#quenya

This was the time of naming, when the language of the Eldar was first being formed. The roots of the tree from which the other tongues would grow.

What words were lost forever when their first speakers vanished in the shadows?

I’m thinking about forgotten songs that are remembered only as fragments or hazy melodies.

And how would the elves have grown and changed if their earliest days hadn’t been so marked by fear and disappearance? We see in their languages the legacy of this trauma, in the multitude of words for horror, in the too many words for the dread of an agonizing death.

Quenya and Sindarin both have multiple words for the unspeakable, or that which can also be spoken about with great sorrow or distress.

Name Etymologies of Middle-Earth: Gandalf

“Yes, yes, my dear sir—and I do know your name, Mr. Bilbo Baggins. And you do know my name, though you don’t remember that I belong to it. I am Gandalf, and Gandalf means me!”

So, when Aragorn fashioned himself an alias as The Eagle of the star, he did so with the root word Thoron and not Soron. He was using archaic Quenya or better known as — Feänorìan Quenya.

"For a while he abode with them and aided them in the making of language; for that was their first work of craft upon Earth, and ever most dear to their hearts, and the fair Elvish speech was sweet in the ears of the Valar." - J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring, "Of the Coming of the Elves"

QUENYA NEOLOGISMS by @outofangband

[ID: an edit comprised of seven horizontal banners, each bearing a word in more ornate white script, and its definition and etymology in smaller serif font below. Top to bottom, the images show:

Frodo: alright. I spent it learning Tolkien's Elvish Quenya language.

Sam: oh nice. ...April Fools'?