Bibliographical Abbreviations
Etym. – The Etymologies (in LR:347-400)
GL – The Gnomish Lexicon (in Parma Eldalamberon #11)
Letters – The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
LotR – The Lord of the Rings
LR – The Lost Road
MC – The Monsters and the Critics
MR – Morgoth’s Ring
PM – The Peoples of Middle-earth
QL – The Qenya Lexicon (in Parma Eldalamberon #12)
RGEO – The Road Goes Ever On (second edition)
RS – The Return of the Shadow
SD – Sauron Defeated
UT – Unfinished Tales
VT – Vinyar Tengwar
WJ – The War of the Jewels
This analysis was originally published in Tyalië Tyelelliéva #18.
Shortly afterwards, another analysis appeared in Vinyar Tengwar #43.
The authors of the latter analysis were able to draw on various other
Tolkien manuscripts that occasionally throws some light on the more
obscure features of the Quenya text. Some information from this article
has been added – in brackets and with red letters[1] – to my own analysis.
Otherwise, my original published text remains virtually unaltered. Those
who want to compare this study to the Vinyar Tengwar article may
download a PDF version of the relevant issue from this URL:
http://www.elvish.org/VT/sample.html
(обратно)
1. Introduction
J.R.R. Tolkien was a man of faith, and in subtle ways his beliefs and
philosophical notions were reflected in his narratives. "
The Lord of
the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work,"
he noted in 1953, "unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the
revision" (Letters:172). Still there are no direct or explicit
references to Christianity or Catholicism in LotR, or for that matter in
The Hobbit or
The Silmarillion. It has, however, long been known
that Tolkien made a Quenya translation of the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew
6:9-13). This, of course, does not mean that he planned to insert this
prayer into his invented world; the long ages of Middle-earth supposedly
far predated the time of Jesus, so this would be historically impossible
even within the fictional context. Rather we should see this translation
as a confirmation of Tolkien’s statement that to him, it was the
invented languages and not the fictional history that was the primary
thing: "The invention of languages is the foundation. The
stories were
made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me
a name comes first and the story follows" (Letters:219).
Some have contended that Tolkien’s languages are so inextricably bound
up with his fiction that they literally would not make any sense if
removed from the Middle-earth setting, the languages
as such being
dismissed as nothing but figments of "literary art". Such a view,
however, seems to represent a sad diminishing of Tolkien’s efforts, as
well as a profound lack of appreciation for the infinite flexibility of
Language. On occasion, Tolkien himself might modestly dismiss his
languages as "nonsense" or a "mad hobby" (MC:239, Letters:8), but in
reality he did know the nature and potential of his work: He noted about
his languages that they "
have some existence, since I have composed
them in some completeness" (Letters:175, emphasis added). Hence they
could in principle be used to translate any text, even if the text as
such had no direct connection to the narratives or the invented world.
And as can now be seen, Tolkien
did produce at least one such
translation: a Quenya version not only of the
Pater Noster or Lord’s
Prayer, but also of the
Ave Maria or Hail Mary. The two are written
consecutively and may well be considered one work. This is presently the
sole known example of Tolkien rendering into one of his languages a text
not originating with himself.
Why did Tolkien translate these prayers? It seems quite unlikely that he
actually
used the Quenya versions in his own worship. In
Vinyar
Tengwar #32, where Carl F. Hostetter and Patrick Wynne presented their
own Quenya version of the Lord’s Prayer (made before they got to see
Tolkien’s translation), Hostetter in his editorial observed:
"Translations of the Lord’s Prayer have enjoyed a long tradition as
representative texts for use in side-by-side comparisons of various
languages." But since Tolkien apparently never made any efforts to have
his Quenya-language Lord’s Prayer published, it does not seem that he
intended it to be a general "sample" of the language. Most likely he
wrote down these texts for no more profound reason than his own
amusement – which should not, however, be taken as an indication of a
frivolous attitude towards these prominent religious texts. The
translation as such was probably serious enough, all the more so since
these prayers would be important to Tolkien as a Catholic.
Quenya texts as substantial as this one rarely appear. If we limit the
scope to what is more or less LotR-style Quenya, the only substantial
texts (as opposed to isolated words or short or unconnected sentences)
that have been available so far number no more than three or four. They
are
Namárië in LotR (and RGEO:66-67), the latest version of the
Last
Ark poem in MC:221-222,
Fíriel’s Song in LR:72, and
Cirion’s Oath
in UT:305, 317. Fíriel’s Song is not even quite LotR-style Quenya, and
Cirion’s Oath consists of only two sentences. The addition to our corpus
of the 73-word Lord’s Prayer/Hail Mary text, which may even be
post-LotR, must therefore be seen as an important event, justifying a
quite thorough analysis.
The analysis here offered is organised into three parts. The first,
relatively brief part will simply establish a
Text to be analysed. In
this case, Tolkien’s handwriting is luckily quite legible and
unambiguous, with only a few uncertain points (such as the distribution
of spaces). I will (summarily) try to justify the readings I prefer,
often based on examples of Quenya that were published earlier.
The next part, the
Syntactical/Analytical Commentary, will match the
texts with typical English versions and analyse the Quenya versions word
by word, but yet within the textual context: This is where observations
regarding syntactical relationships within the text will be set out.
The
Lexical/Etymological Commentary constitutes the final and by far
the longest part of this analysis, providing detailed studies of the
individual words, organised alphabetically. Here I will discuss how
these words relate to material that has been published earlier, and try
to infer what history and etymology Tolkien may have imagined for the
various words and elements. Still, this is not to be taken as a
mini-version of a Quenya Etymological Dictionary; while I will sometimes
go into greater detail than a mere technical analysis of the text before
us might seem to warrant, I will try to maintain the connection with the
text itself. So to ensure easy referencing, nearly all of the
entry-heads cite the word in the exact form it has in this text,
including any inflectional or pronominal endings – which are then
discussed in that same entry, or in the case of endings occurring
repeatedly, cross-referenced to the entry for another word exemplifying
that suffix. (A few suffixed elements that occur
repeatedly in the
text are however given separate entries, if that seems convenient, but
no attempt is here made to be entirely consistent regarding such details
of the presentation. Hence you will find a separate entry for the
pronominal ending -
mma our, whereas the ending -
lya thy is
discussed in the entry for
esselya thy name.) The discussion of
various technical oddities will be worked into the Lexical Commentary
wherever it is convenient; thus there is a discussion of some of the
strange
aorists occurring in these texts in the entry for the word
care, simply because this word provided a good opportunity to
discuss the normal aorist formation and its apparent diachronic
development. By using concrete words and forms found in the texts as the
starting-point for such discourses, I hope to avoid making the
discussions needlessly abstract.
At the end will be found a
Summary recapitulating the major new
insights provided by this text. Here I will slip into a perspective that
is "practical" rather than strictly academic: I tend to be mindful about
the needs of people who want to write or compose in Quenya themselves,
since many aspire to do this, usually being very anxious to stay within
the framework of Tolkien’s system and not distort or dilute it.
The discussions below will involve extensive comparison with earlier
published sources. These will normally be referred to by book (denoted
by the common abbreviations) and page. However, in the case of two
sources, I shall simply refer to them by name with no further
references. They are:
Namárië: Also known as Galadriel’s Lament, this is by far the
longest Quenya text in LotR, occurring in
The Fellowship of the
Ring, Book Two, near the end of chapter VIII ("Farewell to Lórien"),
beginning:
Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen…
The Cormallen Praise: The praise received by the Ringbearers on the
Field of Cormallen in
The Return of the King, Book Six, chapter IV
("The Field of Cormallen"). The parts we shall here refer to are these:
Daur a Berhael, Conin en Annûn! …
A laita te, laita te! Andave
laituvalmet! …
Cormacolindor, a laita tárienna! (Cf. SD:47.) The
first exclamation is in Sindarin, the two others are Quenya. Letters:308
provides these translations: "Frodo and Sam, princes of the west,
glorify (them)." – "Bless them, bless them, long we will praise them." –
"The Ring bearers, bless (or praise) them to the height."
NOTE: In the following discussions, the
asterisk * is prefixed only
in the case of genuinely unattested forms or sentences (wrong forms are
marked with a double asterisk). "Primitive" or ancestral forms quoted by
Tolkien himself, that he often asterisked, must actually be counted just
as authoritative as the "attested" forms. These fictional
"reconstructions" are not here asterisked, but are simply referred to as
"primitive" or "ancestral". A distinction is here made between
"unattested" or "reconstructed" forms and sentences, which are marked
with *, and "deconstructed" words, that are marked with the symbol #
instead. The latter is used in the case of word-forms that are not
"constructed" but simply
isolated from the attested form, e.g.
#
indóme will isolated from
indómelya thy will. However, mere
grammatical affixes isolated from the main word are usually not so
marked, since they do not appear as independent words anyway; the symbol
# is only used in the case of endings that cannot be isolated with full
confidence.
Though I normally regularize the spelling of Tolkien’s languages,
especially in my own compositions, I have here retained the spelling
used in the sources for the sake of academic accuracy. Thus there is
here some inconsistency regarding such variant spellings as
k or
c,
q or
qu and the use of the diaeresis.
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2. The Text
Tolkien wrote his text on a piece of stationery (hence the words "From
Professor J.R.R. Tolkien, Merton College, Oxford" at the top). The text
of the prayers is not written in quite modern letters, but in a
medieval-style script, Tolkien apparently amusing himself by producing
something with the look and feel of an "ancient manuscript". More
specifically, he appears to have imitated a hand historically used for
Anglo-Saxon. The most peculiar feature of this style of writing is the
shape of the letters
s and
r, that look more like modern-day
r
and
p, respectively (for instance, the words
sí ar "now and" in
the middle of the second-to-last line of the manuscript are written in a
way that to a modern reader would rather suggest "rí ap"). Instead of
regular commas Tolkien uses dots, and instead of full stops normally
what looks like a modern colon; a regular full stop is however found
following the word
emmen.
I shall base my analysis on the following reading of Tolkien’s text:
Átaremma i ëa han ëa · na aire esselya · aranielya na tuluva · na care
indómelya cemende tambe Erumande : ámen anta síra ilaurëa massamma · ar
ámen apsene úcaremmar sív' emme apsenet tien i úcarer emmen. Álame tulya
úsahtienna mal áme etelehta ulcullo : násie : Aia María quanta Eruanno i
Héru as elye · aistana elye imíca nísi · ar aistana i yáve mónalyo Yésus
: Aire María Eruo ontaril á hyame rámen úcarindor sí ar lúmesse ya
firuvamme : násie :
In the manuscript, four words occurring at the end of a line are divided
by a hyphen, the word continuing on the next line:
massa-mma,
ú-sahtienna,
món-alyo,
firu-vamme. It seems certain that the
hyphens divide the words simply because of lack of space and should not
otherwise be included. (In the case of
firu-vamme, the hyphen is
quite large and elaborate, but since it intrudes in the middle of a
morpheme – the future-tense ending -
uva – there can be no regular
division here.)
The text above certainly is not the only possible reading. The
distribution of spaces is vague;
ëa han and
as elye could be read as
single words (
ëahan,
aselye)
[2]. A few of the accents (indicating long vowels) are unclear;
if they are there at all, they are obscured by descending elements of
the letters above.
Imíca may also be read
ímíca, both
i's
being long. When I read
yáve with a long
á, it is primarily
because all other sources have a long
á in this word and related words
(
yáve fruit by itself in LR:399 s.v. yab and as the last entry in
the
Silmarillion Appendix; cf. also
yávië for
autumn,
harvest
in LotR, Appendix D). There just might be an accent above the
a here
as well, merged into the letter above; however, without the help of
other sources I would probably have read
yave, and that may be the
actual reading here
[3].
Á hyame could very well be read as
one word,
áhyame; I prefer reading
á as a separate word because
this imperative particle is not directly prefixed to the following verb
in our very few other examples, such as
á vala rather than *
ávala
in WJ:404
[4].
The manuscript itself provides definite clues to the dating. For one
thing, since this is on Merton College stationery, it cannot be earlier
than 1945 (when Tolkien moved from Pembroke to Merton). The spelling of
the Quenya text is also interesting: we repeatedly have
c rather than
k, and the word
quanta "full" provides an example of
qu rather
than
q. Students of Tolkien’s languages will know that in the
pre-LotR period, Tolkien usually wrote
q,
k rather than
qu,
c (indeed the name of the language itself was spelt "Qenya"). Various
philological clues, discussed in detail in the Lexical Commentary below,
seem to suggest that this text is not younger than the LotR Appendices
(in particular, see the entry for the word
ilaurëa concerning the
element
aurë). This takes us to 1955 or later, but not later than
1959-60 (when a certain phonological feature, found in the
Etymologies
of the thirties but apparently abandoned in the text before us, seems to
have been re-instituted – see the entry
care in the Lexical
Commentary). The word #
massa (rather than
masta) for
bread
also points to the fifties; see the entry
massamma. Instead of the
word
ontaril for
mother,
begetter we might have expected
*
nostaril based on a last-minute change Tolkien did in the final
volume of LotR (SD:73); this may suggest that our text (slightly?)
predates this minute change. If we date this text to 1955, we shall
probably not err much. It
may be a little earlier, but not much: the
word
ëa occurring in this text does not seem to have entered Tolkien’s
mythos before 1951 (see LR:338, MR:7, 31 regarding
Ëa or
Eä as a
name of the universe). The word #
ála "do not" incorporates -
la
as a negative element "not", but "possibly soon after the publication of
The Lord of the Rings", Tolkien abandoned this element (see
VT42:32). He reintroduced it in the last years of his life, but this
text is certainly older than ca. 1970. All things considered, it seems
quite unlikely that Tolkien made these translations earlier than 1951 or
later than 1955.
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3. Syntactical/Analytical Commentary: The Textual Context Analysed
I. THE LORD’S PRAYER
Átaremma i ëa han ëa ·
Our father who art in heaven,
It is not quite certain that this traditional English wording of the
prayer actually corresponds to the Quenya text, though it certainly
begins with the words "our Father who art…":
Átaremma "our father",
sc. #
átar "father" (other sources have
atar with a short
a) +
-
mma "ours", with a connecting vowel -
e- slipped in between the
noun and the ending to avoid an impossible consonant cluster. This
ending -
mma denotes an
exclusive "our";
átaremma is not used for
"our father" when his children are talking about him among themselves
(that is *
átarelma), but when they are addressing another party that
is not among his children: In this case, it is the father himself that
is being addressed.
i "who", relative pronoun.
ëa "is" or "exists",
han a hitherto unknown word that according to the normal English
wording of the prayer ought to be the preposition "in" (though it is
wholly dissimilar to the normal word for "in",
mi). See the Lexical
Commentary for further discussion of this word
[5]. The second
ëa would correspond to "heaven". If this
is a noun, it would have to be equated with
Eä, the well-known
Quenya name of the created universe, despite the fact that in the text
before us it is not capitalized. This word is a surprising choice as a
translation for "heaven"; Tolkien did not even use it when translating
"thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" a few lines down. If
han is a preposition, it would seem to somehow describe Eru’s position
in relation to Eä, and in light of the normal wording of the prayer, Eru
must in some sense be "in" Eä. Perhaps
han may mean something along
the lines of "permeating"? Yet in what precise sense Eru is present
within Eä was something of a mystery even to the inhabitants of
Middle-earth, as is evident from the
Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth
(MR:322: "How could Eru enter into the thing [Eä] that He has made, and
that which He is beyond measure greater? … He is already in it, as
well as outside…but indeed the
in-dwelling and the
out-living are
not in the same mode… So may Eru in that mode be present in Eä that
proceeded from him"). Of course, when trying to interpret a translation
of a text that belongs to our world rather than Tolkien’s invented
world, attempting to glean information from his mythos may be beside the
point. Perhaps Tolkien simply meant to say something like *"our Father
who is in (?) the universe". It should be noted, though, that there is
an old
Gnomish text that seems to feature a preposition
han =
"above" (see the relevant entry in the Lexical Commentary below for
reference). If this is what
han means here, Tolkien would seem to have
rephrased "who art in heaven" to "who art above the universe", perhaps
because people within his mythos "did not conceive of the sky as a
divine residence" (Letters:204; cf. the entry
Erumande in the Lexical
Commentary).
Another, even more ingenious interpretation could be that Tolkien here
did
not translate "who art in heaven", but substituted another
Bible-based phrase, namely God’s self-designation "I am that I am" or "I
am who I am" (Exodus 3:14; Hebrew
`ehyeh `asher `ehyeh). Could
Tolkien have re-phrased the first line of the prayer as *"our Father who
art that thou art"? This would allow us to interpret
ëa as a verb in
both of its occurrences. If this is so,
han would have to mean
something like *"that" or *"that which". However, this theory seems
difficult to maintain, even apart from the fact that a devout Catholic
would hardly feel free to significantly rephrase the Lord’s Prayer. If
i ëa han ëa is to mean *"who art that thou art", the second
ëa would
be expected to include a second person pronominal ending (probably
-
lye), but no such suffix is present. Moreover, such an
interpretation would require that
ëa can be used as a copula (like
ná), but our few examples hint that this is not so. The verb
ëa
(also spelt
eä) may be translated "is", but we have no example of it
being used to connect a subject with a noun or an adjective; rather it
means "exists", and so Tolkien translated it in at least one case
(VT39:7). Hence in Cirion’s Oath (UT:305, 317) we have the sentence
i
Eru i or ilye mahalmar eä, "the One who
is above all thrones": Eru
exists in this sublime position;
or ilyë mahalmar "above all
thrones" may here be seen as an
adverbial phrase rather than a
predicate. No matter how we interpret the precise syntax, this example
indicates that
ëa rather than
ná is used for "is" when a subject is
to be connected to a prepositional phrase denoting a position. It seems
most reasonable, then, to assume that
Átaremma i ëa han ëa is another
example of this, and that this means something along the lines of *"our
Father who is in Eä" (though the precise meaning of
han, that we
take to be a preposition of some sort, must remain as uncertain as the
spatial relation between Eru and Eä)
[6].
Átaremma i ëa han ëa provides a new example of the word order used in
a relative phrase. Here we have subject + relative pronoun + verb +
prepositional phrase. On the other hand, the wording
i Eru i or ilyë
mahalmar eä in Cirion’s Oath inverts the order of the verb and the
prepositional phrase, placing the verb at the end (much like in a German
relative phrase, but in Cirion’s Oath the verb
eä is actually not
absolutely final; there is an adverb
tennoio "for ever" following it).
Carrying the word order used in Cirion’s Oath over to the Lord’s Prayer
would produce *
Átaremma i han ëa ëa, the first
ëa being a noun
(Eä, the universe) and the second a verb "is, exists". Perhaps Cirion’s
Oath displays the more normal word order, the Prayer using an
alternative wording to avoid two
ëa in sequence. In a highly inflected
language like Quenya, the word order would typically be quite free
anyway. It may be noted that the sole relative sentence in Namárië – the
words
tellumar, yassen tintilar i eleni, literally "domes, which-in
twinkle the stars" (RGEO:66-67) – has the verb
tintilar "twinkle"
immediately following the relative pronoun
ya "which" (here inflected
for plural locative:
yassen). This quote was from the "prose
version" of Namárië in RGEO; the "poetic" version in LotR does not have
the noun
tellumar "domes" immediately in front of the relative
pronoun, but still agrees that the
verb follows immediately after the
relative pronoun. This would be the same word order as in
Átaremma i
ëa… "our Father who is…" It would seem that Quenya does not have a
fixed word order in relative sentences, but
typically the verb may
follow immediately after the relative pronoun, as in the phrases
Átaremma i ëa and
tellumar, yassen tintilar.
na aire esselya ·
hallowed be thy name,
The word
na seems to be an
optative particle (that is, a particle
signaling that the sentence it occurs in should be taken as a
wish
rather than a declarative statement),
aire "holy" (cf.
aire María
for "holy Mary" in the
Hail Mary text),
esselya "thy name" (sc.
esse "name" + -
lya "thy"). The whole sentence could be interpreted
*"be holy thy name" with
na as the imperative "be!" (LR:374 lists
nâ
2- as the stem of the verb "to be" in Quenya), and perhaps this was
indeed the construction the early Eldar originally intended, but if this
is the case,
na later evolved beyond being a mere imperative "be!" In
light of the two next examples (see below), I think that in terms of
synchronic syntax, it is probably best to interpret
aire esselya as a
nominal sentence "holy [is] thy name" (we will see several more examples
of such sentences in this text), this declarative sentence then being
transformed into a wish or a prayer by supplying the particle
na:
"May your name [be] holy."
aranielya na tuluva ·
thy kingdom come,
aranielya "thy kingdom", sc. #
aranie "kingdom" + -
lya "thy",
na optative particle denoting a wish,
tuluva "shall come", verb
tul- "come" + the future-tense ending -
uva. Stylistic matters
aside, the Quenya text reads literally something like "thy kingdom,
wish-that [it] will come". Unlike the standard English text of the
prayer, that simply expresses a wish that the kingdom may come without
touching on time at all, the Quenya version makes it clear that the
coming of the Kingdom of God is a
future event – as indicated by the
future-tense form
tuluva. (Contrast the aorist tense employed in the
translation of "thy will be done" below; this is not a prayer regarding
a singular future event, but a prayer that the will of God
always be
done, irrespective of time.)
na care indómelya cemende tambe Erumande :
thy will be done, on earth as [it is] in heaven
na wishing-particle,
care "does", aorist verb (with no explicit
subject!),
indólmelya "your will" (#
indóme "will" + -
lya
"thy"),
cemende "(as?) on earth". This is a hitherto unknown case or
adverbial form. It could have much the same function as the well-known
locative in -
sse (that also occurs in the text before us, in the
word
lúmesse below). The basic word is
cemen "earth", so the ending
could be #-
de (which form it could only have following words ending
in -
l, -
r or as here -
n; otherwise impossible consonant
clusters would arise – or, if this suffix were added to words ending in
a vowel, an equally impossible intervocalic
d). It may be that the
ending is actually #-
nde, reduced to #-
de when added to a word
in -
n. It could also be a kind of "comparative" case, indicating
that
cemende is being compared to
Erumande (see below). In earlier
"Qenya", an ending -
ndon meaning "like" appears; it is possible that
-
nde is a later incarnation of it (see the entry
cemende in the
Lexical Commentary below for further discussion)
[7].
tambe "as", evidently used when comparing with
something not close to the speaker; contrast
sív' later in the text,
apparently meaning "as" when comparing to something that
is in the
proximity of the speaker (see the Lexical Commentary for further
discussion of both words).
Erumande "(as?) in heaven", a most peculiar
form apparently including
Eru "God"; see Lexical commentary. It
evidently incorporates the same "locative" or "comparative" ending as in
cemende, and since the latter is known to correspond to the
nominative form
cemen, the nominative of
Erumande could likewise
be #
Eruman. Yet since the ending may also be #
-nde, another
possible nominative may be #
Eruma[8].
This line suggests that Tolkien based his Quenya version of the prayer
on the typical English wording rather than the Greek or Latin versions.
In the Greek text of Matthew 6:10, the wording used is "as in heaven, so
on earth" (
hôs en ouranôi kai epi gês; cf. also Latin
sicut in
caelo et in terra). The inversion "on earth as in heaven" is however
usual in English versions (found already in one Old English translation:
on eorthan swa swa on heofenum), and Tolkien is seen to have carried
it over into Quenya.
This line commences with the last attestation of the wishing-particle
na in this text, and we can summarize the syntactical rules relating
to it as follows: The particle is used to express a wish (or perhaps
indeed prayer) about what happens (will happen) to an object,
or what
a subject does (will do). If the speaker wishes that a subject is to
have or receive the qualities denoted by some adjective, the syntax is
particle + adjective + subject (
na aire esselya, *"wish-that holy
[is] thy name" = "hallowed be thy name"). If the speaker wishes that a
subject is to
do something, the syntax is subject + particle + finite
verb in the appropriate tense:
Aranielya na tuluva, *"thy kingdom,
wish-that [it] will come". If the speaker wants to express what he
wishes to be done to an object, the syntax is particle + finite verb +
object:
Na care indómelya, *"wish-that [one] does thy will". The
latter is the most remarkable construction; the subject position is
simply left empty. One is reminded of the Adûnaic system, whereby the
passive is rendered by "subject in accusative" (SD:439 – in other words,
the "passive" construction basically consists of simply
omitting the
real subject, denoting the agent, from the sentence!) It may be that
Quenya regularly employs "subject-less" verbs where English would have
an "impersonal" subject like
one: hence
care = *"one does". (It
may be noted that Tolkien sometimes slipped in singular third person
pronouns when translating such aorist verbs, e.g.
take "he fastens" in
LR:389 s.v. tak-, though no explicit pronominal element "he" is present.
Perhaps this could also be taken as – or is properly – an impersonal
verb: *"one fastens". If so,
na care indómelya is not really a
subject-less construction: rather a somewhat ethereal impersonal subject
is inherent in this very form of the verb, though it is only perceived
when it is not "overridden" by another, explicit subject.) In Quenya, it
would probably be
permissible to slip in an explicit subject in the
normal position and say (for instance) *
na ilquen care indómelya,
"wish that everyone does thy will". This would involve nothing more
dramatic than merging the attested patterns subject + particle + finite
verb and particle + finite verb + object (into subject + particle +
finite verb + object)
[9].
ámen anta síra ilaurëa massamma ·
Give us this day our daily bread,
ámen imperative particle
á with a dative pronoun
men "to us,
for us" directly suffixed (evidently #
me "we, us" + dative ending
-
n),
anta verbal stem "give", connecting with the imperative
particle in the previous word to produce an imperative "give!" The
dative form #
men is the indirect object of this phrase, hence "give
(to) us".
síra "this day, today" (a somewhat surprising form; we might
rather have expected *
síre – see Lexical Commentary).
ilaurëa
"daily" (
il-aurë-a "every-day-ly"),
massamma "our bread"
(
massa "bread" + -
mma pronominal ending denoting exclusive
"our", as in
Átaremma in the first line).
*ar ámen apsene úcaremmar sív' emme apsenet tien i úcarer emmen. *
and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against
us.
ar "and",
ámen imperative particle
á combined with the dative
pronoun
men "for us, to us" as above.
apsene stem of the verb
"forgive", connecting with the imperative particle and the suffixed
dative pronoun to produce a phrase meaning "forgive us". Notice that
what is in English would be the direct object of the verb "forgive" is
in Quenya the
indirect object instead: In Quenya, the direct object is
evidently
the matter that is forgiven, while the indirect object
(the dative object) is the
person that is forgiven. This is evident
from the next word:
úcaremmar "our sins", which is #
úcare "sin,
misdeed, trespass" + the ending -
mma for exclusive "our" + the
plural ending -
r. (Less probably this could be #
úcar "sin,
misdeed, trespass" + a connecting vowel
e + the other endings; but see
úcaremmar in the Lexical commentary.)
sív' "as", elided form of
*
síve (the final vowel
e dropping out since the next word also
begins in
e – there is however no hard-and-fast rule that such
elisions have to occur whenever two similar vowels follow one another,
cf.
na aire esselya rather than *
na air' esselya, but prepositions
and particles, being unstressed, may be more susceptible to elision than
other words). *
Síve apparently means "as" when the speakers are
comparing with something in their own proximity; see note on
tambe and
*
síve below.
emme emphatic pronoun, exclusive "we" (emphatic
we
to contrast with
those who trespass against us).
apsenet probably
*"forgive them", aorist tense with the pronominal suffix -
t for
"them" as direct object. This is one of only two published examples of a
verb receiving one pronominal ending denoting the
object only, and the
very first example of a
finite verb with such an ending (the other
example being an infinitive:
karitas "to do
it", VT41:13, 17).
In all other known examples, verb-forms that include a pronominal suffix
denoting the object also have a suffix denoting the
subject, the
latter preceding the former. An example involving the same ending -
t
"them" as in
apsenet is provided by the Cormallen Praise, that has
andave laituvalmet for "long shall we praise them". Here the ending
-
t "them" is preceded by -
lme- "we": object and subject
respectively.
Emme apsenet "we forgive them" may be seen as a reworked
form of *
apsenemmet, the subject being expressed as an independent
pronoun instead of a suffix since "we" is to be emphatic, but the ending
-
t for "them" remains suffixed to the verb.
tien apparently dative
pronoun "(for) them" or "(to) them" (the dative of
te, see Lexical
commentary). This would be the
indirect object of the verb "forgive",
and since
tien is followed by the relative sentence "who trespass
against us", it is clear that the dative pronoun denotes the ones that
are forgiven. As we have already observed, in Quenya the indirect
(dative) object of "forgive" denotes the ones that are forgiven, the
direct object the matter that is forgiven:
ámen apsene úcaremmar,
"forgive
us [
men, indirect object]
our trespasses
[
úcaremmar, direct object]". The -
t suffixed to the verb
"forgive" in
emme apsenet must likewise be the direct object, "we
forgive
them", but again, this "them" must refer to the things that
are forgiven rather than the people who are forgiven: the people are
referred to by the independent dative object
tien instead. Tolkien
apparently used the wording *"forgive us our trespasses as we forgive
them [that is, trespasses] for the benefit of those [
tien, dative]
who trespass against us".
i relative pronoun "who",
úcarer verb
"trespass" or "sin", literally rather "do misdeeds": aorist tense with
the plural ending -
r. (Based on other examples we would rather
expect *
úcarir, and probably also *
apsenit rather than
apsenet
above – see
care in the Lexical commentary: Regarding the formation of
the aorist, Tolkien may have been in a somewhat unorthodox "phase" when
he wrote this text, compared to the system he used both earlier and
later.)
emmen "against us" (exclusive). This is the pronoun
emme
(attested earlier in the sentence) with the dative ending -
n, our
first example of an emphatic pronoun with a case ending. This is also
our first example of the dative being used to denote an indirect object
adversely affected by the verbal action, hence the English translation
"against us" rather than "for us, to us". All previously attested
examples of the dative are used to denote indirect objects that
benefit from the verbal action, e.g.
nin "for me" in the sentence
sí man i yulma nin
enquantuva? "now who will refill the cup
for
me?" in Namárië. (As far as grammar is concerned,
tien i úcarer
emmen could probably also be interpreted **"those who trespass
for
us"; the context must be taken into account when determining precisely
how the dative is to be understood.)
Again we see Tolkien basing the Quenya version of the prayer on English
translations rather than the Greek text of Matthew 6:12, which reads
tois opheiletais hemôn = "our debtors" rather than the longer
paraphrase "those who trespass (or, sin) against us". This wording is
quite typical for English translations.
Note on
tambe and *
síve: Both of these words are translated "as,
like". Yet they are apparently not interchangeable. In
na care
indómelya cemende tambe Erumande, "thy will be done, on earth
as
it is in heaven", the word "as" points far away from the speakers
(literally all the way to heaven). On the other hand, in the sentence
sív' emme apsenet tien i úcarer emmen, "
as we forgive those
who trespass against us", the word "as" refers to the situation of the
speakers themselves. Thus, the distinction apparently has to do with the
distance between the speaker and the thing/situation "as" refers to. For
instance:
*
Caruvalmes síve queni sinome oi acárier ta,
"We will do it
like people in this place have always done that,"
*
ar lá tambe carintes i ostosse.
"and not
like they do it in the city."
The first "like" refers to a situation
close to the speaker, the other
to a situation that is
not close to the speaker. Presumably one could
use the evidently "neutral" word for "as, like", namely
ve, for both
sív[e] and
tambe (indeed both forms seem to include
ve, see
Lexical Commentary) – but Tolkien apparently built into Quenya the
possibility of making some fine distinctions that are not regularly
expressed in English. Since Quenya is in many ways
the language of
Tolkien’s mythos, the tongue of the High Elves of the Blessed Realm, it
is not surprising that he tried to make it rich and full of subtle
nuances.
Álame tulya úsahtienna mal áme etelehta ulcullo : násie :
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.
(The Quenya text has no initial "and".)
Álame is the imperative
particle
á with a suffixed negation #
la "not" followed by yet
another suffix, the now familiar #
me "us", here occurring without
the dative ending -
n: this is a direct object, not an indirect one.
tulya stem of the verb
lead, which combined with
álame forms the
imperative phrase "do not lead us".
úsahtienna "into temptation",
clearly #
úsahtie "temptation" + the allative ending -
nna "to,
into".
mal but (wholly different from previously attested words of
the same meaning),
áme imperative particle
á + suffixed pronoun
#
me "us".
etelehta stem of verb "deliver, free", connecting with
áme to form an imperative phrase
deliver us.
ulcullo from
evil, incorporating the ablative ending -
llo "from". The noun
"evil" to which it is attached can be either #
ulcu or *
ulco with
a stem #
ulcu- (see Lexical Commentary). Conceivably this word could
mean "the evil one" (the devil) rather than "evil" as an abstract. The
Greek phrase
tou ponerou can be translated both ways, and some modern
versions do prefer the alternative wording: "Save us from the evil one"
(Matthew 6:12 in
The Jerusalem Bible, which version Tolkien himself
translated a minor part of: Letters:378). In Ephesians 6:14-16, most
translators take
tou ponerou as referring to the devil: "Stand your
ground…always carrying the shield of faith so that you can use it to
put out the burning arrows of the evil one." We cannot be certain what
precise meaning Tolkien intended #
ulcu (or *
ulco) to have,
"evil" or "evil one". The shape of the word itself may suggest the
latter, but if it is not an abstract, we would probably expect the
article
i "the" before it to express "
the evil one" – unless it is
actually a
name of the "Evil One", in which case we would have
expected it to be capitalized.
Some versions of the prayer slip in a doxology at the end: "For thine is
the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen" (Matthew
6:13; cf. 1 Chronicles 29:11 and Revelation 4:11). However, these words
do not occur in some of the oldest Greek manuscripts: Modern Greek
master texts (like those prepared by Westcott/Hort, or the Aland
edition) typically omit them, as do a number of modern translations. Of
this spurious doxology, Tolkien only included the final "amen!" in his
Quenya version of the prayer:
násie, probably literally *"this is
[so]" (see Lexical Commentary). Evidently it was a concern of his that
the text he translated should be genuine. From a
linguistic point of
view we may regret the omission of the full doxology, for it would have
been interesting to see how Tolkien would have handled the independent
possessive pronoun
thine (would the long-hypothesized form *
elya
have been confirmed?)
Here the syntax relating to the imperative particle
á may be
summarized. The Lord’s Prayer provides four examples:
ámen anta "give
us",
ámen apsene "forgive us",
áme etelehta "deliver us" and (with
both a negation -
la- and a pronominal ending -
me suffixed)
álame tulya "lead us not". To these examples may be added
á hyame
for "pray" in Hail Mary (see below). In the latter example we see the
imperative particle by itself, without suffixes, as we do in the
sentence
á vala Manwe "may Manwe order it" (or literally *"do rule
Manwe") in WJ:404. The particle also occurs by itself, in the variant
(short) form
a, in a sentence from the Cormallen Praise:
A laita
te, laita te, "bless them, bless them".
The
verb that follows the imperative particle
á (standing alone or
with negations/pronouns suffixed) will appear as an uninflected stem.
Anta,
etelehta,
tulya are examples of A-stems, or "derived"
verbs (which must also be the case with
vala "rule" in
á vala
Manwe). On the other hand,
apsene and
hyame would seem to
represent "basic" verbs, the essential component of which is just a
naked root with no suffixed verbal ending like -
ta or -
ya (in
apsene we may have an element
prefixed to the root, but that is
irrelevant). Such a verb adds an -
e, evidently representing
primitive short -
i, when the verb appears as an infinitival or
uninflected "stem".
Á hyame "pray!" may be compared to the phrase
áva
kare in WJ:371: "A longer form
áva…which shows combination with
the imperative particle *
â, was commonly used as a negative
imperative
Don’t!, either used alone or with an uninflected verbal
stem, as
áva kare!" – a negative command "don’t do it!" (WJ:371).
Kare here counts as the "uninflected verbal stem" of the verb
kar-
"make, do", itself representing the naked root kar (LR:362). The
negation (
áva instead of
á) does not affect the syntax; one
could certainly scramble the attested examples
á hyame and
áva kare
to produce *
áva hyame "don’t pray!" and *
á kare "do!" The
uninflected verbal stems coincide in form with certain tense-forms: an
A-stem like
anta, as well as the actually infinitival stems
hyame
and
kare, could by their form also be examples of the aorist.
However, when preceded by the imperative particle
á (or its negated
forms
áva,
ála) such a form must be taken as
infinitival/uninflected.
The Quenya versions of the Lord’s Prayer and Hail Mary reveal one new
thing about the imperative particle: it easily attracts pronominal
elements. The pronoun denoting the object of the imperative phrase (in
accusative for a direct object or dative for an indirect object) may be
directly suffixed to the imperative particle, before the verb follows.
Hence we have for instance
áme etelehta "deliver us",
ámen anta
"give (to) us". Yet the sentence
a laita te "bless them" in LotR has
the pronoun
following the verb. We must assume that
te "them" could
also in this case have been suffixed to the imperative particle, so that
"bless them!" would be expressed as *
Áte laita, "do-them bless!"
Conversely, in light of this example from LotR we must assume that the
pronouns could have been placed
after the verb also in the text before
us: *
á anta men "give us", *
á apsene men "forgive us",
á
etelehta me "deliver us", *
ála tulya me "do not lead us". Yet it
may be a feature of Quenya grammar that when a short pronoun that
functions as a direct or indirect object cannot be
suffixed to this
verb (which is perhaps always impossible in the case of an
indirect/dative object), then the pronoun typically appears
before the
verb instead – even though the preferred word order is otherwise
subject-verb-object rather than subject-object-verb. Compare such French
constructions as
je t’aime, though French is normally
subject-verb-object and not subject-object-verb; the Quenya equivalent
can be found in LR:61:
Inye tye-méla "I love thee" with
tye "thee"
prefixed to the verb rather than following it. Even in Namárië
(including the prose version) we have
sí man i yulma nin enquantuva?
for "who now will refill the cup for me?"; notice that the dative
pronoun
nin comes before the verb, though its equivalent "for me" in
the English translation comes after it. It seems that when placed in
front of the verb, such short pronouns easily glue themselves to a
preceding particle when such is present. In light of the examples found
in the text before us, an imperative "refill the cup for me!" would
probably be *
ánin enquate i yulma! with
nin "for me" directly
suffixed to the imperative particle.
(обратно)
II. HAIL MARY
Aia María quanta Eruanno
Hail Mary full of grace,
Aia "hail" (later form/alternative spelling of
aiya),
María
"Mary" (the "Quenya" form is based on the Latin pronunciation, as is
Yésus = "Jesus" later),
quanta "full",
Eruanno "of grace" –
evidently the genitive of *
Eruanna "grace" or literally *"God-gift".
This example shows that "full of" something is rendered as
quanta +
genitive. This use of the genitive has never been attested
before
[10].
i Héru as elye ·
the Lord is with thee.
i article "the",
Héru "Lord" (other sources have
heru with a short
e),
as "with",
elye "thee" (or "thou", which is the meaning this
word has in Namárië; we know little of what case Quenya prepositions
normally govern, accusative or nominative). It will be noted that there
is no Quenya word corresponding to "is" in the English version.
Presumably it would have been possible to slip in such a word (before a
prepositional phrase denoting a position it would probably be
ëa
rather than
ná, hence *
i Héru ëa as elye) – but it is clearly
not required. This is a
nominal sentence, the word "is" being left out
and understood. Such constructions are common enough in the languages of
our own world (e.g. Russian and many Semitic tongues), and this
construction may be common or even dominant in Eldarin as well. In Hail
Mary, this line is the first of three consecutive nominal sentences.
Such constructions are not unheard of in material that has been
published earlier, either: in LR:47 we have
ilya sí maller raikar for
*"now all roads [are] bent".
Vahaiya sín atalante Tolkien himself
translated "far away now (is) the Downfallen", the parenthetical "is"
clearly indicating that this copula is not directly expressed in Quenya
(SD:247). It may be that nominal sentences without an explicit copula
are normal rather than exceptional in Quenya.
As noted above, it would be possible to read
aselye (as one word). If
so, this is better taken as a preposition
as "with" + the pronominal
ending -
lye "thou" (or in this context "thee"), with a connecting
vowel -
e- inserted before the ending to avoid an impossible
consonant cluster (cf.
e before another pronominal ending in
Átar-e-mma). Alternatively, the preposition could be #
ase, the
-
e being part of it. This would in any case be the first known
example of a preposition with a pronominal ending. There are, however,
some arguments against reading
aselye as one word. For one thing,
s
would then become intervocalic, and intervocalic
s is normally voiced
to
z, later becoming
r, so that we would have seen **
arelye
instead. (As long as we do not know anything about the etymology of
#
as(e) "with", it is of course possible that it could represent
earlier *
aþ(e), since
s from
þ in no case became
z >
r;
see the entry
nísi in the Lexical Commentary below for an example. Yet
this seems like an ad hoc theory.) The other argument against the
reading
aselye is that Quenya as we know it does not attach pronominal
suffixes to prepositions, though we seem to have only one example to go
on: Namárië, including the "prose version" in RGEO:67 where metric
considerations are of no concern, reads
imbë met for "between us". If
independent pronouns were readily replaced by the corresponding
pronominal ending following prepositions, we would expect *
imbemmet
(?) instead
[11].
aistana elye imíca nísi :
Blessed art thou among women
aistana "blessed" (evidently a verb #
aista- "bless" + the past
participle ending -
na),
elye "thou" (emphatic form),
imíca
"among",
nísi plural of
nís "woman" (according to all other sources,
the plural ought to be
nissi instead; see the Lexical Commentary).
Just like in the sentence
i Héru as elye "the Lord [is] with thee"
above, the verb "is" is left out and understood.
ar aistana i yáve mónalyo Yésus :
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus.
ar "and",
aistana "blessed" as above,
i "the",
yáve "fruit",
mónalyo "of thy womb", which is #
móna "womb" + the pronominal
ending -
lya "thy" + the genitive ending -
o "of", that displaces
a final -
a (cf.
Vardo as the genitive of
Varda in Namárië),
Yésus "Jesus". Yet again, the verb "is" is understood; there is no
copula between
aistana and
i yáve. Notice that
yáve receives the
article
i though it is also governed by a genitive that might be
thought to determine it sufficiently. Other examples seem to indicate
that it is inconsequential to the meaning whether the article is
included or not when the noun is also governed by a genitive; it is to
be considered definite in either case. The phrase
i yáve mónalyo
represents the same pattern as
i Equessi Rúmilo "the sayings of Rúmil"
in WJ:398; the article is included. On the other hand,
Indis
i·
Kiryamo "The Mariner’s Wife" in UT:8 omits the article before
indis "wife", but it is still definite because of the following
genitive; this does not mean "
a wife of the mariner". One question
remains unanswered: Would it have been permissible to include the
article if the genitive had
preceded the word it governs (known to be
a possible or even preferred word order – see below), or would
*
mónalyo i yáve, *
Rúmilo i Equessi, *
I Kiryamo i Indis be
just as wrong as
thy womb’s the fruit,
Rúmil’s the sayings,
the
Mariner’s the Wife in English?
Aire María Eruo ontaril
Holy Mary mother of God,
Aire "holy",
María "Mary",
Eruo "God’s" (
Eru + genitive ending
-
o),
ontaril "mother" or more literally *"begetter" (with a
feminine ending). Unlike the phrase
i yáve mónalyo above, the genitive
here comes
before the noun it governs:
Eruo ontaril is literally
"God’s mother/begetter" in that order. Above we quoted some of the
numerous attested examples of the opposite order, with the genitive
following its noun instead. It is interesting to notice that while the
"poetic" version of Namárië has
rámar aldaron for "the wings of trees"
(kenning for leaves), the prose version in RGEO:66 has
aldaron rámar
instead. Tolkien moved the genitive from a position
following the noun
it governs to a position
preceding it. The latter is evidently the
preferred order in normal prose, though exceptions abound.
á hyame rámen úcarindor
pray for us sinners
á hyame "pray",
á being the imperative particle and
hyame being an
uninflected verbal stem "pray". The form
rámen is one of the most
obscure words in this text. It evidently means "for us", for which
meaning we would expect to see a dative pronoun #
men, attested
several times above (incidentally suffixed to the imperative particle
á). Sure enough,
rámen may seem to include #
men, but what does
the prefix #
rá- mean? It seems superfluous to achieve the desired
meaning. Conceivably this could be a specialized form of the dative,
meaning something like *"on behalf of us", but the precise semantic
impact of this word must remain a mystery for now
[12].
úcarindor "sinners", #
úcarindo "sinner" with the plural ending
-
r. The word literally means rather *"evil-doers"; see the Lexical
commentary. In UT:317, Tolkien sets out a grammatical rule that "in
Quenya in the case of two declinable names in apposition only the last
is declined". This "last declinable word" rule apparently does
not
apply when a pronoun and a noun stand in apposition. The dative case is
evidently indicated by means of the ending -
n as the final element
of
rámen, and
úcarindor "sinners" (here standing in apposition to
the pronoun
rámen "for us") appears in the nominative rather than the
dative plural (which would be *
úcarindoin, according to the Plotz
declension).
sí ar lúmesse ya firuvamme : násie :
now and in the hour of our death. Amen.
sí "now",
ar "and",
lúmesse locative of
lúme "hour",
ya
"which",
firuvamme *"we shall die" (
fir-uva-mme "die-shall-we").
The ending -
mme represents an
exclusive "we", the natural form to
use here since the one that is addressed is not included in "we": This
is a group ("us sinners") addressing someone
outside that group (Mary,
among Catholics held to be sinless), not another sinner within the
group. – As for
lúmesse ya firuvamme, these Quenya words literally
mean *"in [the] hour that we shall die"; Tolkien did not directly
translate the English wording "in the hour of our death" (the literal
Quenya equivalent of which would have been rather *
i lúmesse
qualmemmo). The construction
lúmesse ya firuvamme may be seen as a
shortening of the syntactically "fuller" *
lúmesse yasse firuvamme,
"in [the] hour
in which we shall die", the relative pronoun
ya
receiving the locative ending as well (
ya with the plural locative
ending -
ssen is attested in Namárië in LotR, that has
yassen for
"wherein" referring to the plural word
oromardi "high halls"). But
this "full" construction would perhaps be perceived as somewhat
cumbersome, the locative ending occurring in two consecutive words, and
so
ya "that, which" is used like English
that in a phrase like "the
year that we moved" (instead of "the year in which we moved"). – Like
the Lord’s Prayer, Hail Mary ends in a
násie "amen" or *"so it is".
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(обратно)
4. Lexical/Etymological Commentary: Discussion of Individual Words
á, imperative particle used in conjunction with an uninflected
verbal stem:
á hyamepray! The particle has no ready English
equivalent; it is simply used in conjunction with a verbal stem to make
it clear that this verb is to be taken as an imperative. The sentence
á
vala Manwe in WJ:404 Tolkien translated "may Manwe order it"; a more
literal translation could be *
do rule Manwe (if we make an effort to
translate
á as a separate word). This
á would represent primitive
â, said to be an "imperative particle…originally independent and
variable in place" (WJ:365, 371). As mentioned in the Syntactical
Commentary above, the imperative particle occurs in LotR in the variant
form
a (as a short vowel) as part of the Cormallen Praise:
A laita
te, laita te. This is translated "bless them, bless them" in
Letters:308; more literally it is *
o bless them, bless them. The
text before us indicates that short pronouns (accusative or dative) may
be suffixed directly to this particle:
áme do [something to]
us,
ámen do [something]
for us; see separate entry
áme for further
discussion. The particle also appears in a negated form #
ála, q.v.
aia, interjection
hail. Only the spelling is new; this
interjection is attested in LotR. Frodo "speaking in tongues" in Cirith
Ungol cried
Aiya Eärendil Elenion Ancalima =
Hail Eärendil, brightest
of stars (translated in Letters:385). As for the variant spellings,
compare primitive
wâyâ envelope yielding both
vaia and
vaiya in
Quenya (LR:397 s.v. way-). Already in his very early notes on "Qenya"
phonology, Tolkien mentioned the variation
aiy-/
ai-, noting that
a word like
paiyan ("oration") was "also written
paian" (
Parma
Eldalamberon #12 p. 8). It is interesting to notice that PM:363, 364
mentions
Máyar as an alternative form of
Maiar (the lesser spirits
of the race of the Valar, cf. MR:340). It seems reasonable to assume
that the oldest Quenya form of primitive
wâyâ envelope was *
wáya
(paralleling
Máyar), later becoming (*
waiya >)
vaiya and still
later
vaia (paralleling
Maiar; at the same stage that had
vaiya, the lesser Ainur would presumably be termed *
Maiyar).
Aiya and
aia as variant words for
hail may thus simply represent
an older and a "modern" form of the same word; the difference in
pronunciation is in any case slight, and in the case of
paiyan vs.
paian Tolkien seemingly implied that the variation is merely
orthographic. (The oldest forms of
aia would be appreciably different:
archaic Quenya *
áya and primitive Elvish *
âyâ.) As for the
precise
etymology of this word, we cannot be certain what Tolkien
intended. The first part of *
âyâ could somehow be related to the
Quenya vocative particle
a, as in Treebeard’s greeting to Celeborn
and Galadriel:
a vanimar o beautiful ones (translated in
Letters:308). The ending *-
yâ is frequently used to derive both
adjectives and verbs; perhaps Quenya
ai(
y)
a can also be used
as a verb, like English
to hail. It is, however, interesting to
notice that a word similar to our suggested oldest Quenya form of
aia/
aiya, namely *
áya, is actually attested in PM:363:
"Quenya
áya meant…
awe." This is the same source (indeed the same
page) that provides the form
Máyar rather than
Maiar, so
áya and
Máyar most likely belong to the same stage of Quenya. If
Máyar later
became
Maiar,
áya awe presumably also turned into *
aia -
wholly similar to the word for
hail used in the text before us. Is it,
indeed, the same word, so that we could drop the asterisks? If so, the
Quenya interjection
ai(
y)
a hail actually or originally means
awe, and its use as a greeting would in origin be an expression of
deep respect felt by the speaker for the one that is being greeted. If
this is the correct etymology,
aia hail does not represent primitive
Elvish *
âyâ as suggested above, but primitive
gâyâ, a form given
in PM:363. The original meaning was harsher than just "awe"; Tolkien
glossed it "terror, great fear". (Tolkien imagined that in Quenya, the
meaning was softened because after the regular loss of initial
g-,
the word came to be associated with Valarin
ayanu- or
ayanûz, a
spirit of Eru’s first creation, which word was adapted to Quenya as
Ainu; see PM:364 and WJ:399. The Valar being the most prominent
Ainur in Arda,
áya came to refer especially to the
awe the Elves
felt for these mighty spirits, and the word took on a noble sense.)
Primitive
gâyâ was derived from a Common Eldarin stem gaya "awe,
dread" (cf. gáyas "fear" in the
Etymologies, LR:358; this could be
an extended form of gaya).
aire, adjective
holy:
na aire esselya *
may thy name (be)
holy,
aire María holy Mary. One’s first assumption would be that
this is the same element
aire as in Namárië, in the compound
airetári-lírinen in…her song, holy and queenly (literally rather
*"by holy-queen-song"). In the prose version of Namárië, Tolkien
rephrased this into
lírinen aire-tário, rendered
song-in
holy-queen’s in his interlinear translation (RGEO:67). Here one cannot
avoid getting the impression that
aire is the word for
holy (and as
I shall demonstrate, this is probably what Tolkien originally intended).
However, in a post-LotR source this adjective is given as
aira
instead: PM:363. The primitive form is not quoted there, but we can
evidently find it in WJ:400:
gairâ awful,
fearful said to come
from the stem gay-
astound,
make aghast, clearly the same as
gaya
awe,
dread in PM:363. (The fact that this stem may be glossed
both as a noun and a verb should not be allowed to trouble us, since the
glosses of a primitive root-word often cannot be "exact": Rather than
being a useable word itself, the root is raw-material for actual words,
so the glosses only hint at the general meaning: The glosses "astound,
make aghast" and "awe, dread" obviously revolve around the same theme.)
The phonetic development
gairâ >
aira is simple enough, and the
semantic development from
awful,
fearful to
holy is not
implausible either, if what is
holy is that which is "awful" in the
true sense of the word: awe-inspiring, object of reverent fear. (In
trying to explain why primitive
gairâ > Quenya
aira came to acquire
a more elevated sense, Tolkien also let the "loremasters" invoke the
influence from Valarin
ayanu- or
ayanûz. See
aia above.) In
gairâ, we see the relatively well-attested adjectival ending -
râ
(cf. for instance such a primitive form as
ubrâ abundant from ub-
abound, LR:396, or indeed primitive
gaisrâ dreadful from gáyas-
fear in LR:358: very similar to
gairâ in both form and meaning). Yet
all of this may in a way be beside the point, for an ancestral form
gairâ is only capable of yielding Q
aira, and in the text before
us the word appears as
aire instead.
Aire could of course be the
plural form of
aira (in such a case representing older *
airai),
but it cannot be plural here, since the nouns it modifies – "thy name"
and "Mary" – are both singulars occurring separately. It could also be a
nominal form of
aira: "The adjective
aira was the nearest
equivalent to
holy, and the noun
airë to
sanctity.
Airë was used
by the Eldar as a title of address to the Valar and the greater Máyar.
Varda would be addressed as
Airë Tári. (Cf. Galadriel’s Lament,
where it is said that the stars trembled at the sound of the holy
queen’s voice…)" (PM:363-364, reproducing a source no earlier than
February 1968, cf. PM:331.) This, then, is how Tolkien now wanted to
explain the element
aire in
airetári-lírinen in Namárië. Yet the
text before us, certainly written long before 1968, gives away that this
was not his original idea. True,
aire María for
holy Mary could be
explained as a construction similar to
Airë Tári Holy Queen, or
literally *
(your) sanctity/holiness, (the) Queen. If Varda
(Elbereth) can be addressed as
Airë or "Sanctity", we must assume that
this title is equally applicable to Mary as she appears in Catholic
thought: Indeed Tolkien stated that the good peoples of Middle-earth
"may call on a
Vala (as
Elbereth), as a Catholic might on a Saint"
(Letters:193, footnote). Yet we cannot explain
na aire esselya in the
same way; assuming that this is literally *"may thy name [be] a
sanctity" seems rather far-fetched. The conclusion that Tolkien when
writing the texts before us thought of
aire as an adjective and
not
as a noun may not be literally inescapable, but it is overwhelmingly
probable. Originally Tolkien seems to have imagined a different
etymology. The past participle
aistana blessed (see below) may very
well be related to
aire holy; if so it gives away that the
r of
the latter word was originally
s: In Quenya,
s in certain
positions became voiced to
z, in turn becoming
r; however, in
front of an unvoiced plosive like
t (as in
aistana, q.v.), it
could not change. If
aire was once *
aize < *
aise, we may
assume an even earlier, primitive form *
gaisi that would allow us to
connect this adjective with
gais-, cited in LR:358 as one primitive
incarnation of the stem gáyas-
fear. We have already pointed out
that this could be merely a variant of the gay-
astound,
make
aghast or gaya
awe,
dread that appears in later sources (PM:363,
WJ:400) – exactly the stem(s) from which Tolkien would later derive the
word for "holy". We need not doubt that the primitive adjective ended in
-
i; this is evident from the past tense verb
airitáne
hallowed, occurring in the Ms. Tolkien Drawing 91, 41v, dating to
ca. 1966 and now at the Bodleian (see
Vinyar Tengwar #32, November
1993, page 7, where Carl F. Hostetter volunteers this information from
an unpublished manuscript). This probably represents primitive
*
gaisitâ-nê, the verb *
gaisitâ-
hallow being constructed from
*
gaisi-
holy with the verbal ending -
tâ, here causative: hence
make holy =
hallow. As for the adjectival ending -
i in
*
gaisi (becoming Quenya -
e when final), compare primitive
karani red yielding Quenya
karne (LR:362 s.v. karán-). If we dare
to start speculating
why Tolkien eventually decided to change the
adjective
holy from
aire to
aira, the very word
karne
(
carne) may – perhaps – provide a hint. In the first edition of
LotR, the Ent Bregalad in a song used the word
carnemírië of his
rowans (LotR Volume 2, Book Three, chapter IV). In Letters:224, Tolkien
explained that this word means "with adornment of red jewels", literally
rather *
red-jeweled. The adjective
carne-, descended from older
karani, here appears as a prefix. Yet the change of primitive short
-
i to -
e was only supposed to occur
finally. Where not
final, as in a compound, this vowel maintained its original quality.
Compare Quenya
varne brown, derived from a stem barán- (just like
karani > Q
carne red comes from karán-) and undoubtedly meant to
represent a primitive word *
barani: In the case of
varne,
Tolkien explicitly noted that this becomes
varni- when followed by
another element (LR:351). Obviously
carne red likewise ought to
appear as
carni- in compounds, and hence Tolkien changed the word
carnemírië to
carnimírië when the revised version of LotR appeared
in 1966. With this we finally catch up with our point: if
carne red
becomes
carni- in compounds (the
i of primitive
karani retaining
its original quality when not final), then an adjective
aire holy
derived from *
gaisi likewise ought to manifest as
airi- in
compounds.
Airetári in Namárië "should" have been *
airitári
instead! Yet Tolkien failed to correct this when he emended
carnemírië
to
carnimírië. If our theory is correct, Tolkien may in the end have
felt that he had no choice but to
reinterpret the
aire of
airetári. A (singular) Quenya adjective in -
e can only represent
a primitive form in -
i, and this -
i- should be unchanged
whenever not final; hence there is simply no way the first element of
airetári can be an adjective. However, Tolkien readily came up with
a new interpretation that would still leave the translation of Namárië
in LotR more or less correct: While
ómaryo airetári-lírinen may be
rendered
in the voice of her song, holy and queenly, it "turned
out" that this
aire is not the adjective
holy after all. It is
"actually" a noun
sanctity, formed from the real adjective
holy,
which is
aira. Thus Tolkien managed to plausibly explain (away) the
linguistic inconsistencies, though they would have troubled very few
readers! However, his translation of the Lord’s Prayer, probably about
contemporaneous with the publishing of LotR, gives away that originally
aire was precisely what it would seem to be in Namárië: the adjective
holy. The alternative explanation must have emerged very late;
airitáne rather than *
airatáne for
hallowed in a late (ca. 1966)
manuscript seems to indicate that Tolkien at this point still thought of
aire,
airi- as the word for
holy. Earlier, he perhaps
planned to explain
Airetári (rather than *
Airitári) in Namárië as
a form coined on analogy with the simplex
aire. Another solution
could be that this is better taken as a loose compound
Aire Tári (a
two-word spelling is actually used in PM:363), though it "happens" to be
written in one word in the text in LotR.
aistana, past participle
blessed, indicating a verbal stem
#
aista-
bless. The ending -
naforming past participles is
well attested. Compare for instance the verb
car- (
kar-)
make
quoted in the
Etymologies (LR:362 s.v. kar-, there in the first person
aorist:
karin) with its past participle #
carna made,
attested as part of a compound in MR:408. This ending descends from
primitive -
nâ: compare such a primitive "past participle" as
skalnâ (> Quenya
halda)
hidden vs. the stem skal
1-
hide,
LR:386. However, in Quenya the past participle ending also appears in a
longer form -
ina. Examples like
hastaina marred (MR:254) would
seem to suggest that this longer form would be used in the case of a
verb in -
ta. Perhaps the past participle of #
aista-
bless
appears as
aistana rather than **
aistaina because of euphony, the
diphthong
ai in two concomitant syllables being disliked. – The verb
#
aista-
bless is not previously attested. It is obviously not to
be equated with
aista to dread in the
Etymologies (LR:358 s.v.
gáyas-
fear), though in both cases we are probably to assume a
primitive form *
gaistâ-. The verb
aista- would then include the
same stem as in (*
gaisi >)
aire holy discussed above, though
subsequent sound-changes have made the words somewhat divergent in form:
intervocalic
s is voiced to
z and then becomes
r in Noldorin
Quenya, but in front of an unvoiced plosive like
t, an
s remains
unchanged (with *
gaistâ- > Q
aista- but *
gaisi > Q
aire
compare primitive
bestâ matrimony > Q
vesta but primitive
besû
married pair > Q
veru, LR:352 s.v. bes-, the latter form arising
via *
vezu). As indicated in the discussion of
aire above, the
original meaning of the relevant stem has to do with fear and dread
rather than holiness: what is "holy" is in origin perceived as that
which is fearful or awe-inspiring. It may be that in a way, the verb
aista to dread in the
Etymologies is indeed the same as its
homonym
bless in the text before us: Tolkien simply reinterpreted the
semantic development (or rather re-coined an earlier word from much the
same elements as before, but then applied them with somewhat different
shades of meaning). In
aista-
to dread, clearly meant to come
from *
gaistâ-, the verbal ending -
tâ > -
ta adds little to
the meaning of the stem gáyas-
fear (if we take this gloss as a verb
rather than a noun). Compare a Quenya verb like
onta-
beget,
derived from a stem ono- of exactly the same meaning (LR:379; see
ontaril). Yet this ending often has a stronger meaning than simply
signaling that "this is a verb". It can be causative (see under
tulya
regarding primitive
tultâ-), but also
declarative:
Interestingly, this meaning is apparently prominent in another attested
word for
bless, namely
laita (the cry
a laita, laita te in the
Cormallen Praise and SD:47 meaning
bless them, bless them,
Letters:308). The verb
laita- would most likely be derived from a
stem that must be either lay- or day- (since initial primitive
d-
normally becomes
l- in Quenya). We know a base lay- that underlies
words for
green or
summer (Letters:283, cf. QL:52 s.v. laya), but
this seems a less than ideal candidate as the stem for a verb
bless;
on the other hand, it seems clear that Tolkien in the
post-
Etymologies period reckoned with a stem *day- having to do with
greatness (of course unconnected with day-
shadow in LR:354):
Sindarin
daer means
great (as in
Lond Daer Great Harbour,
PM:329, and
Athrad Daer/
Dhaer Great Ford, WJ:335/338), and
this adjective is probably meant to represent primitive *
dairâ (with
the same adjectival ending as in such primitive forms as
gairâ,
ubrâ,
gaisrâ: see under
aire above). Likely, Quenya
laita-
bless is to be referred to a primitive word *
daitâ-, sc. the same
stem *day-
great with the verbal ending -
tâ, that would here be
declarative: *
Daitâ- would mean
magnify, that can of course
mean to literally make big or great, but also
praise by declaring
great: When Frodo and Sam were hailed with the cry
laita te,
bless them, the onlookers would literally be encouraging one another
to
magnify them in the sense of
declaring their greatness. In the
case of the word #
aista- in the text before us, that may also be
translated
bless, this semantic idea is however derived from another
source – but the
ending seems to have the same shade of meaning. In
the case of *
gaistâ-, Tolkien evidently imagined that the ending
-
tâ is again declarative, and since the stem gay(a)- or gáyas- has
to do with fear and dread, the basic meaning would be to
declare or
recognize the fearfulness (awe-inspiring quality > holiness) of
another:
Aistana elye blessed (= recognized and declared as holy)
art thou. Contrast the earlier interpretation of *
gaistâ in the
Etymologies, where the same suffix -
tâ was simply used as a
verb-former with little independent meaning and the descendant Quenya
verb
aista to dread differed only slightly in meaning from the stem
gáyas-
fear itself.
#
ála don’t, only attested with a pronominal suffix -
me
us, in the phrase
álame tulya don’t-us lead, that is,
do not
lead us (into temptation). See
áme,
ámen concerning the
pronominal ending -
me. The first element of #
ála is the
imperative particle
á, q.v. The second element is the negation
not, clearly identical to the stem la-
no,
not (LR:367).
Another word for
don’t, namely
áva, appears in a later source.
This word as well incorporates the imperative particle
á, in this
case combined with the negation
vá, "an exclamation or particle
expressing the will or wish of the speaker", to be interpreted
I will
not or
Do not! depending on the context (WJ:371). LR:367 s.v. la-
lists
lá as the Quenya negation
no,
not, so #
ála could be
seen as
á +
lá just like
áva is
á +
vá (in polysyllabic words,
Quenya cannot normally have a long vowel in the final syllable, hence it
is shortened: **
álá > #
ála and **
ává >
áva). As for the
variation #
ála in the
Pater Noster vs.
áva in Tolkien’s later
essay
Quendi and Eldar, this is explained by Bill Welden’s article
Negation in Quenya (VT42:32-34): "Possibly soon after publication of
The Lord of the Rings," Tolkien decided to drop the negative element
al /
la "not" (= the -
la of
ála). Among the new negations
replacing it we find
bâ as an element having to do with "negative
command"; this is the source of -
va in
áva. For a while,
#
ála as a negative command
don’t! was thus a conceptually obsolete
form, but since Welden also notes that Tolkien eventually resurrected
the negative element
ala, Quenya lexicographers may treat #
ála
as a valid word and a synonym of
áva.
ámedo [something to]
us,
ámen do [something]
for us:
the imperative particle
á (q.v.) with pronominal endings, the
following verb filling out the phrase and telling us what
me(
n)
is the (in)direct object of. In #
ála do not the negation #
la
has likewise been directly suffixed to
á, and in
álame the same
pronominal ending as in
áme occurs; see #
ála above. – In this
text, the accusative pronoun #
me us (exclusive) and its dative
variant #
men only appear suffixed to this imperative particle and
its negated form #
ála do not. These pronouns were however
attested previously, though in slightly different forms. The dual form
of #
me, namely
met, appears in Namárië: this means *
us
(two), referring to Galadriel and Varda (another exclusive form, since
Galadriel is not addressing Varda, but is singing
about herself and
Varda to Frodo, who obviously cannot be included in this "us"). The
dative form #
men (for) us was almost attested, so to speak,
before. It has long been recognized that the word
mel-lumna in LR:47,
translated
us-is-heavy (sc. *"is heavy for/to us"), includes an
assimilated form of #
men, the dative ending -
n turning into
l
before another
l (see for instance VT32:8 s.v.
*men*-). For
another example of assimilation *
nl >
ll, cf.
Númellótë
Flower of the West in UT:227; this is transparently
númen west +
lótë flower. The pronoun #
me us is obviously related to the
ending -
mme we (in
firuvamme) and the independent emphatic
pronoun
emme we.
anta, verb
give. This word occurs already in the Qenya Lexicon
(QL:31) as well as in some "Qenya" poems from the early thirties
(MC:215, 221). However, this is our first attestation of this verb in an
actual text that is more or less "mature" Quenya, though in the meantime
this word had also appeared in the
Etymologies. There it was derived
from a stem ana
1- (LR:348), defined
to, towards and suggested to be
a stemvowel-prefixed form of the prepositional element na
1- of similar
meaning (LR:374). The word quoted as the ancestral form of Quenya
anta- is
anta-
to present,
give; this would seem to
indicate that this primitive verb was simply unchanged in Quenya.
However, since Primitive Quendian short -
a was lost at the Common
Eldarin stage, we must assume that the oldest form was rather *
antâ-
with a
long final vowel. The primitive verbal ending -
tâ is well
attested, sometimes with a causative meaning (again, see under
tulya
regarding primitive
tultâ-). Since the meaning of the primitive stem
itself has nothing to do with verbs but is prepositional or adverbial,
-
tâ here literally functions as a verb-former, and the original,
basic meaning of *
antâ- must be *
bring (something)
towards
(someone else), hence
present and then
give.
apsene, verb
forgive, not previously attested. Apart from making
the "external" observation that this verb may echo English
absolve,
absolution, it is difficult to say anything certain about its
intended etymology. The first element may somehow be related to
#
apa-
after (as in
Apanónar the After-born, an Elvish name
of Mortal Men as the Second-born of Ilúvatar: WJ:387). The semantic
relationships must however remain vague, all the more so when the
element #
sen is wholly obscure
[13]. #
Apsen-
forgive would most
likely behave as a "basic" verb or consonant stem, so that the
"uninflected stem" (here used in an infinitival sense) is
apsene for
older *
apseni. According to the system Tolkien used elsewhere, this
would become
apseni- when any ending is added. However, in the text
before us we also have the suffixed variant
apsenet, not as we might
expect *
apsenit. It seems that when writing this text, Tolkien’s
evolution of his languages was in a "phase" where the variation -
e
vs. -
i- did not take place, though he had used this system before
and later returned to it; see
care for a fuller discussion of this
peculiarity. – The ending -
t seen in
apsenet is apparently the
same pronominal suffix -
t them as in
laituvalmet we shall
praise them in the Cormallen Praise. The whole phrase
emme apsenet
thus means
we forgive them – sc. other people’s sins/trespasses, not
the offenders themselves, for they are apparently denoted by the dative
pronoun
tien instead: As we argued above, the direct object
(accusative object) of #
apsen-
forgive is the matter that is
forgiven, while the indirect object (dative object) is the person(s)
forgiven. The object ending -
t them may be a shortened and
suffixed form of the independent accusative pronoun
te them,
concerning which see
tien. It may also be related to the pronominal
ending -
nte they (UT:317 cf. 305), which could be a nasal-infixed
version of -
t.
ar, conjunction
and, well known from Namárië and other sources.
The
Silmarillion Appendix, entry
ar-, defines this element as
beside,
outside and adds that this is the origin of "Quenya
ar
and, Sindarin
a". A similar explanation is given in the
Etymologies (LR:349 s.v. ar
2-), and this may well be Christopher
Tolkien’s source in this case. However, this entry in Etym. says nothing
about the Sindarin (or Noldorin) conjunction; only Quenya
ar is
mentioned. Normally, we would expect a simple stem ar to become
ar
both in Quenya and Sindarin, not
a in the latter. Indeed the Sindarin
of the King’s Letter has
ar instead of
a as the conjunction
and
(SD:128-129); however,
a is found in LotR (the Cormallen Praise
includes the words
Daur a Berhael Frodo and Sam). The King’s
Letter, showing
ar instead of
a, was never published during
Tolkien’s lifetime, so he would not be "bound" by it. Besides the
a of
the Cormallen Praise, a later source also has
ah; MR:304 gives
Finrod ah Andreth for
Finrod and Andreth. This reproduces a
post-LotR source, so this
ah Tolkien must have intended to be
"compatible" with
a in the already published LotR: It would seem that
a manifests as
ah when the next word begins in a vowel, or at least
in
a-. These examples from Sindarin seem to suggest that Tolkien now
imagined the primitive stem yielding the conjunction to be *as rather
than ar, for while the latter should have yielded
ar both in Quenya
and Sindarin, the former can indeed produce Quenya (*
az >)
ar and
Sindarin
a with a side-form
ah that is used before vowels. Compare
the stem os-
round,
about producing Noldorin/Sindarin
o
about,
concerning, with "
h before vowel, as
o Hedhil
concerning Elves [
Edhil]" (LR:379). The
h that turns up before
vowels is a remnant of the
s that the original stem ended in. Same for
Sindarin
ah and from *as: when the next word began in a consonant,
h was almost inaudible and disappeared (*
ah Berhael >
a
Berhael), but before a vowel it survived. The text before us provides
new possible evidence supporting the notion that in the post-LotR
period, the conjunction
and is to be derived from a stem *as rather
than ar: The preposition
as with, here attested for the first
time, could plausibly be related to the word for
and. See
as for
further discussion.
Ar as the Sindarin word for
and in the King’s
Letter may reflect the earlier concept of the stem being ar – evidently
rejected shortly after the Letter was written, but before LotR was
published.
aranielya, noun with pronominal ending:
thykingdom. Regarding
the ending -
lyathy, see
esselya. #
Araniekingdom is a
hitherto unknown word, but obviously related to
aran king. The
latter is undoubtedly to be referred to the stem ara-
noble (PM:363,
cf. the entry
ar(a)- in the
Silmarillion Appendix);
aran could
reflect an "extended" form *aran. Alternatively,
aran could simply
represent a primitive form derived from ara- by adding a masculine
ending, like *
arano. (A quite different etymology for the words for
king was set out in the
Etymologies, where
aran is the Noldorin
form only, corresponding to Quenya
haran: See LR:360. However,
aran later became the word for
king in Quenya and Noldorin/Sindarin
alike.) The word #
aranie kingdom includes what is normally an
abstract ending. The ending -
ie (-
ië) can be gerundial or
infinitival (see UT:317, commenting on
en-yalië), or it can
correspond to English abstract endings like -
ness, e.g.
verie
boldness (LR:352 s.v. ber-). If I had been presented with the word
#
aranie with no context or gloss, my best guess would probably have
been that it means *
kingship. When it is used for
kingdom it may
properly refer to the abstract
reign of a king rather than to his
realm as a physical place. However, precisely what is meant by
Biblical references to "the Kingdom of God" is a matter for theologians
rather than linguists. In the original Greek texts (Matthew 6:10, Luke
11:2), the word translated "kingdom" appears as
basileia; this is
also properly an abstract, and Tolkien may simply have carried its
etymology over into Quenya (Greek
basileus :
basileia king :
kingdom = Quenya
aran : #
aranie). In their
Greek-English
Lexicon of the New Testament, Arndt and Gingrich define
basileia as
"
1.
kingship,
royal power,
royal rule,
kingdom…
2.
kingdom, i.e., the territory ruled over by a king…
3.
esp.
the royal reign or
kingdom of God, a chiefly eschatological
concept." When coining the word #
aranie for Quenya, Tolkien may have
intended it to cover about the same shades of meaning. As for the
meaning "the territory ruled over by a king", it is interesting to
notice that the normally abstract ending -
ie also appears in
#
nórie country (compounded and inflected in Namárië:
sindanóriello out of a grey country). The stem is obviously ndor-
as in the more usual word
nóre land (LR:376, cf. WJ:413).
as, preposition
with. As we argued in the entry
ar above, it
seems that Tolkien eventually decided that
ar and is to be derived
from a stem *as rather than ar as in earlier sources; the Sindarin
cognates
a,
ah suggest this. The conjunction
and and the
preposition
with could descend from the same stem; the semantic gap
between them is not too wide for this to be plausible. All that remains
to be explained is why the
s of *as becomes
r in
ar and, but
stays
s in
as with. The development
s >
z >
r is a
well-known phenomenon in Quenya, but Tolkien seems to have entertained
various ideas about what precise environment triggers this development.
In the
Etymologies,
s normally becomes (
z >)
r if it
follows a vowel and there is no
unvoiced consonant following it.
Hence we have primitive
besnô husband > Q
verno (LR:352 s.v.
bes-), and the stem ólos- produces Q
olor dream (LR:379). In this
scenario, Quenya
ar and could come from primitive *
as, while Q
as with would have to represent a form where the
s was originally
followed by another, unvoiced consonant so that it could not be voiced
to
z (later >
r). Probably this consonant would simply be another
s; double
ss is common and cannot become voiced (e.g. primitive
bessê > Q
vesse, LR:352 s.v. bes-; a form **
vezze >
**
verre did not arise even though the group
ss immediately
followed a vowel).
As with could then represent earlier *
assa
(or conceivably *
asse or *
asso), later shortened to
as.
Compare
nisse woman having the shorter form
nis, LR:375 s.v.
ndis-: Quenya does not permit double consonants finally, so when the
final vowel is omitted,
ss had to be simplified to
s. – However,
Tolkien later decided that for
s to be voiced to
z (in turn becoming
r), it is not enough that it
follows a vowel; it has to be
intervocalic, a second vowel following
after it as well
(presumably a voiced consonant following would also do the trick, so
that we would still see primitive
besnô > Q
verno rather than
**
vesno). Above we quoted
olor dream from the stem ólos as
evidence for the change
s >
r. A later source (UT:396) similarly
quotes the stem as olo-s, but now the Quenya word for
dream is given
as
olos with the final
s unchanged, and only in the
plural does
the change
s >
z >
r occur: The plural form is cited as
olozi/
olori. Here the original
s was intervocalic because of
the plural ending -
i that followed it. According to this new system
(final -
s being unchanged) it would be possible to derive
as
with directly from primitive *
as. Now it is rather
ar and that
is the mysterious word; since the change to
r has occurred, the
original
s must here have been intervocalic at an earlier stage.
Perhaps we are to assume that
ar < *
az is shortened from *
aza
< *
asa? If so, the Quenya preposition
ara outside,
beside
could be re-explained as the same word with the final vowel intact (this
vowel persisting when the word was used as a preposition, but
disappearing when it was used as a conjunction and shortened).
Átaremma, noun with pronominal ending:
our Father. Concerning
the ending -
mmaour (here following a connecting vowel -
e- to
avoid an impossible consonant cluster) see separate entry. The word for
father would here seem to be #
átar; sources both earlier and later
than this text have
atar with a short initial vowel instead (QL:33,
LR:349 s.v. ata-, WJ:402). Conceivably the vocative particle
a
(concerning which see
aia above) is included here: *
a Ataremma o
Father of us being contracted to
Átaremma. But if so, the
integrated particle cannot be obligatory: The word
atarinya "my
father" in LR:70 is another vocative (Herendil talking to his father
Elendil), even with a pronominal ending as in
Átaremma, but this
seemingly completely parallel example still does not show #
átar-
with a long vowel. Of course, this is a human son talking to a human
father; it could be that #
Átar with a lengthened vowel is rather a
special
strengthened form used when the title
Father is applied to
God. If so it may parallel
Héru Lord in the Hail Mary-text; this
word elsewhere appears as
heru with a short
e. – The word
atar
father, as it appears elsewhere, is in the
Etymologies derived
from a stem ata- that is likewise defined
father (LR:349). The
primitive form (one of the few ancestral forms that are explicitly
identified as "PQ", Primitive Quendian) is also said to be
atar,
which Tolkien at this stage probably thought of as representing simply
an extended form of the stem ata itself (*ata-r). This, according to
Etym, produced Quenya
atar pl.
atari. Yet the plural #
atári
occurs as part of the compound
Atanatári Fathers of Men which is
attested several places, such as WJ:39 (also genitive plural
Atanatárion in WJ:175). Tolkien repeatedly changed his mind about the
precise shape of this word; the variants
Atanatardi and
Atanatarni
are also found (WJ:174, 166/174). If
atar father was to have the
stem #
atár- this would require a primitive form *
atâr(-) with or
without some short final vowel (cf.
Anar sun being derived from
primitive
anâr, LR:348 s.v. anár-, and therefore having the plural
form #
anári – attested as part of a compound in PM:126 – instead of
**
anari). The stem-forms #
atard- and #
atarn- that Tolkien
experimented with elsewhere (the first of which is hinted at already in
the Qenya Lexicon, QL:33) would likewise require primitive forms
including the "extra" consonant, probably *
atardo and *
atarno,
respectively. Compare Quenya
halatir kingsfisher becoming
halatirn- before endings because the word descends from Primitive
Quendian
khalatirno (LR:394 s.v. tir-). Yet in the text before us,
Tolkien wrote neither *
Atáremma, *
Atardemma, nor *
Atarnemma
when translating
our Father, so this version of the Lord’s Prayer
cannot be contemporaneous with any of these other experiments.
Átaremma itself may rather represent yet another experiment with the
precise form and behavior of the Quenya word for
father.
care, verb
do,
make. The
Etymologies lists a stem kar-
make,
do or
make,
build,
construct (LR:362). A Quenya
verb
karin I make,
build is quoted; the same verb (in plural
form) occurs in WJ:391, in the phrase
i karir quettar ómainen,
those who make words with voices. (The difference in spelling,
kar- rather than
car-, is of no importance; this persistent
inconsistency is found throughout Tolkien’s post-LotR material, and in
theory both
c and
k represent the Tengwa
calma in the "original
manuscripts".) The form
karir (
carir) exemplifies the plural form
of the
aorist tense, in this case used to denote a "timeless truth".
Car- is an example of a so-called
basic verb, formed directly from
a root (in this case kar-) without adding any ending (like the very
frequent verbal endings -
ta and -
ya). In the primitive language,
basic verbs could receive the ending *-
i associated with the aorist
(though whether this ending actually
forms the aorist, or it is just a
kind of stopgap and the mere
absence of another ending indicates that
the verb is to be understood as an aorist, is not entirely clear). In
Quenya, final short *-
i in the primitive language came out as -
e
(cf. for instance
are day from primitive
ari, LR:349 s.v.
ar
1-). The primitive aorist *
kari likewise became
care as in the
text before us, but if one adds any ending so that *-
i is not final,
it retains its original quality: hence plural
karir (
carir) rather
than *
karer. As for semantics, the difference between aorist
care,
cari- and the continuative/"present" tense *
cára may
perhaps be compared to the distinction between English
does as opposed
to
is doing (or
makes vs.
is making). If we have correctly
interpreted the sentence
na care indómelya as a subject-less
construction *
wish that [one] does thy will, it becomes clear why
the aorist is used here: Much as in the phrase
i karir quettar,
where the idea is that the Elves (always, permanently, generally) make
words, the idea is here that God’s will should (always) be done. The
aorist denotes an "indefinite" action, unlimited or unmarked as to time.
On the other hand, *
na cára indómelya with the
continuative form
of
car- would perhaps rather be a prayer for a specific situation,
expressing a wish that God’s will
is being done in one particular
matter. – Not all of the aorist forms in the text before us behave quite
like we would expect from other examples. Peculiarly, the ending -
e
does not seem to become -
i- when an ending is added. One example of
a "well-behaved" aorist has already been quoted several times: The late
source reproduced in WJ:391 (ca. 1960) indicates that the plural aorist
of
car- is
carir (there spelt
karir). This agrees with much
earlier material, far predating the text before us. Yet in the Lord’s
Prayer, where what is essentially the same verb occurs with a prefix, we
find the form
úcarer (q.v.) Why not *
úcarir? Likewise,
apsenet
"[we] forgive them", probably another aorist, might be expected to
appear as *
apsenit instead; because of the suffix -
t them the
original ending *-
i is not final and therefore should not change to
-
e. Yet these examples are not unique. In SD:290, reproducing a
source from ca. 1945-46, we have the strange form
ettuler for *
come
forth. Again we might expect *
ettulir instead, according to the
system Tolkien had used in the
Etymologies (of ca. 1935+; LR:395 s.v.
tul- has
tulin rather than *
tulen for
I come) and the early
LotR drafts (cf.
sile vs. pl.
silir rather than *
siler in
RS:324). The published LotR contains no example of an aorist, but
interestingly, the forms
carnemírië red-jeweled and
airetári
holy-queen that do occur in this work seem to display the same
phonological oddity: The
e of
carne and
aire represents primitive
i (ancestral forms
karani red, *
gaisi holy), and where
it is not final it "ought" to remain
i. These examples, already
discussed in the entry
aire above, should evidently not be seen as
casual "mistakes" made by Tolkien. Rather it seems that in the latter
half of the forties and in the early fifties, his evolution of Quenya
was in a phase where the original quality of -
e descended from
primitive short -
i was nowhere preserved. Perhaps he imagined that
extensive analogical leveling had taken place, so that though original
-
i "properly" became -
e only when final, the new quality of the
vowel was eventually introduced also where it was
not final. Hence
carir make as the pl. aorist of the verb
car- was changed to
#
carer because of analogy with
care makes (itself < *
kari).
But it would seem that Tolkien later (not later than 1959-60) changed
his mind yet again and reestablished the earlier system, since the
aorist
karir/
carir rather than **
karer reappears in a source
dating from about 1960 (WJ:391). Likewise Tolkien changed
carnemírië
to
carnimírië in the revised edition of LotR (1966).
Airetáre was
kept in this form and not altered to *
Airitári, but as we have
already discussed, the initial element was reinterpreted to mean
sanctity rather than
holy.
cemende, inflected noun:
(as?) on earth. The
Silmarillion
Appendix has an entry "
kemen earth in
Kementári; a Quenya word
referring to the earth as a flat floor beneath
menel, the heavens".
In the
Etymologies, the stem kem- is defined
soil,
earth,
yielding the Quenya words "
kén (
kemen)" (LR:363). This probably
does not mean that
kén has an alternative form
kemen. When Etym.
was written, the Quenya genitive ending was -(
e)
n, only later
changed to -
o, q.v. In some cases the words in -
en are
explicitly identified as genitive singulars; for instance,
ailin
pool,
lake has the "g.sg."
ailinen (LR:329 s.v. ay-). As for the
stem kem-, Tolkien probably meant the Primitive Quendian word for
soil,
earth to be *
keme, producing Common Eldarin *
kêm
(with endings *
kem-). In Quenya *
kêm became
kén because
High-Elven did not permit final -
m, so that it had to be changed to
the closest "permissible" sound, namely -
n. Yet Quenya allowed
medial m, so in this position the consonant remained unchanged;
compare the stem talam producing Q
talan floor, plural
talami
(LR:390). Hence in Etym. the word for
earth is
kén with a genitive
singular
kemen. As mentioned above, Tolkien later changed the
genitive ending to -
o, so we would expect
kemen to become
*
kemo. However, the genitive
kemen appeared in the narratives as
part of Yavanna’s title
Kementári Queen of the Earth, literally
*
Earth’s-Queen. Perhaps Tolkien was unwilling to change this to
*
Kemotári. This may be the reason why he reinterpreted
kemen,
making it the nominative form rather than the genitive; this would
require nothing more dramatic than postulating an "extended" stem
*kemen- (formed by means of
ómataina, sc. reduplication of the
stem-vowel [WJ:417], and a suffixed -
n). Hence
Kementári could
stand and still be translated
Queen of the Earth; the literal
meaning had only changed from *
Earth’s-Queen to *
Earth-Queen,
with minimal semantic impact. –
Kemen,
cemen here appears in the
strange inflected form
cemende. This might seem to be a
locative
form of some kind, though it differs from the normal, well-attested
locative in -
sse (that also occurs in this text; see
lúmesse).
It is unclear whether the ending is -
de or longer -
nde (if the
latter, it is here simplified to -
de since the word already ended in
-
n); see
Erumande. If the case in -(
n)
de is not a
locative, it must be some kind of "comparative" case, indicating that
cemende and
Erumande are being compared to one another ("on earth
as in heaven). It is interesting to notice that an ending -
ndon
signifying
as or
like occurs in some "Qenya" poems from the early
thirties:
wilwarindon as a butterfly,
taurelasselindon like
leaves of forests (MC:213-215; compare
wilwarin butterfly,
#
taure-lasseli forest-
leaves). It could be that -
nde in
the text before us is a later variant of this early -
ndon[14].
ëa, primarily a verb
is or
exists (UT:305/317, VT39:7), also
imperative
be! Notice that
ëa is stronger than the simple copula
ná, though both may be translated "is". The form
ëa is also used
as a noun (then more commonly spelt
Eä), within Tolkien’s mythos a
name of the universe that came into being when Ilúvatar granted
independent existence to the Music of the Ainur. However, in the text
before us the word is apparently used to translate
heaven (unless, as
we suggested above,
i ëa han ëa actually means *
who is above the
universe). The verb
ëa is the basic word here, since its application
as a noun is secondary: "The Elves called the World, the Universe, Eä –
It is" (footnote in Letters:284). "This world, or Universe, [the
Creator] calls
Eä, an Elvish word that means
It is or
Let it Be
" (MR:330). As for the primitive form of this word, strong hints are
provided by what Tolkien wrote in
Quendi and Eldar (VT39:6-7): "The
former presence of intervocalic
ñ, later lost in Quenya, could be
detected by consideration of the relations between
tëa indicates
and…
tengwe sign, and comparison with
ëa exists beside
engwe thing."
Tengwe sign represents primitive
teñ-wê
sign,
token (VT39:17), the letter
ñ denoting "ng" as in English
"king" (LR:346, MR:350). Notice that primitive
ñ +
w produces Quenya
ngw, while intervocalic
ñ was lost:
Tëa indicates (derived
from the same root teñ [WJ:394] as
teñ-wê > Q
tengwe) is clearly
meant to represent earlier *
teñâ. Since Tolkien also mentions Quenya
ëa exists and
engwe thing in this context, we are obviously to
assume that these descend from *
eñâ and *
eñ-wê (though he did
not actually provide these primitive forms). It would seem that the
primitive stem having to do with
existence was *eñ- (*eñe). *
Eñâ
would be a primitive A-stem verb, the origin of Q
ëa meaning
is or
exists. Yet
ëa may also be interpreted as an imperative
be!,
and this meaning is of course relevant for the use of
Eä as a name of
the universe, since Eru gave existence to the Music of the Ainur by this
very command: "I know the desire of your minds that what ye have seen
should verily be…even as ye yourselves are, and yet other. Therefore I
say:
Eä! Let these things Be!" (
Ainulindalë.) This imperative
ëa
may be referred to *
eñ(
e)
â, the latter element being the
primitive imperative particle, "originally independent and variable in
place" (WJ:365; compare the primitive imperative phrase
hek(
e)
â > Quenya
heka! be gone!, WJ:364-365). – The fact that the word
ëa appears in the Lord’s Prayer translation is an important clue
regarding the dating, for this word (or at least
Eä/
Ëa as a name
of the universe) does not seem to have entered Tolkien’s mythos before
1951; see LR:338, MR:7, 31.
elye, emphatic pronoun:
you,
thou. Previously attested in
Namárië (there spelt with a diaeresis:
elyë); see
emme below for
further discussion
[15].
emme, emphatic pronoun: exclusive
we. Also with dative ending:
emmen,
(for) us. A new word in itself, but one that reassuringly
confirms a pattern that has long been recognized: that pronominal
endings can be turned into independent, emphatic pronouns by prefixing
e-. Until now, our sole example has been
elyëthou (or, since it
is emphatic,
even thou) in Namárië. This is an emphatic, independent
pronoun corresponding to the pronominal ending -
lyë, as is clearly
seen in the final line of the song:
Nai hiruvalyë Valimar! Nai
elyë hiruva! Maybe thou
shalt find Valimar! Maybe even thou
shalt find it! For the ending -
mme denoting exclusive
we, see
firuvamme;
emme thus has the same relationship to the ending
-
mme as
elye has to the ending -
lye. (We know only one more
emphatic pronoun, the first person form
inye I in LR:61, that
connects with the pronominal ending -
nye. The form
inye rather
than **
enyë has been regarded as an exception to the normal rule
[16]. The form
emme supports the theory that
inye is an
exception, the prefix used to derive emphatic pronouns normally being
e- instead.) The dative form
emmen indicates that emphatic
pronouns can take case endings, our first example of this.
Eruo, inflected noun
God’s, genitive of
Eru,
God or
literally
the One. The genitive of
Eru was already attested in the
phrase
Oienkarmë Eruo the One’s [Eru’s, God’s] perpetual production
(MR:329, 471); as for the genitive ending -
o, see separate entry.
All sources agree that the divine name
Eru (that the Elves pronounced
on solemn occasions only, WJ:402/MR:211) is to be interpreted
the
One: "There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar…"
(
Ainulindalë). When asked what her Mannish tribe called God, Andreth
told the Elven-king Finrod that it was "as it is with you [the Elves],
but different only in sound: The One" (MR:352). Beyond such simple
statements of what
Eru means, its etymology as a Quenya word is not
explicitly discussed anywhere (see SD:432 concerning
Êru as an Adûnaic
word, though). However, in Letters:384, Tolkien referred to the
"important element er (in Elvish) =
one, single, alone." One reason
for its being "important" would presumably be that it is transparently
the basis of the divine name. In the
Etymologies and the
Qenya
Lexicon, this "element" appears as ere-
be alone, deprived (LR:356)
or
remain alone (QL:36). In these sources the stem-vowel is
reduplicated and suffixed, ere instead of just er, but this is merely
another way of quoting the stem. (See
firuvamme for the stem phir-
also being quoted as phiri with the vowel repeated; see also
quanta
regarding the stem kwat- also being quoted as kwata.) The name
Eru
must be derived from the simplest form er as in Letters:384, without
ómataina (reduplicated and suffixed stem-vowel). The primitive form of
the name would be *
Erû, including the same masculine/animate ending
-
û as in the primitive words
atû father (LR:349 s.v. ata-
father) and
kherû master (Letters:178, 282, stem given as kher-
possess, cf. LR:364). Whether Tolkien meant that this name actually
occurred in the primitive language is of course another matter: what
they knew about Eru the Eldar must have learnt after they got to Valinor
and were taught by the Valar (WJ:402 s.v.
Eru). The Quenya name
Eru is indeed said to be an Elvish translation of a
Valarin name
that is nowhere revealed (WJ:402 cf. 403). In any case, a name meaning
the One can obviously be applied to the God of the monotheistic
Judeo-Christian conception, so Tolkien could use it to translate
God
when rendering Christian/Catholic texts into Quenya.
Eruanno, noun in genitive:
of grace, transparently a compound
incorporating
EruGod,
the One (see above). The nominative could
also be #
Eruanno (since the genitive ending -
o is "invisible"
when added to words already ending in -
o, cf.
i·Kiryamo the
Mariner’s in UT:8), but this would leave the final element of the
compound obscure, since no word *
anno is known. The only other
possible nominative is #
Eruanna, which would be a meaningful word:
several sources (e.g. the
Silmarillion Appendix) give
anna as the
Quenya word for
gift. In the
Etymologies, LR:348, it is derived
from a prepositional stem ana
1-
to,
towards, whence primitive
anta-
to present, give, a verb also found in Quenya and indeed
occurring in the text before us (see the entry
anta). Perhaps
anna
gift represents an old past participle *
an-nâ formed directly from
the root and later used as a noun:
that which is brought forward,
presented, given. Whatever the precise etymology of
anna, the
compound *
Eruanna would seem to denote
grace perceived as
God-gift, the
gift of God. In the published corpus, the only
other word for
grace is
lis (
list-) from the early Qenya Lexicon
(p. 54). This word was developed from a wholly different idea: the root
meaning is said to be
sweetness (p. 55; cf. lis-
honey in the later
Etymologies, LR:369, and
lisse-miruvóreva of the sweet mead in
Namárië in LotR). However, it is interesting to see that the Greek word
kharis grace (related to the word
kekharitômenê favoured one
found in the Greek text of Hail Mary, cf. Luke 1:28) is seemingly
equated with God’s "gift" in 2 Corinthians 9:14-15: "Their prayers for
you, too, show how they are drawn to you on account of all the
grace
[a form of
kharis] that God has given you. Thanks be to God for his
inexpressible
gift" (quoted from
The Jerusalem Bible). Perhaps
it was this and similar Biblical passages that inspired #
Eruanna as
the Quenya word for
grace.
Erumande, inflected noun:
(as?) in heaven. As indicated in the
Syntactical analysis above, it is not altogether certain what the
nominative of this word may be. Since the nominative of
cemende(as?)
on earth is known to be
cemen, one plausible assumption could be
that the word before us is #
Eruman inflected for the same (obscure)
case. (This obviously cannot be equated with the
Eruman of LR:356 s.v.
ere-, which is a "desert N.E. of Valinor".) Yet this strange "locative"
(?) ending could also be #-
nde, simplified to #-
de when added to
a word ending in -
n (like
cemen); if so the nominative would be
#
Eruma. Both of these words can be assigned more or less plausible
etymologies. #
Eruman could incorporate "the Valarin element
aman,
man blessed, holy [that the Elves] learned from Oromë";
thus #
Eruman would identify "heaven" as the blessed and holy abode
of the One (PM:357). It is also possible that #
man means
place,
so that #
Eruman is
The Place of God: A word
men place,
spot occurs in Etym. (LR:372 s.v. men-), but one word seems to hint
that Tolkien later changed it to #
man or #
mane (perhaps he was
troubled by the homophony with the dative pronoun #
men for us):
In SD:56, in an earlier version of the words spoken by Aragorn at his
coronation, the word
here or
in this place appears as
símane
(evidently
sí-mane this-place – cf.
símen in Fíriel’s Song, see
the entry
síra). On the other hand, if we assume that the nominative
is the shorter form #
Eruma, this could incorporate the not uncommon
ending -
ma, primitive -
mâ. While this ending is primarily "a
suffix frequent in the names of implements" (WJ:416), which is clearly
not appropriate here, it can also take on more general meanings. For
instance, the noun #
corma "ring" (attested in LotR as part of the
compounds
Cormarë Ring-day and
cormacolindor Ring-bearers, the
latter translated in Letters:308) is clearly to be referred to the stem
kor- "round" (LR:365). Thus, a #
corma is simply a *"round thing".
Likewise, #
Eruma could – presumably – be simply "a thing (actually a
place) associated with God", which "heaven" is. As for the precise
meaning or significance of #
Eruma(
n) (irrespective of its
etymology), it would seem to denote the dwelling or presence of the One,
evidently the "place" beyond and before Eä where the drama of the Music
of the Ainur transpired. This would be "the fair regions that [Eru] had
made for the Ainur", where afterwards "of the Ainur some abode still
with Ilúvatar beyond the confines of the World" when others left and
entered Eä (see the
Ainulindalë). Since Melkor also left, we must
assume that this was indeed a place where the will of Eru reigned
supreme and unchallenged ("thy will be done, on earth as it is in
heaven"). Hence #
Eruma(
n) can be used to translate English
heaven meaning the dwelling of the Deity, though unlike the English
word it does not also refer to the sky above the earth;
#
Eruma(
n) would be beyond our universe altogether. The
Númenóreans, taught by the Elves, "did not conceive of the sky as a
divine residence" (Letters:204) – which may explain why Tolkien did not
use the standard Quenya translation of
heaven,
menel, in this
prayer.
Menel is just "the region of the stars" (RGEO:72), "the
firmament" (SD:401), "the apparent dome in the sky" (MR:387), the
"heavens" above the physical earth (see the
Silmarillion Index, entry
kemen, quoted under
cemen above).
Menel does not refer to the
dwelling of God.
esselya, noun with pronominal ending:
thy name. The possessive
ending -
lyathy,
your corresponds to the verbal ending
-
lyë thou (see
elye). In the text before us, -
lya also
occurs in the words
aranielya thy kingdom,
indómelya thy will
and
mónalyo of thy womb, in the latter case with the genitive
ending -
o added (regularly displacing the final -
a of -
lya).
The ending -
lya was previously attested only in the word
tielyanna
upon your path (UT:22 cf. 51; this is
tie-lya-nna
path-your-upon), and it corresponds to the ending -
lyë for
you,
thou (see -
mma for further discussion of the relationship
between the pronominal suffixes for subject and possession). The noun
that -
lya is here suffixed to,
esse name, is a well-known
Quenya word, occurring in LotR, Appendix E as the (later) name of Tengwa
No. 31.
Esse also occurs in various forms and compounds in MR:214-217,
reproducing a post-LotR source. It is also found in the
Etymologies,
where it is derived from a stem es-
indicate,
name (LR:356). The
ancestral form is nowhere given but is probably *
essê, the ending
-
ê often being used to derive nouns denoting intangibles or
abstracts: examples include such primitive forms as
rênê remembrance
(PM:372, base given as ren-),
slîwê sickness (LR:386 s.v. sliw-), or
tûrê mastery,
victory (LR:395 s.v. tur-). *
Essê from es- is
however not wholly parallel to these formations; instead of lengthening
the stem-vowel (which would have produced primitive **
êsê > Quenya
**
éze/
ére), the consonant s of the stem is lengthened. This may
be compared to the derivation of the primitive noun
lassê leaf from
the base las- (in the
Etymologies las
1-, LR:367; cf. also
Letters:282). In the essay
Quendi and Eldar, Tolkien explained that
the "true relation" of the derivative
lassê to its stem las- can be
expressed as
laS-ê (VT39:9), the capital
S denoting a strengthened
or lengthened consonant. Similarly, the relation of *
essê to its
stem es- may be described as *
eS-ê. (Compare #
massa bread from
the stem mbas-; see
massamma.)
etelehta, verb
free,
release,
deliver. It would seem
that the #
lehta- part is essentially the same as the Quenya verb
lehtaloose,
slacken listed in the
Etymologies, in LR:368
derived from a stem lek-
loose,
let loose,
release (primitive
*
lektâ-; this would be one of the cases where the ending -
tâ
adds nothing to the meaning of the stem itself). It is closely related
to Noldorin/Sindarin
leithia release (as verb; noun
leithian, as
in the Lay of
Leithian or "Release from Bondage" referred to in the
first paragraph of Chapter 19 in the
Silmarillion). Unlike the more
mundane meaning of Quenya
lehta-
loose,
slacken, these
Sindarin forms more prominently seem to connote a
release or
freeing, and this is also true of the longer Quenya verb
etelehta- in the text before us. The prefixed element
ete- can
evidently be equated with the Quenya prefix
et- that in the
Etymologies is derived from a stem et-
forth,
out (LR:356; the
prefix as such is undefined, but it is clearly meant to have the same
meaning as the stem).
Etelehta- would seem to mean literally
out-release or
out-free (here in Norway we actually use the word
utfri for "deliver" as in delivering someone from danger); the idea is
that the object is brought "out" from the danger or menacing/suppressing
situation. It is interesting to see that the prefix
et- is
lengthened to
ete- where an impossible consonant cluster would
otherwise occur (in this case **
tl). It may be that the second
e
is the stem-vowel of et- reduplicated; on the other hand, it may simply
be the normal "connecting vowel"
e as in the allative form
Elendilenna to Elendil in PM:401 (
Elendil-
e-
nna). The
short form of the prefix,
et-, can actually occur only when it is
prefixed to words beginning either in a vowel or in one of the
consonants
s-,
t-,
w- or
y- (for
t- we have an
attested example:
ettuler in SD:290). Otherwise the form
ete- must
be used to avoid impossible clusters. (However, in one old example,
primitive
etkelê *
out-flow,
t and
k early metathesized, and
Quenya
ehtele spring,
issue of water comes from
ektele. See
LR:363 s.v. kel-. If this Quenya word had been coined later, instead of
descending from the oldest period, it would perhaps have appeared as
**
etekele instead.)
firuvamme, future-tense verb with pronominal ending: *
we shall
die. The verb
fir-
fade,
die is mentioned in MC:223, clearly
to be referred to the root phir- in the
Etymologies (LR:381), which
yields words having to do with death and mortality. The base itself was
not defined in Etym., but in MR:250 it is explained that the verb
fírë
(read *
firë?) originally "meant to
expire, as of one sighing or
releasing a deep breath… This word the Eldar afterwards used of the
death of Men." A reference in WJ:387 confirms this; here the stem is
quoted as phiri, glossed
exhale,
expire,
breathe out. In the
text before us,
fir- occurs in the future tense, denoted by the
well-known ending -
uva (many attestations, e.g.
kenuva shall see
in MC:221 cf. 214 or
hiruva shalt find in Namárië; in the present
text it also occurs in the word
tuluva, q.v.) The pronominal ending
-
mme denotes exclusive
we, that is, a "we" that does not include
the person that is addressed. If one is talking about "we" to a person
that is included in the "we" group, the ending -
lme for
inclusive
"we" would be employed. Previously, the exclusive ending -
mme was
attested only in the word
vamme we won’t in WJ:371. It corresponds
to the independent pronouns #
me (see
áme) and
emme, plus the
possessive ending -
mma our seen in
Átaremma,
massamma.
han is evidently a preposition, but its meaning is uncertain:
in?
among?
permeating?
above?
[17] This preposition, if that is
what it is, would seem to describe the "spatial" relationship between
Eru and Eä, God and the Universe – however that is to be imagined. No
really plausible etymology can be offered. The stem khan-
understand,
comprehend (LR:363) could have yielded a word of this
shape, but its meaning certainly seems to disqualify it. The stem kham-
sit (ibid.) just might be relevant, if
han refers to some kind of
stationary position (final -
m regularly becoming -
n in Quenya).
Unfortunately, all Christopher Tolkien reproduced of this entry in the
Etymologies was the verb
ham-
sit; "the other derivatives are
too chaotic and unclear to present". – By another suggestion
han could
be a variant of the known preposition
an, in the
Etymologies
glossed "to, towards" (LR:374 s.v. na
2-); if so it is here used with a
different shade of meaning, since "to" would not make much sense in this
context. By this theory, the
h prefixed to
an is merely an intruding
consonant inserted to avoid two
a's in a sequence (the word before
han being
ëa). However, no other Quenya examples of such an
intruding
h can be quoted. – It may be noted that in a text reproduced
in MC:217, apparently some variant of "Gnomish" (but somewhat closer to
Sindarin than the Gnomish of the GL), there occurs a phrase
han
Nebrachar. This is translated
above Nebrachar. We must of course
be very wary about basing conclusions regarding LotR-style Quenya on an
obscure Gnomish variant of the early thirties, but if the word
han has
the same meaning in the text before us,
Átaremma i ëa han ëa might
mean
*our Father who is above
Eä – as if Tolkien used a
circumlocution instead of translating "who art in heaven" literally.
(However, the normal Quenya word for
above would seem to be
or, as
in Cirion’s Oath
[18].)
Héru, noun
lord. Other sources, like the
Silmarillion Appendix
and the
Etymologies, give
heru with a short
e – though in Etym,
a long vowel turns up in the "Old Noldorin" cognate
khéro master
(LR:364 s.v. kher-). In Letters:283, the Quenya word for
lord is
quoted as
hér, Tolkien adding
heru as a parenthetical alternative;
the new form
héru seems to combine these two alternatives. In VT41:9,
reproducing a document dating from the late sixties, the Quenya word is
again
hér, which Tolkien here refers to Common Eldarin
khêr. In
PM:210 the Quenya word for
lord is said to be "
heru,
hêr-";
this could be taken to mean that the word
heru turns into
hér- if
you add an ending (e.g. genitive *
héro), but it is uncertain
precisely what Tolkien meant. Again
héru apparently combines both
heru and
hér-. As for the etymology, the primitive form of
heru
(sic) is given as
kherû master in Letters:178, 282; the root is
there given as kher-
possess (cf. kher-
rule,
govern,
possess in the
Etymologies, LR:364). The ending -
û may simply
denote a (masculine) animate, as in primitive
atû father or *
Erû
the One (see the discussion of
Eru under
Eruo for references), but
in primitive
kherû the ending takes on an
agental significance: In
light of the root meaning, a
kherû is a "lord" perceived as a
possessor or
ruler,
governor. The variant form
héru in the
text before us must be assumed to represent an alternative primitive
form *
khêrû with lengthening of the stem-vowel. Such lengthening is
quite common (though not universal) in conjunction with another ending
that can be either agental or simply masculine, namely -
ô; for
instance, the stem kan-
cry yields a primitive noun
kânô crier,
herald (PM:361, 362; this is said to be an example of "the older and
simplest agental form"). Perhaps, then, the much rarer ending -
û
could also be combined with lengthening of the stem-vowel. – A final
possibility, suggested above in connection with the somewhat surprising
form
Átaremma rather than
Ataremma for
our Father (
atar
father having a
short initial vowel in all other attestations), is
that normal, common nouns may be
strengthened by lengthening a vowel
when they are used as divine titles. Hence
atar > #
Átar and
perhaps likewise
heru >
Héru.
hyame, verb
pray, attested in conjunction with the imperative
particle
á (that may indeed be directly prefixed to produce
áhyame; as indicated above, it is not quite clear how we should read
Tolkien’s manuscript).
Hyame would seem to represent the uninflected
stem of a "basic" verb #
hyam-
pray, never before attested.
Earlier we only had
Erukyermë for
Prayer to Eru in UT:166, 436.
Since the group
ky may seem to be abnormal for Quenya (primitive
ky
normally becomes
ty), it has been suggested that
Erukyermë might
be a misreading for **
Eruhyermë in Tolkien’s manuscript. This would
point to **
hyer- as the stem of the verb
pray, at least slightly
more similar to #
hyam- in the text before us. However, Christopher
Tolkien in a letter to David Salo indicates that the reading
Erukyermë
is certainly correct; the form occurs repeatedly in a
typewritten
manuscript that was moreover carefully corrected by his father. The
#
kyer- of
Erukyermë is evidently wholly unrelated to the
#
hyam- of Hail Mary, though both seem to be verbal stems meaning
pray (the word
Erukyermë was probably coined about a decade after
the Hail Mary-translation was made, found in a text apparently written
not long before 1965; cf. UT:7). No plausible
etymology for #
hyam-
can be proposed; it would probably require a primitive stem *khyam- or
*syam-, *skyam-.
i 1) definite article:
i Héru the Lord,
i yáve the fruit;
2) relative pronoun
who, both singular and plural:
Átaremma i
ëa… our Father who is…,
tien i úcarer those who
trespass/sin. Both usages are well attested before; as for the
article, we have for instance
i eleni =
the stars in Namárië. The
phrase
i Eru i or ilyë mahalmar eä the One who is above all thrones
in Cirion’s Oath in UT:305, 317 includes
i used both as an article and
as a relative pronoun. For
i used as a
plural relative pronoun, cf.
the phrase
i karir quettar those who make words in WJ:391. The
Etymologies confirms that
i is "in Q…indeclinable article
the";
it is derived from a base i- that is defined as
that and said to be a
"deictic particle" (LR:361). Perhaps we are to understand that Primitive
Quendian did not have a definite article as such, but that a particle
that originally meant
that had its meaning weakened to
the (e.g.
primitive *
i galadâ that tree > Quenya *
i alda the tree).
The Romance languages got their definite articles just like this: Their
ancestor Latin had no word for
the, but the meaning of Latin
demonstratives (typically
ille,
illa) was weakened to produce
articles like
la or
el. There is nothing in the
Etymologies
about
i being used as a relative pronoun as well, but this is not a
surprising phenomenon. Cf. for instance German, where the articles
der,
das,
die (for various genders and numbers) are also used
as relative pronouns.
ilaurëa, adjective
daily,
everyday:
ilaurëa massammaour
daily bread. The word as such is new, but in the middle of
ilaurëa
we discern the well-known noun
aurë day. In earlier editions of
The Lord of the Rings, Appendix D mentioned
aurë and
lómë as the
Quenya words for
day and
night, though this particular piece of
information was omitted from the revised edition. In any case,
aurë
reappeared in chapter 20 of the
Silmarillion, Fingon crying
utúlie’n aurë,
the day has come, before the Nirnaeth Arnoediad
(Húrin following up with
aurë entuluva,
day shall come again,
when the battle was lost). The
Silmarillion Appendix, entry
ur-
heat, be hot, defines
aurë as
sunlight,
day. In the
Etymologies, the stem ur-
be hot was struck through (LR:396), but
Tolkien must have restored it later: The word
Urimë (or
Úrimë) as
a name of the month of August, occurring in LotR, Appendix D, is clearly
to be derived from this stem, and the entry
ur- in the
Silmarillion Appendix confirms this. The word
aurë was however not
listed in the
Etymologies even while the stem ur- persisted there. The
added
a in
aurë must be seen as an example of a-infixion, parallel
to the process that results in such primitive forms as
thausâ foul
from the stem thus- (LR:393) or
taurâ mighty from tur- (LR:395). In
Quendi and Eldar, Tolkien stated that words formed by a-infixion
"were mostly
intensive, as in…[Quenya]
taura very mighty, vast,
of unmeasured might or size (*tur). Some were
continuative, as in
Vaire Ever-weaving (*wir)" (VT39:10). In the case of a root like
ur-, a-infixion of course cannot be distinguished from a-
prefixing,
since there is no initial consonant. Whether the resulting stem *aur- is
to be seen as "intensive" or "continuative" is a matter of taste; the
period of daylight is perhaps perceived as "continually hot" when
compared to the colder night. The complete primitive word
day must be
either *
aurê (since the ending -
ê may be used to derive words
for abstract or intangible things) or *
auri (compare primitive
ari
as the source of Q
are day in LR:349 s.v. ar
1-).
Ilaurëa shows a
prefix
il- that can safely be referred to the stem il-
all
(LR:361). The same source provides an example of the prefix
il-
every-; it occurs as part of the word
ilqa everything (better
spelt
ilqua according to Tolkien’s later system). WJ:372 also has
ilquen everybody (incorporating -
quen person). #
Ilaurë
thus means
everyday as a noun (though this may not necessarily exist
as an independent word); to this form the adjectival ending -
a has
been added to produce
ilaurëa daily,
of every day. This word
is somewhat similar to
amaurëa, said to be a poetic word for
dawn,
early day (MC:223). While this also seems to incorporate
aurë day, the ending -
a is apparently not adjectival here,
unless this is actually an adjective that is also used as a noun.
Ilaurëa in any case belongs to the part of speech that we would
expect. – For the purpose of dating, it is interesting that the word
aurë day is included in the text before us. While a word
aure
sunlight,
sunshine,
gold light,
warmth had appeared
already in the Qenya Lexicon of 1915 (QL:33), this word as a term for
day arose relatively late in Tolkien’s conception and apparently does
not predate the LotR Appendices. (In the "Qenya" of the 1915 Lexicon,
the words for
day are
kala of daylight as opposed to night, and
lú
of a full 24-hour cycle [QL:44, 56] – but in later Quenya, these words
reappear with the much more general meanings
light and
occasion,
respectively.) As indicated above, in the
Etymologies of the
mid-thirties the Quenya word for "day" had been
are (LR:349 s.v.
ar
1), and this word was still valid in Tolkien’s early drafts for the
LotR Appendices: In PM:127 we have a reference to "the Eldarin
day or
arë". When Tolkien first coined such a word as
mettarë,
mentioned in Appendix D as the last day of the year, he may well have
thought of this as a compound
metta end +
arë day. Then it
seems that for some reason he rejected ar
1 as the stem yielding words
for "day". Perhaps wishing to keep such compounds as
mettarë
unchanged, he introduced the Elvish word
ré (LotR, Appendix D: "a
day of the sun they called
ré and reckoned from sunset to sunset").
Now
mettarë could be re-explained as
metta end +
ré (24-hour)
day, the long
é naturally being shortened at the end of a compound.
The earlier word
are survived as
áre sunlight, mentioned in
Appendix E as the older name of Tengwa No. 31. But here it is also said
that
áre was earlier
áze, indicating that Tolkien now thought of
the original stem as as, not ar as it had been in the
Etymologies:
The sound
r was no longer perceived as original, but arose from
original
s (via
z). For a stem as, see the entry
arien in the
Silmarillion Appendix; cf. also such a post-LotR source as MR:380,
where it is said that the name of the sun was originally
Âs, "which
is as near as it can be interpreted Warmth, to which are joined Light
and Solace". MR:380 also mentions
Ázië, "later"
Árië, as the
name of the spirit of the sun, displaying the same development (
s >)
z >
r as in
áze >
áre. But these revisions in Tolkien’s
conception necessitated further changes. In earlier editions of LotR,
Appendix D quoted the Sindarin word for
day (used of a full 24-hour
cycle) as
aur. This superficially agrees with the
Etymologies,
where the Noldorin/Sindarin word for
day or
morning had likewise
been given as
aur (LR:349). By the time Etym was written, this
aur
was probably perceived as the cognate of Quenya
ára dawn (for Quenya
long
á corresponding to Noldorin/Sindarin
au, cf. for instance Q
nár flame being the cognate of N/S
naur, LR:374 s.v. nar
1-).
Sindarin
aur day, as quoted in Appendix D in earlier editions of
LotR, could similarly have been the cognate of the Quenya word
áre
sunlight that is mentioned (as the name of a Tengwa) in Appendix E –
if Tolkien had not changed the stem from ar to as. In Sindarin,
r
cannot come from earlier
s; nothing like the development
s >
z >
r occurs in Sindarin (or the Noldorin of the
Etymologies). So if
Tolkien wanted to keep
aur as the Sindarin word for
day (and he
clearly did), a new etymology had to be sought;
aur could not be
referred to the new stem as that had replaced ar. Hence Tolkien instead
decided to derive
aur from the (already invented) stem ur having to do
with
heat, evidently envisioning an a-infixed (or a-prefixed)
variant *aur as outlined above: Here the sound
r was original and
simply remained unchanged in Sindarin. However, this derivation brought
up the question of whether there might not be a Quenya cognate – and
this, it seems, is how the Quenya word
aurë day arose. Since
this word refers to "day" only in the sense of "daylight", it could very
well coexist with the new word
ré, that means "day" in the sense of
a full 24-hour cycle. The word
aurë with the meaning
day thus
evidently does not predate the LotR, and the fact that it is
incorporated in the adjective
ilaurëa in the text before us, probably
places this text in the post-LotR period (after the book was written,
but not necessarily before it was published).
imíca, preposition
among. Undoubtedly this is to be derived from
the stem mi-
inside, the source of the Quenya preposition
miin,
within (LR:373). The #
imí- part of the word before us would seem to
represent a stemvowel-prefixed variant of this stem (an entry imi
in,
into actually occurs in the Qenya Lexicon p. 42). Notice that
"where
i is base vowel" (as in mi-),
i- can function as an
"intensive prefix" (LR:361 s.v. i-). This "prefix" actually amounts to
reduplication of the base vowel itself; for an example with another
vowel, cf. primitive
akwâ as an "extension or intensification" of the
stem kwa (WJ:392). Notice that
akwâ from kwa would parallel #
imí-
(*
imî-) from mi- also in the fact that the stem-vowel is lengthened
in its normal position. This leaves the ending -
ca to be accounted
for. It would descend from -
kâ, attested as a primitive
adjectival
suffix (as when the stem gaya-
awe,
dread yields primitive
gayakâ, explicitly said to be "an adjectival form"; this was also
the source of Quenya
aika fell,
terrible,
dire – PM:363 cf.
347). Can an adjectival suffix be used to derive a preposition? This
would not be wholly unheard of in Tolkien’s languages: The ancient
ending -
wâ is seen to be adjectival (e.g. primitive
laik-wâ
green from the undefined stem láyak-, LR:368, or primitive
smalwâ
fallow,
pale from smal-
yellow, LR:386). Yet in WJ:365 the
same ending turns up on the primitive "adverb and preposition"
hekwâ
leaving aside,
not counting,
excluding,
except (WJ:365;
the root is heke-
aside,
apart,
separate, WJ:361). If the
adjectival ending -
wâ can also be used to derive adverbs or
prepositions, perhaps this is true of other adjectival endings, like
-
kâ, as well? Another interpretation is also possible: If
imíca
does not represent *
imî-kâ, the
c of the Quenya word may come from
an extended form of the stem mi-. It is possible that mi- had an
extended form *mik-. (Cf. other extensions in -k, like lep- having the
longer form lepek or ot- being extended to otok: LR:368, 379. This *mik-
would of course be distinct from mik
pierce in WJ:337.) It may be
noted that in the entry for mi- in the
Etymologies (LR:373), a Quenya
adjective
mitya interior is listed. No primitive form is listed, but
it could very well be *
mikyâ (*-
yâ being a well attested
adjectival ending; for the development
ky >
ty, cf. for instance
Quenya
tyar-
cause from the root kyar-, LR:366). This extended
stem *mik- could then have a stemvowel-prefixed variant *imîk-, whence
*
imîkâ > Quenya
imíca. This would only leave the ending -
a
(from *-
â) to be accounted for. WJ:382 mentions an adjectival ending
-
â, and as demonstrated above, it may not be wholly unprecedented
that a properly adjectival ending is used to derive a preposition.
indómelya, noun with a pronominal suffix:
thy will. Removing
-
lyathy (concerning this ending, see
esselya), we are left
with #
indóme as the noun
will, a new word wholly different from
earlier known words of the same meaning (like
nirme, VT39:30, or
þelma > *
selma, WJ:319). Yet #
indóme seems to be made up of
familiar elements. It transparently incorporates
indo heart,
mood. This word is apparently not used of the physical heart, which
is
hón (LR:364 s.v. khô-n-);
indo is rather the figurative "heart"
representing feelings, moods and desires. In the
Ósanwe-kenta,
Tolkien defined
indo as
state (VT39:23) – evidently primarily state
of
mind, given both the context and the other glosses. When trying
to connect #
indóme will to
indo heart,
mood,
state it
is encouraging to notice that in the
Etymologies,
indo is derived
from the base id-
desire (LR:391); there is no great semantic
leap
from
desire to
will. Quenya
indo might represent primitive
*
indô, formed from id- by means of nasal infixion and the nominal
ending -
ô. (This ending is often agental; perhaps the heart is
perceived as a "desirer". For a formation that employs similar devices,
cf. primitive
mbandô custody,
safe-keeping [MR:350] in relation
to the root mbad-
duress,
prison [LR:371], though in this case the
ending -
ô and the nasal infixion add little to the meaning of the
root itself.) Alternatively the primitive form might be *
idnô,
displaying another agental ending (cf. for instance primitive
syadnô
cleaver from the stem syad-
cleave, LR:389); later this became
Quenya
indo by metathesis
dn >
nd (cf. Quenya
ando gate from
primitive
adnô, LR:348 s.v. ad-). As for the derivation of Quenya
indo there are also yet other alternatives; UT:400 mentions an
"element" in(id)-
mind in the discussion of the first element of
Incánus (one of Gandalf’s more obscure names, which it is here hinted
may be Quenya for
Mind-leader). This in(id)- would be a basic stem
*in that has an "extended" form inid (with reduplicated stem-vowel,
so-called
ómataina, and a suffixed -d). This could also be the
source of Quenya
indo heart, *
mind; the primitive form would
then be either *
inidô or *
indô yet again (for suppression of the
reduplicated stem-vowel of an extended base in its actual derivatives,
compare the stem gólob- in LR:359 yielding primitive
golbâ branch –
not **
golobâ, though other examples indicate that this would be
equally possible). In the latest material we have access to (early
1968), Tolkien proposed yet another derivation; now Quenya
indo was
referred to a base nid-
force,
press(ure),
thrust, and again
the primitive form must be either *
indô or *
inidô – in this
version with a
prefixed stem-vowel. The same source defines
indo as
"the mind in its purposing faculty, the will" (VT41:17): semantically
very close to the use of #
indóme here. The long final vowel of
*
inidô or *
indô/*
idnô has been shortened in the normal
Quenya simplex
indo, but in the word #
indóme (where it receives
the accent) it remains long. The ending -
me that has here been added
is attested in quite a few Quenya words. It may function as a verbal
noun ending; hence we have
melme as the noun
love, derived from
the corresponding verb
mel- (LR:372 s.v. mel-). But it may also be
added to a stem with a nominal rather than verbal meaning, as when nil-
friend yields
nilme friendship (LR:378): here -
me can be seen
to correspond to the English abstract ending -
ship. In the case of
#
indóme, the ending seems to develop the sense of
indo heart,
mood,
will (as a faculty) into an abstract *
state of heart =
will (as full abstract:
purpose[19]).
lúmesse, noun in locative:
in [the] hour,
on [the] hour.
This is the sole word in the text before us that displays the normal,
well-known locative ending -
sse, which is important, since this
demonstrates that the strange "locative" (?) forms
cemende,
Erumande (q.v.)
coexisted with the normal locative in -
sse:
Tolkien had evidently not dropped one in favor of the other
[20]. Notice that the
locative can denote "location" in
time as well as in space. Removing
the ending leaves us with
lúme for
hour, a word that is also
attested by itself, though in the
Etymologies with a somewhat
different gloss: LR:370 lists an undefined stem lu-, whence Quenya
lúme time. Yet this word is also attested with the meaning
hour, in the famous greeting
elen síla lúmenna omentielvo "a star
shines upon the hour of the meeting of our ways" (so in WJ:367; the form
Frodo delivers in LotR has …
lúmenn' omentielvo, a vowel being
elided, and the translation offered goes
a star shines upon the hour
of our meeting). An earlier version of this greeting, quoted and
referenced in the entry -
mma below, even has locative
lúmesse
(rather than allative
lúmenna) just as in the text before us. – As
for the
derivation of
lúme, it incorporates the same ending
-
me as in #
indóme above. As we demonstrated in the relevant
entry, the suffix -
me may be used to form abstracts; in this case it
is used to derive a noun denoting something intangible. The stem lu- is
not itself defined, but for another word denoting a period of time that
is derived by means of the ending -
me, cf.
lóme night from
primitive
do3mê (LR:355).
Lúme would be the later form of a
primitive word *
lûmê.
mal, conjunction
but. A wholly new word, for which no etymology
can be offered. Known bases like mbal- in LR:372 and smal- in LR:386
could have yielded a Quenya word
mal as far as phonology is concerned.
However, neither base seems to have a suitable meaning (the former is
undefined but yields the Quenya words
malle street and
ambal
shaped stone,
flag, while the latter base is defined
yellow; it is very difficult to imagine any semantic connection
between this and a conjunction
but). We should probably be looking
for a simpler stem *mal- instead, for semantic reasons apparently
unconnected to the "extended" base malat-
gold (PM:366), though this
base and smal-
yellow in the
Etymologies could actually both be
elaborations of a root with precisely the form *mal-
[21]. – The word for
but so far used
by post-Tolkien writers is
ná,
nán (LR:375 s.v. ndan-) or with a
short vowel
nan (as in LR:72, in Fíriel’s Song:
nan úye sére
indo-ninya but my heart resteth not). Whether Tolkien decided to
drop this earlier conjunction altogether in favor of
mal cannot be
determined at this stage; since no Eldarin word for
but occurred in
any source that was published during Tolkien’s lifetime, he would in
principle be "free" to change this word as often as he pleased. Why he
might have wanted to drop
nán or
nan as the word for
but can only
be speculation. It may be noted, however, that
nán can also be
interpreted *
I am, sc. the copula
ná with the first person
pronominal ending -
n. (This is a tentative observation, since
because of the scarcity of published material we know very little of how
Tolkien would conjugate the verb "to be". However, in VT40:31
Christopher Gilson interprets the form
náre occurring in the early
poem
Narqelion as
ná with a third person pronominal ending, which
would suggest that
ná can indeed receive the normal pronominal
suffixes.) As for the form
nan, it may be that Tolkien wanted to
reserve this word as a preposition *
back: This is the meaning of the
stem ndan-, LR:375, and the same entry in Etym also lists a Quenya
prefix
nan-
backwards. A conjunction
mal, wholly distinct
from
nan, would be completely unambiguous. (It would seem that
Tolkien came up with ever new words for
but in Quenya; one late source
reproduced in VT41:13 has
nó[22].)
María, fem. name:
Mary. The "Quenya" form of the name is
transparently based on the Latin form and pronunciation – not surprising
in light of Tolkien’s love for Latin, not least in its capacity as the
language traditionally used in Catholic liturgy. The names
María and
Yésus occurring in this rendering of
Hail Mary represent the first
known cases of Tolkien using non-Eldarin, "real-world" elements in a
Quenya text. We do know cases of Tolkien rendering "real-world" names
into Quenya by their meaning, e.g. Eadwine (Edwin) =
Herendil
*
Fortune-
friend (LR:364 s.v. kher-). However, he did not attempt
to render "Mary" by its meaning (which is in any case uncertain; the
spelling
Mariam occurring in the Greek text of the Gospel of Luke
points to a Semitic original
Maryam, older variant of
Miryam =
English Miriam; one suggested interpretation is "Rebellious One", but by
New Testament times it was probably a traditional name used with little
thought of whatever meaning it once conveyed). To Tolkien, using a
Latin-based form of a pre-existing name in a Quenya text may not have
represented a great leap; after all, he sometimes spoke of Quenya as the
Elven-Latin (see LotR, Appendix F) and likened the status of Quenya in
Middle-earth to that of Latin in our own world: an ancient, august
language of ritual.
massamma, noun with pronominal ending:
our bread. Concerning the
ending -
mma for exclusive
our, see separate entry below. The
word for
bread is here #
massa, though both the
Qenya Lexicon
(QL:59) and the
Etymologies (LR:372 s.v. mbas-) give
masta instead.
Yet in PM:404, reproducing a source written at some point in the fifties
and probably early in the decade (cf. PM:395), a word for
bread-giver
appears as
massánie. This seems to presuppose #
massa as the word
for
bread, allowing us to conclude that the text before us is
post-
Etymologies. In PM:404, Tolkien also mentioned
lenn-mbass as
the combination that produced Sindarin
lembas,
journey-bread (cf.
the entry for
lembas in the
Silmarillion Index). Hence the stem was
still thought of as mbas-, though the form of the actual noun
bread
had been adjusted. The primitive form would be *
mbassâ, which may
also be represented as *
mbaS-â (see
esselya regarding
esse).
While often adjectival, the ending -
â is also common in the case of
nouns denoting inanimate objects. The stem mbas- itself means (at least
according to the
Etymologies)
knead, which in the case of the
words for
bread would refer to the kneading of the dough. mbas- is
evidently related to masag-
knead,
make soft by rubbing, kneading,
etc. (LR:371). Probably both stems should be seen as elaborated
variants of a simpler root *mas-.
-
mma possessive pronominal ending, exclusive
our, occurring in
the words
Átaremma our Father and
massamma our bread. This
ending as such is previously unattested, but it has precisely the form
we would expect it to have. It has long been recognized that pronominal
endings denoting
possession generally correspond to pronominal endings
denoting the
subject of a verb, the former ending in the vowel -
a
and the latter in -
e (-
ë). For instance, the ending -
lya
thy,
your (as in
esselya thy name, q.v.) corresponds to the
ending -
lyë thou (as in
hiruvalyë thou shalt find in Namárië).
Since the ending for exclusive
we is -
mme (as in
vamme we
won’t in WJ:371), people had already deduced that the pronominal suffix
for exclusive
our would be -
mma; it is nonetheless nice to have
this confirmed (demonstrating that Tolkien’s languages are indeed
sufficiently symmetrical for intelligent extrapolation to be of some
value). In a sense, the ending -
mma for
our was already attested,
but with an inclusive rather than exclusive meaning. It occurs in an
early LotR manuscript in the sentence
eleni silir lúmesse
omentiemman, "the stars shine on the hour of our meeting" (RS:324).
Since
omentiemman of our meeting here means the meeting of the
parties involved, one of them talking to the other, "our" is here
inclusive. Perhaps Tolkien did not make any distinction between
inclusive and exclusive "our" (and by implication "we") at this time.
However, this greeting came to be worded
elen síla lúmenn' omentielmo
"a star shines upon the hour of our meeting" in the first published
edition of LotR, the ending -
mma being changed to *-
lma (here
with the genitive ending: -
lmo), the latter denoting a specifically
inclusive "our": By now, the ending -
mma had probably had its
meaning limited to exclusive "our" only. Later still, in the revised
edition of LotR, Tolkien changed
omentielmo of our meeting to
omentielvo of the same meaning, but this incorporates a specifically
dual "our" and does not imply that *-
lma as such had been
rejected
[23].
mónalyo, noun with pronominal ending inflected for genitive:
of
thy womb. The ending -
lyathy (concerning which see
esselya)
is here combined with the genitive ending -
o, producing -
lyo
(for **-
lyao)
of thy… Removing the endings leaves #
móna as
the word for
womb, not previously attested. Not much can be said
about it except observing that the ending -
a, when not adjectival,
often occurs in words denoting inanimate things. The word would seem to
require a stem *mon- (or *smon-, *mbon-). #
Móna could conceivably be
connected to the undefined stem mô- which yields words having to do with
"labour" or toiling (LR:373), if the bringing forth of children is
perceived as such: In English at least, the verb
labour is used in
connection with giving birth.
na, optative particle denoting a
wish (or indeed a prayer). The
relevant syntax has already been outlined. Nothing certain can be said
about the origin of this particle (it must be distinct from the
preposition
na to,
towards listed in the
Etymologies, LR:374
s.v. na
1-). If it can be related to any published element, it must be
the verb
ná is (as in Namárië, cf. LR:374 s.v. nâ
2- where this
base is said to be the "stem of verb
to be in Q"; see also QL:64). If
we see
na as the imperative
be! we can make sense of the phrase
na
aire esselya, which could be interpreted *
be holy thy name =
hallowed be thy name. It is interesting to notice that in one manuscript
now in the Bodleian (MS Tolkien 21, fol. 2v), Tolkien observed that the
wishing-particle
nai means
be it that, comparing it to
ná is
and "
Namárie be well,
be in well-being = Farewell." So
namárie
is #
na be +
#márie [in] well-being (the latter would be an
abstract formation derived from
mára good, LR:371 s.v. mag-).
However, the "be!" interpretation cannot be made to fit the other
examples, where the particle is used in conjunction with finite verbs.
Aranielya na tuluva obviously cannot be analysed as *
thy kingdom be
will come. An entirely speculative theory of how an imperative #
na
be! could have evolved into a general optative particle: Originally,
na aire esselya was intended to mean *
be holy thy name as outlined
above. However, this construction was later reinterpreted as a nominal
sentence
aire esselya holy [is] thy name with an optative particle
na prefixed to turn a declarative sentence into a wish or a prayer.
This reinterpretation made speakers feel free to use
na in conjunction
with
any declarative sentence, also sentences incorporating finite
verbs. From now on, you could take a complete sentence like
aranielya
tuluva *
thy kingdom will come and turn it into a wish/prayer by
inserting
na in front of the verb. (A further development would allow
the omission of the subject of the sentence, leaving only the object of
the finite verb:
na care indómelya, *
wish-that [one] does thy
will – unless, as we speculated above,
care itself can be taken as
an impersonal form *
one does.)
násie, interjection
amen. The first element could be
ná "is"
(see
na above for references), while #
sie may be an abstract
formation based on the stem si-
this, here, now (LR:385); #
sie
could then mean "this [situation, matter]
[24]".
Násie must be assumed to have the same meaning
as Hebrew
`amen, and the latter was used as an affirmative
interjection
so it is! or
that is true! rather than simply optative
so be it! It does not necessarily refer to what is merely wished for,
but to what
is, what is true; Hebrew
`amen is indeed related to
the word
`emeth truth (older *
`amint). Interpreting the Quenya
word in this light, I tend to conclude that
ná-sie is literally
[so]
is this[25]. (For
the fronting of the verb in exclamations, cf. Fingon’s cry before the
Nirnaeth Arnoediad:
Auta i lómë!, translated
the night is passing
in the text of
Silmarillion Ch. 20, but in the Quenya exclamation the
verb
auta is passing is placed before its subject.) *
Ná sie is
then written in one word as a pseudo-interjection
násie, but the
fact that
s does not become
z >
r, as it regularly does between
vowels, gives away that this is not a "genuine" compound. – If
násie
were to have more strictly optative meaning,
so be it! rather than
indicative
this is so, we might have expected #
na be! rather
than
ná is (see the entry
na above regarding the word
namárie).
nísiwomen, the nominative plural of
níswoman. The plural
of
nís is also attested in MR:213, but there it appears as
nissi
instead. Similar, though not wholly identical forms occur in the
Etymologies. Under the stem ini-
female, a Quenya noun
ní
female,
woman is listed (LR:377). However, in the entry for the
stem nî
1-
woman (of which ini- seems to be a variant with stem-vowel
prefixed) it is said that
ní was an "archaic and poetic" word only,
the current word for
woman being rather
nis or
nisse, pl.
nissi in both cases (LR:377). This agrees with the entries nis-
(LR:378) and ndis- (LR:375). It is suggested that nis- is an elaboration
of nî
1- and ini-, while ndis- is in turn a "strengthening" of nis-. In
the entry ndis- (LR:375), Tolkien indicates that Q
nisse woman comes
from primitive
ndis-sê. This might seem to indicate that an ending
-
sê (the precise meaning of which is difficult to pin down) has been
added to the stem. On the other hand, we can also understand the
primitive form as being *
ndiS-ê, the doubling of the
s
representing a medial fortification; the primitive ending -
ê added
to this fortified stem would here be feminine. The formation of
primitive
ndis-sê woman from the stem ndis- is similar to
bessê
wife from the stem bes- (LR:352). Whatever the precise etymology, in
this scenario the Quenya descendant of
ndis-sê was
nisse, which
was apparently normally shortened to
nis. This would represent
**
niss, the final
ss being simplified to
s since Quenya cannot
normally have a double consonant finally; but in the plural form
nissi, where the double consonant was not final because of the
plural ending, it naturally persists. So far we have discussed the
scenario of the
Etymologies. As already mentioned, in MR:213 the
plural
women is still
nissi, but in this post-LotR source the
singular is given as
nís with a long vowel (as if it were influenced
by the archaic word
ní). The text of the Lord’s Prayer seems to
presuppose the same singular, but here the plural is
nísi, formed
simply by adding the ending -
i: there is no hint of any
stem-variation. The plural
nísi is most surprising, for a single
intervocalic
s ought to become voiced to
z, in turn becoming
r. So why do we not see
nís woman pl. **
nízi/
níri just
as we have
olos dream pl.
olozi/
olori in UT:396? May Tolkien
at this stage have imagined that
nís pl.
nísi represents earlier
*
níþ pl. *
níþi, since
s from earlier
þ never becomes
z >
r? (Cf. for instance
nause imagination from older
nauþe,
LR:378 s.v. nowo-; no form **
nauze, **
naure arose, evidently
because intervocalic
s was voiced to
z before þ became
s;
the voicing rule had ceased to function when new
s'es developed from
þ.) If
nís were to represent earlier Quenya *
níþ, this would
require that the primitive word had a shape quite different from what is
suggested in the
Etymologies. Whatever the case, the re-emergence of
nissi as the plural form in a late source (MR:213) would seem to
indicate that Tolkien had changed his mind back again, reviving the
plural he had used in the
Etymologies. (Hence, writers should
probably let the plural of
nís be
nissi rather than
nísi.)
-
o, a genitive ending here occurring thrice, in the words
Eruo
God’s,
Eruanno of grace and
mónalyo of thy womb (nominative
forms
Eru, #
Eruanna, #
mónalya – the latter two examples
confirm that when it is added to a word ending in -
a, the genitive
suffix -
o displaces this final vowel; cf.
Vardo,
Calaciryo as
the genitive of
Varda,
Calacirya in Namárië). According to WJ:368,
this genitive ending is to be referred to the "ancient adverbial
element" ho, the basic meaning of which seems to be
from (the point of
view being outside "the thing, place, or group [left]"; cf. the entry
3O from, away, from among, out of in the
Etymologies, LR:360).
The Quenya ending is said to descend from Primitive Quendian -
hô, an
enclitic suffixed to noun stems; this position was "the usual place for
the simpler
prepositional elements in PQ" (WJ:368). This -
hô
produced Common Eldarin -
ô, "since medial
h was very early lost
without trace in CE", and with the shortening of the long final vowels,
the Quenya genitive ending -
o arose. As explained by Tolkien in
WJ:368-369, this genitive properly refers to
point of origin more than
"ownership" (for the latter, good Quenya would rather use the
possessive-adjectival case in -
va). It is often useful to bear in
mind that the ending -
o descends from an element meaning
from,
for sometimes this meaning can still be discerned in the use of the
genitive in Quenya. In a phrase like
i yáve mónalyo,
the fruit of
thy womb, the idea is obviously not that the womb somehow
owns the
"fruit", but that the "fruit"
proceeded from the womb. (Cf. also the
"ablativic" use of the genitive in the word
Oiolossëo from Mount
Everwhite in Namárië, though for
from Quenya would normally use the
regular ablative in -
llo; see
ulcullo).
ontaril, noun
mother or more literally
begetter, not
previously attested but made up from familiar elements. In the
Etymologies, a verb
onta-
beget is derived from the stem ono-
of similar meaning (LR:379; this is evidently a stem-vowel prefixed
variant of nô, which stem is also defined
beget: LR:378).
Onta-
would represent primitive *
ontâ- or *
onotâ-; this is one of the
cases where the ending -
tâ functions only as a verb-former and adds
nothing to the meaning of the stem. Two derived agental nouns are
actually listed in the
Etymologies,
ontaro begetter,
parent
and a corresponding feminine form
ontare (the fact that the latter is
said to be feminine evidently implies that
ontaro is masculine; the
endings -
o and -
e are masculine/feminine counterparts in
Quenya). Yet in his Hail Mary translation Tolkien did not use
ontare, but an alternative feminine form
ontaril. The feminine
ending -
il is attested in only a few other Quenya words:
amil
mother derived from a stem am
1- (LR:348 –
mamil in UT:191 is
perhaps a hypocoristic variant) and
tavaril female dryad from the
stem táwar- (LR:391). Cf. also Old Noldorin
khíril lady (LR:364 s.v.
kher-). The simplest agental form in -
r is perhaps not
gender-specific: The primitive endings -
ro and -
re (cf. WJ:371
regarding the former) were masculine and feminine, respectively, but
they would have merged as -
r already in Common Eldarin, since final
short -
o and -
e were lost very early. However, the primitive
endings also appeared in long variants -
rô and -
rê, and where
they occurred the final vowel indicating gender would still be present
in Quenya, though now short: Hence in the
Etymologies the words for
begetter/
parent are
ontaro m. and
ontare f. Even so, we have
relatively few examples of nouns including the long masculine ending
-
ro (all of them in the
Etymologies), and the word
ontare
itself seems to be the sole example of the feminine ending -
re. It
may be that Tolkien decided to drop these endings and rather assume that
the primitive personal/agental endings -
ro (m.) and -
re (f.) had
merged as -
r in Quenya, with no indication of sex; if it is
desirable to express gender, one must add a secondary ending to -
r,
like masc. -
on or fem. -
il. (Cf. masc.
tavaron and fem.
tavaril as the words for
dryad in LR:391 s.v. táwar-.) Hence we have
ontaril as the word for
begetter,
mother in the text before us.
– The plural gender-neutral word
parents,
ontari (evidently
misread as "ontani" in LR:379) occurred in an early version of
Treebeard’s greeting to Celeborn and Galadriel, but it was changed to
nostari as in the published LotR, Tolkien later noting that
nosta-
means
beget. (SD:73; in earlier "Qenya", this verb meant
give
birth instead; see LT1:272 or QL:66.) This change was made as LotR was
being finished, suggesting that the Hail Mary translation predates this
time – or we would perhaps have seen *
nostaril instead of
ontaril. However, it should be noted that the stem ono-
beget,
give birth to was still valid in the post-LotR period, as is evident
from WJ:413 reproducing a source dating from ca. 1960. Even so, the use
of the word
ontaril may provide a hint that our text was written about
the time Tolkien was finishing LotR (say, after the two first volumes
had been published, but before he made some final, minute revisions in
the last volume – like changing
ontari to
nostari as recorded in
SD:73).
quanta, adjective
full. This word is attested at all stages of
Tolkien’s long evolution of Quenya; it occurs both in the Qenya Lexicon
of 1915 (QL:78 s.v. qntn or qata), in the
Etymologies of the
mid-thirties (LR:366 s.v. kwat-, which was an added entry) and in such a
post-LotR source as the essay
Quendi and Eldar of ca. 1960 (in the
phrase
quanta sarme "full writing", VT39:8). In the two first sources,
the spelling used is of course
qanta. The stem kwat- from which this
adjective was derived in the
Etymologies was not further explained or
even defined there. However, in
Quendi and Eldar Tolkien shed more
light on this root (WJ:392). He "theorized" that it had originally
occurred in a simpler form kwa: "This stem evidently referred to
completion. As such it survives as an element in many of the Eldarin
words for
whole, total, all, etc. But it also appears in the form
*kwan, and cannot well be separated from the verb stem *kwata, Q[uenya]
quat-
fill." The adjective
quanta full "cannot well be
separated" either, and this verbal stem kwata, extension of kwa, is
clearly the same stem as kwat- in the
Etymologies (another case of
slightly inconsistent representation of stems; see
Eruo). If kwat(a)
is primarily a verbal stem
fill, it could have a primitive past
participle *
kwatnâ filled (-
nâ being a primitive past
participle ending; see
aistana). If
quanta full is to be
referred to *
kwatnâ filled, this old past participle may then
have developed into an adjective. For a probable parallel case, cf.
Quenya
melda beloved,
dear; the glosses make it clear that
this is to be taken as an adjective. However, the primitive form Tolkien
probably meant to be *
melnâ, which would simply be the past
participle
loved, formed from the stem mel-
love (as friend)
(LR:372). *
Kwatnâ may have metathesized to *
kwantâ at an early
stage; cf. another example of the ending -
nâ being added to a stem
ending in a voiceless stop: From stak-
split,
insert come both
stankâ and
staknâ, these primitive forms being cited as the
sources of the Quenya adjective (and/or noun?)
sanka cleft,
split (LR:388). Despite
staknâ being mentioned last, it may be that
this is the oldest form, early turning into
stankâ; Quenya
sanka
clearly descends from the latter form. The immediate ancestor of
quanta must likewise have been *
kwantâ. However, it is eminently
possible that this is also to be taken as the ulterior form, not just as
a metathesized variant of *
kwatnâ. There are other examples of
adjectives being derived by means of nasal infixion and the suffixing of
-
â, such as primitive
tungâ taut, tight vs. the stem tug-
(LR:394; it is of course possible that
stankâ above is meant to be a
similar formation rather than a metathesized form of
staknâ). Our
favorite theory must probably be that *
kwantâ is an adjective
full
derived from kwat- by means of the same devices; in such a case we shall
not have to postulate a semantic development from past participle to
adjective (
filled >
full).
rámen, pronoun
for us (?),
on our behalf (?). As indicated in
the summary analysis above,
men ought to be enough to express
for
us (
me we + the dative ending -
n). If the last part of
rámen is indeed #
men for us, we are left with a prefix
#
rá- that is wholly obscure. Conceivably the prefix tilts the
meaning of the simple dative
for us in the direction of
on our
behalf; nothing more can be said of it
[26].
sí, adverb
now. It is previously attested in Namárië (
an sí
Tintallë…máryat ortanë for now the Kindler…has uplifted her
hands), in LR:47/SD:310 (
ilya sí maller raikar, with interlinear
translation
all now roads [are] bent), and in the
Etymologies.
The latter source lists the word
sí as a derivative of the stem si-
this,
here,
now (LR:385); this stem thus refers to
present
position in time or space. (In Sindarin, the word
si – often occurring
in lenited form
hi – covers both
here and
now.) The
Etymologies also lists
sin as an alternative form of
sí, and an
example from LR:47 (
sin atalante, in SD:310
sín atalante) would
seem to indicate that the variant
sin (
sín) is used when the next
word begins in a vowel. Compare the distribution of
a vs.
an in
English. However, this is not the case in the Hail Mary text, which has
sí ar rather than *
sin/
sín ar for
now and.
síra, adverb
today. The first element is obviously to be derived
from the same stem si-
this,
here,
now (LR:385) as
sí now
above. This stem manifests as a prefix
sí- (with a long vowel) also
in the word
símen here in Fíriel’s Song (LR:72); this is
transparently
sí-
this +
men place (LR:372 s.v. men-). In
light of this example, it would be tempting to analyse
síra as
this
day. However, the final element #-
ra cannot be related to any
known word for
day. A form *
síre could incorporate
ré,
mentioned in LotR, Appendix D: "A
day of the sun [the Elves] called
ré and reckoned from sunset to sunset." As the final element of a
compound,
ré is shortened to -
re (-
rë); for instance, Appendix
D also cites
mettarë as the name of the last day of the year (clearly
metta end +
ré day, cf. LR:373 s.v. met-, though Tolkien may
originally have thought of the final element as
arë rather than
ré: see
ilaurëa). When making their own translation of the
Lord’s Prayer, Patrick Wynne and Carl F. Hostetter indeed coined
precisely the word *
síre to translate "today" (VT32:8). Yet
Tolkien’s manuscript definitely seems to read
síra and not *
síre
(which, by the way, would clash with
síre river: LR:385 s.v.
sir-). While the possibility that Tolkien accidentally wrote
a
intending
e cannot wholly be ruled out, it is possible to plausibly
explain the word
síra as it stands. The final element may be seen
simply as the adjectival ending -
ra (primitive -
râ, see
aire). An adjective/adverb
síra would not
etymologically mean
strictly "today", it would only somehow refer to
present time or
place, but by convention it could be used specifically for "today". It
is interesting to notice that in early "Qenya" at least, the word for
tomorrow was
enwa (QL:34; no word for "tomorrow" is known from later
sources). This was from the beginning conceived as a demonstrative stem
e(n)- to which is added what seems to be an adjectival ending. In the
context of later Quenya,
enwa could be interpreted as incorporating
the stem en-
over there,
yonder (LR:356) which "of time points to
the future" (LR:399 s.v. ya-); to this is added the ending -
wa
(primitive -
wâ) known from adjectives, adverbs and prepositions (see
imíca concerning primitive
hekwâ).
Enwa by its etymology only
refers vaguely to that which is "over there" or "in the future", but by
convention it could be used specifically for
tomorrow. An
adjectival/adverbial formation
síra today based on the stem si-
(having to do with the present rather than the future) could be wholly
parallel to this. Yet one should generally be wary about basing
conclusions regarding Quenya on the early "Qenya" material, and an even
better interpretation may be found: The word
ré day mentioned in
LotR, Appendix D may reflect a stem *r- (stems consisting of a single
consonant would not be unheard of, cf. the "demonstrative stem" s- in
LR:385). In
ré, this *r- would be combined with the primitive
(abstract) ending -
ê, hence *
rê > Quenya
ré. Without this
ending we could have *
sî-
r- "this-day", to which is added the
simple adjectival ending -
â (WJ:382), resulting in the primitive
"adjective" *
sî-r-â > Q
síra, in Quenya used as an adverb
"today".
sív', elided form of *
síve, conjunction or preposition:
as,
apparently when comparing with something close to the speaker (contrast
tambe below
[27]). The first element is
sí-
this,
here, now as in
síra above. This is prefixed to what is evidently the preposition
ve
as,
like, persisting through all stages of Tolkien’s development
of Quenya (QL:101, Namárië, MC:215). The Sindarin word #
be which
occurs in the King’s Letter (SD:129, there with a suffixed article:
ben) is apparently a cognate of Quenya
ve. While translated
in
the in the phrase
ben genediad Drannail =
in the Shire reckoning
(calendar), the context makes it clear that
in the here means
*
according to the. Sindarin #
be would be similar to the
primitive form of this preposition; in Quenya the primitive form with
b instead of
v may be preserved in the word
tambe, see below.
tambe, preposition:
as,
in the same way as, apparently
pointing away from the speaker (contrast *
síve above). This may be
tana that (LR:389 s.v. ta-) prefixed to *
be as,
like (see
above), contracted to *
tan-be and then assimilated to
tambe. Yet
if this explanation is correct one may ask why
sív[
e] above does
not appear as **
simbe instead, contracted in the same way from
*
sina-be (
sina this, UT:305). It would seem that Quenya word
formation is not entirely symmetric; in the case of
sív[
e] a
prefix based directly on the stem si- is used, while in the case of
tambe the first element might seem to be based on the
derived form
tana rather than the naked root ta-. Perhaps **
táve paralleling
sív[
e] would be equally possible? Such a speculative form cannot
be recommended to writers, though. It may be noted that in one quite
early "Qenya" text reproduced in MC:215-216, the word for
that appears
as
tanya rather than
tana (
tanya wende that maiden).
Tanya
is best analysed as a root *tan- plus the ending -
ya. If Tolkien (at
least sometimes) imagined the demonstrative stem to be *tan- rather than
just ta-, this might explain the form
tambe (< *
tan-be).
Interestingly, the verb
tana-
to show, indicate and the noun
tanna sign, both from a source postdating the
Etymologies and
indeed the LotR itself (MR:385), could very well reflect a demonstrative
stem *tan-. (It may be noted that Christopher Tolkien in MR:385 refers
to
tana- as a
root.)
tien, evidently dative pronoun
to them,
for them. From the
Cormallen Praise we know the word
tethem. This may represent
unstressed *
taithose (ones), a primitive plural pronoun formed
(with the primitive plural ending -
î, -
i) from the demonstrative
stem ta-
that; cf. Quenya
ta that,
it (LR:389). The
connecting vowel
e may well turn up before the dative ending -
n
when it is added to a monosyllable ending in a diphthong, producing a
form *
taien. Before another vowel,
ai was reduced to
e in
Quenya, cf. for instance Q
leo shade from primitive
daio (LR:354
s.v. day-). Hence *
taien could become *
teen, but the sequence of
two concomitant
e's was not durable, becoming
ie by dissimilation.
Hence the dative form of
te can plausibly be
tien. (For the
development
ee >
ie, cf. for instance
laurië as the plural form
of
laurëa golden in Namárië: It has long been recognized that the
plural form represents *
laurëai, unstressed final -
ai later
becoming -
e, but what would be *
laurëe turned into
laurië by
dissimilation.)
tuluva, future verb
will come. The verb
tul-
come is well
attested; in the
Etymologies it is listed in the first person aorist
(
tulin I come), derived directly from a stem tul-
come,
approach,
move towards (point of speaker) (LR:395, cf. WJ:368).
The verb here occurs with the future-tense ending -
uva, as in
firuvamme (q.v.) The future tense
tuluva was already attested in the
Silmarillion, there with the prefix
en-
re-,
again,
Húrin crying
aurë entuluva,
day shall come again, after the
Nirnaeth Arnoediad (
Silmarillion Ch. 20).
tulya, verb
lead, or literally evidently *
cause to come.
This must be seen as a causative form of the verb
tul-
come (see
tuluva above). The
Etymologies also lists a primitive causative
formation,
tultâ-
make come, whence Quenya
tulta-
send
for,
fetch,
summon: LR:395 s.v. tul-. This is probably the
best example we have of the verbal ending -
tâ > -
ta being
causative (though sometimes it functions simply as a verb-former).
Tulya-, however, shows another ending, and it also has a meaning
somewhat different from that of
tulta-: the latter only has to do
with causing something to come to(wards) oneself, while
tulya-
evidently means to
lead or
direct in general, irrespective of the
position of the speaker (despite the gloss assigned to the stem tul-,
quoted under
tuluva above). How, then, are we to analyse
tulya?
The ending -
ya (primitive -
yâ, or by another spelling -
jâ)
is sometimes simply a verb-former that adds nothing to the meaning of
the stem, an eminent example of this being Quenya
sir- vs. Old
Noldorin
sirya-: Both verbs mean
flow, but while the Quenya form
represents the stem sir-
flow with no added elements, the synonymous
Old Noldorin verb is derived by means of the ending -
ya that in this
case cannot be seen to cause any semantic change whatsoever (LR:385).
Yet in other cases this ending may take on a causative meaning. In
WJ:411 the stem tele is glossed
close,
end,
come at the end.
The most immediate Quenya descendant of this was the intransitive verb
tele-
finish,
end. Yet this had a
transitive counterpart
telya finish,
wind up,
conclude. It is not surprising,
then, that the same ending can be used to derive a transitive verb
tulya lead,
make come from the intransitive verbal stem tul-
come. The ending -
ya may not necessarily connote transitivity,
but it is interesting to notice that the verb
ulya-
pour retains
the ending -
ya in the past tense
ulyane only if the verb is used
in a transitive sense. If "pour" is intransitive, the ending -
ya
drops out and the past tense is
ulle, apparently formed directly
from the stem (LR:396 s.v. ulu-).
úcaremmar, plural noun with pronominal ending:
our sins, our
misdeeds. The pronominal ending -
mma, here followed by the plural
ending -
r, denotes exclusive
our (see
Átaremma). Removing the
endings (pronominal and plural), we are left with
úcare-. It cannot
be definitely determined whether the noun
sin should be
úcare
(
úcarë) or just #
úcar: The
e in
úcare- could be part of
the word proper, but it could also be merely a connecting vowel inserted
to avoid an impossible consonant cluster, just as in
Átaremma.
Indirect evidence
may support #
úcare as the independent form: In
MC:222, we have
elenillor as the plural ablative of
elen star.
Notice the
i that is inserted between
elen and the case ending
-
llor (for plural ablative): It seems that the case ending is added
to the normal, "nominative" plural
eleni stars (attested by itself
in Namárië). So if a noun ending in a consonant is to receive an ending
that would produce an impossible consonant cluster, and the whole form
is to be plural, one does not use the normal connecting vowel
e (as in
Átaremma, or
Elendilenna in PM:401). Instead one may construct the
simplest
plural form of the noun, in -
i, and use this plural
ending as a connecting vowel before adding the case ending. If the noun
sin were #
úcar, the same procedure could have been used here:
plural *
úcari, to which the pronominal ending would be added,
producing *
úcarimmar (with double plural marking,
i and
r,
just as in
elenillor). The fact that we do not here see
*
úcarimmar, but
úcaremmar, may then suggest that no extra
connecting vowel is needed – sc. that the naked noun
sin is not
#
úcar ending in a consonant, but #
úcare. The ending -
e would
represent primitive *-
ê, known to be an abstract ending (see
esselya). As for the elements #
úcare is made up of, see the verb
úcarer below.
úcarer plural verb
sin,
trespass. The verb has the plural
ending -
r to agree with its plural subject ("
those who
sin/trespass against us"). This form includes the verb
car-
do,
concerning which see
care; as discussed in that entry, we would
rather expect the plural aorist to be *
úcarir according to the
system Tolkien used in both earlier and later sources. Anyhow, this verb
is obviously related to the noun #
úcare sin,
misdeed discussed
above. The prefix
ú- sometimes functions as a negation
not-,
un-,
in-, but the
Etymologies adds that it is "usually with
bad sense" (LR:396 s.v. ugu-, umu-). Here the "bad sense" is dominant;
in this case, the prefix does not indicate negation, but something
wrong. The noun #
ú-care is quite literally
mis-deed, and
#
úcar- is the corresponding verb:
to commit a misdeed,
to do
wrong,
to sin.
úcarindor, plural noun
sinners,
evildoers; singular
#
úcarindo. This is an agental from of the verb
úcar- discussed
above. This word provides our third attestation of the agental ending
-
indo, with the same meaning as English -
er. The
Etymologies
has
melindo lover, a derivative from the verb
mel-
love
(LR:372 s.v. mel-). In LotR we find the word #
colindo bearer,
attested as a compounded plural: as part of the Cormallen Praise, Frodo
and Sam were hailed as the
Cormacolindor or
Ring-bearers. (The
underlying verb #
col-, #
kol-
bear has never been attested by
itself, but cf. MR:385 stating that
kolla means
borne or
worn.)
In the
Etymologies, -
indo is suggested to be a specifically
masculine agental ending, since masc.
melindo is contrasted with
fem.
melisse as the word for
lover (and of course, both of the
Cormacolindor or Ring-bearers were male). However, in the context of
this prayer, the plural
úcarindor is probably not intended to carry
any implications of gender.
ulcullo noun in ablative,
from evil (or conceivably
from [the]
evil one, as discussed above). This is the sole occurrence of the
ablative ending -
llo from in this text, but it is well attested
elsewhere (Namárië, MC:221-222, Plotz Letter). Little can be said about
the origin of this ending; it is tempting to assume that the final
-
o is somehow related to ho
from, the origin of the Quenya
genitive ending (see -
o). Unlike the case ending, the noun #
ulcu
evil is not previously attested, though it is obviously related to the
adjective
ulca bad,
wicked,
wrong (QL:97)
[28]. Though not found in the
Etymologies, this early "Qenya" adjective was also valid in later
Quenya; it occurs as part of a compound in a LotR manuscript:
henulka
evil-eyed. (SD:68 – this is part of Treebeard’s denunciation of the
Orcs; in the published LotR this Quenya word is not included, though the
Ent still calls the Orcs "evil-eyed".) Some very early ideas about the
derivation of
ulca that are set out in QL:97 are probably best ignored
within the context of later Quenya. In the later period of Tolkien’s
conception, the adjective
ulca and the noun #
ulcu must probably be
derived from a stem *uluk- (or conceivably *guluk- since primitive
initial
g- was lost without trace in Quenya, but by opting for
*uluk- we allow for the possibility that the stem ulug- in LR:396 is a
variant of it; the latter stem is not defined but yields words for such
"evil" concepts as
hideous,
horrible,
monster). The
adjective
ulca would then descend from primitive *
ulukâ or
*
ulkâ, sc. this stem with the adjectival ending -
â (WJ:382). The
noun #
ulcu would represent *
ulukû: two-syllable stems sometimes
form nouns by reduplicating the stem-vowel a third time, as a final
vowel, but in that position it is long. Cf. such primitive words as
galadâ tree (LR:357 s.v. galad-) or
kyelepê silver (Letters:426,
cf. LR:367 s.v. kyelep-). – By another theory, the primitive form should
rather be *
ulku, which by itself would produce Q *
ulco: Final
short -
u in the primitive language had become -
o in Quenya (cf.
primitive
tundu hill > Q
tundo, LR:395 s.v. tun-). This
*
ulco would then appear as #
ulcu- only before endings, hence
ablative
ulcullo, since the original -
u became -
o only when
final. Yet this seems to be a less probable theory. The change of
earlier final short -
u to -
o parallels the change of earlier
short -
i to -
e. From examples like
úcarer instead of
*
úcarir we have already argued that around 1950, Tolkien was in a
"phase" where he carried through the changed quality of the short final
vowels
everywhere, even where the vowels are not final because some
ending follows. He may have intended that the vowels were changed in all
positions by analogy with the simplex forms, where the "final" vowel
really was final and did change for phonological reasons. So if he had
imagined a development *
ulku > Q *
ulco, he would probably have
used *
ulcollo as the ablative form as well. When he wrote
ulcullo
instead, this may indicate that he intended the nominative to be simply
#
ulcu[29]. – If #
ulcu does not
mean
evil as an abstract, but rather
(the) evil one, the final
-
u may not just be the stem-vowel reduplicated. Rather it would be
the same masculine/animate ending as in
Héru, q.v. Then #
ulcu
could be derived from the adjective
ulca evil, falling into an
established Quenya pattern. Regarding the word
Ainu, actually a
borrowing from Valarin, Tolkien stated: "It was from this
ainu that in
Quenya was made the adjective
aina holy, since according to Quenya
derivation
ainu appeared to be a personal form of such an adjective"
(WJ:399). If #
ulcu does mean
evil one, it could likewise be a
"personal" form: a noun derived from the adjective
ulca. Yet
#
ulcu may be an abstract
evil after all; as mentioned above, the
word would probably either receive the article or be capitalized if it
were to refer to the devil. True, Quenya abstracts in -
u are very
rare (abstract nouns typically end in -
e instead), but abstracts of
this shape may occur where
u is also the stem-vowel: Cf.
nuru
death (LR:377 s.v. ñgur-, primitive *
ñgurû with reduplicated and
suffixed stem-vowel). We know that this is a true abstract, since
Tolkien contrasted it with the capitalized form
Nuru, stated to be
Death "personified" (within Tolkien’s mythos a name of the Vala usually
called Mandos
[30]).
úsahtienna, noun in allative:
into temptation. The allative
ending -
nna may simply indicate "movement towards" (as stated by
Christopher Tolkien in UT:432 s.v.
Eldanna), but if Tolkien based
his Quenya translation of the Lord’s Prayer on the normal wording of
this prayer, this ending here implies not only
to,
towards but
into. The allative has the same force in the phrase
mannar Valion
into the hands of the Lords in Fíriel’s Song (LR:72; -
nna becomes
-
nnar in the plural). This allative ending is obviously related to
the prepositional stem nâ
1-
to,
towards (LR:374). Tolkien stated
that "prepositional" elements were normally suffixed to noun stems in
Primitive Quendian (WJ:368, see the entry -
o for the quotation), so
Quenya -
nna would presumably descend from nâ
1- in this suffixed
position. (The Quenya ending, with double
nn, would seem to be
strengthened or nasal-infixed; the Telerin ablative still had simple
-
na, Tolkien equating Quenya
lúmenna upon the hour with Telerin
lúmena: WJ:367 vs. 407.) – Removing the ending we are left with
#
úsahtie as the noun
temptation. The form most similar to this
in the published corpus would be
sahta marred, attested in the
phrase
Arda Sahta Arda Marred (MR:405, changed by Tolkien to
Arda
Hastaina, MR:408, 254). Yet it seems difficult, semantically, to get
from "mar, marred" to "temptation". Nothing certain can be said about
the etymology of #
úsahtie, except that it evidently incorporates the
negative prefix
ú-, but some speculation may be offered: The Qenya
Lexicon lists a verb
saka-
pursue,
look for,
search
(QL:81). If a stem *sak-
search was still valid at a much later stage
of Tolkien’s conception, there could be a primitive causative verb
*
saktâ-
make search (as for the sometimes causative verbal ending
-
tâ, see
tulya regarding primitive
tultâ-). *
Saktâ- would
produce Quenya *
sahta-. With the prefix
ú-, used in the same
"bad sense" as in
úcarer sin,
trespass above, we may interpret
the verb *
úsahta- as
make (someone else)
seek what is bad,
which is a plausible etymology for a verb
tempt. With the
infinitival or gerundial ending -
ie (as in
en-yalië, UT:317),
this verb could indeed produce an abstract #
úsahtie temptation.
It is, however, also possible to plausibly explain this word without
resorting to the early "Qenya" material: Tolkien may have intended
#
úsahtie to be a derivative of the stem stag-
press,
compress
(LR:388). This entry in the
Etymologies lists no actual verb directly
reflecting the meaning of the stem, but there could well be a primitive
verb *
stagtâ- (this would be yet another case of the ending -
tâ
functioning as a mere verb-former, adding nothing to the meaning of the
root – see
ontaril). This *
stagtâ- might later become
*
staktâ- > Quenya *
þahta-, *
sahta-. If this means
to
press, we might again have a gerund *
sahtie, meaning
pressing,
pressure. By adding the prefix
ú-, full of sinister
connotations, we would arrive at #
úsahtie, literally referring to
some kind of "evil pressure". This may plausibly be a way of expressing
temptation[31].
ya, relative pronoun
which,
that:
lúmesse ya firuvamme
*
in the hour that we shall die. Nothing can be said of the etymology
of
ya; the Primitive Elvish form would probably be similar. This is
our first attestation of
ya as a separate word in a text that is
indisputably Quenya. Previously we knew
ya by itself only from the
Arctic sentence published in
The Father Christmas Letters:
Mára
mesta an ni véla tye ento, ya rato nea – translated "good-bye until I
see you next, and I hope it will be soon", more literally probably
*"…which I hope will be soon". While this comes from a work that has
few connections to Tolkien’s Middle-earth mythos (indeed a work that
does not belong to Tolkien’s serious literary production at all), it has
long been recognized that the "Arctic" sentence represents some kind of
Quenya or "Qenya". In LotR-style Quenya,
ya has up till now only been
attested with a case ending; Namárië has
yassen for
wherein (or
*
in which, the ending for plural locative being suffixed to
ya).
Some, indeed, have assumed that
ya- is simply the form the relative
pronoun
i (q.v.) assumes before an ending, and that
ya would not
appear as an independent form. This theory must now be abandoned; the
manuscript before us clearly demonstrates that not only does
ya appear
independently but
ya and
i coexist as Quenya relative pronouns, both
of them occurring here. This, of course, raises the question of when to
use
ya and when to use
i. Are they interchangeable? I suspect that
one would always use
ya- when case endings are to be added;
i is
"indeclinable" in its capacity as article (LR:361 s.v. i-), and this may
be true when it functions as a relative pronoun as well. But when
i
and
ya occur by themselves, it may seem that
i refers to
sentients
(or perhaps more generally
animates), while
ya refers to
inanimates and
situations (the Arctic sentence would be an example
of the latter). In short,
i vs.
ya may represent a distinction
roughly similar to English
who vs.
which,
what. Another
theory, still not disproved, may be that
i is used when it is the
subject of the following relative sentence (e.g. *
Orco i tirë Elda
an Orc that watches an Elf), while
ya is the
object (*
Orco ya
tirë Elda an Orc that an Elf watches).
yáve, noun
fruit. As indicated above, Tolkien’s manuscript may
seem to read
yave with a short vowel, but since there just might be an
accent merged into the letter above, we read
yáve as in all other
attestations of the word. These include the
Silmarillion Appendix
(where
yávë fruit occurs as the very last entry) and the
Etymologies: LR:399 s.v. yab- lists the same word with the same
gloss, and the root itself is also glossed "fruit". The QL (p. 105)
indicates that in Tolkien’s early "Qenya", this word appeared as
yáva
instead, and there was also a verb
yav-
bear fruit (listed in the
form
yavin, perhaps intended as the third person aorist; in later
Quenya it would be first person instead). If such a verb was still valid
in Tolkien’s later incarnations of Quenya,
yáve could be seen as being
basically or originally an abstract formation derived from this verb.
Cf. a Quenya word like
ráne straying, wandering, formed from the
verbal stem ran-
wander,
stray (LR:383) by means of the same
devices: lengthening the stem vowel and adding -
e. Such abstracts
may (later?) take on a more concrete meaning, denoting what is produced
by the action rather than the action itself; hence the word
núte,
formed from the stem nut-
tie,
bind, does not mean
tying,
binding but rather
bond,
knot (LR:378). In a similar fashion,
the meaning of
yáve may have wandered from full abstract
fruit-bearing to the concrete meaning
fruit.
Yésus, masc. name:
Jesus. As in the case of
María for
Mary, Tolkien’s "Quenya" form of the name seems to be based on the
pronunciation of the
Latin form, but spelt according to the normal
Roman conventions for the representation of Quenya. The underlying
Semitic form (probably something like
Yêshû´, that could have been
Quenyarized as *
Yéhyu) may not have been considered at all, nor did
Tolkien try to render it by its meaning ("Yahweh’s Salvation"). The name
is not fully Quenyarized; intervocalic
s would normally have become
voiced to
z, later becoming
r in the dialect of the Noldor (e.g.
olozi >
olori as the plural of
olos dream, UT:396; cf. our
theory that
aire holy, q.v., was originally meant to represent
primitive *
gaisi). If
Yésus were a true Quenya word, it would have
to represent older *
Yéþus, since
s altered from
þ never became
z >
r (see
nísi). But since this is not meant to be an inherited
Quenya word, such diachronic considerations are irrelevant;
synchronically speaking the Latin pronunciation of
Jesus violates no
rules of Quenya phonotax, and so it is used here. It would have been
interesting to know how Tolkien would have
inflected this word,
though. Would we have seen *
Yésuss- with double
s before an
ending, e.g. genitive *
Yésusso or dative *
Yésussen? That would
follow the pattern of a noun like
eques saying,
dictum, which
becomes
equess- before an ending: hence the plural
equessi in
WJ:392. It is there said that this form is "analogical", evidently
suggesting that very many words ending in -
s doubled this sound to
-
ss- before endings (e.g.
nissi as the more orthodox plural of
nís woman; see
nísi), so new words in -
s tended to slip
into the same pattern. Perhaps this would then also be applied to a
borrowed name like
Yésus, so that a phrase like "the love of Jesus"
would be *
Yésusso melme.
(обратно)
5. Summary: New insights on Quenya
In summary we can say that Tolkien’s Quenya rendering of the Lord’s
Prayer and Hail Mary provides quite a few new insights, but there are
also some mysteries. The strange new "locative" or perhaps "comparative"
case exemplified by the words
cemende and
Erumande is probably best
ignored by writers until it is better understood: Tolkien’s unpublished
writings, if they are eventually made available to scholarship, may
throw more light on this form
[32]. The
same goes for the preposition (?)
han of uncertain meaning
[33]. Otherwise, the known
Quenya vocabulary is enhanced by a whole string of new words, most of
which offer no obscurities:
aistana blessed, #
ála imperative
do not,
#aranie kingdom, #
apsen-
forgive (with direct
object of the matter that is forgiven, dative object of the person
forgiven),
as with,
etelehta-
free,
release,
*
Eruanna grace considered as
God’s gift,
ilaurëa daily,
everyday (adj.),
imíca among, #
indóme noun
will [34],
mal but, #
móna womb,
na optative particle,
násie amen! so it is!, the strange form
rámen, ?
for us,
?
on our behalf,
síra today,
sív[
e] and
tambe both
meaning
as or
like (the former apparently comparing with something
that is close, the latter with something remote),
tien as the dative
of
te them,
tulya-
lead, the three related words
#
úcare sin,
misdeed,
úcar- verb
sin and #
úcarindo
sinner,
evildoer, #
ulcu evil as noun
[35], #
úsahtie temptation. There is also
nísi
as an unorthodox plural of
nís woman; the plural
nissi found in
other sources (both earlier and younger than the text before us) is
probably to be preferred.
More than ten of the words above cover meanings for which we had no
Quenya translation before. Some of these words may, on closer scrutiny,
yield further vocabulary items: if we have correctly analysed
násie as
(so) is this, we may isolate a word #
sie this referring to a
situation (e.g. *
i Elda carne sie the Elf did this); the word
sina known from the phrase
vanda sina this oath in Cirion’s Oath
(UT:305, 312) may be
adjectival only, modifying another word but not
necessarily occurring by itself as in "the Elf did this"
[36].
This text confirms what the word
massánie bread-giver in PM:404
suggests: in the fifties, Tolkien had decided that the Quenya word for
bread was to be #
massa and not as in earlier sources
masta. Of
course, both forms could very well coexist in the language, but in the
Etymologies,
masta is both a noun
bread and a verb
bake
(LR:372 s.v. mbas-). Writers can now use
masta for
bake and
#
massa for
bread, avoiding the ambiguous forms.
Some words are of particular value to writers.
Imíca as an unambiguous
word for
among is a welcome addition to our vocabulary; so far writers
have had to resort to
imbë between, but that is not quite the
same. The new word
mal for
but fills no gap in our vocabulary, since
we already had
nan (or
nán,
ná), but
mal is perhaps to be preferred: For one thing it occurs in a source
that is certainly younger than the sources that provide these other
words for
but, and as we have argued,
mal may be less ambiguous
than the alternatives (including the form
nó that turned up in
VT41:13, since according to LR:379 s.v. nowo-
nó is also a noun
conception, and in one sentence
nó even seems to be a preposition
before – see VT41:18). The verb
tulya-
lead is also useful;
until now we have only had
tulta-
summon, and though both words
basically mean "make come" the latter form had the limitation that it
only referred to movement towards the place of the speaker. Another
highly useful word is
as for
with in the sense
together with. So
far it has been somewhat unclear what the Quenya for
with really is. I
have used and recommended
yo; in WJ:407 it occurs as a
prefix in
the word
yomenie (read *
yomentie?)
meeting,
gathering (of
three or more coming from different directions). We seem to have an
independent attestation of
yo in SD:56, in one of the draft variants
of Elendil’s Oath:
yo hildinyar, perhaps meaning *
with my heirs
(the final version in LotR – volume 3, Book Six, chapter V – simply
reads
ar hildinyar,
and my heirs). Though I think
yo may
indeed be one Quenya word for
with, at least at certain stages of
Tolkien’s ever-evolving vision, the new word
as is certainly the best
option for expressing this meaning now. (Moreover,
yo may be ambiguous
since this is conceivably also the genitive of
ya which, hence
*
yo =
of which,
whose. The locative
yassen wherein,
in which occurring in Namárië demonstrates that the relative pronoun
ya may receive case endings.)
News about
pronouns would be very welcome in Tolkienian linguistics,
since parts of the Quenya pronoun table remain rather obscure. We can
now remove the asterisk from
emme as the emphatic pronoun for
exclusive
we, as well as from the related ending -
mma for
exclusive
our. These forms had already been deduced, but
tien as
the dative pronoun
to/for them is unexpected; yet it seems to confirm
that
te them represents *
tai (
tien itself evolving from
*
taien, according to this theory).
It is interesting to observe that the prefix
et-
forth,
out is
expanded to
ete- where an impossible consonant cluster would
otherwise arise, as in
etelehta-
free,
release,
let out.
I have sometimes wondered how
et- could be combined with a word like
lelya-
go (WJ:362), since *
etlelya- is not a possible Quenya
word. While I actually pondered the possibility of a form **
eltelya-
with metathesis, it would seem that
go out (or
go forth) should
rather be *
etelelya-.
The verb
úcar-
sin is valuable not only because it fills a gap in
our vocabulary, but also because it provides an example of the negative
prefix
ú- used on a verb: it conveys the idea of something wrong or
bad (
car-
do >
ú-car-
do wrong,
sin). Some, like Nancy
Martsch in her primer
Basic Quenya, have assumed that
ú-
prefixed to verbs is used as a negation
not. To be sure, this idea
was not without any foundation; we know that
ú- is used like this in
Sindarin (as in Gilraen’s
linnod in LotR, Appendix A:
ú-chebin
estel anim I have kept no hope for myself or literally *
I do not
keep hope for me, the verb *
hebin [here lenited
chebin]
apparently meaning *
I keep). Indeed we have a
Quenya attestation
of
ú- as a negation prefix in Fíriel’s Song, which seems to have
úye as a negated form of
ye is (LR:72:
úye sére indo-ninya
my heart resteth not, more literally
my heart is not resting?)
However, Fíriel’s Song is not quite LotR-style Quenya, and the fact that
the verb
úcar- means
sin,
do wrong rather than
not do (cf.
car-
do) seems to indicate that we should avoid using
ú- as
a negation prefix on verbs. (It is, however, so used in the case of
adjectives, cf.
únótimë numberless or literally
uncountable in
Namárië.) If we want to negate verbs, other devices must be sought; the
most straightforward solution would be to simply use the independent
word
lá not (LR:367 s.v. la-). This word is here attested as part of
the negative command #
ála do not.
The texts also provide new insights on Quenya grammar and syntax. It is
interesting to notice how the imperative of a "basic" verb like
#
hyam-
pray is constructed: the verb receives the ending -
e
(reflecting the ending of an
i-stem:
hyame = *
hyami-), and the
imperative particle
á is placed in front of it to produce
á hyame =
pray! The system so far used by many writers (including me) is to
construct the imperative of such verbs simply by adding the ending
-
a. This was in accordance with the examples
ela! see! behold!
and
heka! be gone! from WJ:362, 364. It still seems possible that
pray! could simply be *
hyama! However, the construction with
á
plus stem in -
e is perhaps to be preferred. It may be that Tolkien
intended
ela! and
heka! as old, fossilized forms. After all, the
same essay that provides
ela! also exemplifies the
negated form of
the same imperative construction (in the phrase
áva kare don’t do
[it]! in WJ:371; this would correspond to a positive command *
á
kare do [it]!). In the case of the example
á vala rule
(WJ:404, not **
á vale), we must assume that
vala- is itself an
A-stem and therefore does not take the ending -
e (e.g. third person
aorist
vala rather than **
vale). The imperative of a "basic" verb
like
tir-
watch should be *
á tire rather than **
á tira,
though a shorter imperative *
tira! paralleling
ela! and
heka! is
perhaps equally possible.
These texts also reveal another thing about Quenya imperative
constructions: The imperative particle
á can receive pronominal
suffixes denoting the object of the sentence (direct object in
accusative or indirect object in dative), as in
áme etelehta deliver
us,
ámen anta…massamma give (to) us…our bread ("us" being
denoted by the suffix #-
me, #-
men). The same goes for the
negated form of the imperative particle, #
ála (as in
álame
tulya,
do not lead us). Presumably Tolkien’s later variant of
the word for
don’t,
áva, could also receive pronominal endings
denoting the object of the prohibition.
Another piece of news about the behavior of pronominal suffixes is that
even finite verbs can receive a pronominal ending, denoting an object,
that does
not have to be preceded by another ending denoting the
subject (
apsenet [we] forgive them). The recently-published
example
karitas to do it (VT41:13, 17) demonstrated that
infinitives can receive object endings, and this can now be seen to be
true of finite verbs as well. In all previous examples of verbs
incorporating a pronominal ending denoting the object, it is preceded by
another pronominal suffix denoting the
subject (e.g. one word from the
Cormallen praise:
laituvalmet we [-
lme-]
shall bless them
[-
t]). Writers who choose to append pronominal endings to verbs
should make sure that there can be no confusion as to whether the ending
denotes the subject or the object; otherwise separate pronouns (rather
than endings) should be employed.
The phrase
quanta Eruanno full of grace represents a hitherto
unknown use of the genitive. It could surely be used in more mundane
contexts as well, e.g. *
yulma quanta neno,
a cup full of water
(
nén,
nen-). The underlying idea is probably the use of the
genitive in the sense "concerning" (as in
Quenta Silmarillion the
Story of [= about, regarding, concerning] the Silmarils). So perhaps
quanta Eruanno =
full regarding grace, *
quanta neno =
full
as far as water is concerned. It would be interesting to know if the
genitive case can also be used
adverbially in connection with the
related verb
quat-
fill (WJ:392), so that a sentence like "the Elf
filled the cup with mead [
miruvórë]" could be expressed as *
i Elda
quantë i yulma miruvórëo – the genitive indicating the substance used
to "fill" the direct object. (If this is not the case, the instrumental
would probably be used instead: *
miruvórenen.) It is even possible
that the genitive can be used, not only with
quanta full, but also
with its antonym
lusta empty, e.g. *
lusta neno empty of
water.
The wishing-particle
na opens up certain vistas of expression that the
formerly known particle
nai does not cover. In all known examples,
nai expresses a wish that is to be fulfilled in the
future, and
that only involves what a subject hopefully is to do to an object:
Nai
hiruvalyë Valimar! Be it [that] thou wilt find Valimar! (Namárië),
nai tiruvantes *may they keep it! (Cirion’s Oath). While this
remains an important Quenya wishing-formula, the particle
na is more
flexible. It can be used to connect adjectives and nouns (
na aire
esselya,
hallowed be thy name or literally *
wish-that holy [is]
thy name). (Presumably this could also be expressed as *
nai nauva
esselya aire, but this would place the fulfillment of the wish in the
future.)
Na can be used in the case of a wish regarding what a subject
hopefully is to do in the future, but no object needs to be involved:
Aranielya na tuluva thy kingdom come or
wish that thy kingdom will
come (reworked from the declarative statement *
aranielya tuluva
thy kingdom will come simply by inserting the wishing-particle in
front of the verb). This could
probably also have been expressed by
means of the "traditional" formula *
nai aranielya tuluva (though all
attested examples of this formula involves an object and not only a
subject). Of particular interest is the peculiar construction
na care
indómelya, apparently *
wish-that [one] does thy will. Not only
does this show that
na can be used with other tenses than the future
(
care looks like an aorist) – it also indicates that this formula
can be used to express a wish about
what is to be done to an object
without actually mentioning any subject. In effect we have a passive of
sorts.
The form
aistana for
blessed seems to tell us that though "derived"
verbs, or A-stem verbs, normally form their past participles in -
ina
(as in
hastaina marred, MR:254, 408), the shorter ending -
na
may be preferred when the resulting form would otherwise come to have
the diphthong
ai in two concomitant syllables: hence not
**
aistaina. (Other verbs for which this may be relevant include
laita-
bless,
praise,
naina-
lament,
taita-
prolong,
vaita-
wrap: past participles *
laitana,
*
nainana [?], *
taitana, *
vaitana. A few other verbs
containing
ai, like
faina-
emit light, seem by their
meanings to be intransitive and could probably not have meaningful past
participles.) – As for the verb that underlies the form
aistana, sc.
#
aista-
to bless, it seems to supersede
aista-
to dread in
the
Etymologies (LR:358 s.v. gáyas-), though as we have argued above,
the ultimate derivation may be much the same. For the meaning
to dread
writers can rather use the verb #
ruk- from a post-LotR source (first
person aorist in WJ:415:
rukin I feel fear or horror, said to be
constructed with "from" – sc. the ablative case? – of the object
feared). For the meaning
bless we already had
laita- from the
Cormallen Praise, but as we have argued, this is by its etymology rather
*
magnify and may often better be rendered
praise (Letters:308; cf.
also the corresponding verbal noun in
Erulaitalë,
Praise of Eru,
as the name of a Númenórean festival: UT:166, 436). In a more purely
"religious" meaning,
bless as opposed to merely
praise or
magnify, #
aista- must henceforth be the first choice of writers.
These texts do not provide much more information about the verb
to be
in Quenya (a topic writers really would like to know more about!),
though it may be noted that the imperative
be! seems to be
na (q.v.
above). If
i ëa han ëa does mean something like *
who art in heaven
(Eä), or even *
who art above Eä, this confirms that
ëa rather
than
ná is used for
is with reference to a position (cf.
i or ilyë
mahalmar ëa who is above all thrones in Cirion’s Oath). It is,
however, interesting to see that nominal sentences with no explicit
copula are apparently quite permissible and even usual:
i Héru as elye
the Lord [is] with thee,
aistana elye blessed [art] thou,
aistana i yáve mónalyo blessed [is] the fruit of thy womb.
There are also some academic (rather than "practical") lessons here. The
Lord’s Prayer/Hail Mary translation demonstrates how Tolkien might
"re-explain" certain forms that had been published, so that they would
not conflict with linguistic revisions he had undertaken afterwards (a
conflict that would have been unavoidable if he had maintained the
explanation that he had originally intended).
Aire is here repeatedly
used for
holy, and the first part of the compound
airetári in
Namárië is likewise translated
holy in LotR. In a much later source
Tolkien however states that
aire is "actually" a noun
sanctity,
the adjective
holy being rather
aira (PM:363-364). It can now be
seen that this is not what he originally had in mind; when he first
wrote
airetári he did intend
aire to mean simply
holy. What
triggered the subsequent re-explanations and rationalizations may have
been a post-LotR revision of the diachronic phonology (or actually the
undoing of a revision that was "valid" during the final part of the
period when LotR was written): When Tolkien once and for all decided
that the change of primitive short *-
i to Quenya -
e occurred
only at the
end of words and did not normally make it into other
positions even by analogy, he had to face the fact that the
already-published form
airetári should have been *
airitári. In the
related case
carnemírie, Tolkien did change it to
carnimírie in
the revised version of LotR (1966), but
airetári persisted in this
form and was later reinterpreted.
If I were to emend these texts to "final-intention" Quenya, as well as
it can be approximated now and to whatever extent it even makes sense to
speak of Tolkien’s "final intentions", I would alter
úcarer to
*
úcarir (based on the late example
karir in WJ:391, certainly
postdating these translations); this again touches on the question of
whether or not the change of final short *-
i to -
e spread to
other positions by analogy. For the same reason I would perhaps also
read *
apsenit instead of
apsenet. I would also change the
strange plural
nísi women to
nissi, the form found elsewhere
(including sources younger than this Hail Mary translation).
Whether we should furthermore read *
Atáremma rather than
Átaremma, or even
Heru rather than
Héru, is difficult to say;
such forms would at least be easier to reconcile with what has been
published elsewhere
[37].
But even so, Tolkien’s translation of the Lord’s Prayer and Hail Mary
will stand as a remarkable sample of Quenya as Tolkien had come to see
the High-Elven language about the time LotR was being published.
(обратно)
1
I’ve put that text into footnotes (Xitsa).
(обратно)
2
VT43 prefers the one-word reading
aselye.
(обратно)
3
so in VT43
(обратно)
4
VT43 agrees with me in reading
á hyame.
(обратно)
5
VT43 argues that
han
means "beyond".
(обратно)
6
VT43 takes
i ëa han ëa as
meaning "who is beyond Eä", which would certainly not be a direct
translation of "who is in heaven". If this is the correct
interpretation, it is still surprising that the second
ëa is not
capitalized as
Eä or
Ëa, to identify it as a proper name.
(обратно)
7
In VT43, the ending
-
de is suggested to be an allomorph of the locative ending -
sse,
or its shorter version -
se. Tolkien may seem to be toying with a
system that has this ending appearing as -
ze or -
de following
certain consonants, like -
n and -
l. This phonological
development does not agree very well with the system he uses elsewhere,
though:
cemen + -
se would be expected to yield
cemesse rather
than
cemende.
(обратно)
8
VT43 takes it for granted that
the simplex is
Eruman.
(обратно)
9
VT43 does not consider the possibility of a
subject-less construction;
na care indómelya is apparently taken as a
kind of imperative: "Do thy [own!] will!" rather than "let thy will be
done".
(обратно)
10
Earlier versions of the Quenya Ave Maria here uses the instrumental
case instead: VT43:26, 27.
(обратно)
11
However, VT43 cites examples of Quenya prepositions that
do take pronominal endings. The mystery of why
s fails to become
r
remains, though.
(обратно)
12
See the entry
rámen in the Etymological analysis for further discussion.
(обратно)
13
According to VT43:18, Tolkien
derived
apsene from
sen "let loose, free, let go" supplied with a
somewhat obscure prefix
aba-, becoming
ap- when the syncope
brought
b into contact with
p.
(обратно)
14
In VT43,
cemende is interpreted as
cemen + -
se, the latter element being
a short locative ending which turns into -
ze > -
de following
n. As I point out elsewhere, this development seems pretty ad hoc;
normally
ns would be expected to turn into a double
ss, not
nd.
(обратно)
15
If
as elye should really read
aselye in one
word, the emphatic pronoun
elye does not after all occur in this
text.
(обратно)
16
the prefixed
i- in this case may reflect the stem-vowel of ni
2-
I, LR:378
(обратно)
17
VT43:14 quotes
han = "beyond"
from a very late (ca. 1970) manuscript.
(обратно)
18
In VT43 it is argued that
i ëa han ëa means "who
is beyond Eä", which would indeed be a circumlocution. The fact that
han appears with the meaning "beyond" in a manuscript 15-20 years
younger than the Lord’s Prayer text cannot be seen as conclusive
regarding its meaning here. However, a variant version of the prayer
used the word
pella instead, a well-known Quenya word for "beyond".
This suggests that "who is beyond Eä" may indeed be the intended meaning
here.
(обратно)
19
According to VT43:16, Tolkien
in a note dating from 1957 derived
indóme from
in-i-d "mind, inner
thought" and defined it as "settled character, also used of the
will
of Eru".
(обратно)
20
VT43
argues that -
de is simply an allomorph of -
sse.
(обратно)
21
VT43:23 presents
some thoughts about possible etymologies of
mal, for instance that
it could be a short ablative of
má "hand" and therefore signifying
"away from one hand" = "on the other hand". I do not think I am
insulting anyone if I say this is extremely speculative, but I can offer
no really plausible etymology myself.
(обратно)
22
And now VT43:23 adds yet other words
for "but":
one,
on,
ono,
anat.
(обратно)
23
The assumption that
omentielvo includes a dual form of
"our" is based on information from Humphrey Carpenter’s edited version
of Tolkien’s letters, but it is unclear whether this was a lasting idea,
or indeed whether or not Carpenter may have misunderstood whatever
manuscript he had before him. There are apparently late manuscripts in
which
omentielvo is explained as containing an
inclusive "our"
rather than a dual ending.
(обратно)
24
According to VT43:24,
sie
appears as an
adverb "thus" in one late manuscript, ca. 1968. Whether
this is relevant for the obviously much earlier
Lord’s Prayer
manuscript cannot be determined, but
sie = "thus" would also make
sense in the context.
(обратно)
25
Or perhaps rather
ná -
sie = "[this] is so", if we
accept the gloss of
sie as "thus"; the meaning remains the same.
(обратно)
26
VT43:33 suggests that
rá-
is derived from
ara along side, and analyzes
rámen as
rá "for" +
men "us". As the authors of the article ought to know and indeed write
elsewhere,
men is a
dative form "for us", not simply "us". The
prefix
rá- still seems superfluous as long as the dative ending is
attached to the pronoun. It is possible, though, that
rá as a
preposition "for" or "on behalf of" governs the dative case, much like
ú "without" governs the genitive case. If so, the "prefix"
rá is
actually a preposition rather than a prefix proper, though a pronoun has
glued itself to it. An earlier version of the Quenya Ave Maria actually
had the two-word reading
rá men: VT43:27. Perhaps, then, we could
also have phrases like *
rá i Eldan "on behalf of the Elf".
(обратно)
27
VT43 confirms that the full form of the word is
síve.
(обратно)
28
Interestingly,
it now turns out that some earlier versions of the prayer actually had
ulcallo instead of
ulcullo.
(обратно)
29
I think my reasoning as such was sound, but according to
VT43:24, the simplex may after all be
ulco with a stem-form
ulcu-.
At least there is one version of the prayer that had
va ulco instead
of
ulcullo, this
va apparently being a preposition "from" that was
used instead of the ablative ending -
llo.
(обратно)
30
If
ulcullo is actually
ulco with stem
ulcu-, it
is a quite rare formation, especially for a word that is to have an
abstract meaning.
Ulco,
ulcu- presupposes a form *
ulku in
early Common Eldarin.
(обратно)
31
These speculations turn out to be quite accurate, which
is frankly more than I would have expected. VT43:22-23 reveals that one
version of the prayer had, not
úsahtienna, but the shorter form
sahtienna. This was derived from a stem thag-
oppress,
crush,
press which is plainly a mere variant of the stag-
press,
compress listed in Etym. For variation between aspirates
like
ph,
th,
kh and consonant clusters in
s-, like
sp-,
st-,
sk-, compare spal-, spalas- as variants of phal-,
phalas- (LR:387). The final form
úsahtie Tolkien referred to another
stem saka-, which however did not mean "search" as it had in the early
Qenya Lexicon; Tolkien defined it as "draw, pull" and indicated that
sahta- is a verb
induce, whence the prefixed gerund
úsahtie =
inducement to do wrong.
(обратно)
32
According to VT43, this -
de is an
allomorph of the regular locative ending -
ssë, but I suspect that
this shorter ending was not a lasting idea in Tolkien’s ever-evolving
conception. For clarity, writers should probably use the full ending
-
ssë, where necessary inserting a connecting vowel before it.
(обратно)
33
It now
appears that
han means "beyond", but I think I would stick to the more
well-known postposition
pella for this meaning.
(обратно)
34
according
to VT43:16
indóme means "settled character, also used of the
will of
Eru"
(обратно)
35
may actually be
ulco,
ulcu-
(обратно)
36
According to
VT43,
sie may actually be an adverb "thus"; this word certainly has
this meaning in a later source. However,
sie = "thus" would also be a
highly useful word that writers have often missed.
Sie could also be
used to translate "so". – As for "this", it is possibly that
sin is
used by itself and
sina as an adjectival modifier:
Elda sina carnë
sin, "this Elf did this".
(обратно)
37
Apparently Tolkien also turned -
mm- as a
pronominal element for exclusive "we, our" into -
lm-, a change that
is reflected in the Second Edition of LotR: Incorporating this revision
we would have to read *
Átarelma, *
massalma,
*
úcarelmar,
*
elmen, *
firuvalme rather than
Átaremma,
massamma etc.
(обратно)
Оглавление
1. Introduction
2. The Text
3. Syntactical/Analytical Commentary: The Textual Context Analysed
I. THE LORD’S PRAYER
II. HAIL MARY
4. Lexical/Etymological Commentary: Discussion of Individual Words
5. Summary: New insights on Quenya
*** Примечания ***
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