Subject: You'm giving me ideas.
Author:
Posted on: 2014-06-26 19:22:00 UTC
On the five hundredth anniversary of the release of the film that popularised it – the original, Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings – it seems appropriate to examine the place the Elvish language, Quenya, has taken in our society.
This language, invented in the Late Middle Ages by J.R.R. Tolkien, has something of a cult following: a startlingly large number of the system's communities use some form of it. But the forms in question are as diverse as the populations that employ them. The dominant varieties are:
Helgan Quenya
This variant is closest to the original work of Tolkien; it strives to employ only words and grammatical constructs attested in his works. Unfortunately, this also makes it rather limited in vocabulary: it is rarely employed in vocal speech, being rather confined to text-based systems, where its limits can be worked around at length.
Third Age Exilic Quenya (Reconstructed)
The North American nation of Laurelindórenan began its existence using an even more restricted form of Helgan Quenya – they utilised only words dated from the period of the writing and publication of The Lord of the Rings. However, the impossibility of running a country with such a limited language soon led to compromises and expansions. Some hundred and fifty years later, 3AEQ(R) is a thriving, living language, with speakers numbering in the millions.
Grelvish
Perhaps the most wide-spread of the Quenya languages, Grelvish is also the most conservative. Originally created from a combination of Quenya and Sindarin, its wordlists have long ago taken on the status of holy writ. Any Grelvish speaker who dares to alter the sacred language faces exile – or worse.
Élvîshë
More of a writing system than a true language, Élvîshë adds random accents and extraneous final 'ë's to English words. It is the official orthographic system of the newly-terraformed 'Vénûsë'.
Finno-Quenya and Elf-Latin
While functionally unrelated, it makes sense to group these languages together: they each borrow words and grammar from another language (Finnish and Latin, respectively) to expand and complete the Quenya corpus. Finno-Quenya is virtually the only Quenya language spoken in Europe, while Elf-Latin has recently been adopted as the official ceremonial language of the trans-Uranian science stations.
Neo-Qenya
Rather than utilising Tolkien's incomplete later writings, Neo-Qenya draws on the pre-Lord of the Rings 'Qenya' language. Strange and alien-sounding even to other Quenya speakers, it is perhaps no surprise that Neo-Qenya has become widely spoken in the Martian hinterlands.
Seventh Age Unified Quendian
Originally created as an effort to 'modernise' and 'update' the holy Grelvish (and thus to demonstrate that it was not truly divine), 7AUQ has since become a popular tongue in its own right. The fastest-growing of the Quenya group, it blends Quenya and Sindarin into a cohesive and unique whole which has been deliberately shaped to allow forms of artistic expression not available in other languages.
Sorry. But ideas do happen...
hS