Subject: A possible solution:
Author:
Posted on: 2014-06-25 19:44:00 UTC

Treat it like Latin.

Latin, for all that the classical civilizations are still studied, is a dead language. Quenya and Sindarin have the same problem; the original speakers are all dead, what with never being alive in the first place. We're going to have to invent new words for things that didn't exist in the cultural context of Second- and Third-Age Middle-Earth, kind of like how the Welsh word for microwave is popty-ping and the Blackfoot word for horse, ponokamita, translates literally as "elk-dog" - and contrary to what you've said, this happens all the time when new cultural influences come into play for a particular culture with a particular language. German's famous for compound words that go on forever. English is the ultimate mongrel language, what with being invaded by everyone and then invading everyone else.

Otherwise, well... what's the point of learning it at all? It can't be to read documents in them, because like you said, eventually we'll run out of Tolkien's material. So learning it becomes based around the creation of new works, and that in turn necessitates the creation of new words. You're right, there will be a lot of different dialects springing up as a direct result of this, but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing; the Quenya-speaking community is comparatively tiny, so the really stupid stuff can get weeded out while the words that people actually want to use will stay.

Finally, the Welsh word for jellyfish is piskodden-wibblywob. I may have misspelled it, but I assure you I am not making that up. =]

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