The purpose of this series is to compile a list of Elvish (Quenya and Sindarin) words and expressions that can be a potential source of confusion and are often used incorrectly in Neo-Elvish writings. The abbreviations used here for sources are adopted from Eldamo : Reference Index.
TEW 1 – Q. vanima
This word is often used in Neo-Quenya writings as a general word for “beautiful”. However, in etymological notes from c. 1959–60 Tolkien stated that it was only applied to living things:
vanya, beautiful, unmarred, of fair unspoiled form, &c. vanima (only of living things, especially Elves or Men) ‘beautiful’ (PE17/150; NM/173).
The remark in parentheses seems only to refer to vanima and not vanya, which is indeed sometimes used for inanimates in the published corpus; cf. Arda Vanya “Arda Unmarred” (PE17/150; NM/173) and Ilu vanya, fanya, eari, i-mar, ar ilqa ímen “the World is fair, the sky, the seas, the earth, and all that is in them” (LR/72).
TEW 2 – Q. ar & S. a
In a discussion of various Quenya words for “and” from the late 1960s (PE17/70–1) Tolkien says that the usual English habit of placing the equivalent of “and” before the final item of a list while omitting it before the other items would in Quenya represent a discontinuity, so that in the Quenya rendering of such a sentence as “Gandalf, Aragorn, Eomer and Imrahil in grey, in silver, in green, and in blue” the “and” before “Imrahil” and “in blue” would be omitted. The same feature of syntax can be seen in the latest version of the King’s Letter from the early 1950s, where the Sindarin phrases Elanor, Meril, Glorfinniel, Eirien sellath dîn and Iorhael, Gelir, Cordof, Baravorn ionnath dîn omit the “and” present in their English equivalents: “Elanor, Rose, Goldilocks and Daisy his daughters” and “Frodo, Merry, Pippin and Hamfast his sons”.
TEW 3 – Q. pen- & S. pen-
Although it might seem intuitive to translate English “have not” with the negated form of Q. sam- or S. sav-, the Elvish languages use a derivative of a different stem to express this notion:
√PEN ‘lack, have not’. <…> This is used in Quenya and Sindarin as negative of verb “to have” [√SAM-, Q samin, sáme: S sevin, aw ( < ahawv)]: as answer to “have you any … ?” as Q penin “no” or “I haven’t” (PE17/173).
Additionally, there is an indication that at least in Sindarin the negated form of sav- was never used at all:
√PENE ‘lack’, always used in Sindarin for ‘have not’: penim vast “we have no bread” (PE17/144).
(Note that penim would have been penif in the later pronominal paradigm.)
TEW 4 – Q. ilya
The fact that the Quenya word for “all” (ilyë) is effectively the plural form of the word for “every, each” (ilya) begs the question of how could one form the Quenya equivalent of such phrases as English “every seven days” (or Russian каждые семь дней), where the word for “every” stands in plural, and avoid confusion with “all seven days”. One possible solution can be suggested by Esperanto, where the words for “every, each” (ĉiu) and “all” (ĉiuj) have the same relation as they do in Quenya (and even might have been the source of inspiration for Tolkien, given his known familiarity with Esperanto). Such an expression as “every seven days” is in Esperanto rendered as ĉiun sepan tagon, i.e. “every seventh day”. Assuming the same pattern can be followed in Quenya, the result would be ilya otsëa ré.
TEW 5 – Q. aiya
The word aiya (or aia) is often used in Neo-Quenya as a casual greeting like English “hi”, although such a usage does not fit the the description given to this word in etymological notes from c. 1959:
√AYA-, revere: hence <…> aia, aiya! hail (only addressed to great or holy persons as the Valar, or to Earendil) (PE17/149).
This fits the attested examples where this greeting is used to address Eärendil and Saint Mary (being translated “hail”), but not Fingon’s cry Aiya Eldalië ar Atanatarni, utúlie’n aurë! “Lo, people of the Eldar and Fathers of Men, the day has come!” from the Narn i Chîn Húrin (WJ/166), where the word aiya is used in a different role, which however fits a description given to it in another note:
Q aiya! a cry, to call for help or attention. Hail! (PE17/89).
There is an idea that Q. aiya is cognate to S. ai, which apparently can be used as a casual greeting, but such a relation between them is nowhere attested, and the expected Sindarin cognate of Q. aiya would have rather been ae (if from *ăja) or *oe (if from *āja), the former of which might have been the particle appearing in ae Adar nín, though this is not certain. It seems in any case that interjections in the two languages do not necessarily have to descend from Common Eldarin.
Be that as it may, this aiya in any case should not be considered the usual formula used in greeting, because this is explicitly stated to be (hara) máriessë “stay in happiness” (PE17/162).
A shorter alternative for those who are not comfortable with aiya (like myself) may be alla “hail, welcome”, which was at different points derived either from √GAL or from √AL. The latter derivation is problematic for those who use la-negation, but the former still works. Finally, a concern has been expressed about the homonymy of this word with the pronoun alla “none, nothing”, but their role in speech is so different, that, in my opinion, this homonymy is unlikely to cause any confusion in practice.
TEW 6 – Q. ma
In The Demonstrative, Relative, and Correlative Stems from c. 1948, while discussing the structure of interrogative sentences, Tolkien says the following:
NB. as remarked above, Q. did not mark interrogation by reversing the normal order of the verb and subject. In sentences containing no interrogative adverb or pronoun the tone alone thus marked the sentence. But it was also usual for such sentences to begin with the reduced stem mă (before vowel măn) used as an interrogative particle or adverb” (PE23/103–4).
Of particular interest is the statement that the interrogative particle ma had the form man before words beginning with a vowel. Although this is never explicitly mentioned in later texts and no relevant examples are available, the following note in Late Notes on Verb Structure from c. 1969, appearing in a discussion of the interrogative particle ma, hints at the ongoing validity of its prevocalic form:
But in GL man is a pronoun = who? If Varda was meant the verb should have been enquantuvas (PE22/161).
In this note, Tolkien appears to contrast man “who” in Galadriel’s lament with the particle man in the hypothetical sentence Sí man i yulma nin enquantuvas? (“Will she [Varda] now refill the cup for me?”).
TEW 7 – S. na
In the Quenya Notes from 1957, Tolkien describes a Sindarin allative preposition:
na ( < nā), to, towards, of space/time. with vocalic mutation. before vowel n’ (PE17/147).
The fact that the vowel of the preposition is elided if the following word begins with a vowel is well-known, but one might wonder if this is true for words beginning with g, which disappears due to vocalic mutation. A hint at the probable answer can be found in Tolkien’s experimental notes on Sindarin genitives from c. 1967, where a similar case is discussed:
The possessive has article ena usually, especially later, reduced to en before vowel (not when g is lost), na before consonant (PE17/97).
Of interest may also be a note on e·alað (“the tree”, from galað) in a discussion of the definite article from 1969 or later:
at the time of these ‘mutations’ g- was still a spirantal consonant ʒ. The hiatus left by its disappearance was maintained; it served to distinguish nouns with lost g from those having an original vocalic beginning: as en·alph, the swan (PE23/136).
Given the absence of reduction of ena before lost g in the former quote and the distinction described in the latter quote, it seems most likely that the preposition na would not be reduced before lost g: thus na ‘aladh “towards a tree”.
TEW 8 – Q. sana-
This word is often used by Neo-Quenya writers for “to think (that…) = to have an opinion (that…)”, as in **Sanan i uman Ambar nánë lára “I think that at one time the Earth was flat”. However, such a usage of this word is unattested, and, given that the stem √SAN is glossed “think, use mind”, it probably means “to think = to be in a state of pondering”; cf. sanwë “an act or process of thinking, thought”, sanar “mind, thinker, reflector”. For the former sense of the verb “think”, it is probably safer to use the verb nam- (or nav-) as it is used in the attested sentence lá karitas, navin, alasaila ná “not doing this would be (I think) unwise”.
TEW 9 – S. ista-
In the Etymologies of the 1930s, when listing the derivatives of the stem √IS, Tolkien described the Noldorin cognate of Qenya ista- “know” (pa.t. sinte) thus: “isto to have knowledge (intr.) pa.t. †sint, istas” (VT45/18). This strongly suggests that in contemporary Sindarin the verb ista- is only used intransitively, probably with such prepositions as o, and has the past istas, as in Istassen oh e·beth hen “I had knowledge about this word”. It is still probable, though, given the connection of the archaic past †sint with the past sinte of the Quenya cognate, that originally the verb was used transitively, like in Quenya, and the intransitive usage, together with the past istas, was fixed at a later time.
TEW 10 – S. naug
This word is often used in Neo-Sindarin writings as the usual noun for “Dwarf”, which indeed appears to have been the case in Gnomish, Noldorin and Sindarin until the 1950s. However, in a linguistic note from around 1959 (PE17/45–6) which seems to constitute a draft of Appendix B to the essay Quendi and Eldar, Tolkien appears to have decided that the usual noun for “Dwarf” was nogoth, but such variants as naug and nogon were also used; and in the final form of the essay he goes even further and says that the word naug was only used as an adjective:
Hadhod, Hadhodrim was the name which they [the Sindar] continued to use in actual intercourse with the Dwarves; but among themselves they referred to the Dwarves usually as the Naugrim ‘the Stunted Folk’. The adjective naug ‘dwarf(ed), stunted’, however, was not used by itself for one of the Khazād. The word used was Nogoth, pl. Noegyth, class-plural Nogothrim (as an occasional equivalent of Naugrim) (WJ/388).
(Note that Noegyth here is an ambiguous spelling of archaic Nœgyth for Negyth, as Nogoth is derived from *nukotto/a.)
Given that Quendi and Eldar constitutes Tolkien’s latest and most elaborate view on these names, it is probably preferable to use nogoth for “Dwarf”, leaving naug for use in its original adjectival meaning.