Category Archives: Finnish

by Quenya101 | 06/09/2013 · 10:02 AM

Eärendil finds his harbour

He did it! Eärendil did it! This is the last part of ‘Eärendil series’ where we sailed around Google Translator listening to several languages pronunciation of this single Quenya word Eärendil and comparing it to Quenya phonetics. Which one is the closest of all? Follow this ride and find what Eärendil has found! Surprised or not, you’ll be aided to keep in mind the correct Quenya pronunciation!

(While you read this guide, go to http://translate.google.com type Eärendil and listen each language mentioned below! A cool and easy tool to aid you with phonetics)

Portuguese

Portuguese shares many phonemes with Spanish and that contributed for a high rate here. We got EÄRENDI here, so almost on the spot!

Norwegian

Oh yeah, baby! Norwegian got a solid pronunciation like Hungarian did. The first E is too open, but we got ÄRENDIL pretty good.

Korean

Well, as long as Far-East is concerned, Korean is good! It has firm vowels and some consonants stand up for the task. We got a ÄREND in Korea!

Slovak

That’s another language I know nothing about and have never heard before. I can’t say more about its phonetics but in this exercise, we have a RENDI here.

Greek

4 stars? Really? YES! Greek kicks ass! Quenya was based on Greek after all. But there’s a trick because of the alphabet. You gotta type Εαρεντιλ (Earentil) so you can hear EÄRENDIL. See? Whole word!!! Unfortunately, the stress is not correct, otherwise it’d be a 5-star!

Finnish

Obviously, Eärendil finishes his tour in the land of the Finns! Finnish got it all! Pronunciation, stress. This is IT! It IS Quenya pronunciation of

EÄRENDIL!

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Filed under Countries, Elvish, Finnish, Geography, Guide, Phonetics, Portuguese, Quenya

Tagged as Eärendil, Finns, Google Translate, J. R. R. Tolkien, Korea, phonemes, phonetics, Quenya

by Quenya101 | 03/14/2013 · 11:49 PM

Quenya words ∈ world languages

César Rojas Bravo!

Did you read the name above? Fine…now we can start our post!

Well, he’s the guy who brought the compilation you’re about to see to life! It’s a hell of an idea, and very interesting for the ones who love Quenya and languages in general (me….guilty ). Read below and you’ll see that there is more in Quenya than meets the eye!

Hasn’t it ever happened to you, that when you come upon certain Quenya words, you realize the same word exists in your language, or in a language you are familiar with?

It has happened several times to me, so I decided to take Helge Fauskanger’s Quenya-English Wordlist and go word by word to find out which words have a meaning (not necessarily the same one, mostly not) in languages I am familiar with.

I found many words existing mostly in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan and Latin, languages I have some knowledge of. Thanks to Milla Leskinen, who helped me by identifying words in Quenya that exist in Finnish, to Celebrinthal for identifying words in Polish, Japanese and German, among others, to Metaflora for Hungarian words, to Emma Flacking, for Swedish and Norwegian, to John Karpo for Greek and to Kastytis Zubovas for Lithuanian.

J. R. R. Tolkien knew Finnish and Latin, so Quenya words existing in these languages probably are not coincidences, whether they have the same meaning or not, but most likely, Professor Tolkien wasn’t aware of all the word coincidences we have found. I have not included the matches with the English language, since no doubt Tolkien knew if this Quenya word existed in English. Occasionally I used a dictionary to double-check the word’s definitions.

I first list the words in Quenya, followed by language and the meaning it has in it. I hope you enjoy it, and of course, if you read Helge’s wordlist and find words in languages not listed here, or words missing, or any corrections you would like to make, please contact me!

Finally, towards the end of the writing of this entry, I found an essay called “Similarities between natural languages and Tolkien’s Eldarin”, by Roman Rausch, in which you can find, among many other interesting things, a list of matches between Noldorin/Sindarin and Welsh and Irish, and a list of matches in other languages, but in which the meanings are very similar or at least related.

Is that it? NO….there’s much more! There’s the whole long list yet! Check for yourselves there, at his site, where the quote was taken from. HERE!

See? And yet once in a while, I still hear people say that Quenya is not real, it’s a fake language…..oh boy…..

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Filed under Countries, Elvish, Finnish, Geography, German, Guide, Italian, Latin, Linguistics, Portuguese, Quenya, Spanish, Tolkien

Tagged as Elvish, Language, Latin, Linguistics, Quenya, Tolkien

by Quenya101 | 02/27/2012 · 6:21 PM

Aranië Finnórë (Suomen Tasavalta)

After long vacations, I come back with one more map for the collection! (Argentina, Latvia, Singapore & Spain)

Finnish

Finland was chosen this time because since January 2012, it has become the country with most elves in the whole Earth! Latvia used to be a good place to spot elves, but now Finland is the ultimate destination! It’s less the 2,000 men per elf. Kudos for Suomi!

Quenya

This map was kinda hard, because I have no knowledge of Finnish, so I had to research carefully every single detail. Lots of regions got “north” on their names (Why is that??? – I wonder…:P ) and that made the whole process a bit easier. When the etymology was not available, orthography also helped, after all Quenya is 1/3 based on Finnish.

Well…behold Aranië Finnórë (the country we own a lot)

Tengwar

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Kiitos, Suomi!

What would Quenya look like if Finnish had been extinct? What would it look like if Tolkien had never learnt Finnish at first place? But why did he learn it anyway?

Are you curious? I am! Read below and find out the reasons you need to be thankful for Finland culture, people, government and language.

So, let’s open our History books and check out what happened in Finland during the 19th century:

To begin with, Finnish was considered a minor, peasant language. Swedish was the high culture and administration language since Middle Ages and this eventually led to a process called Finland’s language strife. Everything began with the Finnish War in 1808-9 when Sweden ceded Finland to Russia, making it an autonomous grand duchy within the Russian Empire.

Initially, Swedish retained its status, but over the years, nationalism arose and there was a movement to establish Finnish as the national language. Kalevala (the epic poem of Elias Lönnrot) boosted the Finnish national identity and intensified the language strife.

“Swedes we are no longer, Russians we do not want to become, let us therefore become Finns!” - Adolf Ivar Arwidsson

To make history shorter: Finland became a country, Finnish became their national language and if it weren’t by their government, their people who fought to preserve their language, Swedish would be the only official language of Finland.

And…

This guy on the left would have never learned Finnish in order to read the Kalevala. Maybe, there wouldn’t be a Kalevala written in Finnish to read after all. Most certainly, Tolkien would not base his prime language in Finnish and this guy on the right, (as well as many other people) possibly would not admire Quenya beauty as intensely as he does. He probably would be taking a nap right now, instead of researching and writing this article.