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elennaloreToday I have studied lesson 1 of Atanquesta. The text was very simple and the vocabulary list wasn’t too long. I found out that my previous course of basics of linguistics was very useful now. The grammatical concepts of subject, predicate and object were explained and the verb “to be” as copula was introduced.
I have some comments considering the vocabulary after consulting the site Parf Edhellen. The pronoun ‘ta’ [that] feels very useful, and I don’t remember it from my earlier studies. Words nér (ner-) and nís (niss-) that mean man and woman are used to describe a male or female person of any sentient race in Tolkien’s universe, not only Men as human. Vanima [beautiful] is probably best to use only while describing living beings, especially Elves and Men.
The definite article and when to use it is always a bit difficult thing for me (even in English, and also in Quenya). Thankfully Quenya has no indefinite article. The definite article ‘i’ is like English ‘the’, but in the text I noticed that it can appear even before a proper noun when an adjective that states the quality of subject is put before a noun and copula is omitted. I learned that in Quenya ‘the tall man’ is ‘i halla nér’, and ‘the man is tall’ is either ‘i nér (ná) halla or ‘halla i nér’.
I have asked my friendly Valinor elves to give me practice sentences for this lesson.
Findekáno: Ta Maitimo. Maitimo halla nér.
Maitimo: Ta Findekáno. Vanima nér i Findekáno.
F: That (is) Maitimo. Maitimo (is) a tall man.
M: That (is) Findekáno. Findekáno (is) a beautiful man.
(I might have misunderstood something or misheard them, so if these practice sentences are somehow wrong, please don’t blame the elves. Quenya is their native language and Maitimo’s father is a well-known linguist, so every mistake there is my own only).
I have some comments considering the vocabulary after consulting the site Parf Edhellen. The pronoun ‘ta’ [that] feels very useful, and I don’t remember it from my earlier studies. Words nér (ner-) and nís (niss-) that mean man and woman are used to describe a male or female person of any sentient race in Tolkien’s universe, not only Men as human. Vanima [beautiful] is probably best to use only while describing living beings, especially Elves and Men.
The definite article and when to use it is always a bit difficult thing for me (even in English, and also in Quenya). Thankfully Quenya has no indefinite article. The definite article ‘i’ is like English ‘the’, but in the text I noticed that it can appear even before a proper noun when an adjective that states the quality of subject is put before a noun and copula is omitted. I learned that in Quenya ‘the tall man’ is ‘i halla nér’, and ‘the man is tall’ is either ‘i nér (ná) halla or ‘halla i nér’.
I have asked my friendly Valinor elves to give me practice sentences for this lesson.
Findekáno: Ta Maitimo. Maitimo halla nér.
Maitimo: Ta Findekáno. Vanima nér i Findekáno.
F: That (is) Maitimo. Maitimo (is) a tall man.
M: That (is) Findekáno. Findekáno (is) a beautiful man.
(I might have misunderstood something or misheard them, so if these practice sentences are somehow wrong, please don’t blame the elves. Quenya is their native language and Maitimo’s father is a well-known linguist, so every mistake there is my own only).
no subject
Date: 2021-04-25 01:17 pm (UTC)(I know less than you, so I am unable to give advice.)