The Elvish Room

[LadyArwenUndómiel]

I'm @ Ardalambion downloading the first part of the course. I hope all goes well. I've read through the mini lessons which you were kind enough to post (thank you so much!) I'm doing the instruction first, it's some 30 pages; will probably take around an hour and a half to read it, three hours at full. Hope I'm up to it! There are also Keys, Appendixes and Vocabulary. Shall I download those as well?

Thanks!

[Arwen_Undomiel]

Arwen, c'est formidable que vous parle un peu français! Je parle un peu aussi (yeah, I'm supposed to take a more, well, spoken language too). J'aime français très beaucoup! But anyway, I downloaded the course and printed it out so I wouldn't get a headache from staring at the screen (like now, unfortunately) and it worked perfectly. So whatever you do, have fun!

(BTW, you are definitely NOT bothering me! I like talking about Elvish. )

[Arwen_Undomiel]

Yeah, download all of it. It's worth it! And btw the first lesson is DEFINITELY the longest — it took me a couple hours!!! Don't worry, none of the other lessons are like that!

[Arwen_Undomiel]

See ya, I'm gonna go take care of my headache!

[LadyArwenUndómiel]

Glad that I'm not a bother!

I may as well download everything, now that I have downloaded more than half of them. The good news is that I have a laptop of my own so I can use up as much memory as I want to! The bad news, however, is that I am on summer vacation and won't be able to reach a printer for about two months and that means headaches!

I have begun an Elvish mailing list as well over the past few months, which mainly consits of lists of words. Would you like me to mail them to you? They are probably not much compared to the course, but once you learn how to speak the whole thing, learning a new word or two may be simpler (considering I can't say, "brush my fin (hair)," since that's not right!).

My email is [e-mail]

[Sinron]

Two Arwens?? I must be getting real old... ;D ;D

[LadyArwenUndómiel]

Aye, there are two Arwens. Actually three if you look at the list of members. But one of them hasn't been here in ages. Perhaps she got attacked by orcs, though I doubt it. As for you being really old, consider Nazgul. As long as the ring is there, so are you!

By the way, somebody here is bound to choose a mortal life. Don't worry!

[Claire]

It will not be me! *Claire comes in and sits in a chair, then looks at all the Elves there and watches the conversation*

[LadyArwenUndómiel]

Don't worry, Claire... Didn't mention anyone in particular...

Here is another neat site with Elvish: www.elvish.org/gwaith/movie.htm

[Claire]

Confusing, is there anyplace to go there to learn Elvish or to find a dictionary?

[LadyArwenUndómiel]

No problem! I have bundles of Elvish pages on my computer. I could send them to you easily...

However, what I mainly have is word lists. If you want a whole course (kind of like a textbook to learn a language!) go to: www.uib.no/People/hnohf/ It is a website with a bunch about any language of Middle Earth. To get directly to the course and download it, go to: www.uib.no/People/hnohf/qcourse.htm

My email is [e-mail] incase you want to email me so that I can send you some more word lists.

Hope that helped

[Claire]

You are very kind. Quenya is the most common elf language, correct? I don't think I can LEARN the language of the elves, but I wish to be able to look in a dictionary and be able to make sentences in elvish, thank you for your help.

[LadyArwenUndómiel]

Lle creoso, mellonamin (you're welcome, my friend). Aye, Quenya is the most important of the Elvish languages. It's practically an Elven form of Latin because all the Elven languages came from a 'primitive' form of Elvish, and Quenya is very similar to it. I'm going along the course and am some 28 pages into it; there certainly is a lot to it but it is definitely worth it! Perhaps I won't manage to get through it as well as I am hoping; but at least I know that I'll learn quite a bit!

[Claire]

So like, Quenya is what Aragorn, Arwen, Galadriel, and all those elves used, right? Maybe you should teach me, I'm better at learning with someone then with myself. I'll go through it the best I can.

[LadyArwenUndómiel]

Okay, Claire. I'll be glad to help you out, though I'm not too sure about my ability as a teacher. I've began taking the course myself and have just finished the 31 page introduction today. I've been taking notes on it and summed it up to a few which I hope explain all of it as well as possible...

Here are my notes for the introduction, I hope that they will help out out. Please feel free to ask about anything that you don't understand. We are both learing so we are in the same Swanship of the Galadhrim! Even though, I won't post all of the notes at once as there are some four written pages of it. I guess I'll take it bit by bit...

Notes for the Introduction!
~What's Quenya Like?
-Highly inflective language (words apperar in many forms depending on the grammatical structure).
-Three words in Quenya may be seven words in English. For example, "anar caluva tielyanna" (the sun shall shine upon your path)
-Quenya usually has more sllyables than English
-Main difference between Quenya and English: samll English words like your and upon usually become endings. For example: tielyanna (upon your path). -lya stands for "your" and -nna stands for "upon"
-Quite a difficult language, though more complete and simpler than Sindarin!
-involved and intricate construction base, though a devoted person may be able to learn the basics for the grammer in a few weeks (this is true for the person who takes the course, I don't know how complete my notes are...)
-has some irregular verbs, though not too many (and probably easier than some of the French ones which I am learning!)
-Quenya stands somewhere between a "real language" and an "Esperanto," which is a language that is made up and not complete (but more logic than Gibberish!)
-too sipmle/easy to be a totally credible as a non-constructed lanuage (when compared to modern day languages)
-constructed and refined by Elves as a whole, not word by word
-relatively tidy grammar

~The Sources
-though Tolkien wrote thousands of pages about this language as well as his other languages (though mainly Quenya), VERY LITTLE of it is available to us!
-Christopher Tolkien wanted to publish some of it, though he didn't manage! (too bad!)
-in late 1990's, the Editorial Team said they would publish more about Quenya in the next few years, though they clearly didn't
-most of the names in Lord of the Rings are Sindarin, though they can be translated into Quenya. (such as Galadriel, Aragorn, Glorfindel, Minas Tirith).
-Namarie is the longest Quenya poem found in LOTR. It's also known as Galadriel's lament.
-Appendix E in LOTR also shows more about Quenya, reading over it would be a good thing to do.
-The Lost Road (a book in the History of Middle-Earth) has a part called Etymologies with over 600 Elvish roots (have to find that book soon... I could use it!)


That's all that I'll post for now (better leave some thinking time here!). The introduction also goes over all about what is legal and what is not, but I believe that I don't want to trouble people. It is about 12 pages long and mainly goes over some law cases. What I posted above is mainly about sources and the basis of Quenya's characteristics, I'll get into deeper study once I begin the lessons. The course is 300 or more pages long and I still have a whole lot to learn.

Next view of my notes shall include: Corpus and Spelling Conventions....