Talk:Quenya/Archive 1

Comment

Hello. Wouldn't be a good idea to put a short sentence at the beginning explaining what Quenya is and who made it and why? Starting with a statement about Elves might not be very enlightening to people who have no background knowledge. Didn't want to do it myself though, as I know how touchy fans can be about these things. Thanks!

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—Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.202.80.139 (talk) 16:37, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

If noone minds, I thinks we should possibly put a complete Quenya dictionary onto Wikipedia to ease the search for people. As I am fairly decent at conversing in it and writing it, I ask if anyone wants to collaborate with me on this project and see if the admins mind. Xel Pos'tare 17:09, 13 September 2006 (UTC)User:CaptainXel

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Celesti, Queen of Sovereign madness, bring thy power upon this earth, to cause the chaos of man to bring forth thy hordes of shadows...

Okay, put down the spellbook bought at the mall and take off the gothy makeup, dude...

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I've removed two external links because they led to sites about Tolkien in general, and not about the Quenya language. These would be entirely appropriate at a general article on Tolkien, but here they just caused clutter. Crculver 20:01, 17 Jan 2004 (UTC)

Agreed. — Jor 17:56, 19 Jan 2004 (UTC)

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I submit 'the Three Houses of Elves' should be 'the Tree Kindreds of the [Elves|Eldar]'. The Term 'Houses' is generally only used for the Edain. {Mithrennaith o Unquendor}

Agreed. Is much more correct--Elistir 08:13, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

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Is there any information available about Quenya's phonology? I've been looking at one of the Quenya lessons and some of the vowels are apparently supposed to be different from those found in English; could someone see if they can find IPA equivelants? Thanks. 147.222.136.224 17:29, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Elementary Phonology

Quenya has five vowels, a, e, i, o, u, short and long; the long vowels are marked with an accent: á, é, í, ó, ú. The vowel a is extremely frequent. The quality of the vowels resembles the system in Spanish or Italian rather than English. To clarify the pronunciation for readers used to English orthography, Tolkien sometimes adds a diaeresis over some vowels (e.g. Manwë rather than Manwe to indicate that the final e is not silent, or Eärendil to indicate that the vowels e and a are pronounced separately and not drawn together as in English ear - the dots are not necessary for the meaning and can safely be left out in e-mail). The diphthongs are ai, au, oi, ui, eu, iu. (A seventh diphthong ei seems to occur in one or two words, but its status is uncertain.) The consonants are for the most part the same as in English, with the sibilants as the main exception: Ch as in church does not occur, neither does j as in joy, and instead of sh, zh (the latter like s in pleasure), Quenya has a sound like the German ich-Laut, spelt hy by Tolkien (e.g. hyarmen "south"). The h of English huge, human is sometimes pronounced as a weak variant of the sound in question. Quenya also lacks th (unvoiced as in thing or voiced as in the); unvoiced th did occur at an earlier stage, but merged with s shortly before the rebellion of the Noldor (see PM:331-333). It should also be noted that the voiced plosives b, d, g only occur in the clusters mb, nd/ld/rd and ng (some varieties of Quenya also had lb instead of lv). There are no initial consonant clusters, except qu (= cw), ty, ny and nw if we count the semi-vowels y, w as consonants. Normally there are no final clusters either; words end either in one of the single consonants t, s, n, l, r or in a vowel, more often the latter. Medially between vowels, a limited number of consonant clusters may occur; those described by Tolkien as "frequent" or "favoured" are in italics: cc, ht, hty, lc, ld, ll, lm, lp, lqu, lt, lv, lw, ly, mb, mm, mn, mp, my, nc, nd, ng, ngw, nn, nqu, nt, nty, nw, ny, ps, pt, qu (for cw), rc, rd, rm, rn, rqu, rr, rt, rty, rs, rw, ry, sc, squ, ss, st, sty, sw, ts, tt, tw, ty, x (for ks). A few other combinations may occur in compounds. Quenya phonology is quite restrictive, giving the language a clearly defined style and flavour.

Note that in Quenya spelling, the letter c is always pronounced k (so cirya "ship" = kirya). Tolkien was inconsistent about this; in many sources the letter k is used, but in LotR he decided to spell Quenya as similar to Latin as possible. In some cases, k in the sources has been regularized to c in the following discussion.

~ Fauskanger's Ardalambion

Yet the introduction to Quenya phonology in the Quenya course http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/less-a.rtf is quite extensive

Dedative case

Shouldn't there be a link to (and mention of) Dedative case - JustinWick 07:41, May 8, 2005 (UTC)

There is now. - Gandalf1491 03:14, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

It should be noted (both here and in the page for the "Dedative Case", which make it appear that Tolkien himself actually used the term, while in fact he is nowhere recorded as having done) that the names "dedative" and "respective" were not used by Tolkien himself, but are supplied by mere guesswork. In the "Plotz Declension" this case is unlabled. Formally it is a shortened form of the locative case. Beyond that, nothing can be said that isn't sheer speculation, either as to a name for the case or as to its function. cfh 14:39, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

See "The s-case" by Ales Bican for an extensive discussion of evidence for this case. cfh 17:06, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

-ntë

The bullet below the pronoun table (plainly intended to be a footnote, with the asterisk appearing next to "-ntë" in the "3rd plu. abstract or thing" line) seems to indicate that this ending is not used for the dual number. However, I don't think it's clear that there is a dual number in third person pronouns, so I wonder if someone could comment on that. Furthermore, this ending is attested as applying to persons, in Cirion's Oath. ("Tiruvantes", "they will guard it"). (Unless the Valar are to be regarded as abstractions?) I am aware this is controversial, but I don't think it should be said to apply to an "abstract or thing" without qualification. TCC (talk) (contribs) 00:02, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Neither in mature Quenya nor n EQ we have exemples of a 3rd dual (in EQG is specified that exists dual forms only for the 1st and the 2nd [PE#14:85-86]. I see your point, but as far as we have no attetstation of a 3rd pl. used for abstract things, -ntë ahould be used. TO be honest I do't think that we would find such, as in EQ and in EQ doesn't existed a 3rd pl refered to things different from the one refered to people.--Elistir 08:23, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Pronoun problem

The chart of pronoun forms in the article seems to have the 1st person dual and plural forms confused. -lvë/-lwë is inclusive dual, -lmë is inclusive plural, -mmë is exclusive plural, and there's probably a fourth form *-ngwë for exclusive dual, although I'm not sure if there's any direct source for this one. The first two are interpretable directly from The Lord of the Rings: -lvë/-lwë from the possessive form omentie-lvo "of our meeting," in which "our" includes the person Frodo is speaking to; and -lmë in laituva-lme-t "we will praise them," which is a cheer from amidst a crowd, so both addresses and includes the rest of the crowd. (This one is more directly stated to be the inclusive plural in Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien.) The third, -mmë, while attested directly without a clear definition, also has the possessive form -mma in the first word of the Lord's Prayer in Quenya, ataremma "our father," in which "our" cannot include the person being addressed (since that's God). --D.M., 12.107.67.3 15:45, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Two notes re: Tolkien

I noticed that the dates at the top right of the Quenya article (presumably indicating Tolkien's birth-death) are incorrect. Tolkien was born in 1892. If "1917" is there for another reason, it's a little misleading. Also, in the section on "Non-fictional Development," the sentence which labels Tolkien as a "professional linguist" should be altered to something like "professional philologist" or "language professor and philologist." Tolkien had no degree in linguistics and himself eschewed the label of "linguist" in at least one of his published letters. (Being a newcomer to this, I thought it best not make the changes myself without opening it up for comments.)

Paul Spreitzer 205.215.135.132 19:26, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

The infobox relates to the language, not the inventor. 1917 is when Tolkien began developing Quenya, ("Qenya") and he continued developing it until his death. (Compare Klingon language, which has one date since that language was invented all at a go, as it were.)

My sense is that perhaps Tolkien would be called a linguist in modern terms, as philology is much more rare as the name of a discipline than it was in his day. I don't know enough about it to express a strong opinion though. TCC (talk) (contribs) 20:19, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't agree with you. JRRT was a philologist. He invented his lambi because he was experimenting with sounds and grammar constructions. He devised the languages that "sounded like music" to his philologist hears; tHen he drafted his Legendarium to be able to give a context to his languages. So the process is completely different from, for exemple, Klingon.

And JRRT doesn't strated creating them in 1917 (that is the date of the GL). The Qenyaqetsa was strated around the 1915 (PE#12), and we have illutrations of his own with some EQ words alson in 1914. But usually is considered the 1915 as the anniversary of Qenya.--Elistir 07:51, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Contradiction?

From the article: "Quenya is usually written in Tengwar, although inside the fiction it was earlier also written in Sarati. The language can also be written in other alphabets: modes for Cirth exist, and it is usually written in the Latin alphabet." (emphasis mine)

This seems like a contradiction but I'm not positive or sure how to go about fixing it. Suggest that someone with more knowledge on this take a look.

I do like the fix, but I did notice it said Tengwar was *not* uncommon. Personally, I think this should be changed (e.g. "not common"). Suggestions? ExNoctem 22:36, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

It's correct as it stands. In its fictional setting, Quenya was most often written in Tengwar, originally in Sarati, and occasionally in Cirth. In the real world, most of the Quenya we have is written in the Latin alphabet. This is what the article says currently. TCC (talk) (contribs) 22:52, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

and most of out corpus of Q(u)enya not written in latin alphabet, is also in ohter scripts or older versions of Tengwar.--Elistir 14:15, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

What, like the Etymologies? Sorry, but I don't recall seeing nearly as much material in other scripts as in "Latinica". Perhaps I'm just not widely read enough -- or do you mean to include material written since Tolkien's death? TCC (talk) (contribs) 20:32, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

No. I'm saying that apar from the part wirtten in Latin Alphabet (that is the widest), the other part of our Q(u)enya corpus is not only written in Tengwar, but also in other scripts or older version of them. For exemple we have some exemple of the Valmaric one. If someone is interested in finding out the ùtengwar coprus, I'll suggest to have a lokk at the MD's TTS.--Elistir 07:40, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Quenya dictionary

If no ne minds, I thinks we should possibly put a complete Quenya dictionary onto Wikipedia to ease the search for people. As I am fairly decent at conversing in it and writing it, I ask if anyone wants to collaborate with me on this project and see if the admins mind.

Xel Pos'tare 17:09, 13 September 2006 (UTC)User:CaptainXel

I don't believe this should be a project for Wikipedia as such. The thing to do might be to initiate a Quenya-language Wiktionary. And behold! Quenya is already on the list of requested languages. It's probably just awaiting someone willing to get it started. TCC (talk) (contribs) 17:21, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Also take a look at the Quenya Wikipedia incubator project --CBD 21:08, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

You might like to add to the Quenya language section on the English wiktionary. 84.65.219.154 12:39, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

anwa

ni lá mára tec Quenya lambë mal ni anta ta lelya. Manen elyë pol cenda ta mára? Think outside the box 07:53, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

The grammar in your sentences above is poor so it's very hard to be certain of understanding what you're trying to say. Could you please restate what you wrote in English? - Ing 16:04, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I tried to say: "I don't write very good in Quenya. Can this be understood?" I know its poor; I was just testing to see if anyone could understand it. Obviously you couldn't. Where did you learn? And what needs to be done to improve it? Think outside the box 16:10, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

See my talk page -Ing 13:58, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Do we really need "Grammar" and "Phonology" sections?

It's simpler and more complete to put a (highlighted link) to the wikibook on Quenya. The article will be only devoted to his fictional and non-fictional history. --Elistir 15:08, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Just fixed your link. Koricind (talk) 03:08, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Verbs

Some anonymous body from Helge Fauskanger's university (129.177.138.238) who is already setting out to re-edit the David Salo page (recently unlocked) wrote:

"Still, most of the forms would be relatively uncontroversial among researchers, with the exception of tultëa as the proposed continuative form of an A-stem (by another suggestion, A-stems cannot make a distinction between aorist and continuative form)."

Just as others have already noted of Helge's prose, our anonymous somebody here uses the predictive term "would" to represent the supposed opinions of others without having to base them in any actually verifiable evidence or writings. Either such forms are, or they are not, uncontroversial; the fact that our anonymous somebody had to alter a simple statement about the verifiable fact that these paradigms are _not_ provided by Tolkien himself, I think indicates that things _are_ rather more controversial than (s)he "would" have it, so this is in fact POV.

cfh 20:05, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the corrections made by the "anonimous from HF univeristy", because the usage of the term "Neo-Quenya" is misleading. That term in linguistics envinroment (represented by Elfling if you want) is used differently from CH&co. You Mr.Hostetter labels "Neo-Quenya" every attempt to study seriuosly or write something in or about Quenya from everyone apart from the group previuosly known as Elfconner. In its widest usage instead is labeled "Neo-Quenya" eveything that has been completly invented, and is proposed as "true".

The verbal conjugation it's a proposed reconstruction based on real attestation: it's a scholar motivated reconstruction (people can agree or not), and not an "invention". As such it shouldn't be used the term Neo-Quenya, and the edit made by the "anonimous" is much more correct than the precedent. I'll prefer to mantain it.

I agree also with these modifications for the same reason above. I know your points (and I appreciate your efforts on VT and Chris one on PE), wikipedia should not display only your opinions, but everyone (WP:NPOV WP:NOT).--Elistir 11:41, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

You seem not to have understood my point, which has nothing to do with whether this should be called "Neo-Quenya" or not (I didn't even use the term, you did). Rather, I'm questioning the use of the phrase "would be uncontroversial" as POV, for the reasons stated, reasons which you somehow failed to address or acknowledge at all in your long "reply". As you state, "wikipedia should not display only your opinions, but everyone"

You also state "You Mr.Hostetter labels "Neo-Quenya" every attempt to study seriuosly or write something in or about Quenya from everyone apart from the group previuosly known as Elfconner" which is completely untrue, and further belies your own POV. cfh 15:16, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I'll quote you: the fact that our anonymous somebody had to alter a simple statement about the verifiable fact that these paradigms are _not_ provided by Tolkien himself. I'm not a native English speaker, but I read this sentence as: «the anonymous alter the previous simpler statement about the verifiable fact etc...». Well, even if I agree that the conjugations provieded in the article are not verifiable (there's no pubblished material that say "present is.." "past is..." etc), from your quotation I'll understand that the simple statement about the verifiable fact etc, is the text before the anonimous edit, that is: These conjugations were not written by J. R. R. Tolkien, they are neo-Quenya reconstruction.

And that's easy to undertsand why I prefer the edited version (for the reason above). Anyway, I agree that "would be uncontroversial" is not POV, I'll edit it. Let me know what you think now.

And about my POV on the sentence above... infact I haven't written it on the article page ;-) I differentiate my own thoughts, from the informations I provide on Wikipedia: i'd never wrote such a sentence in a "page" :-P

--Elistir 15:39, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Uses in LOTR #1

On the Caradhras, the spell Sauruman was chanting was in Quenya. --66.218.11.78 04:04, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Aorist/Present

I think the tense chart should make it more clear that the *Quenya* aorist/present correspond to the *English* simple present/present continuative. Currently it seems unclear what the Quenya tense being represented is. Perhaps just changing the english tense by adding it in parentheses. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Silmenuquerna (talk • contribs)

glottogony

I will not rule out that in some version it is Orome teaching the Elves to speak, but the Silmarillion should probably be considered more "canonical", and the alternative version should be clearly referenced. It strikes me as rather central that the Quendi should have an innate faculty for language, and the variant of Orome teaching them seems to rather spoil that (not that this matters if we can pin down the reference). dab (𒁳) 00:39, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Quiché - Quenya

Tolkien may have been inspired by the Quiché (K'iche') of Central America, when he invented the word and language Quenya. Quiché/K'iche' is the name the Mayans called themselves and their language. The Quendi elves also call themselves and their language by similar names. As a linguist, Tolkien would have ben aware of the Mayan's primary language. Both Quiché and Quenya are the language of the ab/original inhabitants of these respective lands, before modern man appeared. 66.81.153.136 04:18, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Tolkien never evinced the slightest interest in Mesoamerican languages, and there is no remarkable resemblance between /kʼiʧeʔ/ and /kʷɛɲa/. TCC (talk) (contribs) 07:18, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

If you can provide a RS and V source that agrees with your premise, then by all means add it. However the "may" in your statement suggests that it is OR, something not really appropriate for WP. Shot info 08:32, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Pronouns

Now this is more like it. I have noticed that the pronoun table before is based on older information and has not changed for some time. I have made a major revision on that, and thanks to Aelfwine for adding to it. Big improvement! RashBold (talk · contribs) 01:28, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

ALARM!

There is a big problem with the exclusive and the dual endings. I found a (reliable) source, used as a Quenya course on Wikiversity, and in that course they give -mmë as the excl. ending and -lmë as the dual one, while in this article the two of them have switched spots, just as in Wikibooks! Please tell me wich one is right! Mapar007 18:46, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

More trustworthy than Tolkien himself? As noted in the article, the current table of pronominal endings "is adapted primarily from two sources of c. 1968–69,[6] and does not reflect the pronominal system as it stood before that time". As referenced, those sources are Tolkien's own paradigms, as published in:

Tolkien, J.R.R. "Eldarin Hands, Fingers & Numerals (Part Three)." Edited by Patrick H. Wynne. Vinyar Tengwar 49 (2007): 3–37; and

Tolkien, J.R.R. "Five Late Quenya Volitive Inscriptions." Edited by Carl F. Hostetter. Vinyar Tengwar 49 (2007): 38–58.

The system you cite derives solely from a "theory" about these pronominal endings proposed by Helge Fauskanger.

cfh (talk) 23:30, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

OK, the problem is solved. According to Tolkiens latest edits (see Plotz letter) the endings are:

-lmë: exclusive

-lvë: inclusive

-mmë: dual

(and by the way, it was not Fauskanger's Quenya course I meant, but the course from Thorsten Renk)

Mapar007 (talk) 18:07, 4 June 2008 (UCT)

I didn't say it came from Fauskanger's course; I just said the "theory" was proposed by Fauskanger. Which it was. cfh (talk) 20:18, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Ah ok, sorry (Mapar007)

a posteriori?

Can we discuss the classification of Quenya as a posteriori? To me that term implies taking nearly all roots from existing languages. It would be more accurate imho to describe the Elvish family as a priori with some borrowed roots. On the other hand, a priori may connote philosophical languages; it's a false dichotomy. Elvish and Loglan violate the dichotomy in opposite ways: Elvish uses traditional structures and new roots (without imitating any language closely enough to be described as e.g. "relexified Finnish"), while Loglan uses borrowed roots (in a peculiar way) and new structures. —Tamfang (talk) 20:32, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree that Quenya is not a posteriori. I believe the person who classified it as such either did not know what the term meant, or is in any case unaware of how the term "a posteriori" is used among the conlanging community. I'm changing it. Cevlakohn (talk) 10:21, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Sigh, motherfuck. It's one of those damned infoboxes so I can't just change the reference to a posteriori to apriori, I have to find what the goddamn code is for a priori. I absolutely hate infoboxes. Hate them. In the meantime I got rid of the whole entry in the infobox-- better no information than false information. If anybody knows how to fix it with Wikipedia's godawful infobox format, feel free. Cevlakohn (talk) 10:25, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Swedish

in addition, the -r nominative plural endings are reminiscent of Swedish).

Is it distinctive of Swedish vs other (North) Germanic languages? —Tamfang (talk) 06:03, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

Old Norse also has nominative plural -r endings, so no. — Eru·tuon 17:50, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

So has German btw. --Ulkomaalainen (talk) 12:34, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Phonology

I'm pretty sure the pronunciation of A is supposed to be [ɑ], no matter the length. --Oscararon (talk) 15:27, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

There's no source cited, so I wouldn't know how to check it. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 19:58, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Latin influence example

As an example of Latin influence, word 'aure' (morning) is given. Although this explanation seems to be the most obvious one (also for me), I would like to point that there is a close resemblance to Finnish word 'auer' (haze, sometimes, esp. in poetry: morning haze 'aamun auer'). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.146.54.156 (talk) 20:49, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Another one I've noticed is the genitive plurals of nouns, which are -aron, -oron, or -ion, which seem to take after Latin -ārum, -ōrum, and -(i)um, respectively. BGManofID (talk) 23:58, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Transcription of labiovelars

In the intro section, the consonant qu is transcribed as [kʷw] in the IPA transcription of Quenya, but as simply [kʷ] in the consonant table, without the [w]. Which is correct? Is the consonant [kʷ] considered as a double consonant for stress determination, and the transcription meant to represent this? — Eru·tuon 17:44, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

In Quenya <qu> (also written <q> by Tolkien) is not a consonant but a cluster.90.54.1.73 (talk) 16:08, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

"Chronology of publications of Elvish texts"

A number of entries in this section are about languages other than Q. I would move the whole section to Elvish languages (Middle-earth). —Tamfang (talk) 21:05, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Ha, I just made a similar comment on Sindarin. —Tamfang (talk) 21:00, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Italian influence on Quenya?

Thus, Quenya in its phonological qualities resembled Latin or Italian more than Finnish.

Like Latin in its vowel repertoire and stress pattern, but more like Finnish in its consonant phonotactics, e.g. avoidance of clusters and (more loosely) of voiced stops. As for Italian, where are the palatal consonants? —Tamfang (talk) 06:54, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Interesting question... Italian does have palatal l and n (gli- and gn), and the soft Italian c, g, and sc are like the Vanyarin ty, dy, and hy. Italian also uses nasal+stops (nt, mp, nc, nd etc.), and even favored clusters (rd, ld, st) much more than Finnish does, and uses qu and gu just as much as Latin. I suspect that Tolkien's Vanyarin dialect may have been his making a more Italian-sounding Quenya, given its properties which, in just about every respect, are more like Italian than Noldorin Quenya is (medial d, /z/, and how Vanyarin pronounces palatal consonants), but of course this is mere speculation. Tolkien did love Italian (and despise French): "I remain in love with Italian, and feel quite lorn without a chance of trying to speak it" (Letters:223). Here's an excerpt of subtitled Italian... it definitely looks like Quenya, don't you think? [1] BGManofID (talk) 08:24, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Interesting indeed. Fauskanger writes on his Ardalambion page that "the quality of the vowels resembles the system in Spanish or Italian rather than English" but does not relate any consonants to those two languages. De728631 (talk) 16:03, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

I suspect the similarity to Italian is mainly due to Tolkien's trying to apply a Latin basis with Finnish phonological rules to Quenya. Italian does have the most conservative (i.e., Classical Latin) consonants among the Romance languages. This as opposed to, say, Spanish, which routinely changed medial stops to voiced spirants (ex. c to g and thereby [ɣ], as in amigo), and got rid of all double consonants except rr (Spanish ll is actually ly). Italian, however, is like Quenya and Finnish and unlike Latin when it comes to final consonants; Latin uses final -t, -s, and -m a lot, Spanish uses -s for all its plurals, making it frequent in that language, whereas Quenya uses -s and -t relatively sparingly. And, if one compares Fauskanger's list of favored consonant clusters and compares them with those favored in Italian, they would be almost the same. Tolkien also wrote that t, p, c, are unaspirated (as in Italian and unlike English), and l is pronounced clear and light, unlike English or Slavic l. Now whether the similarities that Quenya has with Italian are deliberate on the part of Tolkien, or merely because Italian just happens to be Modern Latin (for lack of a better way of putting it), I don't know; but we do know that Tolkien did have a bias toward Italian and against French, which is just as Romance as Italian. BGManofID (talk) 23:45, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

vowel loss and consequent sandhi

In the late Ancient Quenya period, when vowels were lost in long compound words, the consonants or groups so created were as a rule changed or reduced:

"long compound words" and "groups so created" suggest medial vowel loss, but the examples shown all seem to be final. – Consonants are not created by vowel loss; how about 'exposed'? —Tamfang (talk) 22:02, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Use of Quenya

There is a discussion ongoing at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Middle-earth#"neo-language" regarding that paragraph and the use of "Neo-languages" in general. Please join us there and wait for the outcome before you edit that paragraph. De728631 (talk) 18:07, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Galadriel and Gildor

“ Galadriel is the only major Elf in The Lord of the Rings who had Quenya as a mother-tongue: she was born in Eldamar. Elrond, Arwen, and Legolas were all born in Middle-earth. We do not know where and when Gildor Inglorion was born. ”

I removed the sentence about Gildor, who is mentioned nowhere else in the article, and is not "major" in any obvious sense. At the same time, I rearranged the first sentence for better flow (and better grammar):

“ Galadriel, born in Eldamar, is the only major Elf in The Lord of the Rings who had Quenya as a mother-tongue. ”

Naturally these changes were reverted without comment.

I question whether the paragraph ought to be here at all. It's a reasonable inference, but we generally don't do reasonable inferences. Is there anything explicit in canon to support it? —Tamfang (talk) 04:36, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with your version and with the paragraph at all. The Encyclopedia of Arda states that Quenya in the Third Age had become a ceremonial language only among elves so it's logical that Galadriel as the last major Noldo is the only noteworthy native speaker. De728631 (talk) 12:50, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Is that a reliable source? This is no place for logic. —Tamfang (talk) 21:56, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

There's also Glorfindel but he's also not prominent enough in LotR to be mentioned. De728631 (talk) 12:55, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Two timelines

For Tolkien's constructed languages we must distinguish two timelines of development:

• one internal, consisting of the sequence of events within the fictional history of Tolkien's secondary world; and
• one external, in which Tolkien's linguistic taste and conceptions evolved.

There ought to be some mention that Tolkien's conception of the history changed over time. There aren't just two lines: there's a series (external history) of parallel lines (internal history), forming a two-dimensional structure. How best to express this? Before the latest rewrite there was the phrase "Tolkien's conception of that world and its history evolved"; one would like to know why Laurifindil (talk · contribs) didn't like that, but L. has never yet responded to a question. —Tamfang (talk) 21:19, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

GA nom

I would encourage the article's keepers to expand the lead to conform to WP:LEAD before the GA review starts, as else it will quickfail. The lead needs to summarize the article, as is now it only gives an "in world" history of the languge. It needs to give a summary of the history of development and grammar as well. Also the structure is weird. The Syntax section should be with grammar and before vocabulary and it should be a lot more comprehensive. Also I think it needs to draw in more secondary sources.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:33, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Vocabulary

The table has a mistake: Quenya and English glosses are reversed. Also, the sources for these allegedly published words should be incorporated into the section for easy reference. Any neologisms should be discarded, like any derivatives of The Etymologies not specifically discussed by Tolkien himself. 91.152.231.113 (talk) 15:13, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Page protected

I've fully protected the page for a few days due to the edit war over these references. While internet sources can be reliable (i.e. the reason given for removing them doesn't quite make sense), is "The Encyclopedia of Arda" a reliable source? Looking at it myself, it looks like an unofficial, personal website that someone maintains purely for enjoyment. Swarm ^X11|11|11 17:52, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Apart from the normal fanpage this site uses primary and independent references [2]. And while it is not comprehensive and may contain occasional errors there are mostly correct and reliable assessments of the general Tolkien-related topics and characters. What makes it reliable is the fact that it is not a Wiki that gets edited all the time. Apart from that, WikiProject Middle-earth has listed the site as a standard source: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Middle-earth/Standards.

In particular, the references that Laurifindil keeps removing state nothing else than the primary Tolkien source, i.e. that Sindarin was used as a standard language by the Noldor elves in exile. De728631 (talk) 21:40, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

See also Maunus' request for secondary sources in the #GA nom section above. Sourcing everything with primary sources is not always practical. De728631 (talk) 22:02, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

This review is transcluded from Talk:Quenya/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Jezhotwells (talk · contribs) 02:01, 9 November 2011 (UTC) I shall be reviewing this article against the Good Article criteria, following its nomination for Good Article status.

Disambiguations:

Linkrot:

Checking against GA criteria

GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): b (MoS for lead, layout, word choice, fiction, and lists):

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): c (OR):

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

   As the page was in an edit war until it was protected a day ago, this has to be a quickfail. Jezhotwells (talk) 02:10, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

7. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

   Quickfail due to edit war, please renominate when you have sorted out your problems. Jezhotwells (talk) 02:10, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Hey!

Let's do a Wikipedia written in Quenya! --Sistemx (talk) 17:13, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Good luck with that. There are not even enough vocabularies to write the front page. De728631 (talk) 22:12, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

It's actually being done. See http://neo-quenya.wikia.com/wiki/Neo-Quenya_Wiki. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.173.145.214 (talk) 01:01, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

But it's more of a "Wikitolkienpedia"...I don't think you can really cover nuclear physics in Quenya, for example, without inventing pretty much every word you use. Double sharp (talk) 15:22, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

And they're likely to get sued for copyvio. Not because of the language but for the massive uploads of artworks and book covers. De728631 (talk) 15:51, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

(The amount of redlinks in their templates listing characters is incredible, BTW...) Double sharp (talk) 16:28, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, they have a periodic table page. Although I am somewhat disappointed that not all the names were translated (hydrogen and oxygen appear to have been), just changed to fit Quenya phonology. In particular I don't like what they chose for fluorine very much. Double sharp (talk) 16:32, 25 March 2013 (UTC)

Fluorine is from Latin fluere "to flow": -ine is a generic suffix for halogens. Suggest "flowing air"? air = vista (as substance), flow (as verb) = sir-, lutta-, lutu-: *lutuvista? (sorry for atrocious Quenya, please correct if need be!) Double sharp (talk) 13:44, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Me pursuing this: User:Double sharp/Quenya periodic table. Your Quenya is far better than mine, so please help correct my atrocities against the language! Double sharp (talk) 14:08, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Then again we could use "phthorine" instead... Double sharp (talk) 08:17, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Datasheet

Is there a Quenyan Language Datasheet available? 68.151.17.107 (talk) 22:41, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

What's a Language Datasheet with capital letters? —Tamfang (talk) 07:51, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

table of stop consonants

These are attested as initial consonants in the Etymologies. I made this table because it seems odd to have a table of only the nasals.

labial	P→p	B→v	PH→f	M→m	MB→m
dental	T→t	D→l	TH→s	N→n	ND→n
palatal-dental	TY→ty	DY→y		NY→ny
palatal-velar	KY→ty	GY→y	KHY→hy		ÑGY→indy
plain velar	K→c	G→∅	KH→h		ÑG→n
labial-velar	KW→qu	GW→w			ÑGW→nw,ungw

It ought to be checked against the corrections in Vinyar Tengwar.

—Tamfang (talk) 08:49, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

There should be a comparison with what happens in Telerin and Þindarin IMHO. Double sharp (talk) 10:53, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

(still thinking how KHY could end up as [θ] in Telerin!) Double sharp (talk) 12:38, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

misc queries

“ Other forms that appear to have been borrowed are actually coincidental, such as Finnish kirja "book", and Quenya cirya "ship". ”

Why would anyone think a word for 'book' was borrowed for 'ship'?

“ The Latin aure "dawn", and Quenya aure "moment of special meaning, special day, festival day" are unrelated. Instead, Quenya aure comes from the Valarin/Quenderin root ur-. ”

“ Arda, the Quenya name for "region", just happened to resemble Germanic Erde "earth", while it actually comes from the Valarin/Quenderin root gar-. ”

That he crafted an Elvish etymology for it doesn't establish that he didn't take it from a primary-world language in the first place; Tolkien's derivations worked both forward and backward in fictional time.

√GAR 'hold, possess' suggests garth 'enclosure' and French garde, merely putting the problem back one step!

On the other hand, there appears to me to be no such Latin word.

“ In Quenya, heavy syllables are syllables that contain either a long vowel, a diphthong, or a cluster of two consonants .... ”

So in alda, for example, does the d belong to the first syllable? —Tamfang (talk) 00:28, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Let me try to address these questions:

"Why would anyone think a word for 'book' was borrowed for 'ship'?"

Because if you speak neither Finnish nor Quenya and only read or hear the two terms you would think that they might be related.

"That he crafted an Elvish etymology for it doesn't establish that he didn't take it from a primary-world language in the first place; Tolkien's derivations worked both forward and backward in fictional time."

That would mean that Tolkien first took some real world forms like aure or Erde and then thought about any internal roots for them. I'm not sure that it actually happened that way. It should also be considered that Tolkien often invented words that he thought sounded beautiful, so if he created a root word and then applied his fictional development to it, it might have happened that familiar phrases came out. Anyhow, this is worth some more research.

"So in alda, for example, does the d belong to the first syllable?"

Yes, it's ald-a, not al-da. De728631 (talk) 00:15, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Actually, as far as I know, the d belongs to the second syllable. That's not how syllabification works in Latin, and Tolkien based Quenya syllabification and stress on Latin. In Quenya and Latin (though Latin has a few exceptions), a cluster of two consonants (ld) is divided up between the syllable before and the syllable after. The first consonant goes to the syllable before, the second to the syllable after: al-da. A syllable is heavy if its rhyme has more than just a short vowel: that is, if it ends in a long vowel, diphthong, or consonant. I can't cite a specific source for my knowledge as far as Quenya is concerned, but this is how I learned it. Anyway, it's weird to syllabify a cluster of two consonants with the syllable before them, and leave the syllable after without an onset, and my rule is simpler than the one Tamfang quotes, which is not an either-or as far as I can figure it, but very difficult to simplify. — Eru·tuon 19:19, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

But alda is also the tengwa for the cluster ld so I suppose in this specific word the l and d should not be separated. De728631 (talk) 01:13, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

I don't believe so. Certain consonant clusters are represented with a single letter (nasal-stop clusters, for instance) and others aren't. There isn't a very clear pattern as to which. I don't see why orthography should necessarily correspond to syllable structure. Orthography is incredibly varied in how faithfully it represents phonology and how much it's simply arbitrary. Latin and Ancient Greek have two-consonant letters (x, xi, psi), and they were simply considered as representing two consonants, which could be divided up between syllables just like any other two letters. It makes sense to treat the Quenya letters the same way. Not doing so leads to problems (either onsetless syllables or syllables with phonologically unlikely onsets); doing so removes these problems. — Eru·tuon 04:45, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

But if we syllabify Quenya words this way, it causes some problems with the stress rules. How are double consonants syllabified? Is halla (1) hal-la or (2) hall-a? If we take this definition of a heavy syllable, then taking (1) means that the first syllable is not heavy because it doesn't contain a biconsonantal cluster, which would mean that compounds involving this word, like Hallacar, would have to be stressed on the second syllable. And do initial biconsonantal clusters count? In ungwe, do we count gw as one or two consonants? (Do we have examples from Tolkien illustrating how the stress rules work on various words?)

Also, I'm curious when you say "onsetless syllables or syllables with phonologically unlikely onsets". Illustrative examples please? Double sharp (talk) 14:03, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Last question first. I mean if we keep the cluster ld together, we can syllabify in two ways: ald-a and a-lda. In both syllabifications, the final syllable has problems. In the first, it lacks an onset. It is generally preferred for syllables to have onsets. In the second, it violates the sonority hierarchy. L, a liquid, is more sonorous than d, a stop. When the two occur together in an onset or coda, the more sonorous one should be closer to the vowel than the less sonorous one. In an onset, the less sonorous should come first, so d should be before l, but it isn't. So lda is a less preferable syllable. Both syllabifications generate problems. The syllabification al-da lacks these problems, so it's preferable.

I'm puzzled by your first series of questions. According to the definition I give, a syllable only has to end in a single consonant to be heavy. It does not need a biconsonantal cluster.

Consonants in onsets have no bearing on syllable weight. Syllable weight is based on the rhyme of the syllable. I think ungwe would be syllabified un-gwe, but stress is on the first syllable of a two-syllable word no matter what.

Double consonants are syllabified like consonant clusters. One goes to the syllable before, the other to the syllable after: hal-la.

Hallacar is stressed Hˈallacar, not Hallˈacar. Stress depends on the weight of the penultimate syllable, not the antepenult. An antepenult does not have to be long to be stressed; it just has to be in a word that doesn't have a heavy penult. In Hallacar the penult is la and isn't heavy (or else it's a and is still not heavy), so the antepenult is stressed.

We do have examples of stress, though not syllabification, in Appendix E of the Lord of the Rings (or the Return of the King if the book is in three volumes). We also have a passage where, I suspect, the stuff about "two consonants" about two syllables came from. Here I'll quote the relevant bit:

In [words longer than two syllables, stress] falls on the last syllable but one, where that contains a long vowel, a diphthong, or a vowel followed by two (or more) consonants.

Tolkien's words may be interpreted as meaning that the penultimate syllable may end in a vowel and two consonants. This is a fair interpretation, but not the correct one, because he's speaking in imprecise terms to a layman. He is not describing Quenya syllabification, but telling someone who knows nothing about syllabification how to determine the stress in a Quenya word. Saying the vowel of the penultimate syllable is followed by two consonants is the same as saying that the penultimate syllable ends in a vowel and consonant. If the penultimate syllable ends in a vowel and consonant, there must be another consonant after it, because the last syllable must have an onset. Thus there are two consonants after the vowel of the penultimate syllable: the coda consonant of the penult, and the onset consonant of the ultima.

In Latin and Greek syllabification, onsets are prioritized over codas. You give syllables their onsets, and then if any consonants are left over, you make them into codas. Tolkien was deeply influenced by Latin and Greek, and it's unlikely that he would invent an entirely different syllabification system, in which consonant clusters get tacked onto codas (ald-a) before all syllables get their onsets.

Anyway, Quenya stress is identical to Latin stress (though not Greek). Here are the words Tolkien gives in Appendix E. Some of them are Sindarin, but it doesn't matter, because they follow the same rules. He marks stress by capitalizing the vowel of the stressed syllable. He doesn't capitalize the stressed syllable, which is consistent with my belief that he isn't attempting to describe syllabification. It is clear that isIldur has two consonants after the stressed vowel, but it is not indicated which syllable these consonants belong to.

isIldur, Orome, erEssëa fËanor, ancAlima, elentÁri, dEnethor, periAnnath, ecthElion, pelArgir, silIvren

These words would be stressed exactly the same way if they were converted to Latin orthography and Latin stress rules were applied to them.

Okay. I took way too long on this, and I need to quit. I probably answered your questions in way more detail than necessary. Whatever. — Eru·tuon 05:52, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

I know this is years later, and you might never see or respond to this, but I disagree with your analysis that Tolkien's mention of "two (or more)" consonants in a syllable is simply a result of him not addressing linguists or experts. Tolkien says, specifically, that "where the last syllable but one contains (as often) a short vowel followed by only one (or no) consonant, the stress falls on the syllable before it." Tolkien asserts that a single consonant in a syllable is insufficient to make the syllable "heavy." He further mentions that "words of this type are favoured [...] especially in Quenya." In such cases, do you assert that having a single consonant following a vowel in a syllable would be the same has having no consonant, and that the consonant would simply be the onset of the ultimate syllable? Corsair Caruso (talk) 06:50, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Heh, turns out I looked on my watchlist and saw my name, just a few minutes after you posted. Yes, essentially. As in Latin and Greek, a single consonant following a vowel belongs to the following syllable (if there is one). So súrinen is syllabified sú-ri-nen, and the penultimate syllable doesn't end in a consonant. Syllabifying as súr-in-en would be incorrect. — Eru·tuon 07:05, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for clearing up the confusion! Double sharp (talk) 11:00, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Does anyone have access to Parma Eldalamberon 19? I would edit the article to reflect this understanding of syllabification and stress, but for all I know, my surmises about these subjects might be wrong, and anyway, it would be a good idea to base a section on the source given for it. I wish the darned thing weren't a full 35 dollars, or that it were available someplace. — Eru·tuon 19:15, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Counting

Having a duodecimal/hybrid decimal-duodecimal counting system is quite unusual. Shouldn't we give info about number words? Double sharp (talk) 11:43, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

User:Double sharp/Quenya number words?? Double sharp (talk) 12:36, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Initial x and ps

It ought to be made clear that although Tolkien says these are allowed, they do not actually appear in any words in our present corpus (AFAIK). For now all it does is make borrowing Greek woords into Quenya easier. Double sharp (talk) 14:54, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Where did Tolkien say that? At least for ps it has already been mentioned in the article in the intro for the consonants section that grouping of consonants only appears inside a word. As to x: in the beginning of a word this would equal the combination of ks or cs which is equally not valid. De728631 (talk) 18:04, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

In the article, under "Phonotactics" and referenced to Fauskanger's "Quenya" and Tolkien's "Outline of Phonology": "Quenya tolerates only the following initial groups: hl, hr; x (ks), ps; ty, ny, ly; qu (kw), ñw (became nw in Noldorin Quenya)." Fauskanger does not give x and ps as allowable initial consonant clusters, so I suppose it must be in Tolkien. Double sharp (talk) 08:19, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

That's weird. I think this got somehow mixed up with Fauskanger's list of medial consonants. I'm going to remove x and ps from the initials list in the article. De728631 (talk) 13:43, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Seems like I missed the Phonology article in Parma Eldalamberon. Unfortunately I don't have access to that so I can't check it. Apparently, Fauskanger doesn't count hl and hr as clusters; after all, the h is only meant to add an aspirated sound to the "main" consonant. De728631 (talk) 13:53, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

On hl and hr

Are these clusters, or independent phonemic [ɬ] and [r̊]? (Either way they still wouldn't be in the consonant chart, because they merge with l and r by the Third Age.) Double sharp (talk) 13:42, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Voiceless sonorants are a thorny question in general, in Old English, Old Norse, and Modern English as well as Quenya. One way of differentiating between clusters and phonemes is how long they are pronounced, but regrettably we have no native speakers of Quenya whose speech we can analyze. Another way is if there's a clear phonemic distinction between clusters and individual sounds: that is, if we had /hl/ contrasting with /l̥/. That clearly doesn't exist in Quenya. So, we have only typology and personal preference left. Some people like to represent phonetic sounds with phonemic sequences, and other people like to have separate phonemes.

I personally find it most phonologically and phonetically plausible to analyze them as separate phonemes, at least right before the merger. The set of sound changes would go like this:

• /sl/ (Proto-Elvish form)
• [hl] (lenition: debuccalization of /s/)
• [hl̥] (assimilation: devoicing of /l/ after voiceless consonant)
• /l̥/ (lenition: elision of /h/)
• /l/ (lenition: voicing of voiced sonorant)

I think historically philologists have called hnut > nut (an English sound change) cluster reduction. However, this doesn't seem plausible to me. Clearly hnut originally began with a cluster /xn/ in Proto-Germanic or even in Old English, but from the point of view of naturalness, it had to go through the intermediate stage of being a single phonemic voiceless sonorant /n̥/, or else it wouldn't merge with the single voiced sonorant phoneme /n/. I'm sure there are differences of opinion on this point. — Eru·tuon 00:26, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

How is phonemic conflation "more natural" than cluster reduction? Did English bomb, lamb need to go through a phase where mb was a denasalized m before it conflated with /m/? With xnut, why couldn't the h have voiced in assimilation w the n, and the elided, or gone straight to elision? — kwami (talk) 21:21, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

@Kwamikagami: A denasalized m would be b, causing bomb, lamb to become bobb, labb. A similar sound change occurred in Old West Norse, but we say bom, lam in English, implying elision (or perhaps assimilation to bomm, lamm at some point in the past). This example is problematic, so I'm not sure how it's supposed to disprove my point.

What I mean about naturalness is that voiceless sonorants are typologically rare and difficult to produce and hear, and therefore likely to voice. I also have the impression that English speakers typically use a voiceless sonorant in what rather than a cluster nowadays, suggesting that simple voicing occurred, but I haven't actually done acoustic analysis of the speech of wh-distinguishers. And perhaps I'm wrong: maybe it's more natural for voiceless sonorants to strengthen to fricatives, in which case what with a voiceless sonorant would've become fat.

Another possibility is that partial assimilation happened: that [xwat] became [hwat], [ʍwat], and then [wat], and similarly with hnut. I think something I read suggested this was the case. — Eru·tuon 21:51, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

There can be denasalized /m/ that is not [b]. In Korean, for example. My point was that, since voiceless sonorants are rare, why assume they occurred phonemically at all? Why not just /sl/ > /hl/ > /l/? — kwami (talk) 22:13, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Denasalized /m/ that's not [b] sounds fascinating, though I don't understand articulatorily or acoustically what it means. It seems like as soon as a stop loses nasality, it would become oral. Perhaps you can explain it to me.

I guess from a segmental perspective, the phonemic change you envision is much simpler. I'm thinking more of phonological features, though, and it makes sense to me that the sonorant would become voiceless and then be revoiced. However, I think I lack proper evidence to prove this is most natural. — Eru·tuon 22:42, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Korean nasals have denasalized allophones, especially initially. Sort of a head-cold voice, maybe. Korean tenuis stops are also voiced intervocallically. That is, /m, n/ may be [m͊ n͊], and /p, t/ may be [b, d]. But while an English speaker will hear them all as /b, d/ (though perhaps with an odd accent), a Korean speaker will hear them as entirely different. That could just be phonemic knowledge, but they don't seem to have merged. There are a few papers on this, but remarkably little given how important I suspect it is for phonological and historical phonological theory. — kwami (talk) 23:14, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm guessing, after trying to produce those sounds, that what happens is the stop is held, air exhaled into the occluded space, with the lips or tongue moving outwards due to the pressure. Weird. The difference could be duration. — Eru·tuon 23:29, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

If we're talking about Quenya, one way to determine this would be via the stress, as part of the definition of a heavy syllable (one that can receive stress if penultimate) is the presence of a cluster or doubled consonant, which makes its syllable heavy even if it doesn't contain a long vowel or diphthong. (Hy and hw apparently count as clusters in Book Quenya, but not in vernacular Quenya, so while in the former they can be taken as clusters, they must be independent phonemic [ç] and [ʍ] in the latter.) Unfortunately the only example of medial hl or hr that I can think of immediately is ohloni "diphthongs", which isn't helpful as the penultimate syllable is short and thus the stress must go on the first syllable regardless of the status of hl. Is there a better example anywhere? Double sharp (talk) 21:31, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Vowel Quality, Long versus Short

Could I make a suggestion for a change to the vowels in the phonology section? Tolkien makes note on page 71 of The Road Goes Ever On (3rd edition) that the short vowels "may be rendered as in [English] sick, bed, hot, foot (for ŭ), though ŏ is intended to be rounder than in modern [English]." I believe that the quality of short i is currently given as [i], which is not in agreement with Tolkien's assertion. The vowel sound in question is [ɪ]. I'm familiar with Fauskanger's Quenya course, and he makes note of the distinction but seems to believe it is obsolete. "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." (Taken from Fauskanger's Quenya course-a). However, the Road Goes Ever On was published after The Lord of the Rings, and is the latest published source I'm aware of directly concerning pronunciation. Is there a reason that this might not supersede Mr. Fauskanger's analysis? Corsair Caruso (talk) 21:08, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

As a further note, the above distinction would render the short u as [ʊ]. I seem to remember that Fauskanger also asserts that the à vs a distinction also indicates a quality change, which I believe is accurately represented as [ɑː] vs [a].Corsair Caruso (talk) 16:56, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

25,000 Words?

I think this figure needs revisiting. I tried to find a reference, and a I found an essay from Ardalambion wherein it's mentioned "In total, my translation of the Johannine texts amounts to slightly more than 25,000 words." In other words, his translation into Quenya (or Neo-Quenya) was 25,000 words long. Presumably there were repetitions (e.g. the word for "and"). If that's the source of the figure, then it would seem that there are far, far, far fewer than 25,000 words. It's probably worth someone doing an actual count. 24.152.136.199 (talk) 07:40, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Now that you mention it I think 25,000 is a vast exaggeration probably resulting from counting Kloczko's total translation. The known corpus without neo-Quenya has to be much smaller. I just did a rough count in Wolfgang Krege's 2003 Elvish-German dictionary and was already in the C section when I had reached only 200 individual words. Fauskanger lists "about one fifth of the published total", counting 973 individual words. This x5 would amount to some 4500 words. De728631 (talk) 15:40, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Coincidences?

If Tolkien says that resemblances such as Arda/Erde, Atalante/Atlantis, etc., are entirely coincidences... er... how serious do we have to take him? (Just reading that the most usual formula used by the Noldor in farewells is - wait for it -- Áva márië! and thinking that Tolkien was having a great bit of fun with such resemblances...--2001:A60:1513:3E01:FCC6:D437:7F83:CC65 (talk) 12:41, 23 May 2015 (UTC)

There is indeed a tendency to take statements by creators far too much at face value, but I doubt we can do anything until a reliable source comes up daring to do that. Double sharp (talk) 14:58, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

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Too much detail! Anybody noticed the sheer amount of detail here? On the consonant chart there are 13 phonological rules describing various voicing of consonants and commenting on the orthography of the language. To compare, English has 7, and each of them are variances between remote dialects. Tolkien did include a great deal of detail in his discription of the language, which goes hand in hand with another concern. The amount of the Silmarillion included in this article is staggering! Consider the introduction to the article. Currently, there is a mini history lesson on the language before the Content panel. Compare to English's one paragraph explaining the bare essentials. Here is my proposed introduction: "Quenya (IPA: ['kwɛɲa]) is one of the fictional languages spoken by the Elves in the fantasy works of J. R. R. Tolkien. It was the language developed by those non-Telerin Elves who reached Valinor from an earlier language called Common Eldarin, which also evolved from the original Primitive Quendian. 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] Quenya is usually written in Tengwar, although it was earlier written in Sarati. In the real world Tengwar is not uncommon, but it is usually written in the Latin alphabet." Everything which is not essential to an explanation of the language receives a link, or is moved to the correct part of the article. The information on the dialects of Quenya should be moved into the fictional history section under a subheading fictional dialects. Unnecessary terms and translations like "...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)" should be avoided. Dsachs2 (talk) 06:44, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Last edited at 06:44, 19 December 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 03:40, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Favorite Romance?

The combination of a Latin basis with Finnish phonological rules resulted in a product that resembles Italian in many respects, which was Tolkien's favorite modern Romance language'

Actually we have plenty of material by Tolkien himself stating that his favorite Romance was actually Spanish, not Italian. From page 213 from the same book as the one used for a reference in this very sentence we read in relation to his personal influences in his taste:

Spanish was another: my guardian was half Spanish, and in my early teens I used to pinch his books and try to learn it: the only Romance language that gives me the particular pleasure of which I am speaking (...)

It even goes on to make a comparison to how he can perceive the beauty of Italian and English but in a different way:

[I]t is not quite the same as the mere perception of beauty: I feel the beaty of say Italian or for that matter of modern English (which is very remote from my personal taste): it is more like the appetite for a needed food.

This letter dates from June 7th 1955, the letter cited on Italian as favorite dates from August 15th 1955. However in a letter from October 25th 1958 he reiterates his preference for Spanish stating:

For instance I dislike French, and prefer Spanish to Italian (...)

I think his preference stands very clear in light of all the evidence.--Eremeldo 17:05, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Word Order Contradiction

So, the header at the Grammar section stated that the word order is SOV, but at the end of the sytax subsection, it states SVO. I'm not familiar with the subject and don't have time to do the digging right now, but someone familiar with it should get that cleared up.162.247.45.152 (talk) 23:49, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

I have changed the header to SVO as is referenced in the syntax subsection. De728631 (talk) 13:47, 11 May 2017 (UTC)