Comments by Tamas Ferencz
These are the 10 posts of 121 by Tamas Ferencz.
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Towel in Quenya
Possibly. I am not a fan of the verb sovalla- - somehow it looks weird to me - but I could see the compound being simplified like that.
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Gloss “-nde” by Aldaleon
Yes, those are all examples of nominal formative suffixes. What Aldaleon quoted from PE22 was specifically examples of verbal nominal suffixes, i.e. suffixes used to form nouns out of verbs (hence the term "deverbative"). For -nde we even have an example of it being attached to a gerund: kariende "the process of making, manufacture" - which fits the gloss of "denoting a durable process".
Note that this -nde is not related to the feminine agental suffix (i)nde (as in e.g. serinde "needlewoman").
Tolkien worked on Quenya for over five decades and he came up with a lot of variants - which is good for us as it only extends our capabilities to form words.
For more examples on nominal formative suffixes see lesson 14 of Atanquesta.
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U-Stem Verbs in Sindarin
The only possible example I was able to find is Noldorin dufu-; all other examples are from Gnomish or Early Noldorin. No idea on conjugation, sorry.
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Towel in Quenya
In the case of ontámo I assume it's not haplology as such, but a case of simplification due to the closeness of a voiced and voiceless stop d and t merging in quick colloquial speech: *ondotámo > *ondtámo > ontámo.
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Translating (ancient) names
Names are very personal things, so it's difficult to come up a with a definitive answer. I may think it makes little sense to translate a name with - say - Aramaeic origins into an Eldarin language, but if someone wants to go that way to name themselves or their character in a story, who am I to naysay?
We know that Elves had specific traditions about names, we know, because Tolkien wrote about them, we know about emilessi and epessi and the others, we know that connection between the character of the child and their name(s) was important to them. In our current Western culture (which is all I can speak to, it may well be very different in other parts of the world) I think it is rather rare for parents to choose the name of their child based on its original meaning. Who names their child Anne or David or Hedwig or Ronaldo because of what those names mean (or we think they mean)? I think the majority of us choose a name because we either like how it sounds, or know someone with the same name.
But of course translating names can be fun and a nice way of getting into learning Eldarin. But it can also be difficult, because names are usually quite dense and have changed and simplified a lot over the centuries of use, so a literal translation might often result in awkward sounding garbage.
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I am ... years old
Indeed that's a problem that has come up for many writers. My personal solution to this is to use the verb oi- "live, pass one's days. The present perfect of oi- is oine "have lived" so "Marko is seven years old" would be Marko oine koranari otso "Marko has lived seven years." But other solutions may be equally valid.
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Useless words
Possibly. But then others may say you are introducing an English bias by translating an English idiom directly. A non-English speaker may not understand what you're trying to say when you scatter a few mais in your text because in their own language speakers use some other words for fillers.
Of course Tolkien himself was not above using English idioms as template for Quenya expressions, like we discussed in this thread for instance.
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Useless words
In my opinion this is something that can evolve over time. If enough people start using NeoQuenya in chats etc. then sooner or later there will be a need for such words, someone will come up with something, which then we'll have a chance to be picked up by other speakers. Unless, of course, in a future publication of Tolkien's writings such a words is magically attested.
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Phenomenological Concept
Note also Tolkien's own constructions ilúvala, ilúkara, iluisa which can be a basis for creating a word from "omnipresence, omnipresent". I see in Eldamo that someone has already come up with *iluasta which I am not entirely sure about, but apparently the thought process was the same there.
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Phenomenological Concept