Quenya Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
\Quenya is one of the languages spoken by the Elves in J. R. R. Tolkien's work. It was the language that developed among those non-Telerin Elves that reached Valinor (They are at times called High Elves.) 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 (Quenya and Vanyarin Quenya (also Quendya), respectively). The language was also adopted by the Valar who also made some new introductions into it from their own original language. The Third House, the Teleri, spoke a different, closely related language: Telerin, although this was by some seen as a dialect of Quenya.The written script alphabet of the Elven languages is typically Tengwar, although Cirth can also be used.
The Ñoldor that fled to Middle-earth following the Darkening of Valinor spoke Quenya among themselves. However when Thingol of Doriath, who was the king of the Sindar (Elves of the Telerin line who remained in Beleriand instead of journeying to Valinor) learnt about their slaying of the Teleri, he forbade the use of Quenya in all his realm, and the Ñoldor were forced to use Sindarin when communicating with his people, and thus the language fell out of daily use.
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 referred to Quenya as "Elf-Latin".) Quenya was used as a formal language and for writing; Sindarin was the vernacular of all Elves. However, the Ñoldor 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 that learned Quenya as a cradle-tongue: she was born in Valinor, during the days of the Two Trees. Ñoldorin (Exilic) Quenya differed somewhat from Valinórean Quenya, because the language continued to evolve after exile, and it underwent some regularisation as it became a language of lore. There were also a few changes in pronunciation.
The most striking feature of Quenya is that it is a highly agglutinating language, meaning that multiple affixes are often added to words to express grammatical function. It is possible for one Quenya word to have the same meaning as an entire English sentence, for example, one could say "They have seen it." in Quenya in a single word (namely Ecénientes).
Outside the fiction, its grammar is influenced by Finnish, which is an agglutinative language; 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 dual dative ending -nt), voiced stops must be preceded by sonorants, and a word may not end in a non-coronal consonant.
Tolkien wrote much more material about Quenya and his other languages than he published in his lifetime. 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 and Lapine.
In early Tolkien's writings (see: The History of Middle-earth), this language was called Qenya, and it underwent countless revisions in both grammar and vocabulary before it reached the form found in The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. The term Qenya is now used to distinguish between old Qenya and the new Quenya.
See also: Languages of Middle-earth, Sindarin, Tengwar
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