Verb: Present tense and agreement in number. Subject/object. The superlative form of adjectives.



Lesson 6: Past tense.



Lesson 7: Future tense and Aorist.



Lesson 8: Perfect tense. Pronominal endings -n(yë), -l(yë), -s.



Lesson 9: The infinitive. The negative verb. Active participles.



Lesson 10: Adverbs. Pronominal endings -ntë and -t. Infinitives with object pronouns. The past tense of intransitive verbs in -ya. Passive participles.



Lesson 11: The concept of cases. The Genitive case.



Lesson 12: The Possessive-Adjectival case. Verbal or Abstract nouns and how they interact with the Genitive and Possessive cases.



Lesson 13: The Dative case. The Gerund. Pronominal endings -lmë, -lvë, -mmë. An indefinite pronoun.



Lesson 14: The Allative and Ablative cases. Equë and auta: two peculiar verbs. Possessive pronominal endings: -nya, -lya, -lva, -lma, -mma.



Lesson 15: The ending -rya and more about possessive pronominal endings. The Locative case. Relative sentences. Third Person obscurities.



Lesson 16: The Instrumental case. Verbs with an unaccented vowel + -ta. The imperative. The nai formula.



Lesson 17: The demonstratives: Sina, tan(y)a, enta, yana. Inflecting the "Last Declinable Word". U-stem nouns. Ordinals in -ëa.



Lesson 18: Independent pronouns. Impersonal verbs. U-stem verbs. The various uses of lá.



Lesson 19: Pronouns in imperative phrases. Emphatic pronouns. Question-words: Man, mana, manen. Postpositions.



Lesson 20: The obscure verb "to be". Ma as a possible interrogative particle. Sa introducing nominal clauses.







Introduction







Of all the languages invented by British author and philologist J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973), the most popular has always been Quenya. It also seems to be the most highly developed of all the languages Tolkien devised. Indeed only two of them – Quenya and Sindarin – are so complete that one can with some ease write substantial texts in them without resorting to massive invention of one's own. Until recently, Sindarin was poorly understood, and its complex phonology may daunt fresh students (especially if they have no linguistic training). My advice to people who want to study Tolkien's linguistic creations would definitely be that they start with Quenya. Knowing this tongue will facilitate later studies of the other languages, including Sindarin, since Quenya represents just one branch of the Elvish language family: The Elvish languages are not "independent" entities, but all evolved from a common ancestral tongue, and in many respects, Quenya stands closer to this primitive original than the other languages.



In reality as opposed to this fictional context, Tolkien knew well what kind of style he was aiming for, and having sketched a "primitive Elvish" language, he cleverly devised sound-shifts that would produce a tongue with the desired flavour: Quenya resulted from his youthful romance with Finnish; he was, in his own words, "quite intoxicated" by the sound and style of this language when he discovered it (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, p. 214). However, it should be emphasized that Finnish was an inspiration only; Quenya is in no way a garbled version of Finnish, and only a few words of its vocabulary display any semblance to the corresponding Finnish words. (See Harri Peräla's discussion at http://www.sci.fi/~alboin/finn_que.htm; the writer is a Finn himself.) Tolkien also mentioned Greek and Latin as inspirations; we can evidently add Spanish to the list as well.



The fictional or "internal" history of Quenya is synopsized in my regular Ardalambion Quenya article (see www.Ardalambion.com/quenya.htm) and does not have to be repeated in any detail here. Very briefly, within Tolkien's mythos Quenya was the language of the Elves that dwelt in Valinor in the Uttermost West; being spoken in the Blessed Realm, it was the noblest tongue in the world. Later one of the clans of the Elves, the Noldor, went into exile in Middle-earth, bringing the Quenya tongue with them. In Middle-earth it soon fell out of use as a daily speech, but among the Noldor it was ever preserved as a ceremonial language, and as such it was also known to Mortal Men in later ages. Hence in The Lord of the Rings we have Frodo delivering the famous Quenya greeting elen síla lúmenn' omentielvo, "a star shines on the hour of our meeting", when he and his friends run into some Elves (and the Elves are delighted to meet "a scholar in the Ancient Tongue"). If one studies Quenya as a way to immerse oneself in Tolkien's fiction, it may indeed be best to picture oneself as a mortal student in Middle-earth in the Third Age, about the period covered in The Lord of the Rings. (Picturing oneself as an Elvish native speaker in Valinor back in the First Age may be overly ambitious.) The particular form of Quenya taught in this course is – by intention – precisely the "late Exilic" or "Third Age" variant. This is the kind of Quenya exemplified in The Lord of the Rings, with Galadriel's Lament (Namárië) as the most substantial example.



Numerous enthusiasts have brought forth a limited, but steadily growing body of Quenya literature, especially since a substantial amount of vocabulary finally became available with the publication of The Lost Road in 1987, fifteen years after Tolkien's death. Thanks to this and the fifteen other books of Middle-earth material that Christopher Tolkien in the period 1977-96 edited from the manuscripts his father had left behind, we now know very much more about Tolkien's languages than we ever did during the lifetime of their inventor. We certainly can't sit down and readily translate the works of Shakespeare into Quenya, but we do know a few thousand words and can infer the general outlines of the grammar Tolkien envisioned. Still, you cannot really become "fluent" in Quenya, not matter how hard you study what is presently available. But it is eminently possible to write quite long Quenya texts if one deliberately eschews the unfortunate gaps in our knowledge, and we can at least hope that some of these gaps (especially regarding grammatical features) will be filled in by future publications. In the future, we may be able to develop Quenya into a more fully "useable" language. But we must obviously start by carefully internalizing the information provided by Tolkien's own material, as far as it is available to us.



Many have wanted a regular "course" or "tutorial", with exercises and all, that would allow them to study Quenya on their own with some ease. One such effort has been made before: Nancy Martsch' Basic Quenya. All in all, this was certainly a good work; the fact that material that has been published after it was written now reveals certain shortcomings, cannot be held against the author. However, many would like to have a more updated course, and I have repeatedly been approached by people suggesting that I would be the right person to write it. It is of course nice when others call me an "expert" on Tolkienian linguistics; actually I would say that it is difficult to be an "expert" in these matters, due to the scarcity of source material. Nonetheless, I have been so privileged that I have been able to spend much time studying these matters (starting more than ten years ago), and I see it as my duty to record and pass on whatever insights I may have gained. Hence in the end I sat down and started writing this course, intended for beginners. (This conveniently allows me to fill the uncritical, vulnerable minds of fresh students with my interpretation of Quenya grammar, which interpretation I inevitably hold to be the best and most accurate. Ha ha ha.) However, this course does not seek to imitate a Linguaphone-like format with long dialogues etc. to help the student to acquire "basic fluency" in various situations relating to everyday life. This would be quite pointless in the case of an "art-language" like Quenya, which is to be used for carefully prepared prose and poetry rather than casual chatting. Rather these lessons take the form of a series of essays on various parts of Quenya grammar, reviewing and analyzing available evidence in an attempt to reconstruct Tolkien's intentions, with some exercises appended.



Why study Quenya? Obviously not because you are going to Valinor on holiday and need to be able to communicate with the natives. Some may want to study this language to somehow get in better accord with the spirit of Tolkien's authorship. He referred to



...what I think is a primary 'fact' about my work, that it is all of a piece, and fundamentally linguistic in inspiration. [...] It is not a 'hobby', in the sense of something quite different from one's work, taken up as a relief-outlet. The invention of languages is the foundation. The 'stories' were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows. I should have preferred to write in 'Elvish'. But, of course, such a work as The Lord of the Rings has been edited and only as much 'language' has been left in as I thought would be stomached by readers. (I now find that many would have liked more.) [...] It is to me, anyway, largely an essay in 'linguistic aesthetic', as I sometimes say to people who ask me 'what is it all about'. (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, pp. 219-220)



In light of such strong statements made by the author, studying his invented languages cannot be dismissed as some kind of silly escapism for romantic teenagers. It must be considered a crucial part of scholarship relating to Tolkien's authorship, or indeed his work in general: The languages constructed by Tolkien are part of his output as a philologist, not necessarily less serious than his writings on pre-existing languages like Anglo-Saxon; notice that he refused to call his "fundamentally linguistic" work a mere hobby. One may call Quenya and the other languages works of art, but no matter what word we use to describe them, in the end it all boils down to this: Tolkien was not just a descriptive linguist, passively exploring and contemplating pre-existing tongues – he was a creative linguist as well.



Obviously fluency in Quenya or Sindarin is not a prerequisite before you can say anything intelligent about Tolkien's narratives; yet it is clear that some critics and scholars have woefully underestimated the crucial role of the invented languages, finding themselves unable to take even very clear statements like the one quoted above wholly seriously. To fully appreciate the scope and intricacy of Tolkien's linguistic sub-creation one has to actively study it for its own sake. It should certainly be able to command interest for its own sake. Some years ago, recognized Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey observed that



...it's clear that the languages Tolkien created are created by, you know, one of the most accomplished philologists of all time, so there is therefore something interesting in them, and I think also in them there is poured much of his professional knowledge and thought. (...) I've often noticed that there are really very valuable observations about what Tolkien thought about real philology buried in the fiction. And I would not be at all surprised if, you know, there were valuable observations buried in the invented languages. So there may be, in fact, something which emerges from it. [From an interview conducted during the Arda symposium in Oslo, April 3-5 1987, published in the journal Angerthas, issue 31.]



Even if one does not believe that there are great new philological insights waiting to be unearthed from the structure of Tolkien's languages, I cannot see why conducting detailed studies of these languages should necessarily be seen as escapism, or at best a somewhat silly pastime for people who are too lazy to find something better to do. The languages constructed by Tolkien have been likened to music; his biographer Humphrey Carpenter observes that "if he had been interested in music he would very likely have wanted to compose melodies; so why should he not make up a personal system of words that would be as it were a private symphony?" One may study one of the languages Tolkien painstakingly developed as one may study a musical symphony: a complex work of many interrelated parts woven into intricate beauty. Yet the symphony is fixed in its form, while a language can be infinitely recombined into ever new texts of prose and poetry, and yet retain its nature and flavour undiminished. One of the attractions of Quenya is that we can compose linguistic "music" ourselves just by applying Tolkien's rules, so Carpenter's comparison is too limited: Tolkien did not just make a symphony, he invented an entire form of music, and it would be a pity if it were to die with him.



Of course, others may want to study Quenya to immerse themselves in Tolkien's fiction, with no pretensions of "scholarship" of any kind: Tolkien's vision of the Elves (Quendi, Eldar) is no doubt the main achievement of his authorship, and Quenya was – at least in the somewhat biased opinion of the Noldor – "the chief Elvish tongue, the noblest, and the one most nearly preserving the ancient character of Elvish speech" (The War of the Jewels p. 374). But one may grope towards "Elvishness" in a deeper sense than just trying to immerse oneself in fiction. Happily abandoning the all too classical idea of Elves as tiny, overly pretty "fairies", Tolkien instead achieved the vision of Elves as something more: "I suppose that the Quendi are in fact in these histories very little akin to the Elves and Fairies of Europe; and if I were pressed to rationalize, I should say that they represent greater beauty and longer life, and nobility – the Elder Children" (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, p. 176). The quintessence of Tolkien's vision of "Elvishness" is contained primarily in the languages, "for to the Eldar the making of speech is the oldest of the arts and the most beloved" (The Peoples of Middle-earth p. 398). In a way, the study of Quenya can be a quest for this vision of something beautiful and noble beyond the normal capability of our mortal and finite selves: "The Elves represent, as it were, the artistic, aesthetic, and purely scientific aspects of the Humane raised to a higher level than is actually seen in Men" (Letters, p. 176). The seeking for such a "higher level" transcends all fiction. Tolkien's inner vision of this level he translated partly into pictures, much more prominently into narratives, but (to him) more importantly still, into the words and sounds of language. In Quenya his vision of Beauty lives on, awaiting those capable of comprehending and appreciating it.



On their web-pages, the Swedish Tolkien-linguists of the Mellonath Daeron group try to justify their study of Tolkien's languages:



Our activity has been described as the ultimate luxury. We study something that does not exist, just for fun. This is something you can afford when you have everything else; food, shelter, clothes, friends, and so on. The Tolkien languages are well worth studying for their high aesthetic values alone. And knowledge of the languages is a key to a fuller appreciation of the beauty of Tolkien's sub-creation, his world, Arda.



I heartily agree with the last two sentences, but I cannot agree that Quenya or Sindarin "does not exist". Obviously we are not talking about physical, tangible objects, but that goes for any language. These are not fictional languages, but languages as real as Esperanto or any other constructed language. Tolkien himself noted about his languages that they "have some existence, since I have composed them in some completeness" (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, p. 175).



Unlike Esperanto, Quenya is however strongly associated with a fictional internal history. (Tolkien once stated that Esperanto had been more successful if there had been an Esperanto mythos to go with it!) The associated mythos certainly enriches Quenya and helps us to understand what kind of linguistic "flavour" Tolkien was aiming for, and the fact that this language has a role to play in the most famous fantasy novels ever written obviously provides it with much "free publicity" that Esperanto can only dream of. Yet it must be emphasized that Quenya does exist as an actual entity in our own world, and as mentioned above, it indeed has a steadily growing literature, mostly in verse: The texts presently in existence must already be hundreds of times more comprehensive than all the Quenya texts Tolkien ever wrote himself. He endlessly refined the structure and imaginary evolution of his invented languages, but he wrote remarkably few substantial texts in them. Though he stated that he "should have preferred to write in 'Elvish'" (see quote above), he actually wrote about the "Elvish" tongues rather than in them. "Delight lay in the creation itself," Christopher Tolkien observes (Sauron Defeated, p. 440). His father made the languages just because he loved making them, not because he needed to "use" them for any specific purpose. To be sure, Tolkien wrote a number of poems in "Elvish", but they amount to very little compared to the thousands of pages he wrote about the structure of his languages.



Tolkien had his fun in sheer invention; that was his privilege as the original creator. However, I daresay quite few people are capable of deriving much pleasure from mere passive contemplation of the structure of a language, or from reading the grammar of an invented language as if it were some kind of novel. I imagine that most people who want to study Quenya have some intention, however vague, of putting this knowledge to use by writing Quenya texts themselves, or at least by reading other people's texts (at the very least Tolkien's own). Really learning any language in any case requires active participation: Even if you wouldn't dream of ever publishing anything in Quenya but rather want to assess Tolkien's "Elvish" for purely academic purposes, you will still have to work yourselves through some exercises to internalize grammar and vocabulary. Such exercises are provided in this course.



My favorite angle on the study of Tolkien's languages is probably this (building on the "musical" analogy suggested by Carpenter): I'd say we are in somewhat the same situation as if a genius composer were to invent a new form of music, writing a great deal about its structure, but making relatively few actual compositions – some of them not even published during the lifetime of the composer himself. Yet these few compositions gain a steadily growing international audience, an audience that would very much like to hear more – much more – music of this kind. The original composer being dead, what are we to do? There is only one way to go: We must carry out a thorough study of both the published compositions and the more theoretical writings, to make out and internalize the rules and principles for this kind of music. Then we can start to compose ourselves, making entirely new melodies that yet comply with the general structure devised by the original inventor.



This, of course, has a rough analogy when it comes to Tolkien's narratives as well. Tolkien's themes and principles of story-telling have been taken over by generations of new authors, resulting in the modern fantasy genre – though it would not be very controversial to say that far from all authors have been able to live up to the high standards set by the master. In somewhat the same manner, the quality of the numerous post-Tolkien Quenya texts varies greatly. In the case of some early attempts, written when very little source material was available, it is now easy to spot various shortcomings and misinterpretations of what Tolkien really intended. Today, with much more material available, I would say it is possible to write texts that Tolkien probably would have recognized as at least roughly correct Quenya (though I think reading Quenya texts not originating with himself would have been a strange experience for him; his invented languages were originally something very private).



This course should in any case be useful no matter what your angle on this study may be – whether you want to learn Quenya to immerse yourself in Tolkien's fiction, to better appreciate a crucial side of his authorship, to learn about the intricate creations of a talented linguist, to accept the intellectual challenge of trying to master a sophisticated system, to go on a meditative quest for "Elvishness", or simply to enjoy Quenya aesthetically. None of these are mutually exclusive, of course. Whatever your angle is, I hope you would like to have a part in making Quenya literature grow and flourish.



Another Tolkien quote may be in place here: "No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself" (MC:189).







What is Quenya like?







What kind of language is this, structurally speaking? It seems that Finnish provided considerable inspiration not only for the sound-patterns, but for the basic structure as well. Tolkien described Quenya as a "highly inflected language" (The Road Goes Ever On p. 69). That is, words appear in many different forms depending on their precise function in any given grammatical context. The differing forms are for the most part constructed by employing a plethora of endings, endings with meanings that in English would often be expressed as separate words instead. Hence an English translation of a Quenya text will normally consist of more words than the Quenya original: In Unfinished Tales p. 22, 51, we learn that three words of Quenya may well require a seven-word English translation: Anar caluva tielyanna = "the sun shall shine upon your path". Some may see this as evidence that Quenya is a more efficient language than English, but whether one uses one long word or several shorter words to express a given meaning is not very crucial. (It may be noted that if one counts syllables instead of words, it is suddenly English that is the most "efficient" language in the example above: The English text has one syllable less than the Quenya version!) Quenya should be enjoyed for its own qualities, not by comparing it to other languages. But the word tielyanna "upon your path" illustrates the main difference between English and Quenya: small independent words like "your" or "upon" frequently become endings instead – in this example -lya and -nna, respectively.



Is Quenya a "difficult" language? Speaking of Quenya and Sindarin, the two main languages of his mythos, Tolkien wrote that "both languages are, of course, extremely difficult" (Letters:403). Undoubtedly there are many presently unsuspected complexities waiting for us in the vast amount of unpublished material. But as far or short as our knowledge goes today, I certainly wouldn't call Quenya "extremely difficult". It may be an involved and intricate construct, but certainly less complicated than Sindarin, and the acquisition of Quenya as we know it is in no way a superhuman feat. Any devoted student should be able to achieve basic mastery of the grammatical system in relatively short time, weeks or even days rather than months. General knowledge about linguistics would certainly be helpful in such a study, but hardly a prerequisite; in this course I have tried to make the explanations so simple that any reasonably bright teenager should be able to understand what is going on. (Bearing in mind that some people who want to study Quenya are quite young, I have tried to pre-suppose virtually no knowledge about linguistics, and I will explain even elementary linguistic terms – more knowledgeable students may feel that I sometimes go into boring baby-talk.)



It must still be understood that it is not a streamlined Esperanto we are dealing with here. Tolkien deliberately tried to make his languages "naturalistic"; hence there are some irregular verbs and the like, though I would say their number is quite manageable. Quenya probably stands about midway between an absolutely regular "Esperanto" and a typical "real" language with its spate of complexities and irregularities, yet perhaps closer to the former. Indeed Quenya is probably too simple to be entirely "credible" as a supposedly non-constructed language, at least if we compare it to the messy languages of Mortal Men in our own age. But then Quenya wasn't really "non-constructed" within the scope of the fictional history either; it was constructed and refined by the Elves, "and the Eldar know their tongue, not word by word only, but as a whole" (The Peoples of Middle-earth p. 398). So perhaps the Eldar, being very much conscious of the structure of their speech, would tend to make languages with a relatively tidy grammar. Anyway, from the viewpoint of students it is difficult to regret the absence of more irregular forms to be memorized, so if this simplicity does indeed make Quenya less "credible" as a natural language, Tolkien is easily forgiven!







The Sources







We know that Tolkien wrote literally thousands of pages about his languages. Unfortunately – and here I must ask fresh students to brace themselves for their first big shock, though the shocking fact has already been alluded to – very little of this material is available to us. However, Christopher Tolkien has apparently tried to make arrangements for its publication. Throughout most of the nineties, he was sending photo-copies of his father's linguistic manuscripts to a group of Americans often (but unofficially) referred to as the Elfconners, apparently because of their prominence on the "cons" or conventions of ELF, the "Elvish Linguistic Fellowship". However, the most outspoken member of the group seems to have convinced himself beyond refutation that the term "Elfconners" was always meant to be derogatory, associating it with "conning" or deception. As pointed out by TolkLang moderator Julian Bradfield, it may be that this member of the group is inventing insults against himself, but currently it is politically correct to refer to this group simply as the Editorial Team, abbreviated ET. Whatever we call them, the group consists of Christopher Gilson, Carl F. Hostetter, Patrick Wynne and Arden R. Smith (in recent years, Bill Welden has also joined in). Before they started to receive Tolkien manuscripts, these people quite regularly published the Tolkien-linguistic journals Vinyar Tengwar (edited by Hostetter) and Parma Eldalamberon (edited by Gilson), generally maintaining a high standard. This, we must assume, was the reason why Christopher Tolkien wanted them to publish his father's linguistic manuscripts in the first place.



The very strange and most unfortunate fact is that after they started receiving Tolkien manuscripts for publication, the group's rate of publication dropped disastrously. They began to receive manuscript copies in 1991; a decade later they have managed to get a few hundred pages of new material into print (most of it wordlist material pertaining to the very earliest stages of Tolkien's work, far removed from the LotR scenario). Some of us are not impressed. What little material has appeared has been nicely presented, but with the present rate of publication, the completion of the project must be very far off indeed. In 1996, Christopher Gilson stated that "next year", his group planned to publish "fairly comprehensive" grammars for the two main languages of Tolkien's mythos. In early 2002 they finally published some material relating to certain stages of "Gnomish", an early conceptual ancestor of the language Tolkien later called Sindarin; we are still waiting for a really substantial amount of material about Quenya. Most other deadlines that the members of Gilson's group have set for themselves has proved equally worthless, and since about 1998 they have largely refrained from stating any deadlines at all. Still, we must hope that in ten (or twenty, or thirty...) years, we will know more – but if the Editorial Team is able to ever commence efficient, regular publication of Tolkien's material, they have yet to demonstrate this ability.



We must work, then, from sources already available – sources that often touch on the languages more or less incidentally. The linguistic aspect of Tolkien's authorship luckily permeates his works to such an extent that if you bring together all the scattered pieces of information and analyze them thoroughly, you will be able to figure out much about his languages even without access to his explicit grammars. Unfortunately this method of study will leave many gaps in our knowledge, gaps most irritating to people who try to actually use these languages. In other cases, the material is so scarce that we can formulate not just one but all too many theories about what the underlying grammatical rules look like, and we don't have any further examples that would allow us to identify the correct theory. Nonetheless, we do know a great deal about Quenya, though some of our knowledge is more tentative than we would like. A survey of the sources is in place here; at least I should explain the abbreviations used in this work.



The primary narrative works, The Lord of the Rings (LotR, 1954-55) and The Silmarillion (Silm, 1977) need no further introduction. (Of course, there is also The Hobbit, but this book contains little linguistic information, and hardly anything at all about Quenya.) Most of the Elvish names of people and places found in LotR (such as Aragorn, Glorfindel, Galadriel, Minas Tirith) are Sindarin, but there are substantial samples of Quenya as well. In LotR, we find one of the longest Quenya texts known, the poem Namárië near the end of chapter VIII ("Farewell to Lórien") in Book Two in the first volume, The Fellowship of the Ring. Also known as Galadriel's Lament, this is the poem commencing with the words Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen...



Various shorter samples of Quenya are also sprinkled throughout LotR, such as Frodo speaking in tongues in Shelob's lair ("Aiya Eärendil Elenion Ancalima! he cried, and he knew not what he had spoken"), the praise that the Ringbearers received on the Field of Cormallen (part Sindarin, part Quenya), Elendil's Declaration as repeated by Aragorn at his coronation, and Treebeard's greeting to Celeborn and Galadriel. The Quenya parts of the Cormallen Praise (as I shall refer to it), as found in volume 3, Book Six, chapter IV ("The Field of Cormallen"), go like this: A laita te, laita te! Andave laituvalmet! ... Cormacolindor, a laita tárienna! (Cf. Sauron Defeated p. 47.) This is translated in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, p. 308: "Bless them, bless them, long we will praise them." – "The Ring bearers, bless (or praise) them to the height."



In the next chapter (V) we have Elendil's Declaration, repeated by Aragorn at his coronation: Et Eärello Endorenna utúlien. Sinome maruvan ar hildinyar tenn' Ambar-metta. This is translated in the text as "out of the Great Sea to Middle-earth I am come. In this place will I abide, and my heirs, unto the ending of the world."



Treebeard's Greeting in the chapter after that (VI) goes a vanimar, vanimálion nostari, translated both in Letters p. 308 ("o beautiful ones, parents of beautiful children") and Sauron Defeated p. 73 ("fair ones begetters of fair ones"; this rendering is the more literal).



Quenya material (though mostly isolated words only) also occur in the Appendices to LotR, in particular Appendix E.



In the Silmarillion, we also have a few short Quenya sentences. In chapter 20 there are some battle-cries: Útúlie'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!" – Auta i lómë! "The night is passing!" – Aurë entuluva! "Day shall come again!" Near the end of chapter 21 there is the cry a Túrin Turambar turun ambartanen, "o Túrin master of doom by doom mastered" – but Unfinished Tales p. 138 indicates that turun should rather read turún' (evidently shortened from a longer form turúna, the final -a dropping out because the next word also begins in a-). The Silmarillion Appendix, "Elements in Quenya and Sindarin names", also mentions many words belonging to these two languages.



In the case of other sources, a more summary survey will suffice, since these books and journals (unlike LotR and Silm!) have not appeared in too many editions and translations. Hence I can simply refer to the relevant book and page when quoting from them, and that reference will hopefully be precise enough. We will list them by the abbreviations used hereinafter:



¤ RGEO: The Road Goes Ever On (our page references are to the Second Edition of 1978, ISBN 0-04-784011-0). The first edition was published in 1968; this is thus one of our very few sources outside LotR that were published in Tolkien's own lifetime, which lends it extra authority (for when something had been published, he would normally consider it a fixed and unchangeable part of the mythos). While RGEO is basically a song cycle (Tolkien's poems with music by Donald Swann), Tolkien also included quite extensive notes on two Elvish poems occurring in LotR, Namárië and the Sindarin hymn A Elbereth Gilthoniel (RGEO:66-76). Besides writing them out in Fëanorian script, he also provided an interlinear translation of both; this allows us to know with certainty which word means what. He also rearranged Namárië into a clearer "prose" version, as an alternative to the poetic version in LotR – providing us with a unique opportunity to compare poetic style and prose style in Quenya. Hence I will sometimes refer to the "prose Namárië".



¤ UT: Unfinished Tales (1980, ISBN 0-04-823208-4). A posthumously published collection of material supplementing and sometimes fleshing out the stories of LotR and Silm, though as the title implies, not all of it was ever finished by the author. Of particular interest to students of Elvish is Cirion's Oath found in UT:305: Vanda sina termaruva Elenna•nórëo alcar enyalien ar Elendil vorondo voronwë. Nai tiruvantes i hárar mahalmassen mi Númen ar i Eru i or ilyë mahalmar eä tennoio. The (not entirely literal) translation given in the text goes: "This oath shall stand in memory of the glory of the Land of the Star, and of the faith of Elendil the Faithful, in the keeping of those who sit upon the thrones of the West and of the One who is above all thrones for ever." Tolkien added some interesting notes about the Quenya words (UT:317), allowing us to analyze the Oath itself.



¤ Letters: The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981, ISBN 0-04-440664-9). Edited by Humphrey Carpenter, Tolkien's biographer, this collection of letters also contains some linguistic information. Readers of LotR occasionally wrote to Tolkien asking questions touching on the samples of Quenya and Sindarin found in that work, and this being Tolkien's favourite subject, he often wrote fairly detailed answers. Among other things, Letters provides translations of some Elvish samples that are not translated in the LotR itself, e.g. Aiya Eärendil Elenion Ancalima = "hail Eärendil brightest of stars" (Letters:385; we have already quoted the translation of the Cormallen Praise in Letters:308).



¤ MC: The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (1983, ISBN 0-04-809019-0). This book contains Tolkien's essay A Secret Vice (MC:198-223), in which he sets out his thoughts and theories about language-construction in general. He also included some "Elvish" poems, most notably Oilima Markirya or "The Last Ark", which is listed in several versions. The version of Markirya that is most interesting to people studying the kind of Quenya exemplified in LotR, is found in MC:221-223 (including some valuable annotation).



Having edited and published Silm, UT and MC from the papers his father had left behind, Christopher Tolkien commenced what would become a highly ambitious project. In the period 1983-1996, he published a series of no less than twelve volumes, demonstrating how his father had developed his world-famous narratives over many years. The History of Middle-earth series (HoME) presents the many "layers" of manuscripts, chronicling how the Silmarillion and LotR as we know them gradually came into being, and also presenting other materials relating to Tolkien's vast mythology. For convenience I will list all the volumes of HoME by their standard abbreviations, though I will not actually quote from each and every one of them:



¤ LT1: The Book of Lost Tales 1 (1983, ISBN 0-04-823231-5)

¤ LT2: The Book of Lost Tales 2 (1984, ISBN 0-04-823338-2)

¤ LB: The Lays of Beleriand (1985, ISBN 0-04-440018-7)

¤ SM: The Shaping of Middle-earth (1986, ISBN 0-04-440150-7)

¤ LR: The Lost Road (1987, ISBN 0-04-440398-4)

¤ RS: The Return of the Shadow (1988, ISBN 0-04-440669-X)

¤ TI: The Treason of Isengard (1989, ISBN 0-261-10220-6)

¤ WR: The War of the Ring (1990, ISBN 0-261-10223-0)

¤ SD: Sauron Defeated (1992, ISBN 0-261-10305-9)

¤ MR: Morgoth's Ring (1993, ISBN 0-261-10300-8)

¤ WJ: The War of the Jewels (1994, ISBN 0-395-71041-3)

¤ PM: The Peoples of Middle-earth (1996, ISBN 0-216-10337-7)



Each of these books provide clues to the structure of Tolkien's languages, though often in a somewhat incidental fashion (Christopher Tolkien included relatively little of his father's narrowly linguistic writings, which being highly technical would be of limited interest to the general readership). For people interested in Tolkien's languages as they appear in LotR, the most important volumes of HoME are LR, WJ and SD, which any serious student of these languages should have in his or her private library. The only long Quenya text occurring in HoME, Fíriel's Song, is found in LR:72 – but more importantly, these books reproduce three important source documents that I will often refer to simply by name (as do most students of Tolkien's linguistic creation). Therefore, they will be briefly described here. We are talking about the Etymologies and the essays Quendi and Eldar and Lowdham's Report.



1. The Etymologies (called "Etym" for short) is found in LR:347-400. (I should mention that there are different editions of LR around, so there is unfortunately more than one pagination; my page references are to the edition normally used by Tolkien-linguists.) To casual readers undoubtedly the most baffling document in the entire HoME series, this is our most important single source of "Elvish" vocabulary. However, it is not a regular dictionary. It is an alphabetical list of about six hundred primitive "bases" or roots, the various entries listing actual words derived from these roots as they appeared in later Elvish languages (sometimes the actual ulterior "primitive Elvish" form is also mentioned, closely reflecting the "base" itself). For instance, under the entry ÁLAK (LR:348), itself defined "rushing", we find this series: "*alk-w swan: Q alqa; T alpa; ON alpha; N alf." Tolkien's idea is that the Primitive Elvish word alk-w developed into Q[uenya] alqa, T[elerin] alpa, O[ld] N[oldorin] alpha and N[oldorin] alf. The Etymologies was written in the second half of the thirties, and the spelling and general concepts differ somewhat from the scenario of the LotR as published in the early fifties. (If we were to "update" the sample just quoted, we must read Sindarin for Noldorin, and Quenya alqa and "Noldorin"/Sindarin alf should rather be spelt alqua and alph, respectively – both words, so spelt, are actually attested in later writings.) Despite the fact that the Etymologies in some respects reflects a somewhat "outdated" linguistic scenario, Tolkien undertaking important revisions after he wrote Etym, it is still a gold-mine of information (and as we have just demonstrated, it can to some extent readily be "updated" in accordance with Tolkien's later ideas). Of all the languages Tolkien mentioned in Etym, Quenya is in any case among the tongues that were not very significantly affected by his subsequent revisions. (In the case of "Noldorin", on the other hand, he would tinker with its phonology and imaginary evolution, and drastically alter its internal history, to produce Sindarin as we know it from LotR.)



2. Quendi and Eldar (sometimes "Q&E" for short) is found in WJ:360-417. This is ostensibly an essay on the "Origin and Meanings of the Elvish words referring to Elves and their varieties. With Appendices on their names for other Incarnates". This ground is certainly covered, but luckily (from our point of view!) there are many digressions, appendices and notes that provide much extra information about the Elvish languages as Tolkien had come to see them in the post-LotR period: This essay dates from ca. 1959-60. Christopher Tolkien felt that one substantial section departed too radically from the stated subject of the essay, and edited it out (see WJ:359, 396). Luckily, the omitted section was later published in the journal Vinyar Tengwar, issue #39. When I quote from Quendi and Eldar, I will therefore sometimes refer to WJ and sometimes to Vinyar Tengwar (VT). "Digressive" though the section that appeared in VT may be, it is of course of immense interest to people studying Tolkien's languages.



3. Lowdham's Report, or in full Lowdham's Report on the Adunaic Language, can be found in SD:413-440. As the title implies, this report is mainly concerned with another language than Quenya: Adunaic (in the LotR appendices spelt Adûnaic), the vernacular of Númenor. However, a little information about Quenya, which in this report is referred to as "Avallonian", can also be gleaned – the two languages sometimes being compared or contrasted. ("Lowdham" is just a fictional character of Tolkien's. Tolkien sometimes presented even quite technical information about his languages as if he were merely quoting or referring the observations and viewpoints of various people residing within his mythos. Among his favourite fictional "sources" we find Fëanor, the greatest but also the proudest of the Noldor, Rúmil the sage of Tirion, and Pengolodh the loremaster of Gondolin: Many of Tolkien's characters seem to share their author's interest in mysterious scripts and strange languages.)



The sources so far mentioned are the ones published or edited by Tolkien himself or by his son – except for Letters, that was edited by Humphrey Carpenter. In addition there are a few works edited and published by others. Some very brief scraps of information can be extracted from J.R.R. Tolkien – Artist and Illustrator, edited by Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull. The results of the Editorial Team, scarce but not unimportant, must also be mentioned. The journal Vinyar Tengwar (VT), edited by Carl F. Hostetter, had its "golden age" in the period 1988-93, when the editor managed to uphold continuous bimonthly publication. When Hostetter and the other ET members in the early nineties started to receive original Tolkien material of the utmost interest to be edited and published, the rate of publication mysteriously dropped to about one issue a year, and this situation has continued throughout the latter half of the nineties and into the new decade. Not all of the few issues that have been published include any new Tolkien material, and those that do are usually devoted to very short scraps (that are moreover samples of very early material that is often clearly not LotR-compatible).



A few issues do stand out, however, and one of them has already been mentioned: In issue #39, July 1998, Hostetter published the part of Quendi and Eldar that Christopher Tolkien left out of WJ, as well as the companion essay Ósanwe-kenta (the latter is not strictly linguistic by its subject, but Tolkien nonetheless mentioned quite a few Quenya words). Some useful material also appeared in issue #41, July 2000, filling certain annoying gaps in our vocabulary (in particular regarding the verb "can") and providing interesting new information about the formation of the present tense. In January 2002, various Quenya translations of the Pater Noster and the Ave Maria were published in issue #43; Tolkien the Catholic produced more than one Elvish version of these texts.

The other main results of the ET's editing efforts for the most part consist of wordlist material: the Gnomish Lexicon (GL) and the Qenya Lexicon (QL, a.k.a. the Qenyaqetsa, abbreviated QQ). The GL also mentions a few "Qenya" words (just like the QL mentions some Gnomish words; the languages are not infrequently compared or contrasted). Regarding "Qenya" as opposed to (LotR-style) Quenya, see below. These Lexicons were published in issues #11 and #12 of the journal Parma Eldalamberon, 1995 and 1998, respectively. They were originally written during World War I, when the earliest form of Tolkien's mythos began to take shape: The QL manuscript is usually dated to 1915, the GL to 1917. Substantial excerpts were published already in 1983-84, Christopher Tolkien drawing heavily on the Lexicons in the appendices to LT1 and LT2. Prefixed to each Lexicon, Parma also published some related material: a never finished Gnomish Grammar in #11, and some phonological descriptions for "Qenya" in #12.



Of the actual Quenya samples so far mentioned, I shall often refer to Namárië, Treebeard's Greeting, Elendil's Declaration, Cirion's Oath, Fíriel's Song and Markirya simply by title or "name", not always providing a reference to book and page. From the discussion above the student will know where they are found (if you feel the urge to check the accuracy of my quotes!) In most other cases I will provide a reference when I quote something, since it will usually be found in one of the sources that do allow a precise reference to book and page (since there is not a spate of different editions with differing pagination around). When I refer to entries in the Etymologies (in LR), I simply quote the entry-head, which can easily be located in all the various editions (irrespective of differing pagination).







A word of Warning Regarding parts of the Corpus







Scattered in the sources listed above we have a total Quenya "corpus" that would amount to very roughly 150 pages if it were all brought together (though most of this would unfortunately just be unconnected wordlist material; the samples of actual text are much rarer and could probably be fitted into no more than two or three pages). But here a word of warning is in place: If you want to learn the kind of Quenya that you have encountered in LotR, not all of the samples found in this corpus are entirely "reliable" – even though they are certainly genuine Tolkien. To avoid what is potentially a quagmire of confusion, the student should immediately internalize one fact: The kind of Quenya exemplified in LotR is not the only kind of Quenya there is. If you start analyzing all the samples of Quenya that we now have, you will soon realize that they do not form a homogenous mass. Most samples certainly "look" much the same, never straying too far from the Finnish-inspired word-shapes, but much of the early material (never published during Tolkien's lifetime) can be shown to employ or presuppose words, inflectional endings and grammatical rules that differ from the system of LotR-style Quenya. By all means, no sample is entirely different from LotR-style Quenya – but in material predating the mid-thirties, neither is there any sample that is entirely identical.



Tolkien was, so to speak, all too good when it came to devising languages. Fixing them in one clear-cut and unchangeable form was an almost impossible task for him. There were ever new ideas that he wanted to work into their structure, even if these ideas contradicted and obsoleted things that he had written earlier. We can be sure that his fictional character Lowdham speaks for Tolkien himself (SD:240):



In making up a language you are free: too free (...) When you're just inventing, the pleasure or fun is in the moment of invention; but as you are the master your whim is law, and you may want to have the fun all over again, fresh. You're liable to be for ever niggling, altering, refining, wavering, according to your linguistic mood and to your changes of taste.



With the posthumous publication of many of Tolkien's writings, we got evidence for plenty of 'niggling, altering, refining, and wavering' on his part. It is now evident that Quenya appeared in many incarnations, and while they all share the same general "style" and would probably look the same to a fresh student, they actually differ in many details of grammar, vocabulary and even phonology. A powerful demonstration of the extent of Tolkien's revisions is provided by the Markirya poem, which exists in one version dating from the early thirties (MC:213) and another that is about forty years younger, dating from the last decade of Tolkien's life (MC:221-223). Both versions have (almost) the same meaning, but the late version is in the full sense of the word a translation of the former, not a mere rewriting: Only a few words and inflectional endings are common to both texts.



Since Tolkien in pre-LotR sources typically used the spelling Qenya instead of Quenya (though the intended pronunciation is the same), I and others often use "Qenya" (preferably in quotes) as a name of early variants of Quenya that are more or less different from the form that appears in LotR and later sources. The first version of Markirya I would thus call a "Qenya" poem; only the later version is Quenya as we know it from LotR. Some other poems reproduced in MC (Nieninqe and Earendel, pp. 215-216), as well as an alternative "Last Ark" poem of another meaning than the classical Markirya (MC:221), are also decidedly "Qenya" rather than Quenya. These texts may certainly be enjoyed for their own qualities, but as source-material for students trying to figure out the structure of LotR-style Quenya they exclude themselves.



As we would expect, the language generally becomes more and more similar to its "final form" the closer we get to Tolkien's writing LotR. For instance, the relatively late text Fíriel's Song is almost, but not quite LotR-style Quenya. However, one should not have a simplistic view of these things, thinking that Tolkien started out in 1915 with a language that was wildly different from the Quenya of LotR and that it "gradually" evolved into LotR-style Quenya in a nice and tidy evolutionary line. The scarcity of published material does not allow us to follow the process in any detail, but it is already evident that Tolkien kept changing his mind back and forth, not only doing revisions but frequently also undoing them later: Indeed some of the very earliest material, written during WWI, gives an overall impression of being more similar to LotR-style Quenya than certain "Qenya" poems of the early thirties. It may seem that Tolkien, rather than boldly "progressing" toward LotR-style Quenya, made a series of detours on the way, sometimes venturing off into radical revisions that eventually proved dissatisfying and were rejected. Yet in other cases certain revisions proved durable, Tolkien evidently perceiving them as genuine improvements – but the whole process was wholly unpredictable, for in a game like this there could be no imaginable objective criteria for what constitutes an improvement: As Tolkien had Lowdham saying, "Your whim is law."



Something really close to LotR-style Quenya seems to have made its first appearance in the latter half of the thirties, with the writing of the Etymologies. But it is not to be thought that everything was completely settled even after LotR had been written and published in the first half of the fifties; Tolkien indeed used the opportunity to tinker just a little with even the published samples of Quenya in this work when a revised edition appeared in 1966 (and even more niggling was certainly going on behind the scenes). Seven years later he died, and there is little reason to believe that he ever managed (or even seriously tried) to fix Quenya and his other languages in one definite cut-in-stone form – sorting out every detail. Members of the Editorial Team have indicated that Tolkien's later manuscripts bear witness to one last phase of intense experimentation, but apparently, no final or definite version of the language ever emerged. This was not necessarily a "failure", like a composer never managing to finish his great opera: "Unceasing change, often frustrating to those who study these languages, was inherent in this art," Christopher Tolkien observes (SD:440). In another place, he remarks regarding his father's work on the languages that "it seems indeed that they very attempt to write a definitive account produced immediate dissatisfaction and the desire for new constructions: so the most beautiful manuscripts were soon treated with disdain" (LR:342). Insofar as "delight lay in the creation itself", Tolkien could not write a definitive account, or his fun would be past and over.



Nonetheless, if compared to Tolkien's intense experimentation in the twenty years from 1915, Quenya does seem to have entered a somewhat "stable" phase in the second half of the thirties. Over the next decade Tolkien wrote LotR, which included some samples of Quenya as it now appeared (most notably Namárië). With the eventual publication of LotR in 1954-55, these forms became a "fixed" part of the mythos (despite Tolkien's slight tinkering in the 1966 revision). Having published LotR, Tolkien obviously could not revise his languages anything as freely as he could before. Reportedly, there are hints in his post-LotR manuscripts that he indeed felt somewhat constrained. But this relative stability would later be good news for people wanting to learn or study "the" Quenya, Tolkien's more-or-less final decision on how this language had "really been" back in the remote ages chronicled by his narratives.



Some (including me) have referred to this as mature Quenya. Others feel this term to be unduly disparaging to the earlier forms of Quenya or "Qenya", since the inevitable implication is that they were somehow immature and inferior. Artistically, subjectively speaking I do think the "final" form of Quenya is more attractive than Tolkien's earlier experiments, and there can be no doubt that this is the kind of Quenya that most students will primarily want to learn – not the earlier variants that Tolkien himself rejected. For that matter, this is certainly the version of Quenya that Tolkien himself would have wanted us to study; if it had been up to him, we would never have seen any other versions! He took the utmost care to ensure that his mythos would remain free from internal contradictions, and he would never have recognized contradictory variants of Quenya as being somehow equally valid. Indeed it should be noted that elderly Tolkien referred to his earliest form of "Qenya" as "very primitive" (PM:379). Hence we have no choice but to treat the early material with considerable caution, and there is little reason to believe that Tolkien would have been greatly insulted if others were to say (or indeed to agree!) that his early "Qenya" variants are not quite as attractive as his later, carefully refined version(s) of the language.



Even so, in this course I have opted to speak, not of "mature Quenya", but rather of LotR-style Quenya. The latter term must be wholly uncontroversial. The language that this course teaches is of course LotR-style Quenya, as well as it can be approximated at the present stage – but there is no point in pretending that the various earlier "Qenya" variants never existed. I will indeed refer to some of their features, to give the student some idea of what kind of variations occur in the material. Apart from such academic considerations, the early material is something we may "fall back on" where material closer to (and ideally postdating) the writing of LotR is insufficient for our needs. In particular, we may cannibalize the "Qenya" material for useful vocabulary items, in each case making sure that the words we carry over into LotR-style Quenya fit this tongue (i.e., they must not clash with later words of different meaning, and the shape of the words themselves must fit the phonology and derivational system of the language as Tolkien eventually came to envision it). After all, all the incarnations of Q(u)enya in the entire period from the language was invented in 1915 and until Tolkien's death in 1973 may well be seen as endless variations on somewhat the same themes. Therefore it is in a way only fitting that in our attempts to develop a useable form of Quenya, we take everything into consideration. But as for the overall grammatical and phonological structure, we must give priority to Tolkien's vision as it manifested in LotR and writings postdating this work: If we have any respect whatsoever for Tolkien's intentions, the form of Quenya that we attempt to crystallize must be LotR-compatible.



Little can be easy or clear-cut in this strange corner of Language. Reconstructing the structure of Quenya is like trying to piece together a huge puzzle of far-sundered pieces. Many pieces are simply missing, vast amounts of material being inaccessible to scholars (and to make matters worse, the ones who are supposed to be publishing it often seem far more concerned about concealing it). Moreover, because of Tolkien's frequent revisions you can't even be sure that all the pieces you do find belong to the same puzzle at all. Some clearly do not fit and can be ignored; many other fall in the category of "doubtful", and you don't really know what to do with them.



In this course I will mention some of the variations and present my hopefully qualified guesses as to what we should accept as authoritative and what is probably best ignored. Indeed, due to the general lack of explicit grammatical information from Tolkien, I will not always present Quenya grammar with confidence and authority; rather you will often see me review whatever evidence is available and try to make out some rules that we can follow when putting together our own Quenya compositions. But in a way this is precisely what I should like to do anyway, so as to acquaint students with the kind of deductions that the field of Tolkienian linguistics is all about at this stage. Concerning some material I published earlier, I've had (gentle) complaints to the effect that I merely listed my conclusions without showing what they were based on, somewhat dogmatically asserting that "this is how it is, take my word for it". I think this style was unavoidable in a brief presentation, but here I will in many cases avail myself of the opportunity to go back to the primary sources and really demonstrate what kind of deductions underlie everything.



Precisely because Tolkien's Quenya is a somewhat fluid entity, fixed in general outline but with endless contradictory variations when it comes to the details, we can to some extent feel free to crystallize our own standard (not making it more difficult than we have to). As long as we piece together a usable system from elements Tolkien provided, even though there is no way we can accept all the known variations within a single, unified system, the resulting language will be "real Quenya" – to the extent such a thing can exist.







Spelling Conventions







Over the decades, Tolkien's spelling of Quenya varied in certain details. As discussed above, just about every aspect of Quenya was somewhat "variable", but unlike the unstable grammar, the spelling variations are not very consequential: In theory our alphabet is not the writing native to Quenya anyway. Tolkien was merely hesitating on how to best render into our own letters the supposed "original Elvish script" (the Tengwar, also called Fëanorian writing – a singularly beautiful script that Tolkien devised with the same loving care as the languages themselves). In this course, a consistent spelling has been imposed on the material, mostly based on the spelling used in LotR (I say "mostly based" because the spelling used in LotR is not entirely consistent either, but it is close!) Concerning the spelling used in LotR, Tolkien wrote: "The archaic language of lore [namely Quenya] is meant to be a kind of 'Elven-latin', and by transcribing it into a spelling closely resembling that of Latin (except that y is only used as a consonant, as y in E[nglish] Yes) the similarity to Latin has been increased ocularly" (Letters:176).



I will outline the spelling conventions used in this work. What follows is not something a fresh student needs to carefully internalize. People who want to study Quenya should nonetheless be aware of the major spelling inconsistencies in the primary sources. Guided primarily by the spelling Tolkien used in LotR, I have regularized the following features:



Vowel length indicated by an accent (and no other symbol): In his spelling of Quenya, Tolkien always used some kind of symbol to mark vowels that are to be pronounced long (if you don't know what a vowel is, see the first regular lesson). But precisely what symbol he used is somewhat variable. Sometimes he uses a macron, a short horizontal line above the vowel; this is especially common in the Etymologies and certain other "philological" writings. Sometimes a circumflex is used, e.g. ô in the word fôlima "secretive" from the earliest "Qenya" dictionary (LT2:340/QL:38). But in LotR and most sources postdating it, Tolkien typically uses a normal accent to indicate vowel-length, and so will we here: long á, é, í, ó, ú as opposed to short a, e, i, o, u. So if I ever needed the word fôlima, I would spell it fólima instead. When quoting Primitive Elvish forms, I will however use circumflexes to mark long vowels. In the sources, macrons are normally used instead: We have already quoted alk-w "swan" from the entry ÁLAK in Etym., the macron above the final a indicating that the vowel is long. However, writing alk-wâ (etc.) instead is safer in a document that is to be distributed over the Internet; vowels with macrons may be replaced by various weird symbols if the software of the recipients is not overly fond of linguistics.



- C rather than K: If you bothered looking up the reference I gave for the sentence Anar caluva tielyanna above (Unfinished Tales p. 22), you may have noticed that in the source, the middle word is actually spelt kaluva instead. In Quenya, k and c represent the same sound (pronounced K); Tolkien just couldn't make up his mind which letter to use. In pre-LotR sources, such as the Etymologies and the early Qenya Lexicon, he mostly used k (though in a few cases, c pops up in these sources as well). Since the original inspiration for Quenya was Finnish, and Finnish orthography employs the letter k, it is not surprising that Tolkien originally preferred that grapheme. But as is evident from Letters:176 quoted above, he later decided that in LotR, he would spell Quenya as similar to Latin as possible. Guided by Latin orthography, he started to use the letter c instead of k: "I decided to be 'consistent' and spell Elvish names and words throughout without k" (Letters:247). For instance, the word for "metal" had been spelt tinko in the Etymologies (entry TINKÔ), but in LotR Appendix E, the same word with the same meaning appears as tinco instead. Hence we regularize k to c throughout. It is a curious fact that Tolkien, even in sources that postdate LotR, in many (indeed most) cases reverted to the use of k. His writings are quite inconsistent on this point. A word for "Dwarf" is given as Kasar with a k in WJ:388; yet on the next page Tolkien switches to c when quoting the Quenya name of Moria: Casarrondo ("Dwarf-cave" or "Dwarf-hall"). A word for "house" appears as köa in WJ:369 (köarya "his house"), but in MR:250 the same word is spelt with a c in the compound cöacalina "light of the house" (an Elvish expression for the soul inside the body). In some late notes published in VT41:10, Tolkien mentioned a word ruskuite "foxy" using the letter k rather than c, but immediately afterwards he wrote down a word calarus "polished copper" using c rather than k. From the posthumously published Silmarillion we remember names like Melkor and Tulkas, but in MR:362, 382 the spellings used are Melcor and Tulcas. The Quenya word for "horse" is spelt rocco in Letters:282, but in Letters:382 we have rokko instead. Imitating Tolkien's persistent indecision in this matter would be quite pointless or even confusing. For instance, the Quenya word for "bed" is given in LR:363 as kaima, but in Namárië in LotR, the obviously related word "lies" is spelt caita. Maintaining the inconsistent spelling out of some kind of misunderstood reverence would obscure the relationship between the words; to go with caita, the word for "bed" clearly ought to be spelt caima. I should mention that there are those who would regularize the material to k instead, discarding the spellings used in LotR in favour of the orthography Tolkien uses in many other sources. This is only a matter of taste, and in the "C or K" question all writers can essentially make their own choice, but I will normally adhere to the LotR spelling. After all, the LotR is a rather central work regarding the setting Tolkien placed his languages in.



NOTE: But in the case of the title of the Markirya poem, I tend to retain k simply because the word markirya or "ark" only occurs in the early, "Qenya" version of the poem. It is not found in the later Quenya version, though I don't know what we should otherwise call it. So in this case I will leave the k in to mark this as an early "Qenya" word, though a form marcirya would surely work in LotR-style Quenya as well – and this is the spelling I would use if I ever needed the word "ark" in an actual Quenya text. I guess I would normally also retain k in some names that we are very familiar with from the Silmarillion: Melkor, Tulkas, Kementári and a few others. But the Silmarillion also employs forms like Calaquendi (rather than Kalaquendi), so there is little consistency in this work.



- QU rather than just Q: In most pre-LotR sources, the combination "cw" is represented by the one letter q. But in a few early sources (published only posthumously), and more importantly in LotR, Tolkien used qu rather than just q: Again the inspiration was Latin spelling. This even affected the name of the language; as mentioned above, Tolkien's original spelling was Qenya. To quote another example, the word for "feather", spelt qesse in a pre-LotR source (Etym., entry KWES), became quesse in LotR (Appendix E). This is a change that is consistently carried through in Tolkien's post-LotR writings as far as we know them, so we need not hesitate to impose this spelling on the earlier material as well. (Tolkien's own son does so in LT1:170; when discussing the first element of the name Qerkaringa occurring in early material, Christopher Tolkien uses the spelling querka instead. I would go one step further and write querca.)



- X rather than KS (or for that matter CS): Tolkien's spelling of what is to be pronounced "ks" varies. Most sources seem to have ks, but occasionally, the spelling x is used instead (already in the Qenya Lexicon of ca. 1915, p. 95, we seem to have tuxa as a variant spelling of tuksa "144"). Throughout the Etymologies, the spelling ks is used, e.g. maksa "pliant, soft" (entry MASAG). The Etymologies, entry KARAK, thus gives Helkarakse as the name of the arctic area crossed by some of the Noldor when they went into exile. However, this name appears as Helcaraxë in the published Silmarillion, with x for ks (and c for k), and we regularize in accordance with the latter spelling – e.g. maxa rather than maksa. In published post-LotR sources, Tolkien seems to be using x rather than ks consistently, e.g. axan "commandment" and nixe "frost" in WJ:399/417, or axo "bone" in MC:223 – so x must be seen as his final decision in this matter. In LotR Appendix E, Tolkien refers to "the combinations ts, ps, ks (x), that were favoured in Quenya"; this also seems to suggest that ks is to be represented by x in normal spelling. (No actual example of a Quenya word containing x/ks seems to occur in LotR, but as mentioned above, we have Helcaraxë in the Silmarillion.)



- N rather than Ñ: In many sources, Tolkien uses the symbol ñ, which should not be pronounced as in Spanish orthography (e.g., as in señor). "In the transcription ñ [is used for] the Fëanorian letter for the back nasal, the ng of king" (MR:350). Unlike English, Quenya could originally have this ng at the beginning of words (as well as in other positions where it may also occur in English). A prominent example is the word Ñoldo, plural Ñoldor, which is so spelt in many sources. But in LotR Appendix E, Tolkien wrote that this ng or ñ "has been transcribed n (as in Noldo) according to the pronunciation in the Third Age". The list of Tengwar names in the same Appendix confirms the development Tolkien hinted at here: the pronunciation of certain symbols of Tengwar writing was slightly changed as the long Ages of Middle-earth went by. The letters that were originally called ngoldo and ngwalme (= ñoldo, ñwalme) were later called noldo and nwalme instead; since the letters were named after actual Quenya words containing the sound denoted by the letter, this reflects a development whereby initial ñ- becomes normal n-. Already in the Etymologies of the mid-thirties, Tolkien hinted at a similar development: In the entry ÑGAR(A)M, the word for "wolf" was listed as "ñarmo, narmo", which is evidently to be understood as an older and a later form. MR:350 mentions a word ñólë "lore, knowledge" that is spelt with initial ñ- in the Etymologies as well (entry ÑGOL, where it is glossed "wisdom"), but in the Silmarillion Appendix (entry gûl) it is spelt nólë. This would be the later, Third Age form. We go for the Third Age form everywhere, regularizing ñ to n throughout. (Notice, though, that in Tengwar writing the distinction between the symbols transcribed ñ and n was upheld even after they had both come to be pronounced "n". But this is not a problem as long as we write Quenya in our normal alphabet.) Undoubtedly the combinations ng and nc in the middle of words are also technically ñg and ñc, as in anga "iron" or anca "jaw", but this pronunciation comes naturally to speakers of English and does not have to be expressly represented in writing. As far as is known, Tolkien never used the letter ñ before g or c in Quenya words, but only n.



- S rather than þ: This is a case somewhat similar to ñ vs. n: Tolkien imagined that Quenya as spoken in Valinor possessed þ, more or less like the sound spelt th in English think. (In Valinorean Quenya it was strictly a little more s-like than the English sound, pronounced with the tip of the tongue against the upper teeth only, not between the upper and lower teeth as in English.) However, in the dialect of the Noldor, this s-like þ eventually turned into normal s, merging with preexisting s'es (a change Fëanor vehemently but vainly opposed: see PM:331-339 for an eminent example of how intertwined Tolkien's languages and narratives can be). Quenya as a ceremonial language in Middle-earth always had s, since only the Noldorin dialect was known there. In WJ:484, Tolkien mentions þinde as the Quenya word for "grey, pale or silvery grey", but adds that in the Noldorin ("Ñ") dialect, this became sinde. In WJ:319, we find þelma as a word for "fixed idea, will"; in this case the later Noldorin form selma is not mentioned there or elsewhere, but we would still use the latter form here, since we are aiming for the kind of Quenya that was used in Middle-earth in the Third Age.



The diaeresis: In many cases, Tolkien adds a diaeresis, two dots, above a vowel, for instance ä, ö, ë in the names Eärendil, Eönwë. This is only to clarify the pronunciation, primarily for readers used to English orthography. It should be emphasized that the diaeresis is not in any way "necessary" to write correct Quenya. Tolkien wrote about the spelling ë that it is "only a device of transcription, not needed in the original" – that is, in the supposed "original" Tengwar writing (PM:343). It is not really "needed" in the transcription either – Tolkien never used it in the Etymologies – and it can safely be left out in e-mail. Indeed some scholars advocate leaving it out altogether in all media, perceiving it as a superfluous graphic encumbrance useful only to people who don't know the first thing about Quenya (and to people used to the orthographies of such languages as German, Swedish or Finnish, it can be downright misleading). But I don't know; I guess I like to see the diaeresis in carefully presented texts, even if it doesn't tell me anything I don't know beforehand. It adds an exotic tint to the texts, and also represents a nod in the direction of the visual impression made by written Finnish, since Finnish orthography employs letters like ä and ö – that however denote sounds distinct from normal a, o, which is not the case in Quenya spelling.



If we are to use the diaeresis, it should however be used in a consistent way. In WJ:425, Christopher Tolkien comments on his father's "very variable" use of it, so some regularization is required. (Christopher Tolkien himself has been regularizing his father's spelling in some quotations; for instance, in PM:371 he cites the Quenya word rossë "fine rain, dew" from the entry ROS1 in Etym., but there the word is actually spelt rosse with no diaeresis.)



The final -ë in (say) Eönwë is meant to remind the reader that final -ë is not silent, as it usually is in English orthography. "Final e is never mute or a mere sign of length as in English," Tolkien noted in LotR Appendix E (this very sentence providing two examples of this feature of English spelling, namely mute and mere). He added that "to mark this final e is often (but not consistently) written ë". As he says, this spelling is not used consistently, whether in LotR or in other sources – cf. some of the words already quoted: quesse, sinde, nixe. Hereinafter, we will however be consistent about this: quessë, sindë, nixë. (Notice, however, that the diaeresis is not used in words where the final e is also the only vowel, as in short words like te "them" or ve "as, like" – both of which occur in LotR. From time to time I see some overeager dot-fan produce spellings like të and vë, but while this is not in any way "harmful", it is quite superfluous: Tolkien never uses such spellings.)



Since only a final -e receives the diaeresis, the dots normally go if you add an ending to the word (or use it as the first element in a compound), since the -e is then no longer final. An attested example of this is provided by the word lámatyávë "sound-taste" (individual pleasure in word-forms), the plural of which is spelt lámatyáver (MR:215-216). We do not see **lámatyávër, for because of the plural ending -r, the vowel e before it is not final anymore. (Throughout this course, a double asterisk ** is used to mark a wrong form.) Appendix D in LotR likewise indicates that the plural form of enquië (the Eldarin six-day week) is to be spelt enquier rather than **enquiër.



Besides final ë, we shall use the diaeresis to clarify the pronunciation of the combinations ea, eo and oe (sc. to indicate that both vowels are to be pronounced clearly separate: e-a, e-o, o-e; hence for instance ëa is not to be drawn together like ea in English heart). In the case of e + a and e + o, the diaeresis is placed above the e as long as it appears as a lower-case letter: ëa, ëo. If, however, it is to be capitalized, the dots move to the next letter instead: Eä, Eö (as in Eärendil, Eönwë). Tolkien's own writings are not consistent in this matter; we adopt the spelling used in LotR and the Silmarillion. Sometimes he places the diaeresis above a capital letter as well; for instance, the Quenya name of the universe in some texts appears as Ëa (e.g. MR:7), though according to the system we just sketched it should be Eä – as in the published Silmarillion. (Gross inconsistency is seen in Letters:386, where Tolkien refers to "the attempt of Eärendil to cross Ëar [the ocean]" – it must be either Ëarendil, Ëar OR Eärendil, Eär!) Conversely, Tolkien sometimes places the diaeresis over the second vowel in the group even when the first vowel is not capitalized, resulting in spellings like eä (UT:305, 317); we would rather spell it ëa (as Tolkien himself did elsewhere; see VT39:6). In a footnote in MR:206, Christopher Tolkien observes that his father wavered between Fëanáro and Feänáro (the Quenya form of the name Fëanor); according to the system here outlined, it should be Fëanáro.



In the case of oe (a very rare combination), we place the diaeresis over the ë, as in the example loëndë in LotR Appendix D (this is the name of the middle day of the year in the calendar of the Elves). In Appendix E, Tolkien explicitly stated that the fact that oe is disyllabic is "often indicated by writing...oë".



In some sources, the combination ie is also broken up with a diaeresis, resulting in spellings like Niënna (name of a Valië or "goddess"), for instance in MR:49. Yet this spelling is not used in the published Silmarillion, that simply has Nienna. The LotR itself is somewhat ambiguous on this point. In Appendix A we have the names Telperiën and Silmariën so spelt (though Unfinished Tales p. 173 has Silmarien). However, the most substantial Quenya text in LotR, Namárië, does not use the diaeresis in this combination – this text has tier, not tiër, for "paths" (though the latter spelling occurs in RGEO:67). In accordance with this example, as well as Nienna in the Silmarillion, we will not use the diaeresis in the combination ie. If, however, the group -ie occurs at the end of a word, the e receives the diaeresis because it is final (wholly irrespective of the fact that it is also part of the combination ie), in accordance with the rule established above. Hence Namárië, Valië rather than Namárie, Valie, and if the first element of Nienna occurs by itself, we will spell it nië – this is the word for "tear". Removing the plural ending -r from tier "paths" likewise produces tië "path", since -ë becomes final.



In many post-LotR sources, Tolkien also started to break up the combination oa by means of a diaeresis (apparently to warn the reader that "oa" is not drawn together as in English load). Hence we have spellings like hröa "body" (MR:350 and passim). Cf. also some of the words quoted above: köarya, cöacalina. However, in LotR Tolkien simply wrote oa. Contrast the spelling loa used in LotR (Appendix D: "The Eldar also observed a short period or solar year...usually called loa") with the spelling löa in MR:426 (where the word occurs in the plural: "löar upon löar" = years upon years). Regularizing in accordance with the system used in LotR, we will not use the diaeresis in the combination oa. Hence we will here use spellings like hroa "body", coa "house" etc. Hroa without a diaeresis is actually found in MR:399-400 (and VT41:13), so we are not "tampering" with Tolkien's spelling, just crystallizing a standard by choosing one of the options his writings provide and carrying it through consistently. This, as I have tried to demonstrate, is true of all the regularization I impose on the material.



As for the English orthography employed in this work, it follows the author's home-made Mid-Atlantic convention. Therefore you will find British spellings like flavour, colour (not American flavor, color) next to American spellings like analyze (not British analyse). The orthography of my native Norwegian does not in all cases match the pronunciation, but it comes rather closer to the spoken language than any variant of English spelling does. Therefore, please allow me to gently mock the pointless variations introduced by well-meaning reformers of English orthography. It is actually beyond help, so why bother?

Quenya Course
06:44 Aug 13 2005
Times Read: 641








This free Quenya course can be downloaded as RTF files. A "pocket PC" version is also available (scroll down to the bottom of this page for link). An excellent PDF version developed by Johan Winge is currently down for updating; hopefully the revised version will be available before long.



This course presupposes no knowledge of linguistics; even the most elementary terms and concepts are explained. What it does presuppose is a deep and serious interest on the part of the student, for this course does not aim to present only Quenya grammar as such, but also much of the underlying reasoning and deduction by which our present knowledge of Quenya has been meticulously extracted from the primary sources.



This is a non-commercial project, so I can very well afford to be honest: This course is for the serious student who really wants to study one of the most highly developed languages Tolkien ever made, scrutinizing it in all its rich and intricate detail - a study undertaken largely (or entirely) for its own sake. Knowing Quenya will hardly be of much help in finding a job. This course is not for the faint-hearted who are unable to truly appreciate a lengthy discussion of (say) whether ny is to be considered a consonant cluster n + y or a single consonant like Spanish ñ. I do try to present the structure and grammar of Quenya in an attractive fashion, but the student must have no fear of "technicalities"; this course is all about technicalities. If you want to "learn Quenya" simply because you would like to coin a few cool Elvish names to be used in role-playing, chances are that you are in no way prepared to delve into the amount of information here presented. If, on the other hand, your interest is sufficient to carry you through this entire course, you will emerge not only with an insight on Quenya grammar that is about as complete as published material allows - you will also know what research in the field of Tolkienian linguistics is all about.



The course proper consists of twenty lessons, all of which are available for download. There are also various appendices.

A revised version of this course was uploaded in February 2003; most of the significant revisions have to do with new material published in Vinyar Tengwar, issues 43 and 44 (search for the references VT43, VT44 in the text of the course).