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External history. J. R. R. Tolkien began to construct his first Elvish tongue c. 1910–1911 while he was at the King Edward's School, Birmingham. [1] . He later called it Qenya (c. 1915), and later changed the spelling to Quenya.
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- Conceptual History
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Quenya descended directly from Ancient Quenya, which developed from an earlier language called Common Eldarin. Of the Three Houses of Elves, the Ñoldor and the Vanyar spoke slightly different, though mutually intelligible, dialects of Quenya (Ñoldorin Quenya and Vanyarin Quenya, respectively). The Vanyarin dialect was also called Quendya; IPA: [ˈkʷ...
According to "The Lhammas", the Vala Oromë taught to the Elves the language of the Valar, and for this reason their language family was collectively called Oromëan. The Valar themselves had speech from the beginning. Over time, however, the Eldar changed the language, adding words of their liking and softening its speech from its original manner. T...
Quenya is, like many European languages, a nominative-accusative language, which means that the subject of a transitive verb is marked the same as the subject of an intransitive verb.
In The Children of Húrin
1. Utúlie'n aurë! Aiya Eldalië ar Atanatarni, utúlie'n aurë!- "The day has come! Behold, people of the Eldar and Fathers of Men, the day has come!" 2. Auta i lóme!- "The night is passing!" 3. A Túrin Turambar turún' ambartanen.- "O Túrin master of doom by doom mastered."
In The History of Middle-earth
1. Valar valuvar.- "The will of the Valar will be done." 2. Manen lambë Quendion ahyanë?- "How did the language of Elves change?"
aina- holyáirë- sunlightalqua- swananar- SunQuenya was influenced specifically by Welsh, which was used as an agglutination; grammatical inspiration also comes from Latin and Greek. The phonology is 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 du...
Jan 28, 2024 · The word Quenya is in origin an adjective meaning “belonging to the Quendi”, but despite this unspecific derivation is only ever used as a name of the language. It descends from an older form kwendjā , with the d surviving only in the Vanyarin dialect, where the name is still Quendya .
If I were to take a guess, I'd say that Quenya is somewhat related to Quendë ("Speaker"). Nonetheless, it seems that there's also not much available in Tolkien Gateway about the etymology of Quendë (besides the fact that it seems to come from the root KWE, which itself seems to be related to speech).
Jan 20, 2024 · Qenya (pronounced [KWEN-ya]) [1] was the original name of the High-Elven tongue which gradually would change into Quenya of the Lord of the Rings . In the earliest versions of the legendarium, Qenya (as every Elvish language) belonged to the Oromean phylum, derived from the language Orome taught the Quendi.
Apr 13, 2024 · Quenya is an artificial language developed by the English philologist & author of The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, etc., J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973). The native language of the High Elves, Quenya was inspired by Finnish, Latin, Greek & some smaller elements from other European languages.
After the Elves divided, Quenya originated as the speech of two clans of "High Elves" or Eldar, the Noldor and the Vanyar, who left Middle-earth to live in Eldamar ("Elvenhome"), in Valinor, the land of the immortal and God-like Valar.
