Quenya | ||
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Created by: | J. R. R. Tolkien | 1915–1973 |
Setting and usage: | The fictional world of Arda | |
Total speakers: | An unknown number of people try to cultivate Quenya in written form (see Neo-Eldarin) | |
Category (purpose): | constructed language artistic language fictional languages languages of Arda Quendian Eldarin Quenya |
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Category (sources): | a posteriori language with elements of Finnish, Latin and Greek. | |
Language codes | ||
ISO 639-1: | None | |
ISO 639-2: | art | |
ISO 639-3: | qya | |
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. |
Quenya (IPA: ['kwɛɲa]) is one of the fictional languages spoken by the Elves (the Quendi, "those who speak with voices" because when they first awoke they were the only creatures they knew who used words to speak), in the fantasy works of J. R. R. Tolkien. It was the language developed by those non-Telerin Elves who reached Valinor (the "High Elves") from an earlier language called Common Eldarin, which also evolved from the original Primitive Quendian. Of the Three Houses of the Elves, the Noldor and the Vanyar spoke slightly different, though mutually intelligible, dialects of Quenya (Quenya [also Noldorin Quenya and later when they followed Fëanor in Arda Exilic Quenya] and Vanyarin Quenya [also Quendya], respectively). The language was also adopted by the Valar, who made some new introductions into it from their own original language, though these are more numerous in the Vanyarin dialect than the Noldorin one. This is probably the case because of the enduringly close relationship the Vanyar had with the Valar. Those of the Third House, the Teleri, who reached Aman and founded the city of Alqualondë spoke a different, closely related language, (Amanya) Telerin, although this was by some seen as a dialect of Quenya, which is untrue in a historic perspective but plausible in a linguistic one; the languages do not share a common history, but are very much alike, and later grew very close due to contact.
During the Third Age Quenya was no longer a living language in Middle-earth: most Elves spoke Sindarin, and Men mostly spoke Westron. Quenya was mainly used in official names and writings and as a ceremonial language, much as the Latin language was in medieval Europe. For this reason it was sometimes called "an Elven-Latin" by Tolkien.[1]
In Tolkien's fictional world, Quenya is usually written in Tengwar, although it was earlier written in Sarati. The language can also be written in other alphabets: modes for Cirth exist. In the real world Tengwar is not uncommon, but it is usually written in the Latin alphabet.
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As told in The Silmarillion (chapter 3), the Elves devised the language at Cuiviénen, before they encountered the Vala Oromë:
Since the stars were the first thing seen by the Elves as they awoke, the word el "star" was the first invented, originally an exclamation of adoration,[2] and Oromë named the elves Eldar "people of the stars" in their own language. Similarly, according to the Cuivienyarna,
Over time, however, the Eldar changed the language, adding to it words of their liking and softening it from its origins in Valarin speech. The Valar adopted this language in order to converse with the Eldar in Valinor.
The Noldor who fled to Middle-earth following the Darkening of Valinor spoke Quenya among themselves. However, when Elu Thingol of Doriath, who was the king of the Sindar (Elves of the Telerin line who remained in Beleriand instead of journeying to Valinor) learned about their slaying of the Teleri, he forbade the use of Quenya in his realm. The Sindar, however, had been slow to learn Quenya, while the Noldor at this time had fully mastered Sindarin. (The Silmarillion, chapter 15).
The Quenya used in Middle-earth of the Third Age (the time of the setting of The Lord of the Rings) had come to be a scholarly pursuit—something akin to Latin in our time (indeed, Tolkien occasionally refers to Quenya as "Elven-Latin"[1]). Quenya was used as a formal language and for writing; Sindarin was the vernacular of all Elves. However, the Noldor still remembered Quenya and valued it highly, which we can see in the way they treat Frodo's greeting elen síla lúmenn' omentielvo ("A star shines on the hour of our meeting"). Galadriel is perhaps the only major Elf character in Middle-earth during the events of The Lord of the Rings who learned Quenya as a cradle-tongue: she was born in Valinor, during the days of the Two Trees; she was also most likely the most powerful elf in Middle-earth at the time, as well as the oldest save Círdan. Noldorin (Exilic) Quenya differed somewhat from Valinórean Quenya, because the language continued to evolve after exile and underwent some regularisation as it became a language of lore. There were also a few changes in pronunciation.
Tolkien, an enthusiastic philologist, wanted to create as beautiful a language as possible. This urge, in fact, was the motivation for his creation of Middle-earth. While the language developed, he needed speakers, history for the speakers and all real dynamics, like war and migration, to be able to make the artificial language complete, and of these thoughts Middle-earth was initiated.[3]
Tolkien was keen on legends and sagas, and studied foreign languages to be able to read them in their native language. Amongst others, he studied some Finnish to be able to read Kalevala, the Finnish national epic.
Outside the fiction, the grammar of Quenya was influenced by Finnish, which is an agglutinative language; grammatical inspiration also came from Latin and Greek. The phonology was also based on Finnish and, to a lesser extent, Latin, Italian and Spanish. Some interesting phonological rules are that no consonant cluster can begin or end a syllable (with one exception, the dual dative ending -nt); voiced stops must be preceded by sonorants; and a word may not end in a non-coronal consonant. The Finnish influence also extends to vocabulary; some words, such as tule "come" and anna "give", have a Finnish origin. Latin influence is also evident in certain words (e.g. aure, "dawn"), and Germanic influence in others (e.g., Arda, the Quenya name for the world).
Standard (Noldorin or Exilic) Quenya appears to be the most influenced by Finnish phonology, as it has the most restrictive rules regarding consonant clusters. The influence of Italian, which Tolkien also loved, appears somewhat stronger in the related language Telerin, [1] and the Vanyarin dialect of Quenya, which retained certain features such as the retention of d and z in places where they were lost in standard Quenya. Examples of Vanyarin Quenya include the title of the poem Aldudenie and words like ezello "green" (borrowed from Valarin), as well as the name of language itself, Quendya.
The most striking feature of Quenya is that it is a highly agglutinative language, meaning that multiple affixes are often added to words to express grammatical functions. It is possible for one Quenya word to have the same meaning as an entire English sentence. For example, one can say "I have found it" in Quenya in a single word, utúvienyes (= utúvie- "have found" + -nye "I" + -s "it").
The journals Vinyar Tengwar and Parma Eldalamberon are devoted to editing and publishing Tolkien's linguistic papers.
Quenya is one of many constructed languages introduced over the years by science fiction and fantasy writers, some others being Klingon, Newspeak, Nadsat, the Ascian language and Lapine.
In Tolkien's early writings (see: The History of Middle-earth), this language was called Qenya (although pronounced the same as Quenya). It underwent countless revisions in both grammar and vocabulary before it reached the form found in The Lord of the Rings and again went through changes before the completion of The Silmarillion. The term Qenya is now used to distinguish between old Qenya and the new Quenya. However, the fluid nature of Quenya (or Qenya, for that matter) makes such a distinction a highly disputed one.
Quenya used by fans for post-Tolkien composition of poems and texts, phrases and names, is usually nicknamed neo-Quenya, or Quenya Vinyakarmë (Q. for "neologism") by scholars. Since Tolkien's own ideas were rather fluid, any attempt to actually use the language must involve a number of "editing decisions" by the post-Tolkien author. See Neo-Eldarin.
In 2001, the first instalment of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy was released in theaters. The resultant increased popularity of Quenya led to an Onion article, "Don't Come Crying to Me when You Need Someone who Speaks Elvish".[2]
Quenya has 10 basic vowels arranged in pairs of short and long.
Front | Central | Back | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
long | short | long | short | long | short | |
Close | iː | ɪ | uː | u | ||
Mid | eː | ɛ | oː | ɔ | ||
Open | ɑː | a |
Tolkien cited that long é, ó, when correctly pronounced, were "tenser and 'closer' " than their short counterparts, thus approaching [i] and [u] respectively. Eldarin was known to have lacked [ɔ], though Valarin and early stages of Sindarin were cited to have possessed it.
Offglide | ||
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Front | Back | |
i | iu | |
e | eu | |
a | ai | au |
o | oi | |
u | ui |
All of the diphthongs were originally falling diphthongs, but by the Third Age /iu/ had become a rising diphthong [i̯u] similar to the beginning of English yule [juːɫ].
All consonants are written according to their values in IPA, unless otherwise noted.
Labial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
plain | lab. | plain | lab. | |||||
Nasal | m | n | nʷ2 | ɲ4 | ŋ7 | ŋʷ12 | ||
Plosive | p b | t d | c3 | k8 g | kʷ11 | |||
Fricative | f v1 | s | ç6 | x9 | h | |||
Trill | r | |||||||
Approximant | lateral | l | ʎ5 | ʍ13 w | ||||
central | j10 |
/f/ is voiced to [v] when final or before /n/.
/h/ was originally [x] in all positions, but later debuccalized to [h] when in initial position. It retains the pronunciation [x] intervocalically, as in aha [axa] ('rage'), and between the back vowels /a, o, u/ and /t/, as in ohtar [oxtar] ('warrior'). Between the front vowels /e, i/ and /t/, /h/ is palatalized to [ç], as in nehta [neçta] ('spearhead').
The pronunciation of hy, originally written as a single letter, weakened to [h] by the Third Age, and so the sequence /h/ /j/ was then used to express [ç].
Tolkien vacillated between ng and ñ in writing Quenya's velar nasal, but is said to have favoured the latter in late writings up until his death. By the Third Age, the pronunciation of initial [ŋ] had advanced to [n].
Nouns are declined for (up to) ten cases (some of which are short variants of uncertain significance). These include the four primary cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, and instrumental; the three adverbial cases: allative (of which the dative is a shortened form), locative (also with a shortened form, of uncertain significance), and ablative; and an adjectival case.
Primary cases:
Adverbial cases:
Adjectival case:
There are four numbers: the singular, general plural, partitive plural, and dual.
The declension of the noun in Late Quenya is found in the so-called "Plotz Declension" that Tolkien provided in a letter to Dick Plotz in 1967.[4] This gives the "Classical" or Book Quenya declension of (only) the two vocalic-stem nouns cirya "ship" and lassë "leaf", in four numbers: singular, pl. 1, pl. 2, and dual. The forms of pl. 1 appear to correspond to the general plural, and those of pl. 2 to the partitive plural of Late Quenya. The declension has eight chief cases in three groups that Tolkien labelled a, b, and c. Of these cases, Tolkien named only a) the primary cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, and instrumental; and b) the adverbial cases: allative, locative, and ablative. The allative and locative in turn have (unnamed) short forms (except in the loc. dual), of which the short allative form appears to correspond to the dative case of Late Quenya. The third group, c, has only one member (and only in the sg. and in pl. 2), which appears to correspond to the adjectival case as described in the c. 1960 essay "Quendi and Eldar".
The declension of nouns as given below has been modified from the form given in the Plotz Declension to reflect the forms of Spoken Quenya (in accordance with Tolkien's own description of the differences between "Classical" or Book Quenya and Spoken Quenya that accompanies the Plotz Declension). The declensions of meldo "friend", elen "star", and nat "thing" given here are conjectural examples of the declension of other stem types.
Singular | cirya | lassë | meldo | elen | nat |
Nominative | cirya | lassë | meldo | elen | nat |
Accusative | cirya | lassë | meldo | elen | nat |
Genitive | ciryo | lassëo | meldo | eleno | nato |
Instrumental | ciryanen | lassenen | meldonen | elennen | natenen |
Allative | ciryanna | lassenna | meldonna | elenenna | natenna |
Dative | ciryan | lassen | meldon | elenen | naten |
Locative | ciryassë | lassessë | meldossë | elenessë | natessë |
Short Locative | ciryas | lasses | meldos | elenes | nates |
Ablative | ciryallo | lassello | meldollo | elenello | natello |
Adjectival | ciryava | lasseva | meldova | elenwa | nateva |
Plural | cirya | lassë | meldo | elen | nat |
Nominative | ciryar | lassi | meldor | eleni | nati |
Accusative | ciryar | lassi | meldor | eleni | nati |
Genitive | ciryaron | lassion | meldoron | elenion | nation |
Instrumental | ciryainen | lassínen | meldoinen | eleninen | natinen |
Allative | ciryannar | lassennar | meldonnar | eleninnar | natinnar |
Dative | ciryain | lassin | meldoin | elenin | natin |
Locative | ciryassen | lassessen | meldossen | elenissen | natissen |
Short Locative | ciryais | lassis | meldois | elenis | natis |
Ablative | ciryallon | lassellon | meldollon | elenillon | natillon |
Partitive plural | cirya | lassë | meldo | elen | nat |
Nominative | ciryali | lasseli | meldoli | eleneli | nateli |
Accusative | ciryali | lasseli | meldoli | eleneli | nateli |
Genitive | ciryalion | lasselion | meldolion | elenelion | natelion |
Instrumental | ciryalínen | lasselínen | meldolínen | elenelínen | natelínen |
Allative | ciryalinna(r) | lasselinna(r) | meldolinna(r) | elenelinna(r) | natelinna(r) |
Dative | ciryalin | lasselin | meldolin | elenelin | natelin |
Locative | ciryalisse(n) | lasselisse(n) | meldolisse(n) | elenelisse(n) | natelisse(n) |
Short Locative | ciryalis | lasselis | meldolis | elenelis | natelis |
Ablative | ciryalillo(n) | lasselillo(n) | meldolillo | elenelillo | natelillo |
Adjectival | ciryalíva | lasselíva | meldolíva | elenelíva | natelíva |
Dual | cirya | lassë | meldo | elen | nat |
Nominative | ciryat | lasset | meldu | elenet | natu |
Accusative | ciryat | lasset | meldu | elenet | natu |
Genitive | ciryato | lasseto | melduo | eleneto | natuo |
Instrumental | ciryanten | lassenten | meldunen | elenenten | natunen |
Allative | ciryanta | lassenta | meldunna | elenenta | natunna |
Dative | ciryant | lassent | meldun | elenent | natun |
Locative | ciryatsë | lassetsë | meldussë | elenetsë | natussë |
Ablative | ciryalto | lasselto | meldullo | elenelto | natullo |
There are two main types of verbs: basic (or primary) verbs, those which are formed from the basic verbal base, such as tirë (tiri-) "to watch" from stem tir-, and derivative (or A-stem) verbs, whose stems end in -a and are formed either by putting verbal suffixes to a base like tulta- "summon", from *TUL "come", or derived from non-verbal bases like kúna- "bend", originally an adjective "bent".
These conjugations were not written by Tolkien, but represent one possible reconstruction using information derived and inferred from a number of sources of various periods. These forms will be relatively uncontroversial among researchers:
Derivative verbs | Basic verbs | |||
Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | |
Infinitive | tulta | tirë | ||
Aorist/Simple present | tulta | tultar | tirë (tiri-) | tirir |
Present continuative | tultëa | tultëar | tíra | tírar |
Past | tultanë | tultaner | tirnë | tirner |
Future | tultuva | tultuvar | tiruva | tiruvar |
Perfect | utultië | utultiër | itírië | itíriër |
Pronouns are seen as both independent words, and enclitics which resemble synthetic verb endings. The rules for this are not completely understood, although evidence suggests that independent forms are more emphatic in nature, while enclitics are the forms in use normally. The effect of having both pseudo-synthetic (with enclitics) and analytic (with independent pronoun) verbs gives Quenya a system strongly resembling that of Irish Gaelic (see Irish verbs). What is known is that for intransitive verbs, the pronoun can appear as either an independent word or an enclitic, with the enclitic form often coming in two different forms, long and short. In the third person, the short form is used for direct objects rather than subjects.
As with all parts of Quenya grammar, the pronominal system was subject to constant revision throughout Tolkien's life. The following table is adapted primarily from two sources of c. 1968–69,[5] and does not reflect the pronominal system as it stood before that time. Unattested forms are omitted, but *-inca and *-inqua are plausible possessive forms of -ince and -inque, respectively.
Form | Long form | Short Form | Independent | Possessive |
1st pers. sg. | -nye | -n | ní | -(i)nya |
2nd pers. sg. intimate/familiar | -tye | -- | tyé | -tya |
2nd pers. sg. formal/polite | -lye | -l | lyé | -lya |
3rd pers. sg. | -se (rarely) | -s | sé/sá (neuter) | -rya |
Impers. sg. | -- | -- | -- | -ya |
1st pers. pl. incl. | -lve/-lwe | – | vé (< wé) | -lva/-lwa |
1st pers. pl. excl. | -lme | – | mé | -lma |
2nd pers. pl. | -lde | – | lé | -lda |
3rd pers. pl. | -lte/-nte | – | té | -lta/-ntya |
Impers. pl. | -r | -- | -- | -rya |
1st pers. dual incl. | -ngwe/-ince/-inque | – | wet | -ngwa |
1st pers. dual excl. | -mme | – | met | -mma |
2nd pers. dual | -ste | – | tyet/let | -sta |
3rd pers. dual | -ste/-tte | -t | tú (pers. and neuter) | -sta |
Impers. dual | -t | -- | -- | -twa |
The poem Namárië is the longest piece (80 words) of Quenya found in the The Lord of the Rings, which has several further Quenya fragments, such as Elendil's words upon reaching Middle-earth (Et Eärello Endorenna utúlien. Sinome maruvan ar Hildinyar tenn' Ambar-metta!) or Treebeard's greeting to Celeborn and Galadriel (A vanimar, vanimálion nostari). Other Quenya texts published by Tolkien during his lifetime include Oilima Markirya ("The Last Ark"), Nieninque, and Earendel contained in the lecture A Secret Vice (re-published in 1982 in The Monsters and the Critics). A fragment of the poem Narqelion was published by Humphrey Carpenter in his Biography. Oilima Markirya with 90 words is the longest known Quenya text.
Other Quenya texts by Tolkien were edited posthumously:[6]
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