When is Classical Parmaquesta?

Hi everyone,

I would like to learn not just the modern Tarquesta vocabulary but also the Parmaquesta terms of Quenya, but I'm not shure how to define that since Parmaquesta is the language in a period of time, not a point of time.

So, if, let's say, a learned Noldo in the Third Age were to write a text in that which they would regard to be standard Parmaquesta, would that be late or early PQ? More specifically asked, which process of the Eldamo phonetics on Quenya is the last one that should be considered when writing a Parmaquesta text?

Thanks for your help and all the amazing work!

Here is an approximate timeline for the development of Quenya:

eldamo.org

Like all Elvish languages, the primitive precursors of Quenya appeared soon after the awakening of the Elves in Cuivienén, a period when all Elves spoke the same language. Tolkien referred to this period as Primitive Quendian or Common Quenderin [CQ]; most of the literature on Elvish uses CQ to avoid confusion with the Parmaquesta [PQ] period discussed below. The Elves themselves no longer remember what their speech was like at the dawn of their race (PM/399-400), and are forced to reconstruct the most ancient form of their language using the same comparative linguistic tools used to study ancient human languages.

After the First Sundering of the Elves, their languages split into two broad branches: the Eldarin languages for those who journeyed toward Valinor and the Avari languages for those who stayed behind (S/52). Of those who went on the journey, Tolkien called this the Common Eldarin [CE] period. In this ancient time, the speech of the Teleri (who traveled more slowly) began to diverge into a distinct dialect called Ancient Telerin [AT]. This new branch of Eldarin was the basis for the Telerin and Sindarin languages. Some elements of Common Eldarin were still preserved orally, probably in ancient songs (PE19/68). Nonetheless the exact form of the language in this period is uncertain, and it is not always easy to tell which developments of the language date to CE or CQ. I generally use the term “Primitive Elvish” to refer to these two periods collectively.

The next period of Quenya’s development was variously called Ancient Quenya [AQ] or Old Quenya [OQ], and was marked by the split between the Quenya and Telerin branches of the languages. It is not entirely clear when the AQ period began, but it definitely must have started by the time the Ñoldor and Vanyar crossed the sea to Valinor, leaving their Telerin brethren behind in Beleriand. Some AQ/AT distinctions probably predate this physical division of the Elvish tribes, however, most notably the Ancient Telerin sound change whereby labialized velars became labials (kw > p).

In the middle of the Ancient Quenya period the Elves first invented writing: the Sarati system or Rúmilian Alphabet, created by the Elvish scholar Rúmil. There was thus a collection of literature dating back to the second half of Ancient Quenya. It can be useful to subdivide the Ancient Quenya period in two, for pre- and post-literate Elvish. In my own writing I reserve the term Old Quenya [OQ] for the period when Sarati was the normal writing system of the Elves, but there is no indication Tolkien ever used the term this way. Furthermore, we don’t really have enough information about either Ancient Quenya or the Sarati alphabet to known for certain which developments came before or after the invention of writing.

After Ancient Quenya, the next period of Quenya’s development was Parmaquesta [PQ] or “Book Language” (PE19/68), so called because it remains the primary written form of Quenya. The beginning of the Parmaquesta period is marked by the introduction of a new writing system, the Tengwar or Feanorian Alphabet, created by the Ñoldorin loremaster Fëanor. Some of the more peculiar features of how tengwar are used in Quenya writing are more understandable once you realize that this system of writing originally reflected the pronunciation of the language at the beginning of the Parmaquesta period.

Up through the Parmaquesta period, the Vanyar and Ñoldor interacted frequently enough that there was little difference in the speech of the first and second tribes. In the thousand or so solar years before the end of the First Age, however, the Vanyarin and Ñoldorin dialects began to diverge. This division was probably exacerbated by the withdrawal of Fëanor and his followers from Elvish society after he threatened his half-brothers with violence. The two dialects split even further apart after the Ñoldor went into Exile, and their language continued to develop in isolation from the Vanyar. This last period of Quenya’s history is called Tarquesta [TQ] or “High Speech” (PE19/68).

After end the First Age, Quenya ceased to be used in daily speech among the Elves of Middle Earth, and the language was frozen in its Tarquesta form. Though the writing system still reflected the Parmaquesta period, the actual pronunciation of Quenya words was based on the (Ñoldorin) Tarquesta forms, and this was the form of the language adopted by Elves and Men in the later ages of Middle Earth. As Quenya was used primarily in lore and ritual, the final form of the language was given the name “High Speech”.

Tolkien gave a rough timeline of Quenya’s development in the Quenya Outline of Phonology (OP2, PE19/68) which fits the dating system used in the Annals of Aman (MR/48-134), both written in the 1950s. The dating system in the Annals of Aman used “Years of the Trees” [YT], since they describe the time period before the rise of the Sun and the Moon. Each “Year of the Tree” marked roughly 9.5 solar years of time (MR/60), so the periods described are much longer that they first appear. Also note that Tolkien continued to work on his histories through 1960s, and this chronology may not completely reflect his later conception of the histories. With those caveats, the major periods of Quenya’s historical development are:

• Common Quenderin [CQ]: From the awakening of the Elves (YT 1050) through the First Sundering (YT 1105): approximately 500 solar years.
• Common Eldarin [CE]: Lasted until the Vanyar and Ñoldor crossing the sea to Valinor leaving the Teleri behind (YT 1132): roughly 250 solar years.
• Ancient Quenya [AQ]: Up through the invention of Sarati (YT 1180): roughly 450 solar years.
• Old Quenya [OQ]: Up through the invention of Tengwar (YT 1250): roughly 650 solar years, or 1100 solar years when combined with Ancient Quenya.
• Parmaquesta [PQ]: According to Tolkien, PQ was represented Elvish speech around YT 1300 (PE19/68), but it was probably much longer before the Ñoldorin and Vanyarin dialects diverged (perhaps around YT 1450-1470): roughly 2000 solar years.
• Tarquesta [TQ]: This period began some time before the Exile of the Ñoldorin (which was in YT 1495) and overlapped with the Years of the Sun (just under 6 centuries) after Morgoth destroyed the two trees, and lasting through the end of the First Age: roughly 1000 solar years.

As noted above, this chronology needs to be taken with a grain of salt. The division of AQ into two periods called Ancient Quenya and Old Quenya split by the invention of Sarati is my own terminology. Tolkien generally lumped this all into a single AQ period; where Tolkien used the term Old Quenya it seems to be synonymous with either Ancient Quenya or (occasionally) Parmaquesta. The precise point of divergence between the Vanyarin and Ñoldorin dialects is also unknown.

The entries that follow are primary concerned with the Tarquesta form of the language, as it would have been used by Elves and Men in the Third Age of Middle Earth. As such, it is largely concerned with the Ñoldorin dialect of Quenya. The Vanyarin dialect is discussed separately, but many of the things that are true of Ñoldorin dialect are true of Vanyarin as well.

Thanks Paul! Could you edit your post and extract the relevant passage on PQ? You can link to external websites, but just like StackOverflow, we recognise that domains and links change, so such references should be embellished with an excerpt/quote of the answer (in the event that the link goes dead in the future.)

Thanks!

Thanks from me too, the timeline helps a lot. So, I try to sum up; the written standard of Quenya in the Third Age reflects that which was spoken approximately in YT 1300 and classified as early PQ, and, in regard to the phonetical timing, I guess that would make it the language between process 10 and 11 on this timeline:

eldamo.org,

right?

Or is my whole approach wrong and written Quenya doesn't exactly equal the spoken language at any time, but is instead modern TQ with slightly different spelling which retains only some morphological features from PQ (like initial X-) while ignoring others (like long final vowels)?

These are complicated questions. Parmaquesta is sometimes used to refer to a specific way of speaking, in much the same way as Old English, Middle English, Shakespearean English, and so forth. But really all languages are undergoing continuous evolution, with constant small shifts from one state to another.

Thus Parmaquesta can also refer to a period of time in the language's history as well, one that spanned hundreds of years and involved dozens of sound changes. If you wanted to replicate "Parmaquesta" you'd need to designate when in a particular period you were talking about.

Even using YT1300 as your baseline doesn't solve the problem. We don't know exactly when the various Quenya sound changes occurred. The ordering of sound changes in Eldamo is approximate, not necessarily accurate. And the "YT1300" PQ is probably not what "modern" Elves would think of as Classical Quenya. For example, when modern English speakers imitate Shakespearean English, they aren't actually speaking English as it was in the 1500s, but an approximation by incorporating certain archaic elements in their speech.

All of this is difficult to sort out even for real-world languages. For a constructed language like Quenya without a real body of literature to examine, anything we say will be at best a very rough guess.

That said, in my mind "modern Classical Quenya" use the Tarquesta form of the language with certain older pronunciations still reflected in spelling, such as pronouncing ñ instead of n or þ instead of s. It probably also involves using more "poetic" and older word forms, in much the same way that an English speaker might use "thee" when affecting a classical style of speaking.

It is probably not how the Elves of YT1300 actually spoke, because there would be a number of "hidden" sound changes not reflected later spelling and largely forgotten to all but linguistic scholars. It would be like the difference between a modern person performing a Shakespearean play and someone who actually researched the language of the 1500s to figure out how people really spoke (which is still an approximation, because no sound recordings from that period exist).

So, just that we're on the same page ...

Quenya is nearly - no, actually it's exactly like English. Both languages are more conservative in writing than in speech, but not because they write a past language. In writing, they merely do two things different from their modern speech:

First, they use ancient spelling habits, which often don't reflect the modern pronunciation (table instead of teibl, knight instead of nait, light instead of lait, ithil instead of isil, xarma instead of harma, ñoldo instead of noldo),

and second, in regard to semantics and grammar, the language is basically on the modern level, but employs some archaisms/doesn't acknowledge new developments (whom instead of who, -ing istead of -in, prepositions instead of postpositions, accusative, cáno for herald instead of tercáno, nóre for people, etc.).

So, for short, we write the modern language, just with some random archaisms and old-fashioned spelling conventions - and we don't write PQ as it really was, we merely take some PQ aspects into our TQ texts. It is not that there really is another language written than spoken, as in medieval England where the learned spoke English and wrote Latin,

right?

If that's right, and if the modern books are not written in the book-language, then, really Tolkien, why call it "book-language" in the first place? Because it was the time when the first books were written?

Well sort of. The analogy is accurate if you are talking about the First Age. In that period, Tarquesta is roughly equivalent to Modern English, and Parmaquesta would be like Shakespearean English.

In the Third Age, it would be like it was the year 3000 AD and English had been a dead language for a millennia, with the caveat that there were a small number of immortal Americans around with a vague memory of how things used to be.

Well well, who knows? But anyway, thanks for clarifying.