In Efling 34934 (<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/elfling/message/
34934>) Helge Fauskanger writes, well, a great deal of more of the
same demonstrations of his inability to read things in context and
report them accurately. I'll assume those reading this list have by
now learned the drill with respect to Helge's rhetorical deficiencies.

But I did want to comment regarding his three "Quenya" sentences:

> _I Elda lende i ciryanna_ "the Elf went to the ship".
>
> _Andanéya i Naucor hirner malta i orontissen_ "long ago the Dwarves
> found gold
> in the mountains"
>
> _Cenuval nér nóra i taurello i ostonna_ "You will see a man run from
> the forest
> to the city"
>
> It is indeed my opinion that these sentences are written in exactly
> the same
> language as Namárie or the Markirya poem, even though these precise
> combinations
> of words were never recorded by Tolkien himself. We obviously cannot
> ask Tolkien
> whether he would have recognized them as correct Quenya, but we can
> consult his
> writings on Elvish (or at least some of them). If somebody wants to
> argue that
> the sentences above are NOT correct Quenya, I challenge them to
> present evidence
> from Tolkien's writings to demonstrate exactly what is wrong with
> them.

Challenge accepted:

_I Elda lende i ciryanna_ "the Elf went to the ship" Here, and in each
of these sentences, the use of the definite article is in precise lock-
step with the English original. Tolkien's Quenya compositions quite
obviously do not, and in fact use it rather less than does English. So
right away these sentences stand out as employing English, not Quenya,
syntax in this regard.

_Andanéya i Naucor hirner malta i orontissen_ "long ago the Dwarves
found gold in the mountains": First, _(i) Naucor_ means "(the) Dwarves
(in general or under discussion)", not "the Dwarves as a people", as
required by this context. So instead this should be the collective
_Naukalie_, and the indiscriminate use of _Naucor_ here marks this
sentence as derived from English. Second, so far as I can recall, the
locative case always indicates "at" or "on" (even in Tolkien's
translation where English idiom uses "in", the sense is not "inside",
but "upon": e.g. _súmaryasse_ "in her (the ship's) bosom" does not
mean _inside_ the ship, but _on_ it;* while _ear-kelumessen_ does not
me _inside_, i.e. _immersed in_, the flowing sea, but _upon_ it).
Instead, "inside" or "within" is always expressed prepositionally,
most often with _mi_.** That's the sense here, and so by this alone
this translation is indeed recognizable as most likely incorrect
Quenya. (I would also ask why _hir-_ should form its past-tense with _-
ne_, and not as a strong past (*_híre_)? KHIR- to all appearances is a
basic verb. Further, why not _tuv-_, which in its actual attested use
seems closer in meaning than the actual attested use of _hir-_?)

* Note that this expression is very likely derived from _Beowulf_,
line 35: "_on bearm scipes_", where the idiom is literally "_on_ (the)
bosom of (the) ship". Even today, though modern English idiom now
requires "_in_ one's bosom", when we say it we do not necessarily mean
_inside_ one's bosom, or else every baby "in its mother's bosom" would
be physically inside its mother's chest!.

** The one possible counterexample, _símaryassen_ 'in their
imaginations' notably refers to a non-physical entity, not to a
physical location, and so despite the fact that the English idiom
requires 'in' for a natural gloss, this does not necessarily indicate
that the Elvish idiom had the same physical interiority as the
English; it might well be literally rendered as '(up)on' their
imaginations. Note English "on my mind" of what is occupying (residing
in) one's thoughts.

_Cenuval nér nóra i taurello i ostonna_ "You will see a man run from
the forest to the city". I note that with the exception of first
person sg. _-n_ there are _no_ examples of shortened pronominal
endings being attached to future-tense verbs (instead we have _-lye_,
_-nte_); so _cenuval_ here sticks out as quite possibly incorrect.

So in fact all of these sentences betray their inauthentic nature, and
their actual origins in English idiom and syntax, rather than
reflecting actual Quenya as actually attested and as actually
conceived of by Tolkien.

-- Carl F. Hostetter