Til að þið fáið einhverja hugmynd um hversu mikið þetta er, þá ætla ég að taka mér það “bessaleyfi”(hvað sem það nú þýðir) að birta eftir hann það sem hann skrifaði um Quenya. Þetta er inngangurinn að æfingunum þar sem hann skýrir þær út og spyr “Afhverju að læra Quenya”.







Introduction

Of all the languages invented by British author and philologist J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973), the most popular has always been Quenya. It also seems to be the most highly developed of all the languages Tolkien devised. Indeed only two of them – Quenya and Sindarin – are so complete that one can with some ease write substantial texts in them without resorting to massive invention of one's own. Until recently, Sindarin was poorly understood, and its complex phonology may daunt fresh students (especially if they have no linguistic training). My advice to people who want to study Tolkien's linguistic creations would definitely be that they start with Quenya. Knowing this tongue will facilitate later studies of the other languages, including Sindarin, since Quenya represents just one branch of the Elvish language family: The Elvish languages are not “independent” entities, but all evolved from a common ancestral tongue, and in many respects, Quenya stands closer to this primitive original than the other languages.
In reality as opposed to this fictional context, Tolkien knew well what kind of style he was aiming for, and having sketched a “primitive Elvish” language, he cleverly devised sound-shifts that would produce a tongue with the desired flavour: Quenya resulted from his youthful romance with Finnish; he was, in his own words, “quite intoxicated” by the sound and style of this language when he discovered it (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, p. 214). However, it should be emphasized that Finnish was an inspiration only; Quenya is in no way a garbled version of Finnish, and only a few words of its vocabulary display any semblance to the corresponding Finnish words. (See Harri Peräla's discussion at http://www.sci.fi/~alboin/finn_que.htm; the writer is a Finn himself.) Tolkien also mentioned Greek and Latin as inspirations; we can evidently add Spanish to the list as well.
The fictional or “internal” history of Quenya is synopsized in my regular Ardalambion Quenya article (see http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/quenya.htm) and does not have to be repeated in any detail here. Very briefly, within Tolkien's mythos Quenya was the language of the Elves that dwelt in Valinor in the Uttermost West; being spoken in the Blessed Realm, it was the noblest tongue in the world. Later one of the clans of the Elves, the Noldor, went into exile in Middle-earth, bringing the Quenya tongue with them. In Middle-earth it soon fell out of use as a daily speech, but among the Noldor it was ever preserved as a ceremonial language, and as such it was also known to Mortal Men in later ages. Hence in The Lord of the Rings we have Frodo delivering the famous Quenya greeting elen síla lúmenn' omentielvo, “a star shines on the hour of our meeting”, when he and his friends run into some Elves (and the Elves are delighted to meet “a scholar in the Ancient Tongue”). If one studies Quenya as a way to immerse oneself in Tolkien's fiction, it may indeed be best to picture oneself as a mortal student in Middle-earth in the Third Age, about the period covered in The Lord of the Rings. (Picturing oneself as an Elvish native speaker in Valinor back in the First Age may be overly ambitious.) The particular form of Quenya taught in this course is – by intention – precisely the “late Exilic” or “Third Age” variant. This is the kind of Quenya exemplified in The Lord of the Rings, with Galadriel's Lament (Namárië) as the most substantial example.
Numerous enthusiasts have brought forth a limited, but steadily growing body of Quenya literature, especially since a substantial amount of vocabulary finally became available with the publication of The Lost Road in 1987, fifteen years after Tolkien's death. Thanks to this and the fifteen other books of Middle-earth material that Christopher Tolkien in the period 1977-96 edited from the manuscripts his father had left behind, we now know very much more about Tolkien's languages than we ever did during the lifetime of their inventor. We certainly can't sit down and readily translate the works of Shakespeare into Quenya, but we do know a few thousand words and can infer the general outlines of the grammar Tolkien envisioned. Still, you cannot really become “fluent” in Quenya, not matter how hard you study what is presently available. But it is eminently possible to write quite long Quenya texts if one deliberately eschews the unfortunate gaps in our knowledge, and we can at least hope that some of these gaps (especially regarding grammatical features) will be filled in by future publications. In the future, we may be able to develop Quenya into a more fully “useable” language. But we must obviously start by carefully internalizing the information provided by Tolkien's own material, as far as it is available to us.
Many have wanted a regular “course” or “tutorial”, with exercises and all, that would allow them to study Quenya on their own with some ease. One such effort has been made before: Nancy Martsch' Basic Quenya. All in all, this was certainly a good work; the fact that material that has been published after it was written now reveals certain shortcomings, cannot be held against the author. However, many would like to have a more updated course, and I have repeatedly been approached by people suggesting that I would be the right person to write it. It is of course nice when others call me an “expert” on Tolkienian linguistics; actually I would say that it is difficult to be an “expert” in these matters, due to the scarcity of source material. Nonetheless, I have been so privileged that I have been able to spend much time studying these matters (starting more than ten years ago), and I see it as my duty to record and pass on whatever insights I may have gained. Hence in the end I sat down and started writing this course, intended for beginners. (This conveniently allows me to fill the uncritical, vulnerable minds of fresh students with my interpretation of Quenya grammar, which interpretation I inevitably hold to be the best and most accurate. Ha ha ha.) However, this course does not seek to imitate a Linguaphone-like format with long dialogues etc. to help the student to acquire “basic fluency” in various situations relating to everyday life. This would be quite pointless in the case of an “art-language” like Quenya, which is to be used for carefully prepared prose and poetry rather than casual chatting. Rather these lessons take the form of a series of essays on various parts of Quenya grammar, reviewing and analyzing available evidence in an attempt to reconstruct Tolkien's intentions, with some exercises appended.
Why study Quenya? Obviously not because you are going to Valinor on holiday and need to be able to communicate with the natives. Some may want to study this language to somehow get in better accord with the spirit of Tolkien's authorship. He referred to

…what I think is a primary ‘fact’ about my work, that it is all of a piece, and fundamentally linguistic in inspiration. [...] It is not a ‘hobby’, in the sense of something quite different from one's work, taken up as a relief-outlet. 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. I should have preferred to write in ‘Elvish’. But, of course, such a work as The Lord of the Rings has been edited and only as much ‘language’ has been left in as I thought would be stomached by readers. (I now find that many would have liked more.) [...] It is to me, anyway, largely an essay in ‘linguistic aesthetic’, as I sometimes say to people who ask me ‘what is it all about’. (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, pp. 219-220)

In light of such strong statements made by the author, studying his invented languages cannot be dismissed as some kind of silly escapism for romantic teenagers. It must be considered a crucial part of scholarship relating to Tolkien's authorship, or indeed his work in general: The languages constructed by Tolkien are part of his output as a philologist, not necessarily less serious than his writings on pre-existing languages like Anglo-Saxon; notice that he refused to call his “fundamentally linguistic” work a mere hobby. One may call Quenya and the other languages works of art, but no matter what word we use to describe them, in the end it all boils down to this: Tolkien was not just a descriptive linguist, passively exploring and contemplating pre-existing tongues – he was a creative linguist as well.
Obviously fluency in Quenya or Sindarin is not a prerequisite before you can say anything intelligent about Tolkien's narratives; yet it is clear that some critics and scholars have woefully underestimated the crucial role of the invented languages, finding themselves unable to take even very clear statements like the one quoted above wholly seriously. To fully appreciate the scope and intricacy of Tolkien's linguistic sub-creation one has to actively study it for its own sake. It should certainly be able to command interest for its own sake. Some years ago, recognized Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey observed that

…it's clear that the languages Tolkien created are created by, you know, one of the most accomplished philologists of all time, so there is therefore something interesting in them, and I think also in them there is poured much of his professional knowledge and thought. (…) I've often noticed that there are really very valuable observations about what Tolkien thought about real philology buried in the fiction. And I would not be at all surprised if, you know, there were valuable observations buried in the invented languages. So there may be, in fact, something which emerges from it. [From an interview conducted during the Arda symposium in Oslo, April 3-5 1987, published in the journal Angerthas, issue 31.]

Even if one does not believe that there are great new philological insights waiting to be unearthed from the structure of Tolkien's languages, I cannot see why conducting detailed studies of these languages should necessarily be seen as escapism, or at best a somewhat silly pastime for people who are too lazy to find something better to do. The languages constructed by Tolkien have been likened to music; his biographer Humphrey Carpenter observes that “if he had been interested in music he would very likely have wanted to compose melodies; so why should he not make up a personal system of words that would be as it were a private symphony?” One may study one of the languages Tolkien painstakingly developed as one may study a musical symphony: a complex work of many interrelated parts woven into intricate beauty. Yet the symphony is fixed in its form, while a language can be infinitely recombined into ever new texts of prose and poetry, and yet retain its nature and flavour undiminished. One of the attractions of Quenya is that we can compose linguistic “music” ourselves just by applying Tolkien's rules, so Carpenter's comparison is too limited: Tolkien did not just make a symphony, he invented an entire form of music, and it would be a pity if it were to die with him.
Of course, others may want to study Quenya to immerse themselves in Tolkien's fiction, with no pretensions of “scholarship” of any kind: Tolkien's vision of the Elves (Quendi, Eldar) is no doubt the main achievement of his authorship, and Quenya was – at least in the somewhat biased opinion of the Noldor – “the chief Elvish tongue, the noblest, and the one most nearly preserving the ancient character of Elvish speech” (The War of the Jewels p. 374). But one may grope towards “Elvishness” in a deeper sense than just trying to immerse oneself in fiction. Happily abandoning the all too classical idea of Elves as tiny, overly pretty “fairies”, Tolkien instead achieved the vision of Elves as something more: “I suppose that the Quendi are in fact in these histories very little akin to the Elves and Fairies of Europe; and if I were pressed to rationalize, I should say that they represent greater beauty and longer life, and nobility – the Elder Children” (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, p. 176). The quintessence of Tolkien's vision of “Elvishness” is contained primarily in the languages, “for to the Eldar the making of speech is the oldest of the arts and the most beloved” (The Peoples of Middle-earth p. 398). In a way, the study of Quenya can be a quest for this vision of something beautiful and noble beyond the normal capability of our mortal and finite selves: “The Elves represent, as it were, the artistic, aesthetic, and purely scientific aspects of the Humane raised to a higher level than is actually seen in Men” (Letters, p. 176). The seeking for such a “higher level” transcends all fiction. Tolkien's inner vision of this level he translated partly into pictures, much more prominently into narratives, but (to him) more importantly still, into the words and sounds of language. In Quenya his vision of Beauty lives on, awaiting those capable of comprehending and appreciating it.
On their web-pages, the Swedish Tolkien-linguists of the Mellonath Daeron group try to justify their study of Tolkien's languages:

Our activity has been described as the ultimate luxury. We study something that does not exist, just for fun. This is something you can afford when you have everything else; food, shelter, clothes, friends, and so on. The Tolkien languages are well worth studying for their high aesthetic values alone. And knowledge of the languages is a key to a fuller appreciation of the beauty of Tolkien's sub-creation, his world, Arda.

I heartily agree with the last two sentences, but I cannot agree that Quenya or Sindarin “does not exist”. Obviously we are not talking about physical, tangible objects, but that goes for any language. These are not fictional languages, but languages as real as Esperanto or any other constructed language. Tolkien himself noted about his languages that they “have some existence, since I have composed them in some completeness” (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, p. 175).
Unlike Esperanto, Quenya is however strongly associated with a fictional internal history. (Tolkien once stated that Esperanto had been more successful if there had been an Esperanto mythos to go with it!) The associated mythos certainly enriches Quenya and helps us to understand what kind of linguistic “flavour” Tolkien was aiming for, and the fact that this language has a role to play in the most famous fantasy novels ever written obviously provides it with much “free publicity” that Esperanto can only dream of. Yet it must be emphasized that Quenya does exist as an actual entity in our own world, and as mentioned above, it indeed has a steadily growing literature, mostly in verse: The texts presently in existence must already be hundreds of times more comprehensive than all the Quenya texts Tolkien ever wrote himself. He endlessly refined the structure and imaginary evolution of his invented languages, but he wrote remarkably few substantial texts in them. Though he stated that he “should have preferred to write in ‘Elvish’” (see quote above), he actually wrote about the “Elvish” tongues rather than in them. “Delight lay in the creation itself,” Christopher Tolkien observes (Sauron Defeated, p. 440). His father made the languages just because he loved making them, not because he needed to “use” them for any specific purpose. To be sure, Tolkien wrote a number of poems in “Elvish”, but they amount to very little compared to the thousands of pages he wrote about the structure of his languages.
Tolkien had his fun in sheer invention; that was his privilege as the original creator. However, I daresay quite few people are capable of deriving much pleasure from mere passive contemplation of the structure of a language, or from reading the grammar of an invented language as if it were some kind of novel. I imagine that most people who want to study Quenya have some intention, however vague, of putting this knowledge to use by writing Quenya texts themselves, or at least by reading other people's texts (at the very least Tolkien's own). Really learning any language in any case requires active participation: Even if you wouldn't dream of ever publishing anything in Quenya but rather want to assess Tolkien's “Elvish” for purely academic purposes, you will still have to work yourselves through some exercises to internalize grammar and vocabulary. Such exercises are provided in this course.
My favorite angle on the study of Tolkien's languages is probably this (building on the “musical” analogy suggested by Carpenter): I'd say we are in somewhat the same situation as if a genius composer were to invent a new form of music, writing a great deal about its structure, but making relatively few actual compositions – some of them not even published during the lifetime of the composer himself. Yet these few compositions gain a steadily growing international audience, an audience that would very much like to hear more – much more – music of this kind. The original composer being dead, what are we to do? There is only one way to go: We must carry out a thorough study of both the published compositions and the more theoretical writings, to make out and internalize the rules and principles for this kind of music. Then we can start to compose ourselves, making entirely new melodies that yet comply with the general structure devised by the original inventor.
This, of course, has a rough analogy when it comes to Tolkien's narratives as well. Tolkien's themes and principles of story-telling have been taken over by generations of new authors, resulting in the modern fantasy genre – though it would not be very controversial to say that far from all authors have been able to live up to the high standards set by the master. In somewhat the same manner, the quality of the numerous post-Tolkien Quenya texts varies greatly. In the case of some early attempts, written when very little source material was available, it is now easy to spot various shortcomings and misinterpretations of what Tolkien really intended. Today, with much more material available, I would say it is possible to write texts that Tolkien probably would have recognized as at least roughly correct Quenya (though I think reading Quenya texts not originating with himself would have been a strange experience for him; his invented languages were originally something very private).
This course should in any case be useful no matter what your angle on this study may be – whether you want to learn Quenya to immerse yourself in Tolkien's fiction, to better appreciate a crucial side of his authorship, to learn about the intricate creations of a talented linguist, to accept the intellectual challenge of trying to master a sophisticated system, to go on a meditative quest for “Elvishness”, or simply to enjoy Quenya aesthetically. None of these are mutually exclusive, of course. Whatever your angle is, I hope you would like to have a part in making Quenya literature grow and flourish.
Another Tolkien quote may be in place here: “No language is justly studied merely as an aid to other purposes. It will in fact better serve other purposes, philological or historical, when it is studied for love, for itself” (MC:189).

THE QUESTION OF COPYRIGHT
This is an issue I shall have to devote quite a few paragraphs to, though this will probably surprise any fresh, innocent student who has never given much thought to this at all. However, debates revolving around copyright issues have sadly caused a great deal of bitterness among students working in the field of Tolkien-linguistics; such debates essentially blew apart the TolkLang mailing list, leading to the establishing of Elfling instead. If Tolkien's heirs or their lawyers ever read what follows, I hope they are not offended. This really is not about stealing anything from them, but about directing attention to one highly important part of Tolkien's work and help people learning about it, so that it can live and grow and stand as a lasting testimony to his efforts, and as a dynamic memorial to himself. Talking about his father, Christopher Tolkien in a TV interview described Quenya as “language as he wanted it, the language of his heart”. Students of Quenya merely want this special part of Tolkien's heart to live on. Nobody is trying to make any money or otherwise profit from this. (If the Tolkien Estate, or rather HarperCollins, might ever want to publish this course in book form, I would be happy to let them do so, and I would not expect to receive any royalties.)
In 1998 and early 1999, on the TolkLang list, lawyer W. C. Hicklin vociferously argued that publishing “unauthorized” grammatical descriptions of a Tolkien-language would be a blatant violation of the copyright of the Tolkien Estate, asserting that any such publication would undoubtedly make the Estate react with “money, guns and lawyers”. (One hopes the part about firearms was a figure of speech.) I cannot agree with such an interpretation of copyright law, especially considering that what we know about Quenya we have for the most part learnt by studying the examples we have – not by reading Tolkien's explicit grammars, that still have not been published. I cannot imagine that when studying available Quenya texts, is it illegal for us to put our conclusions into words and tell others about them. If this is what copyright means, then all sorts of scholarly commentary and literary criticism immediately go down the drain. While Hicklin said he reported the position of Christopher Tolkien (whom he claimed to know on a first-name basis), the Tolkien Estate itself has so far declined to present its opinion on these issues, even when asked to do so by TolkLang moderator Julian Bradfield. It may be noted that copyright law is not the area Mr. Hicklin specializes in, and I think he pressed the concept of “character” rather far by asserting that every individual word in the invented languages must be considered a literary character of Tolkien's, apparently on par with such characters as Aragorn or Galadriel. Mysteriously, Hicklin still agreed that it is OK to write fresh texts in Tolkien's languages, though in Hicklin's world this would seem to be the analogy of writing new stories involving Tolkien's characters (which everybody agrees would be a copyright violation).
Hicklin's obvious problems in putting together a consistent argument, as well as subsequent legal inquiries conducted by myself and others, have led me to the conclusion that copyrighting a language as such would be quite impossible. The language “itself” is not to be likened to a fixed text in or about it; it is an entirely abstract system, and for anything to enjoy copyright protection it must first of all have a fixed form to be protected. Arguing that the very grammatical structure and vocabulary of the language is its “fixed form” is no use, for this is an abstract system, not a “form”. Any actual text about (or in) a language is indeed protected, but not the language “itself”. To return to the analogy of our genius composer who invents a new form of music: His copyright to his own compositions, and to his writings on this form of music as fixed texts, cannot and should not be disputed by anyone. But he or his heirs cannot well assert that publishing entirely new compositions, or wholly original descriptions of the principles of this kind of music, would somehow violate their copyright.
This course is written and published (for free on the Internet) by me as a private person. The Tolkien Estate has not been asked to endorse it or even comment on it, it is in no way “official”, and I must take full responsibility for the quality of the contents. No disrespect is intended when I point out that any endorsement by the Estate would not have meant much in the way of a quality guarantee, since certain earlier works on Quenya that were published with explicit permission from the Estate can now be seen to contain certain obvious shortcomings and misinterpretations. There is little reason to believe that Estate lawyers or Christopher Tolkien himself are capable of judging the quality of a Quenya grammar (and likewise no reason to hold this against them; learning Quenya from the primary sources is a long and challenging study reserved for the especially interested). In such a situation I hope and believe that the Tolkien Estate respects the right of scholars to carry on their studies undisturbed, and to present the results of such research – especially when the relevant publications are entirely non-commercial. Despite the strong claims made by Hicklin and a very few others, there is presently no concrete evidence that the Estate or Christopher Tolkien see such studies as a violation of their copyright. If they do, let them contact me and we will talk.
The interpretation of Quenya grammar that it here set out is based on a study of the available sources, mostly analysis of actual Quenya text, and on exegesis of the relatively few explicit notes on grammar that are presently available. I hold it to be obvious that this is primarily a work of analysis and commentary (presented in a didactic fashion), and in terms of copyright, discussing the structure of Quenya cannot be much different from discussing (say) the plot structure of The Lord of the Rings: In either case it is clear that anything I can say must ultimately be based on Tolkien's writings, but the resulting study still is not a “derived work” in terms of copyright law. What we are doing here is not retelling Tolkien's fiction (though I will certainly refer to it – but then from the perspective of a critic, or better commentator, to demonstrate how Tolkien's fiction and language-construction interlock). Primarily we will be studying one of Tolkien's languages as an actual rather than a fictitious entity. The fact that this language was first presented to the world in a context of fiction does not make it a “fictional language”, and use or discussion of it is not necessarily “derivative fiction”. As already mentioned, Tolkien himself observed that his languages as such “have some existence” simply because he had actually devised them – they do not exclusively reside within a fictitious context (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, p. 175).
Much of Quenya vocabulary is not wholly “original”; Tolkien readily admitted that the vocabularies of his “Elvish” languages were “inevitably full of…reminiscences” of pre-existing tongues (The Peoples of Middle-earth p. 368). Though usually not so obvious that it is disturbing to those who want to study Quenya as a highly exotic language, the fact remains that the knowledgeable easily discern Indo-European (and sometimes even Semitic) words and stems underlying many of Tolkien's “invented” words. This is not to be seen as some sort of failure of imagination on Tolkien's part; he noted that “it is impossible in constructing imaginary languages from a limited number if component sounds to avoid such resemblances” – adding that he did not even try to avoid them (Letters, pp. 384-385). Even where no plausible “real-world” inspiration for a Quenya word can be cited, the fact still remains that there is no legal tradition whatsoever to allow a person coining new words to somehow claim them as his personal property. Tolkien himself was aware that names cannot be copyrighted (Letters, p. 349), and then one cannot well copyright common nouns, verbs, adjectives or prepositions either, precluding “unauthorized” use of them. Some words in common use today, such as robot, first occurred in a context of fiction. One cannot therefore claim that they are “fictional” words, protected on par with fictional characters, and not to be used, listed or explained without explicit permission from the one who first coined them (or his heirs).
Legal inquiries conducted after Hicklin made his flamboyant claims have confirmed that words as such automatically enter public domain the second they are coined, and nobody can monopolize them or claim exclusive ownership to them. You can register a word as a trademark, of course, but that is something entirely different: Apple Computers can't stop anyone from using “apple” as an everyday word. It is also irrelevant that the manufacturer of some kind of fantasy game had to remove all references to “balrogs”, for here it is not the Sindarin word balrog, but balrogs as characters that lie in Tolkien's copyright. The fact that Tolkien coined the word alda for “tree” hardly implies that trees are his literary characters. It is not just a tree growing in Middle-earth that can be termed an alda; the word works just as well if I write a Quenya poem about a tree growing outside my house.
I agree, though, that Quenya and the other languages enjoy some protection in their capacity as parts of the Middle-earth setting. If anyone were to write new fantasy stories involving Elves speaking a language called Quenya, and there were samples demonstrating that this is indeed Tolkien's Quenya, this would obviously be the same kind of plagiarism as if any fantasy writer were to “borrow” a city called Minas Tirith, and the description in the book made it clear that this city happened to be built on several levels and was overlooked by a white tower. But again: this course is most certainly not intended as derivative fiction. This is about studying and using one of Tolkien's languages largely irrespective of the fictional context as such – though since I also aspire to present Quenya as a part of Tolkien's authorship, I shall of course have to mention, refer to and sometimes even quote the narratives as well as presenting mere technicalities. Nonetheless: It is obviously untrue that Tolkien's languages cannot in any way be separated from his fictional world (as Hicklin seemed to claim). Vicente Velasco was for instance able to write a Quenya poem (Ríanna) commemorating Princess Diana after her tragic death, but this does not imply that the accident where she was killed must actually be a plot point in a Tolkien novel. Indeed Tolkien himself made a Quenya translation of the Lord's Prayer, a text that obviously belongs to our own reality and could not occur within the Middle-earth setting.
When discussing copyright issues, we must distinguish very clearly between the fictional context and actual use of systems or ideas described within this fiction; the latter is quite irrelevant for a discussion of copyright. By way of comparison: I fully agree that if anyone were to write new fantasy stories involving a race of small people with hairy feet living in underground structures called smials, then this writer would clearly plagiarize Tolkien and possibly even violate his copyright. But I cannot imagine that I violate anyone's copyright if I dig out a smial in my garden – or for that matter, if I have a head-to-feet hair transplant. Similarly, one shouldn't feel free to write fantasy stories about Elves speaking Quenya, but actually using the linguistic structures dreamed up by Tolkien to write new texts that by their contents have nothing to do with his fiction cannot be a violation of copyright. The new Quenya texts are copyright to no one but their writers.
Happily, Tolkien's heirs seem to agree to this; at least they have never tried to stop anyone from publishing their Quenya poems. If the Estate has no problems with this, I can only assume that their lawyers also agree that it is perfectly legal for anyone to write Quenya grammars or compile Quenya wordlists. Otherwise we should be left with the rather absurd notion of a language that can be used, but not taught or in a scholarly way described. I cannot imagine that the Estate would assert that the by now quite large number of Quenya texts that are not written by Tolkien and have nothing to do with his fiction cannot be subjected to grammatical or lexicographical studies simply because they happen to be written in Quenya. This would be an attempt to block and veto certain kinds of scholarship relating to an entire body of literature, and I don't think this could be sustained, legally or even morally. I don't know that Tolkien's heirs disagree.
I have no intention, however, of disputing the Estate's copyright to Tolkien's actual writings (on the languages or otherwise), and though it is an interesting exercise to “reconstruct the Elvish original” supposedly underlying some of Tolkien's poems or stories, one should not publish “Elvish” translations of a great amount of continuous Tolkien text. All of his texts lie in the copyright of the Tolkien Estate until it expires in 2023 (or was it 2048?), and publishing substantial translations or close retellings thereof would require the permission of the Estate: No matter how exceedingly esoteric the target-language is, any translation is still directly derived from Tolkien's own, copyrighted text. Neither should one write long stories set in Tolkien's world; that would be a violation of copyright no matter what language you use. However, making translations of a limited amount of Tolkien text can probably pass as fair use (but please don't publish your own Quenya rendering of the Ring Poem; there are all too many competing versions already…) Neither is there much reason to believe that the Estate would take any action against short Quenya-language novelettes even if they do seem to be set in Middle-earth, since it should be obvious that the real purpose is to demonstrate the use of Quenya, not to write new stories to compete with Tolkien's own (I wouldn't publish even such novelettes in any way that could conceivably be seen as commercial publishing, though). Poems about persons or events in Tolkien's world (like Ales Bican's Roccalassen or “Song to Éowyn”) I think can pass as a branch of commentary or synopsis, as long as you don't include any fresh fiction of your own. But please don't push even that too far; Tolkien's heirs are in their good right when they assert their copyright to his stories.
In exercises made for this course, I have in any case deliberately avoided any direct references to persons, places or events in Tolkien's fictional world (except for one reference to the Two Trees because the Quenya word provides such a good example of dual number). Instead of referring to Tolkien's fiction I have in most cases resorted to a wholly generic fantasy world or medieval world; there is nothing to preclude the possibility that this is Tolkien's world, but nothing concrete to confirm it, either. There are lots of Elves and Dwarves in these exercises, but though we inevitably use words like Eldar and Naucor for these peoples when talking about them in Quenya, they are really just “generic” Elves and Dwarves. Feel free to imagine that these “Elves” are Tolkien's Eldar if you like, but there is nothing that definitely ties them to any specific mythos.
Despite the fact that I don't think the Tolkien Estate could legally stop people from doing pretty much what they want with Quenya as an actual language (separated from Tolkien's fiction), I urge students to use whatever knowledge they may obtain in a respectful way. We should feel some kind of moral obligation, or even gratitude, towards Tolkien as the creator of this language. Quenya as we know it is the result of decades of painstaking work and endless refinement; its creator intended it to have an august or even sacred flavour, and it is not to be used for unworthy or downright silly purposes. (Please don't publish your Quenya compositions on toilet walls, for instance.) There is an old TV interview where Tolkien says he would not necessarily mind others knowing and enjoying his invented languages, but he would not like to see any of them turned into some sort of “secret” lingo used to exclude others. This is a wish I urge any and all students to respect. As a student and user of Quenya one should also be committed to preserving the integrity of Tolkien's system, taking great care not to distort it or needlessly dilute it. Occasionally we have to coin new words, but in such cases one should eschew arbitrary invention and instead work from Tolkien's own stems, using his methods of derivation.
Wrote Tolkien, "Of course the L[ord of the] R[ings] does not belong to me. It has been brought forth and must now go its appointed way in the world, though naturally I take a deep interest in its fortunes, as a parent would of a child. I am comforted to know that it has good friends to defend it“ (The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, p. 413-14). Perhaps he would have felt the same way about the invented languages exemplified in the book he is talking about: They have been brought forth and do already go their ”way in the world“, studied and even used by many – but now Quenya and the other languages must live their lives independently of their ”parent“, for he is no longer among us. So let students and users be their ”good friends“ and ”defend“ their systems, true to the vision of the man who spent a lifetime developing them. And this brings us back to the structure of Quenya itself.

WHAT IS QUENYA LIKE?
What kind of language is this, structurally speaking? It seems that Finnish provided considerable inspiration not only for the sound-patterns, but for the basic structure as well. Tolkien described Quenya as a ”highly inflected language“ (The Road Goes Ever On p. 69). That is, words appear in many different forms depending on their precise function in any given grammatical context. The differing forms are for the most part constructed by employing a plethora of endings, endings with meanings that in English would often be expressed as separate words instead. Hence an English translation of a Quenya text will normally consist of more words than the Quenya original: In Unfinished Tales p. 22, 51, we learn that three words of Quenya may well require a seven-word English translation: Anar caluva tielyanna = ”the sun shall shine upon your path“. Some may see this as evidence that Quenya is a more efficient language than English, but whether one uses one long word or several shorter words to express a given meaning is not very crucial. (It may be noted that if one counts syllables instead of words, it is suddenly English that is the most ”efficient“ language in the example above: The English text has one syllable less than the Quenya version!) Quenya should be enjoyed for its own qualities, not by comparing it to other languages. But the word tielyanna ”upon your path“ illustrates the main difference between English and Quenya: small independent words like ”your“ or ”upon“ frequently become endings instead – in this example -lya and -nna, respectively.
Is Quenya a ”difficult“ language? Speaking of Quenya and Sindarin, the two main languages of his mythos, Tolkien wrote that ”both languages are, of course, extremely difficult“ (Letters:403). Undoubtedly there are many presently unsuspected complexities waiting for us in the vast amount of unpublished material. But as far or short as our knowledge goes today, I certainly wouldn't call Quenya ”extremely difficult“. It may be an involved and intricate construct, but certainly less complicated than Sindarin, and the acquisition of Quenya as we know it is in no way a superhuman feat. Any devoted student should be able to achieve basic mastery of the grammatical system in relatively short time, weeks or even days rather than months. General knowledge about linguistics would certainly be helpful in such a study, but hardly a prerequisite; in this course I have tried to make the explanations so simple that any reasonably bright teenager should be able to understand what is going on. (Bearing in mind that some people who want to study Quenya are quite young, I have tried to pre-suppose virtually no knowledge about linguistics, and I will explain even elementary linguistic terms – more knowledgeable students may feel that I sometimes go into boring baby-talk.)
It must still be understood that it is not a streamlined Esperanto we are dealing with here. Tolkien deliberately tried to make his languages ”naturalistic“; hence there are some irregular verbs and the like, though I would say their number is quite manageable. Quenya probably stands about midway between an absolutely regular ”Esperanto“ and a typical ”real“ language with its spate of complexities and irregularities, yet perhaps closer to the former. Indeed Quenya is probably too simple to be entirely ”credible“ as a supposedly non-constructed language, at least if we compare it to the messy languages of Mortal Men in our own age. But then Quenya wasn't really ”non-constructed“ within the scope of the fictional history either; it was constructed and refined by the Elves, ”and the Eldar know their tongue, not word by word only, but as a whole“ (The Peoples of Middle-earth p. 398). So perhaps the Eldar, being very much conscious of the structure of their speech, would tend to make languages with a relatively tidy grammar. Anyway, from the viewpoint of students it is difficult to regret the absence of more irregular forms to be memorized, so if this simplicity does indeed make Quenya less ”credible“ as a natural language, Tolkien is easily forgiven!

THE SOURCES
We know that Tolkien wrote literally thousands of pages about his languages. Unfortunately – and here I must ask fresh students to brazen themselves for their first big shock, though the shocking fact has already been alluded to – very little of this material is available to us. However, Christopher Tolkien has apparently tried to make arrangements for its publication. Throughout most of the nineties, he was sending photo-copies of his father's linguistic manuscripts to a group of Americans often (but unofficially) referred to as the Elfconners, apparently because of their prominence on the ”cons“ or conventions of ELF, the ”Elvish Linguistic Fellowship“. The group consists of Christopher Gilson, Carl F. Hostetter, Patrick Wynne and Arden R. Smith (in recent years, Bill Welden has also joined in). Before they started to receive Tolkien manuscripts, these people quite regularly published the Tolkien-linguistic journals Vinyar Tengwar (edited by Hostetter) and Parma Eldalamberon (edited by Gilson), generally maintaining a high standard. This, we must assume, was the reason why Christopher Tolkien wanted them to publish his father's linguistic manuscripts in the first place.
The very strange and most unfortunate fact is that after they started receiving Tolkien manuscripts for publication, the group's rate of publication dropped disastrously. They began to receive manuscript copies in 1991; a decade later they have managed to get some 200 pages of new material into print (most of it wordlist material pertaining to the very earliest stages of Tolkien's work, far removed from the LotR scenario). Some of us are not impressed. What little material has appeared has been nicely presented, but with the present rate of publication, the completion of the project must be very far off indeed. In 1996, Christopher Gilson stated that ”next year“, his group planned to publish ”fairly comprehensive“ grammars for the two main languages of Tolkien's mythos. By 2001 we are still waiting. Just about every other deadline that the members of Gilson's group have set for themselves has proved equally worthless, and since about 1998 they have largely refrained from stating any deadlines at all. Still, we must hope that in ten (or twenty, or thirty…) years, we will know more – but if the Elfconners are able to ever commence efficient, regular publication of Tolkien's material, they have yet to demonstrate this ability.
We must work, then, from sources already available – sources that often touch on the languages more or less incidentally. The linguistic aspect of Tolkien's authorship luckily permeates his works to such an extent that if you bring together all the scattered pieces of information and analyze them thoroughly, you will be able to figure out much about his languages even without access to his explicit grammars. Unfortunately this method of study will leave many gaps in our knowledge, gaps most irritating to people who try to actually use these languages. In other cases, the material is so scarce that we can formulate not just one but all too many theories about what the underlying grammatical rules look like, and we don't have any further examples that would allow us to identify the correct theory. Nonetheless, we do know a great deal about Quenya, though some of our knowledge is more tentative than we would like. A survey of the sources is in place here; at least I should explain the abbreviations used in this work.
The primary narrative works, The Lord of the Rings (LotR, 1954-55) and The Silmarillion (Silm, 1977) need no further introduction. (Of course, there is also The Hobbit, but this book contains little linguistic information, and hardly anything at all about Quenya.) Most of the Elvish names of people and places found in LotR (such as Aragorn, Glorfindel, Galadriel, Minas Tirith) are Sindarin, but there are substantial samples of Quenya as well. In LotR, we find one of the longest Quenya texts known, the poem Namárië near the end of chapter VIII (”Farewell to Lórien“) in Book Two in the first volume, The Fellowship of the Ring. Also known as Galadriel's Lament, this is the poem commencing with the words Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen…
Various shorter samples of Quenya are also sprinkled throughout LotR, such as Frodo speaking in tongues in Shelob's lair (”Aiya Eärendil Elenion Ancalima! he cried, and he knew not what he had spoken“), the praise that the Ringbearers received on the Field of Cormallen (part Sindarin, part Quenya), Elendil's Declaration as repeated by Aragorn at his coronation, and Treebeard's greeting to Celeborn and Galadriel. The Quenya parts of the Cormallen Praise (as I shall refer to it), as found in volume 3, Book Six, chapter IV (”The Field of Cormallen“), go like this: A laita te, laita te! Andave laituvalmet! … Cormacolindor, a laita tárienna! (Cf. Sauron Defeated p. 47.) This is translated in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, p. 308: ”Bless them, bless them, long we will praise them.“ – ”The Ring bearers, bless (or praise) them to the height.“
In the next chapter (V) we have Elendil's Declaration, repeated by Aragorn at his coronation: Et Eärello Endorenna utúlien. Sinome maruvan ar hildinyar tenn' Ambar-metta. This is translated in the text as ”out of the Great Sea to Middle-earth I am come. In this place will I abide, and my heirs, unto the ending of the world.“
Treebeard's Greeting in the chapter after that (VI) goes a vanimar, vanimálion nostari, translated both in Letters p. 308 (”o beautiful ones, parents of beautiful children“) and Sauron Defeated p. 73 (”fair ones begetters of fair ones“; this rendering is the more literal).
Quenya material (though mostly isolated words only) also occur in the Appendices to LotR, in particular Appendix E.
In the Silmarillion, we also have a few short Quenya sentences. In chapter 20 there are some battle-cries: Útúlie'n aurë! Aiya Eldalië ar Atanatári, utúlie'n aurë! ”The day has come! Behold, people of the Eldar and Fathers of Men, the day has come!“ – Auta i lómë! ”The night is passing!“ – Aurë entuluva! ”Day shall come again!“ Near the end of chapter 21 there is the cry a Túrin Turambar turun ambartanen, ”o Túrin master of doom by doom mastered“ – but Unfinished Tales p. 138 indicates that turun should rather read turún' (evidently shortened from a longer form turúna, the final -a dropping out because the next word also begins in a-). The Silmarillion Appendix, ”Elements in Quenya and Sindarin names“, also mentions many words belonging to these two languages.
In the case of other sources, a more summary survey will suffice, since these books and journals (unlike LotR and Silm!) have not appeared in too many editions and translations. Hence I can simply refer to the relevant book and page when quoting from them, and that reference will hopefully be precise enough. We will list them by the abbreviations used hereinafter:
¤ RGEO: The Road Goes Ever On (our page references are to the Second Edition of 1978, ISBN 0-04-784011-0). The first edition was published in 1968; this is thus one of our very few sources outside LotR that were published in Tolkien's own lifetime, which lends it extra authority (for when something had been published, he would normally consider it a fixed and unchangeable part of the mythos). While RGEO is basically a song cycle (Tolkien's poems with music by Donald Swann), Tolkien also included quite extensive notes on two Elvish poems occurring in LotR, Namárië and the Sindarin hymn A Elbereth Gilthoniel (RGEO:66-76). Besides writing them out in Fëanorian script, he also provided an interlinear translation of both; this allows us to know with certainty which word means what. He also rearranged Namárië into a clearer ”prose“ version, as an alternative to the poetic version in LotR – providing us with a unique opportunity to compare poetic style and prose style in Quenya. Hence I will sometimes refer to the ”prose Namárië“.
¤ UT: Unfinished Tales (1980, ISBN 0-04-823208-4). A posthumously published collection of material supplementing and sometimes fleshing out the stories of LotR and Silm, though as the title implies, not all of it was ever finished by the author. Of particular interest to students of Elvish is Cirion's Oath found in UT:305: Vanda sina termaruva Elenna·nórëo alcar enyalien ar Elendil vorondo voronwë. Nai tiruvantes i hárar mahalmassen mi Númen ar i Eru i or ilyë mahalmar eä tennoio. The (not entirely literal) translation given in the text goes: ”This oath shall stand in memory of the glory of the Land of the Star, and of the faith of Elendil the Faithful, in the keeping of those who sit upon the thrones of the West and of the One who is above all thrones for ever.“ Tolkien added some interesting notes about the Quenya words (UT:317), allowing us to analyze the Oath itself.
¤ Letters: The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981, ISBN 0-04-440664-9). Edited by Humphrey Carpenter, Tolkien's biographer, this collection of letters also contains some linguistic information. Readers of LotR occasionally wrote to Tolkien asking questions touching on the samples of Quenya and Sindarin found in that work, and this being Tolkien's favourite subject, he often wrote fairly detailed answers. Among other things, Letters provides translations of some Elvish samples that are not translated in the LotR itself, e.g. Aiya Eärendil Elenion Ancalima = ”hail Eärendil brightest of stars“ (Letters:385; we have already quoted the translation of the Cormallen Praise in Letters:308).
¤ MC: The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays (1983, ISBN 0-04-809019-0). This book contains Tolkien's essay A Secret Vice (MC:198-223), in which he sets out his thoughts and theories about language-construction in general. He also included some ”Elvish“ poems, most notably Oilima Markirya or ”The Last Ark“, which is listed in several versions. The version of Markirya that is most interesting to people studying the kind of Quenya exemplified in LotR, is found in MC:221-223 (including some valuable annotation).

Having edited and published Silm, UT and MC from the papers his father had left behind, Christopher Tolkien commenced what would become a highly ambitious project. In the period 1983-1996, he published a series of no less than twelve volumes, demonstrating how his father had developed his world-famous narratives over many years. The History of Middle-earth series (HoME) presents the many ”layers“ of manuscripts, chronicling how the Silmarillion and LotR as we know them gradually came into being, and also presenting other materials relating to Tolkien's vast mythology. For convenience I will list all the volumes of HoME by their standard abbreviations, though I will not actually quote from each and every one of them:
¤ LT1: The Book of Lost Tales 1 (1983, ISBN 0-04-823231-5)
¤ LT2: The Book of Lost Tales 2 (1984, ISBN 0-04-823338-2)
¤ LB: The Lays of Beleriand (1985, ISBN 0-04-440018-7)
¤ SM: The Shaping of Middle-earth (1986, ISBN 0-04-440150-7)
¤ LR: The Lost Road (1987, ISBN 0-04-440398-4)
¤ RS: The Return of the Shadow (1988, ISBN 0-04-440669-X)
¤ TI: The Treason of Isengard (1989, ISBN 0-261-10220-6)
¤ WR: The War of the Ring (1990, ISBN 0-261-10223-0)
¤ SD: Sauron Defeated (1992, ISBN 0-261-10305-9)
¤ MR: Morgoth's Ring (1993, ISBN 0-261-10300-8)
¤ WJ: The War of the Jewels (1994, ISBN 0-395-71041-3)
¤ PM: The Peoples of Middle-earth (1996, ISBN 0-216-10337-7)

Each of these books provide clues to the structure of Tolkien's languages, though often in a somewhat incidental fashion (Christopher Tolkien included relatively little of his father's narrowly linguistic writings, which being highly technical would be of limited interest to the general readership). For people interested in Tolkien's languages as they appear in LotR, the most important volumes of HoME are LR, WJ and SD, which any serious student of these languages should have in his or her private library. The only long Quenya text occurring in HoME, Fíriel's Song, is found in LR:72 – but more importantly, these books reproduce three important source documents that I will often refer to simply by name (as do most students of Tolkien's linguistic creation). Therefore, they will be briefly described here. We are talking about the Etymologies and the essays Quendi and Eldar and Lowdham's Report.
1. The Etymologies (called ”Etym“ for short) is found in LR:347-400. (I should mention that there are different editions of LR around, so there is unfortunately more than one pagination; my page references are to the edition normally used by Tolkien-linguists.) To casual readers undoubtedly the most baffling document in the entire HoME series, this is our most important single source of ”Elvish“ vocabulary. However, it is not a regular dictionary. It is an alphabetical list of about six hundred primitive ”bases“ or roots, the various entries listing actual words derived from these roots as they appeared in later Elvish languages (sometimes the actual ulterior ”primitive Elvish“ form is also mentioned, closely reflecting the ”base“ itself). For instance, under the entry ÁLAK (LR:348), itself defined ”rushing“, we find this series: ”*alk-wª swan: Q alqa; T alpa; ON alpha; N alf." Tolkien's idea is that the Primitive Elvish word alk-wª developed into Q[uenya] alqa, T[elerin] alpa, O[ld] N[oldorin] alpha and N[oldorin] alf. The Etymologies was written in the second half of the thirties, and the spelling and general concepts differ somewhat from the scenario of the LotR as published in the early fifties. (If we were to “update” the sample just quoted, we must read Sindarin for Noldorin, and Quenya alqa and “Noldorin”/Sindarin alf should rather be spelt alqua and alph, respectively – both words, so spelt, are actually attested in later writings.) Despite the fact that the Etymologies in some respects reflects a somewhat “outdated” linguistic scenario, Tolkien undertaking important revisions after he wrote Etym, it is still a gold-mine of information (and as we have just demonstrated, it can to some extent readily be “updated” in accordance with Tolkien's later ideas). Of all the languages Tolkien mentioned in Etym, Quenya is in any case among the tongues that were not very significantly affected by his subsequent revisions. (In the case of “Noldorin”, on the other hand, he would tinker with its phonology and imaginary evolution, and drastically alter its internal history, to produce Sindarin as we know it from LotR.)
2. Quendi and Eldar (sometimes “Q&E” for short) is found in WJ:360-417. This is ostensibly an essay on the “Origin and Meanings of the Elvish words referring to Elves and their varieties. With Appendices on their names for other Incarnates”. This ground is certainly covered, but luckily (from our point of view!) there are many digressions, appendices and notes that provide much extra information about the Elvish languages as Tolkien had come to see them in the post-LotR period: This essay dates from ca. 1959-60. Christopher Tolkien felt that one substantial section departed too radically from the stated subject of the essay, and edited it out (see WJ:359, 396). Luckily, the omitted section was later published in the journal Vinyar Tengwar, issue #39. When I quote from Quendi and Eldar, I will therefore sometimes refer to WJ and sometimes to Vinyar Tengwar (VT). “Digressive” though the section that appeared in VT may be, it is of course of immense interest to people studying Tolkien's languages.
3. Lowdham's Report, or in full Lowdham's Report on the Adunaic Language, can be found in SD:413-440. As the title implies, this report is mainly concerned with another language than Quenya: Adunaic (in the LotR appendices spelt Adûnaic), the vernacular of Númenor. However, a little information about Quenya, which in this report is referred to as “Avallonian”, can also be gleaned – the two languages sometimes being compared or contrasted. (“Lowdham” is just a fictional character of Tolkien's. Tolkien sometimes presented even quite technical information about his languages as if he were merely quoting or referring the observations and viewpoints of various people residing within his mythos. Among his favourite fictional “sources” we find Fëanor, the greatest but also the proudest of the Noldor, Rúmil the sage of Tirion, and Pengolodh the loremaster of Gondolin: Many of Tolkien's characters seem to share their author's interest in mysterious scripts and strange languages.)

The sources so far mentioned are the ones published or edited by Tolkien himself or by his son – except for Letters, that was edited by Humphrey Carpenter. In addition there are a few works edited and published by others. Some very brief scraps of information can be extracted from J.R.R. Tolkien – Artist and Illustrator, edited by Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull. The results of the Elfconners, scarce but not unimportant, must also be mentioned. The journal Vinyar Tengwar (VT), edited by Carl F. Hostetter, had its “golden age” in the period 1988-93, when the editor managed to uphold continuous bimonthly publication. When Hostetter and the other Elfconners in the early nineties started to receive original Tolkien material of the utmost interest to be edited and published, the rate of publication mysteriously dropped to about one issue a year, and this situation has continued throughout the latter half of the nineties and into the new decade. Not all of the few issues that have been published include any new Tolkien material, and those that do are usually devoted to very short scraps (that are moreover samples of very early material that is often clearly not LotR-compatible).
A few issues do stand out, however, and one of them has already been mentioned: In issue #39, July 1998, Hostetter published the part of Quendi and Eldar that Christopher Tolkien left out of WJ, as well as the companion essay Ósanwe-kenta (the latter is not strictly linguistic by its subject, but Tolkien nonetheless mentioned quite a few Quenya words). Some useful material also appeared in issue #41, July 2000, filling certain annoying gaps in our vocabulary (in particular regarding the verb “can”) and providing interesting new information about the formation of the present tense.
The two other main results of the Elfconners' editing efforts for the most part consist of wordlist material: the Gnomish Lexicon (GL) and the Qenya Lexicon (QL, a.k.a. the Qenyaqetsa, abbreviated QQ). The GL also mentions a few “Qenya” words (just like the QL mentions some Gnomish words; the languages are not infrequently compared or contrasted). Regarding “Qenya” as opposed to (LotR-style) Quenya, see below. These Lexicons were published in issues #11 and #12 of the journal Parma Eldalamberon, 1995 and 1998, respectively. They were originally written during World War I, when the earliest form of Tolkien's mythos began to take shape: The QL manuscript is usually dated to 1915, the GL to 1917. Substantial excerpts were published already in 1983-84, Christopher Tolkien drawing heavily on the Lexicons in the appendices to LT1 and LT2. Prefixed to each Lexicon, Parma also published some related material: a never finished Gnomish Grammar in #11, and some phonological descriptions for “Qenya” in #12.

Of the actual Quenya samples so far mentioned, I shall often refer to Namárië, Treebeard's Greeting, Elendil's Declaration, Cirion's Oath, Fíriel's Song and Markirya simply by title or “name”, not always providing a reference to book and page. From the discussion above the student will know where they are found (if you feel the urge to check the accuracy of my quotes!) In most other cases I will provide a reference when I quote something, since it will usually be found in one of the sources that do allow a precise reference to book and page (since there is not a spate of different editions with differing pagination around). When I refer to entries in the Etymologies (in LR), I simply quote the entry-head, which can easily be located in all editions (irrespective of pagination).

A WORD OF WARNING REGARDING PARTS OF THE CORPUS
Scattered in the sources listed above we have a total Quenya “corpus” that would amount to very roughly 150 pages if it were all brought together (though most of this would unfortunately just be unconnected wordlist material; the samples of actual text are much rarer and could probably be fitted into no more than two or three pages). But here a word of warning is in place: If you want to learn the kind of Quenya that you have encountered in LotR, not all of the samples found in this corpus are entirely “reliable” – even though they are certainly genuine Tolkien. To avoid what is potentially a quagmire of confusion, the student should immediately internalize one fact: The kind of Quenya exemplified in LotR is not the only kind of Quenya there is. If you start analyzing all the samples of Quenya that we now have, you will soon realize that they do not form a homogenous mass. Most samples certainly “look” much the same, never straying too far from the Finnish-inspired word-shapes, but much of the early material (never published during Tolkien's lifetime) can be shown to employ or presuppose words, inflectional endings and grammatical rules that differ from the system of LotR-style Quenya. By all means, no sample is entirely different from LotR-style Quenya – but in material predating the mid-thirties, neither is there any sample that is entirely identical.
Tolkien was, so to speak, all too good when it came to devising languages. Fixing them in one clear-cut and unchangeable form was an almost impossible task form him. There were ever new ideas that he wanted to work into their structure, even if these ideas contradicted and obsoleted things that he had written earlier. We can be sure that his fictional character Lowdham speaks for Tolkien himself (SD:240):

In making up a language you are free: too free (…) When you're just inventing, the pleasure or fun is in the moment of invention; but as you are the master your whim is law, and you may want to have the fun all over again, fresh. You're liable to be for ever niggling, altering, refining, wavering, according to your linguistic mood and to your changes of taste.

With the posthumous publication of many of Tolkien's writings, we got evidence for plenty of ‘niggling, altering, refining, and wavering’ on his part. It is now evident that Quenya appeared in many incarnations, and while they all share the same general “style” and would probably look the same to a fresh student, they actually differ in many details of grammar, vocabulary and even phonology. A powerful demonstration of the extent of Tolkien's revisions is provided by the Markirya poem, which exists in one version dating from the early thirties (MC:213) and another that is about forty years younger, dating from the last decade of Tolkien's life (MC:221-223). Both versions have (almost) the same meaning, but the late version is in the full sense of the word a translation of the former, not a mere rewriting: Only a few words and inflectional endings are common to both texts.
Since Tolkien in pre-LotR sources typically used the spelling Qenya instead of Quenya (though the intended pronunciation is the same), I and others often use “Qenya” (preferably in quotes) as a name of early variants of Quenya that are more or less different from the form that appears in LotR and later sources. The first version of Markirya I would thus call a “Qenya” poem; only the later version is Quenya as we know it from LotR. Some other poems reproduced in MC (Nieninqe and Earendel, pp. 215-216), as well as an alternative “Last Ark” poem of another me

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