Quenya
the High-elven tongue of the Vanyar and Noldor in Aman
Definition
Quenya is the High-elven tongue of the Elder Days — the language spoken in Aman by the Vanyar and the Noldor, and the oldest idiom of the Eldar to be fixed and developed as a language of lore. It is the speech “of the kindred of the Noldor”, brought to Middle-earth by the Exiles, but in the mortal lands it was never the daily tongue of the people: the Sindar did not adopt it, and it became the language of ceremony, song, and learning.
The Tongue of Aman
In the years of Valinor, Quenya was the tongue of the whole court of the Valar and of the High Elves — the language in which the Elves of Tirion named the world and the Powers mirrored; only the Teleri of Alqualondë kept their own related speech. The Noldor learned it in Aman and carried it forth in the Exile, so that the lords of Gondolin, Nargothrond, and the Havens kept their Quenya names alongside the Sindarin of daily life.
In Middle-earth
- The language of the Exiles: When the Noldor returned to Beleriand, they found a Sindarin-speaking land; with few exceptions the Noldor adopted Sindarin for common speech, and Quenya was “forbidden” as an everyday thing by the preference of the age — it endured as the language of high lore, names of power, and of the Elves’ remembrance of Aman.
- The tongue of lore: Quenya remained the learned tongue of the Noldor throughout the First and later Ages — the medium of books of lore, oaths, and solemn utterance (as in the Quenta Silmarillion’s own claim that all names in the tale are recorded in “Sindarin of the Third Age” and the older “Quenya”).
Significance
Quenya is Tolkien’s principal invented language — built with patience on a Finnish-like grammar and phonology — and the key to his Elvish naming system: most of the oldest Elvish names (Eärendil, Fëanor, Varda, Tirion) are Quenya. Its survival into the later Ages as the “Latin of Elfland” makes it the great tongue of the Elves’ undying inheritance, against the ageing of the mortal world.