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Nouns, the Article
Nouns in Quenya
The first thing you should know is that nouns in Quenya come in tons and tons of different forms. While English doesn’t have more than four forms: the normal one, plural, and possessive singular and plural (house, houses, house’s, houses’), Quenya is going to have a lot more. Words denoting “for, from, to, of” and others are added to the end of the noun in Quenya as well. Don’t let this discourage you, we won’t be dealing with most of them for a while, and they’re easy enough to get used to after a bit of practice.
In Quenya, there are two different types of plurals.
The first type of plural discussed is a “partitive plural”, which indicates that it may be used to refer to a few out of a larger group. This is formed by adding the ending -li to the noun. For example, Eldali (formed from Elda, Elf) would have the meaning of several or some Elves. Keep in mind, the exact usage of this form is not well known, so we’ll leave it alone for the most part.
The normal form of the plural should seem familiar to you. Nouns ending with a, u, i, o, or ië are made plural by adding to the end -r. So, from the Silmarillion, we have:
Elda, Elf, plural Eldar
Vala, god (or angel, perhaps), plural Valar
Noldo, member of the second clan of the Elves, plural Noldor
Valië, female Vala, plural Valier
The other way to form the plural is by adding -i to the word. Nouns ending in -ë typically are made plural by replacing the -ë with an i.
There are a few exceptions. For nouns ending in -ië, for example, the plural ends with the -r In LotR Appendix E, the plural of tyellë, “grade”, is shown as tyeller. Likewise, the plural of mallë, “road”, is maller. It is suggested that this is the case because in the case of nouns ending in -llë, using the -i ending would cause confusion with the partitive plural ending -li.
The Article
In English, articles are words like “the”, “a”, and “an”.
Quenya only has one article. This corresponds to the English “the”, and is i For example, “i eleni” would mean “the stars.”
In Quenya, there is no distinction between "a star" and just "star"; both are simply elen.
In Quenya, there are some words that are counted as proper names and do not take articles. Anar, the Sun, does not take an article. Neither does Isil, the Moon.
The article is not normally used before a plural denoting an entire people. In Quenya there would probably be no article before plurals like Valar, Eldar, Vanyar, Noldor, Lindar, Teleri, Atani etc. assuming that the entire race is considered.
At times, especially in poetry, the article drops out for no particular reason.
Vocabulary… since there’s no real way you can learn Quenya without one…
minë "one"
Anar "(the) Sun"
Isil "(the) Moon"
ar "and"
Elda "Elf"
lië "people”, an ethnic group
vendë "maiden”
rocco "horse"
aran "king"
tári "queen"
tasar "willow"
nu "under"
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