A Crash Quenya Course: Nouns

[Giliathriel]

Very, very long ago when I was first into plaza stuff I got really into Quenya and made a pretty simple grammar guide. Here's the part that I did for Nouns. Feel free to ask any questions about stuff! This is really a grammar guide only, it doesn't go over pronunciation or vocabulary or anything, but I always just had a dictionary handy and translated from there. Enjoy! I did the verbs as well but I need to re format everything so it may take me a bit to get it postable.

A Noun denotes a person, place, thing or idea. It also is a subject, direct object, indirect object, predicate nominative, an appositive, and object of the preposition, or an object complement.

I’ll start off with a brief explanation into articles ‘the’ and ‘a, an’.
1. The Quenya article for ‘the’ is ‘i’. Example- i elen, ‘the star’.
2. There is no Quenya equivalent for ’a’ or ’an’. It is simply left out, and understood.
3. Before a race, an article is not used.

Next, here’s how to form the plural.
1. For nouns ending in A, O, I, IË, or U, you simply add -r.
2. For nouns ending in a consonant or ë, you add -i onto the consonant, (e.g. Eleni, stars, from Elen. Or you change ë into i.)

There is a second form of the plural, called the dual. It denotes a pair of something, or two that make a logical or natural pair, and not just two things that happen to be together at the moment.
1. -t Is the normal ending, and is added pretty much only if the noun does not contain a t or a d.
2. -u is one of the endings, when it is added, it takes the place of the vowel at the end. (e.g. Alda, ‘tree’ and it’s dual, Aldu, a pair of trees, like Telperion and Laurelin, the two trees of Valinor. It is usually added in words that contain a t or a d, or end in a consonant.

Next, we come to suffixes, or Cases. Many function where in English we would use a preposition. The traditionally go on the direct object.

The Nominative Case- Is the basic form of the noun. You already know how to form it’s normal stuff, from above.

The Genitive Case Is a case that shows ownership, or origin, and is best translated by an English ‘of’ construction. (e.g. Eleno, of a star).
It’s construction is as follows:
Singular Plural Partitive Plural Dual
-o -on -lion -to
We form this by simply adding these onto the end of the noun. For -o and -on, you drop the last vowel if there is one.

The Possessive Case- Expresses origin and ownership, and can correspond to both the English ending -’s, and the of construction.
Singular Plural Partitive Plural Dual
[/b]-va(wa after a consonant) -iva -líva -twa[/b]

The Dative Case - This is the first case that I’m introducing that uses an ending instead of a preposition. This case means to, or for. We see it in Namarie, in the word nin, for me.
Singular Plural Partitive Plural Dual
-n -in -lin -nt

The Allative Case- basically means to, towards, into. A good example of it’s use is in Aragorn’s Coronation- Endorenna, to Middle Earth.
Singular Plural Partitive Plural Dual
-nna -nnar -linnar(r) -nta

The Ablative Case- Shows from, out of. Also shown in Aragorn’s Coronation- Eärello, out of the sea.
Singular Plural Partitive Plural Dual
[/b]-llo -llon or -llor -lillo(n) -lto[/b]

The Locative Case- means on or in.
Singular Plural Partitive Plural Dual
-ssë -ssen -lisse(n) -tsë

The Instrumental Case- shows the tool with which you do something, the instrument, hence the name. (It may be useful to use a ‘in’ or ‘by’ translation when translating)
Singular Plural Partitive Plural Dual
-nen -inen -línen -nten

Note on Forming: (!!!) When you have a noun ending in a consonant, you add an e before the ending that begins with a consonant.

Showing Possession
1. There are five endings- nya (my) -lya (your) -rya (his, her, ?it’s) -lva (our inclusive) and -lma (our exclusive) that show possession (if the meanings of inclusive and exclusive are confusing: a good way of thinking of it is two groups of people meeting for the first time- inclusive would be both of them, exclusive would be only one). THEY GO BEFORE THE CASE ENDING!!!!!!!!

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Thank you very much!

The Quenya article for ‘the’ is ‘i’. Example- i elen, ‘the star’.

Is it on the wrong track to ask if the i of Ilúvatar has the meaning of the definite article?

[Giliathriel]

From what i can find, Iluvatar is a compound of ilu, iluve (all, universe), and atar meaning father. I can definitely see how that would make sense though! I wonder in other languages if they use a "the" before his name.

[KingODuckingham]

When I first was big into the LotR books and Tolkien in general, I had very little knowledge of language and never payed attention to stuff like this, but now I am a dead languages teacher and I find this all fascinating. I really appreciate your write-up, although I'm groaning at having to learn a dual set of endings. Is it very common, do you think? In Ancient Greek there is a dual but it is almost never used unless you are reading Homeric or something extra-old.

Also, what a pain to have separate instrumental, locative, and allative cases. Is the allative used for reference, the way the dative is in Latin and Greek? E.g. "Tuās rēs tibi habētō." where tibi is a dative of reference, "keep your goods (to/for yourself) or (for your own sake). Or would that also be the dative here, do you think?

Does the ablative also grab some meanings of "by" in English? Obviously not the instrumental ones, but perhaps by in the sense of alongside, or near? Or would that fall under locative?

[Androthelm]

Can anyone give me an example of Locative in Tolkien's work? I like it a lot (big sucker for grammatical cases) but can't think off the top of my head for how it would be used exactly.