LESSON SIXTEEN
The Instrumental case. Verbs with an unaccented vowel + -ta. The imperative. The nai formula.

If we accept the information provided in the Plotz letter as Tolkien's definite version of Quenya case system, we have now discussed all the Quenya noun cases except two. One of them is somewhat obscure; Tolkien supplied no further information about it, not even telling us what this case is called. The relevant ending is -s, plural -is. The Plotz lay-out suggests that this "Mystery Case" is simply a shorter, alternative version of the locative: The word exemplifying this case is listed in a parenthesis below the locative form of the same word. So instead of coassë "in a house", plural coassen "in houses", one may perhaps use the shorter forms coas, pl. coais. However, since we cannot be entirely confident regarding the function of this case, I will not construct any exercises involving it. On the other hand, the function of the last Quenya case we will discuss in this course is relatively well understood. We are talking about:

THE INSTRUMENTAL CASE
The rule for how the instrumental case is constructed can (for pedagogical purposes!) be stated very simply: Just add -en to the dative form! So where the dative has the ending -n, corresponding to plural -in and dual -nt, the instrumental has the endings -nen, plural -inen, dual -nten. Before discussing the function of this case, we will fill in some more details about the instrumental forms as such.
	We must assume that the basic instrumental ending -nen can be added directly to nouns ending in -n and -r without creating impossible clusters, so that we could have elennen as the instrumental form of elen "star", or Anarnen as the instrumental of Anar "Sun". (These instrumental forms would of course be accented on the second-to-last syllable because of the consonants cluster -nn- or -rn- now following the vowel of this syllable.) Nouns ending in -s with stems in -r- (for older -z-) would probably also show -rn- in the instrumental, e.g. olornen as the instrumental form of olos, olor- "dream". Nouns in -n with stems in -m- must be assumed to have instrumental forms in -mnen, e.g. talamnen as the instrumental form of talan, talam- "floor". But from this point, we can't be sure. Since the group ln regularly becomes ld in Quenya, it could be that the instrumental form of (say) estel "trust, hope" should be ?estelden for older estelnen. Otherwise, as in the case of nouns in -t, it becomes even more difficult. What is the instrumental form of a noun like nat "thing"? Since **natnen is not a possible Quenya form, would it turn into ?nanten with metathesis tn > nt, or would a connecting vowel (possibly -e-) materialize to produce a form like natenen? In the case of nouns with special stem-forms ending in consonant clusters, a connecting vowel must be inserted before the ending -nen; the instrumental form of nís (niss-) "woman" may be something like nissenen. 
Some otherwise long-lost final vowel may also be preserved before case-endings, as when ambar "fate, doom" is seen to have the instrumental form ambartanen (the relevant example is further discussed below). The stem of ambar may be given as ambart(a)-: Presumably the word did end in -rta way back in primitive Elvish, but except when shielded by grammatical endings, the final vowel and (later) the -t had been lost.
If the plural ending -inen is added to a noun ending in one of the three vowels -a, -o, or -u, the initial -i- of the ending merges with the last vowel of the noun to form a diphthong. Constituting the new second-to-last syllable, it naturally attracts the stress. Thus WJ:391 has ómainen as the plural instrumental form of óma "voice", the form ómainen being accented on the diphthong -ai-. Nouns ending in -ë may originally have behaved in a similar fashion, so that lassë "leaf" once had the plural instrumental form lasseinen, accented on the diphthong ei – but in Quenya, older ei eventually turned into a long í, and the Plotz letter points to lassínen as the current form. Of course, this long í still attracts the stress, like any long vowel occurring in the second-to-last syllable of a word. It is possible that nouns ending in -i, like tári "queen", would also show í in their plural instrumental forms, tári+inen manifesting as tárínen since two short i's would merge into one long í. This plural form tárínen, accented on the í in the second-to-last syllable, would then contrast with the singular tárinen, accented on tár-. Nouns in -ë with stem-forms in -i may behave in a similar fashion. The singular instrumental form of the noun lírë, líri- "song" is attested in Namárië as lírinen (this would be simply líri+nen); perhaps the plural form would be lírínen (for líri+inen).
For the last time in the course proper I must bore the student with the question of dual forms: Some dual instrumentals have the ending -nten as indicated by Plotz, but the dual element is obviously the t, intruding into the simplest instrumental ending -nen. So is the ending -nten peculiar to nouns with nominative dual forms in -t, so that nouns with nominative dual forms in -u would rather add the simplest ending -nen after this -u? I tend to think so; the instrumental form of Aldu "Two Trees" would then be Aldunen rather than ?Aldunten (or ?Aldanten or whatever).

As the name suggests, the function of the instrumental case is to identify the "instrument" (in a wide sense) by which some action is achieved. The best example available is probably the phrase i carir quettar ómainen "those who make words with voices" (WJ:391). This description of the Elves, involving the plural instrumental form of óma "voice", identifies their voices as the "instrument" or means by which they make words. Lacking an instrumental case, English often uses the preposition "with" instead, as in Tolkiens translation of ómainen: "with voices". However, it should be understood that the Quenya instrumental endings correspond to English "with" only where this preposition means "using" or "by means of" (i carir quettar ómainen could also be translated "those who make words using voices").
It is highly unlikely that the endings marking the instrumental case can be used for English "with" in the sense of "together with" (and please allow me to dwell on this point for a moment, for some writers have actually misapplied the Quenya instrumental case in such a way!) A sentence like "I saw them with an Elf" can hardly be translated as **cennenyet Eldanen, for to the extent this makes any sense at all, it implies that the Elf is the instrument by which "I saw them"! On the other hand, in a sentence like "I saw them with my binoculars", it would be quite all right to use the instrumental case for the English preposition "with". (Unfortunately, I can't reconstruct the actual Quenya wording, for Tolkien doesn't seem to mention any Elvish word for "binoculars" anywhere: Perhaps the far-sighted Elves just didn't need such artifices!)
	The Quenya instrumental endings may also be rendered into English by means of other prepositions than "with". The two instrumental forms occurring in Namárië Tolkien translated as phrases involving the preposition "in"; yet it is clear from the context that the instrumental does not really intrude on the area otherwise covered by the locative. The first instrumental form occurs at the end of the first line of the song: Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen, "ah! like gold fall the leaves in the wind". Despite Tolkien's translation, the context indicates that the "wind" (súrë, súri-) is here thought of as the "instrument" which makes the leaves fall: "In the wind" actually implies "by means of the wind", or simply "because of the wind". This example shows that the Quenya instrumental case may indicate simply the reason why something happens (the instrumental ending marking the noun denoting what makes it happen). The second example of the instrumental case in Namárië is similar, involving the noun lírë, líri- "song": Quoting from the prose version in RGEO, reference is made to Vardo...tellumar, yassen tintilar i eleni ómaryo lírinen, that is, "Varda's...domes, in which the stars twinkle by the song of her voice" (ómaryo lírinen = "her voice's song-by"). So the song of Varda's voice is what makes the stars twinkle, and the word for "song" is accordingly marked with the instrumental ending -nen.
	Another instrumental ending translated "in" by Tolkien is found in Fíriel's Song, one line of which says that the Valar gave everyone the gifts of Ilúvatar lestanen = "in measure". Here the instrumental noun tells us something about how the verbal action was accomplished.
	The Markirya poem includes the plural instrumental form (ending -inen) of the word ráma "wing", the sails of a ship being poetically referred to as its "wings": The ship is described as wilwarin wilwa...rámainen elvië, meaning something like "fluttering like a butterfly...on starlike wings" (or, "with starlike wings", "by means of starlike wings"). We could imagine a less poetical example using the same plural instrumental form, e.g. aiwi vilir rámainen, "birds fly with (or, using) wings". Talking about a single bird we could use a dual instrumental form: aiwë vilë rámanten, "a bird flies with [a pair of] wings".

One (actually the only) example of an instrumental form occurring in the Silmarillion is particularly interesting. Near the end of chapter 21, Of Túrin Turambar, Níniel refers to her brother as Turambar turun ambartanen, "master of doom by doom mastered". UT:138 indicates that the more proper reading is Turambar turún' ambartanen. This sentence is peculiar for several reasons. The word for "doom" (= "fate") is here ambar with stem ambart(a)-, as in the name Turambar "master of doom" and the instrumental form ambartanen "by doom". Other sources point to umbar as the Quenya word for "fate, doom" (it is even mentioned in LotR Appendix E as the name of a Tengwa letter). Ambar elsewhere occurs with the meaning "world", as in Elendil's Declaration in LotR (where reference is made to the Ambar-metta or "end of the world"), but ambar "doom" only partially coincides with this noun, since the stem-form ambart(a)- is distinct. Conceivably the "proper" Quenya word for "doom" was umbar, but the variant form ambar appeared in Exilic Quenya because of influence from the corresponding Sindarin word (ammarth or amarth). We must have faith: perhaps Tolkien explains the seeming discrepancies in some still unpublished note.
	Another peculiar feature of Níniel's cry is the word turun or more properly turún', translated "mastered". The translation would seem to indicate that this is a passive participle, and the complete form must be turúna, the final -a here dropping out because the next word (ambartanen) begins in the same vowel. This form turún[a] "mastered" must be related to the verb tur- "govern, control, wield" that we introduced in Lesson Seven. However, according to the rules for the formation of passive participles set out in Lesson Ten, the participle of tur- ought to be turna (cf. carna "made" as the attested passive participle of car- "make"), or less likely túrina (cf. rácina "broken" as the attested participle of rac- "break"). The form turún[a] is quite perplexing. It could belong to some peculiar phase in Tolkien's evolution of Quenya, an experiment later abandoned. Since we are dealing with posthumously published material here, we can never be certain that all the linguistic samples represent the Professor's definitive decisions on what Quenya grammar was "really" like.
We must hope that future publications will throw more light upon the strange form turún[a], but if we accept it as some kind of passive participle, we can make out one important grammatical rule from Níniel's cry: Following a passive participle, the agent who brought about the condition described can be introduced as a noun in the instrumental case. In our attested example, Túrin Turambar was "mastered", and since Níniel wanted to add information about what it was that "mastered" her brother, she used the instrumental form ambartanen = "by doom". A less gloomy example could involve, say, técina "written", the passive participle of the verb tec- "to write": We could build a phrase like i parma técina i Eldanen, "the book written by the Elf". Following a participle, the instrumental form could surely also assume its more basic function of denoting an instrument, so that we could have a phrase like técina quessenen "written with a feather [pen]" (quessë = "feather").

We must assume that the instrumental endings can be added to the relative pronoun ya- to express "by which", "with which": Singular i cirya yanen lenden amba i sírë "the ship by which I went up the river" (amba = "up"), plural i ciryar yainen... "the ships by which...", dual i ciryat yanten... "the couple of ships by which..."
	Though our attested examples involve other cases, there is no reason to doubt that also instrumental endings can be combined with possessive pronominal endings – producing forms like mányanen "with my hand", "using my hand" (má-nya-nen "hand-my-with").
	Combined with a gerund (ending in -ië), the instrumental case may perhaps express the idea of "by doing so and so", e.g. tiriénen "by watching" (for instance, in a sentence like "I found out by watching"). When the instrumental ending is added to nouns in -ië, the vowel in front of the ending would likely be lengthened, thus receiving the accent (a quite awkward stress-pattern being avoided): Hence I go for tiriénen rather than ?tirienen, which would have to be accented on the second i. We have no attested example involving the instrumental case, but cf. Tolkien's tyaliéva as the possessive form of tyalië "play". The instrumental would likely be tyaliénen, then. Such vocalic lengthening – apparently to avoid cumbersome stress-patterns – is also observed in other parts of speech, as we will discover in the next thrilling section:

VERBS WITH AN UNACCENTED VOWEL + -TA
We have earlier discussed what must be the main categories of Quenya verbs. There are some minor sub-groups of verbs that may have their own peculiar features, but our knowledge is very limited since (the litany of Tolkienan linguistics:) we have so few examples. All the same, a few observations about some of these sub-categories may be made, and we will deal with one of them here.
	In some of my examples and exercises I have combined the verb car- "make, do" with an adjective, e.g. exercise C in the previous lesson: Hiritaryas carnë lierya alya, "his finding it made his people rich". I should point out that we have no Tolkien-made example of an adjective being combined with car- in such a way, and it may be that I am here imposing an English idiom on Quenya. Now this may not be such a disaster: If we are ever to develop a usable form of Quenya, it would almost inevitably become somewhat coloured by modern usage (and if the Eldar return from Valinor to protest against their language being mistreated, that would not be a bad thing, either). Even so, it may be noted that Quenya vocabulary includes what may be termed causative verbs derived from adjectives; perhaps fully "idiomatic" Quenya would rather use such formations.
These verbs express, in a single word, the idea of "making" an object have the properties described by the corresponding adjective. The student should already be familiar with the ending -ta, which occurs in many Quenya verbs (e.g. pusta- "to stop"). Often it is just a verbal ending with no particular implications, but occasionally it may take on a causative meaning; compare the primary verb tul- "to come" and the derived verb tulta- "to summon" (= to cause to come). Added to adjectives, it seems that this ending may similarly be used to derive causative verbs. We have only a handful of examples, but the adjective airë "holy" apparently corresponds to a verb airita- "to hallow" – that is, "to make holy". (The final -ë of airë "holy" appears as -i- in airita- because the -ë of airë descends from -i in the primitive language, and it changed to -ë only when final. Cf. the similar variation in the aorist: silë "shines", but with a plural subject silir "shine", because if you add any ending the final vowel is no longer final at all.)
The one form of the verb airita- that is actually attested is the past tense. It reportedly appears as airitánë in an unpublished Tolkien manuscript stored at the Bodleian: According to a footnote in Vinyar Tengwar #32, November 1993, p. 7, the manuscript page in question "dates to c. 1966 and gives much information about Quenya verbs. It will be published in an upcoming issue of Vinyar Tengwar." Eight years and nine Vinyar Tengwars later, we are unfortunately still waiting to see this apparently highly interesting document – but at least VT#32 cited the past tense airitánë. It obviously includes the well-known past tense ending -në, but it should be noted that the vowel of the ending -ta- is here lengthened when the past tense ending is added. In this way, the now long syllable -tá- attracts the stress. **Airitanë with no lengthening would have a rather awkward stress-pattern (accented on -rit-), and it is perhaps for this reason the lengthening occurs. This may also imply that if some further ending is added after -në so that the stress would not threaten to land on -rit- after all, the lengthening of -ta- may not occur: Perhaps, say, "we hallowed" is airitanelmë rather than ?airitánelmë, since the stress must here fall on -ne- and -ta- receives no stress at all. Some think Quenya cannot have a long vowel in a wholly unaccented syllable unless this syllable is also the first one of the word.
Whatever the case may be, we can apparently infer this rule: As long as the past tense form of such a verb (that is, a verb with an unaccented vowel in front of the verbal ending -ta) is not to receive any further endings that may shift the stress, the ending -ta is lengthened to -tá- when the past tense ending -në is added after it: Thus airitánë as the pa.t. of airita-. Of course, not all endings that may be suffixed to -në have the power to shift the stress, and then the lengthening of -tá- must remain to prevent the accent from going someplace it shouldn't: Airitáner "hallowed" (with a plural subject), airitánes "(s)he hallowed", airitánen "I hallowed". But quite possibly, it should be airitanenyë with no lengthening of -tá- if you use the longer form of the ending for "I" – so that the stress moves to -ne-, and -ta- becomes a wholly unaccented syllable.
In the Etymologies, Tolkien listed at least one more verb that seems to belong to this class. The entry NIK-W- provides a verb ninquitá- "whiten", i.e. "make white", derived from the adjective "white": ninquë (stem ninqui-; the primitive form is given as ninkwi). By writing ninquitá-, Tolkien obviously suggested that the final vowel is often long, and we may safely assume that the past tense is ninquitánë. 
NOTE: In the entry NIK-W-, Tolkien also listed a verb ninquita- "shine white" that would probably inflect otherwise: perhaps the past tense would rather be ?ninquintë with nasal infixion (allow me to state explicitly that this is speculation!) In the aorist, the two verbs must probably coincide as ninquita, the context determining whether this is to be interpreted "whitens" or "shines white".

We may be able to tell one more thing about this class of verbs: how the passive (or "past") participle is formed. The evidence is widely scattered, though. 
In The Houses of Healing, Chapter 8 of Book Five in The Return of the King, Tolkien has Aragorn saying that "in the high tongue of old I am Elessar, the Elfstone, and Envinyatar, the Renewer". The Quenya title Envinyatar = "Renewer" is interesting. As for the final -r seen here, this ending may be added to (A-stem) Quenya verbs with much the same meaning as the English agent ending -er, so Envinyatar "Renewer" points to an underlying verb envinyata- "to renew". The prefix en- means "re-", and vinya is the Quenya adjective "new", so apparently we are looking at another verb derived from an adjective by means of the ending -ta.
Interestingly, what may be seen as the passive participle of this verb envinyata- "to renew" is attested in MR:405, in the phrase Arda Envinyanta. This Tolkien translated "Arda Healed" (the reference is to a future world healed from the consequences of the evil of Morgoth). Comparing it with Aragorn's title Envinyatar = "Renewer", we can tell that Arda Envinyanta more literally means "Arda Renewed". It should be noted how the passive participle is formed: by nasal-infixion intruding before the t of the ending -ta of the verb envinyata-. The resulting form envinyanta differs from the passive participles of "normal" verbs in -ta, which seem to have participles in -taina. (Compare hastaina "marred" from the same text that provides the example Arda Envinyanta "Arda Healed": Arda Hastaina or "Arda Marred" was the world as it actually appeared, marred by Morgoth. See MR:405, cf. 408, note 14. It is important to notice that these divergent types of participles occur in the same source text, allowing us to know with certainty that the different formations do belong to the same version of Quenya: Otherwise, it would be tempting to dismiss some of the formations as representing merely a certain stage in Tolkien's evolution of the language – ideas he later abandoned.)
If envinyata- "to renew" has the passive participle envinyanta, we may plausibly assume that the pass. part. of airita- "to hallow" is similarly formed by means of nasal-infixion: airinta "hallowed" (rather than ?airitaina, though perhaps this form would also be acceptable). And if airita- has the past tense form airitánë with lengthening of -ta- to -tá-, we can probably assume that envinyata- "to renew" becomes envinyatánë in the past tense. Similarly, if ninquitá- is the verb "to whiten", with the past tense ninquitánë, the participle "whitened" may well be ninquinta. (The forms envinyanta, airinta, ninquinta would of course agree in number like adjectives in -a, changing this final vowel to -ë in the plural.)
We have mentioned pretty much all the very few known verbs that may tentatively be assigned to this sub-class. There is no direct evidence for how they would behave in other forms than the past tense and the passive participle. (As for the active participle in -la, we would almost certainly see the same lengthening of the ending -ta as we observe before the past tense ending -në: hence airitála "hallowing", envinyatála "renewing". Again, the "motivation" for lengthening the vowel of -ta would be to achieve euphonic stress-patterns.)
It is of course difficult to know to what extent we should feel free to derive new Quenya verbs ourselves by adding -ta to adjectives (remembering that adjectives in -ë change this vowel to -i- before endings, as in airita- "to hallow" from airë "holy"). To return to the sentence we started with, hiritaryas carnë lierya alya "his finding it made his people rich", perhaps this might better be expressed as hiritaryas alyatánë lierya? We then assume that the adjective alya- can be used as the basis for a verb alyata- "make rich" or "enrich", with past tense alyatánë (and passive participle alyanta). In this as in other matters, people who want to write in Quenya face a difficult choice: Should we try to make the language work using solely the words Tolkien himself provided, introducing unattested idioms or long circumlocutions where necessary to work around gaps in the Tolkien-made vocabulary? Or should we feel free to derive new words from Tolkienian elements by applying the Professor's principles as far as we understand them, something that may be perceived as diluting Tolkien's actual linguistic output with "fake" elements (however cleverly constructed)? Some post-Tolkien creativity must unquestionably be allowed if we are ever to develop Quenya into anything like a useable language, but there are no easy answers here.

THE IMPERATIVE
The imperative is a form of the verb used to express commands or requests. In English, imperatives are often preceded by the word "please" to make them more polite, but it should be understood that an imperative form as such is not necessarily to be taken as a blunt order. In Tolkien's Quenya rendering of the Lord's Prayer, several imperatives occur, and such a prayer as "deliver us from evil" is of course just that – a prayer, not an attempt to order God around.
	According to Tolkien, the primitive Elvish language had an imperative particle that could be used in conjunction with a verbal stem to indicate that it was to be taken as an imperative. The particle had the form â, and it was "originally independent and variable in place" (WJ:365). Sometimes it was placed after the stem, and in such cases it came out as an ending -a in Quenya. WJ:364 mentions an "imperative exclamation" heca! meaning "be gone!" or "stand aside!" – and on the next page, this is suggested to come from the  primitive phrase hek(e) â. There is also the primitive exclamation el-â, "lo!", "look!", "see!", which is supposed to be the very first thing the Elves ever said as they awoke at Cuiviénen and first saw the stars (WJ:360). In Quenya, this word came out as ela! It was "an imperative exclamation directing sight to an actually visible object" (WJ:362).
	If we were to be guided by examples like heca and ela, we would have to conclude that in the case of primary verbs at least, imperatives may be formed by adding -a to the verbal stem. For instance, tir- "to watch" would have the imperative tira! "watch!", representing primitive tir-â or tir(i) â. The corresponding Sindarin form tiro! is actually attested. (Notice that the imperative tira "watch!" would be distinct from the present/continuative form tíra "is watching", since in the latter form, the stem-vowel is lengthened.) This may be one way of constructing Quenya imperatives, but it is also possible that exclamations like heca and ela are to be taken as "fossilized" forms descending from earlier stages of Elvish.
As for the typical "modern" way of forming imperatives, there is some evidence that a descendant of the original particle â was still treated as an independent word: it was placed in front of the verbal stem instead of being suffixed as an ending. In the LotR itself, an example is provided by the Cormallen Praise, the crowd hailing Frodo and Sam with the words a laita te... Cormacolindor, a laita tárienna! "Bless them... The Ring bearers, bless (or praise) them to the height" (translated in Letters:308). Notice how the verbal stem laita- "bless, praise" is here preceded by the imperative particle a to form an imperative phrase a laita! "bless!" or "praise!" The particle a also appears in the long form á, directly from primitive â, as in the exclamation á vala Manwë! "may Manwë order it!" (WJ:404). Here, the verb vala- "rule, govern" (the origin of the noun Valar and in later usage therefore referring to "divine" power only) is combined with the imperative particle á: The literal meaning of á vala Manwë! is transparently something like "do rule Manwë!", if we make an effort to translate á as a separate word.  Incidentally, this example demonstrates that the subject of the imperative (the one who is to carry out the "order" or request) may be explicitly mentioned after the imperative phrase proper.
Is there any reason why the imperative particle appears in the short form a in a laita, but in the long form á in á vala? It has been suggested that á is shortened to a whenever it occurs in front of a long syllable (like lai-, because of the diphthong ai), but we cannot be sure. Perhaps á vs. a is just an example of random variation: Presumably being unaccented, the particle could well tend to become shortened if speakers don't enunciate with care (the ecstatic crowds at Cormallen, hailing the hobbits who had saved the world, hardly did!) I would normally prefer the long form á, avoiding confusion with a as a particle of address, like English "o" (as in Treebeard's greeting to Celeborn and Galadriel: a vanimar = "o beautiful ones", Letters:308). For instance, since the verb "to go" is lelya-, the imperative "go!" would be á lelya!
The imperative particle á can also be combined with the negation vá to form the word áva, used in negative commands: Áva carë! "Don't do [it]!" (WJ:371). This example also gives away how primary verbs behave in imperative phrases: they appear with the ending -ë, just like they do when they are used as infinitives (and ending-less aorist forms). So from a primary verb like tir- "watch", we can probably form a command like á tirë! "(do) watch!" – negative áva tirë! "don't watch!"

THE NAI FORMULA
If one does not want to issue a command (however polite), but is merely expressing a wish that something will be done or will happen, Quenya has a special "wishing formula".
Near the end of Namárië, we find these lines: Nai hiruvalyë Valimar! Nai elyë hiruva! In LotR, this is translated "maybe thou wilt find Valimar! Maybe even thou wilt find it!" The word nai is here rendered into English as "maybe", but elsewhere, Tolkien indicated that this Quenya word does not merely imply that something is possible. He noted that nai "expresses rather a wish than a hope, and would be more closely rendered 'may it be that' (thou wilt find), than by 'maybe.'" (RGEO:68) We may wonder why he used the "misleading" translation maybe in the first place; possibly there are some "conceptual developments" involved here (i.e., Tolkien changed his mind about the precise meaning of a Quenya text he had already published!) Anyway, his final decision on the meaning of the phrase nai hiruvalyë Valimar was that it is to be interpreted "be it that thou wilt find Valimar" or "may thou find Valimar". Nai elyë hiruva likewise means "be it that even thou wilt find [it]". (The word elyë "even thou" here occurring is an emphatic, independent pronoun corresponding to the ending -lyë "thou, you", whereas Valimar here stands as an alternative to Valinor: Galadriel singing Namárië thus expresses a wish that Frodo will eventually "find" or come to the Blessed Realm – and as we remember, both he and Galadriel herself went over the Sea in the end.)
We have one more attestation of the nai wishing-formula. It occurs in Cirion's Oath, Cirion expressing a wish that the Valar will guard the oath: Nai tiruvantes, "be it that they will guard [/watch over] it". Tolkien noted that this is the equivalent of "may they guard it" (UT:305, 317).
As for the basic meaning of the word nai itself, Tolkien implied that it is quite literally "be (it) that": He derived Quenya nai from earlier nâ-i (RGEO:68). The nâ part would seem to be the element meaning "be!", undoubtedly closely related to the Quenya copula ná "is", itself a form of the verb "to be". The final i must be the element corresponding to the "that" of "be (it) that", and this i is certainly meant to be related to the Quenya article i "the".
Whatever the precise origin or basic meaning of nai may be, it is a useful word that can apparently be put in front of any sentence including a future-tense verb, turning a simple statement about the future into a wish about what the future may bring: 
¤ Elda tuluva coalmanna "an Elf will come to our house" > Nai Elda tuluva coalmanna! "be it that an Elf will come to our house!" = "(I) wish that an Elf will come to our house!" or "may an Elf come to our house!"
¤ Hiruvan i malta "I will find the gold" > Nai hiruvan i malta! "be it that I will find gold!" = "wish that I will find the gold!"
¤ Caruvantes "they will do it" > nai caruvantes! "be it that they will do it!" = "wish that they will do it!"

In Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring, Saruman can be heard uttering an example of the nai formula in the scene where he stands on the top of Orthanc reading invocations intended to bring down an avalanche on the Fellowship. He cries to the mountain: Nai yarvaxëa rasselya taltuva notto-carinnar! = "Wish that your blood-stained horn will collapse upon enemy heads!" (The actor pauses before taltuva "will collapse"; Christopher Lee playing Saruman may not have understood that he was uttering a single sentence rather than two!)
In our attested examples, nai is combined with the future tense, but since we have only three examples, it certainly cannot be ruled out that nai may be used in conjunction with other tenses as well. (One may even say we have only two examples, Cirion's Oath + Namárië, since the two examples of the nai formula near the end of Namárië are very similar.) Perhaps nai can also describe the speaker's hope that a certain wish is already being fulfilled, or has been fulfilled in the past – the speaker still not knowing whether the wish came true or not. If so, we could have constructions like nai tíras "be it that (s)he is watching" = "I hope (s)he is watching" (with the present or continuative tense of tir- "watch"), nai hirnentes! "be it that they found it" = "I hope they found it" (with the past tense of hir- "find"), or nai utúlies "be it that (s)he has come" = "I hope (s)he's come" (with the perfect tense of tul- "come"). However, in the exercises below, nai is only combined with the future tense – as in our attested examples.

Summary of Lesson Sixteen: The instrumental case has the basic ending -nen, plural -inen, dual -nten (at least in the case of nouns with nominative dual forms in -t; nouns with dual forms in -u may just add the simplest ending -nen to this vowel). The instrumental ending is added to nouns denoting the "instrument" or means by which some action is done or accomplished, as when Elves are described as making words ómainen = "with voices" (óma "voice"). The instrumental ending may correspond to such English prepositions as "with" or "by" where these words mean "using", "by means of". Sometimes the instrumental ending may mark a noun simply indicating what makes something happen, as when the first line of Namárië says leaves fall súrinen = "in the wind", i.e., because of the wind. Following a passive participle, a noun in the instrumental case may indicate who or what brought about the situation described, as when Túrin is described as turún' ambartanen, "mastered by doom". – Verbs including an unaccented vowel + the ending -ta seem to have past-tense forms in -tánë (notice the long á) and passive participles in -nta. Attested examples include airitánë, past tense of airita- "to hallow", and envinyanta, passive participle of envinyata- "to renew, heal". These verbs are causative formations derived from adjectives by means of the ending -ta, as when airë (airi-) "holy" is the basis of the causative verb airita- "to make holy" = "to hallow". – Quenya imperatives are marked by the particle á (variant a, negative áva "don't"), which is placed in front of the verbal stem: A laita = "(do) praise!", á vala "(do) rule!" In this grammatical context, the stem of primary verbs assume the ending -ë, as in the negative command áva carë "don't do [it]!" A few (old, fossilized?) imperative forms are seen to replace the independent imperative particle á or a with the corresponding ending -a (ela "lo! behold!", heca! "be gone!") – The word nai, meaning "be it that...", can be placed at the beginning of a sentence to express a wish: Nai tiruvantes "be it that they will guard it" or "may they guard it" (cf. tiruvantes "they will guard/watch it"). In our attested examples, nai is placed in front of sentences including a future-tense verb; whether nai can be combined with other tenses is unclear.

VOCABULARY

nelya "third" (The original name of the Third Clan of the Elves was Nelyar, literally "Thirds, Third Ones", though the Eldarin branch of that clan would later be called Lindar or Teleri instead [WJ:380, 382].)
á imperative particle (variant a, but we will use á here)
áva "don't!" (i.e., the imperative particle combined with a negation. Also in the form avá, the sole attested two-syllable Quenya word that is definitely known to be accented on the last syllable [WJ:371] – but we will use áva here.)
rac- "to break"
envinyata- "to renew"
airita- "to hallow"
harna- "to wound" (and the passive participle is evidently also harna, defined as "wounded" in the entry SKAR in the Etymologies. The adjectival or participial formation harna "wounded" is the primary derivative from the original root; eventually harna- also came to be used as a verbal stem "to wound". Of course, if this word were to go like a regular A-stem verb, the passive participle should then be ?harnaina. But the ending -ina is just a longer variant of the ending -na which is present from the beginning, and suffixing it twice to the same word should hardly be necessary!)
namba "hammer"
ehtë "spear"
yána "holy place, sanctuary"
nilmë "friendship"
Rómen "the East" (the initial ró- is ultimately related to the or- of the verb orta- "rise", since the Sun rises in the East.)

EXERCISES

1. Translate into English:

A. Utúlies Rómello ninquë rocconen.
B. I nér harnanë i rá ehtenen, ar eques: "Áva matë yondonya!"
C. Quentemmë i Eldanna: "Nilmelma ná envinyanta annalyanen!"
D. I nelya auressë quentes i vendenna: "Á carë ya merilyë!"
E. Quen umë polë hirë harma nurtaina Naucoinen, an Nauco melë núravë i malta ya haryas.
F. I nér ná harna rassenten i lamno; nai úvas firë!
G. Lindëas alassenen.
H. Á lelya i ostonna ar á quetë i taura tárinna: "Nai varyuvalyë nórelma i úmië ohtarillon!"

2. Translate into Quenya (consistently using the independent imperative particle rather than the ending -a, which possibly only occurs in fossilized forms):

I. He said to the Dwarf: "Break the cup with a hammer!"
J. By ship I went away [past tense of auta-] to a remote land in the East.
K. The city is protected by great walls, and warriors who fight with spears cannot break the walls.
L. Calandil said to his wounded son: "Don't die!"
M. May your queen find the sanctuary hallowed by the Elves!
N. The king and the queen went to my house and renewed our (excl.) friendship with great gifts.
O. She seizes the boy with her hands (dual), and she says: "Don't go to the river!"
P. The woman who lives (/dwells) in the third house in the street said to the Elf: "Watch the men who are coming from the sanctuary that you see on the hill, the ones who go to the east."

LESSON SEVENTEEN
The demonstratives: Sina, tan(y)a, enta, yana. Inflecting the "Last Declinable Word". U-stem nouns. Ordinals in -ëa.

QUENYA DEMONSTRATIVES
"Demonstratives" are such words as English this or that, with the corresponding plural forms these and those. Thus, they have a stronger meaning than the mere article the (though in the languages of the world, many definitive articles descend from older demonstratives that were overused so that their meaning faded). The demonstratives may be used together with nouns, producing phrases like "this house" or "that man".
	In LotR-style Quenya we have only one demonstrative attested in an actual text: Cirion's Oath commences with the words vanda sina, translated "this oath". The Quenya word order is actually "oath this", sina being the word for "this": The root SI- has to do with present position in time or space (cf. such words as sí "now" or sinomë "in this place" = "here", the latter from Elendil's Declaration in LotR).
	A word for "that" appears as tanya in an early "Qenya" text published in MC:215, which has tanya wende for "that maiden". Here, the word-order is "English-style" with the demonstrative first and the noun it qualifies following it – the opposite of the word order seen in Cirion's Oath. Perhaps the word order is free, so that vanda sina could just as well be sina vanda – and conversely, tanya wende could also be wende tanya? Be that as it may, we cannot be quite certain that the word tanya is still valid in LotR-style Quenya. The Etymologies lists TA as the Elvish "demonstrative stem 'that'," and the actual Quenya word for "that" is given as tana. Since this form seems like a perfect counterpart to sina "this", we will here use tana rather than tanya as the word for "that" (though it is also possible that the "Qenya" form tanya survived into the later stages of Tolkien's conception). So given that vanda sina is "this oath", we must assume that "that oath" would be vanda tana. Maybe we should update the "Qenya" phrase tanya wende "that maiden" to LotR-style Quenya vendë tana (or wendë tana with the older form or archaic spelling of the word for "maiden"). Then we also implement the word-order seen in Cirion's Oath, with the demonstrative following rather than preceding the noun it connects with: In the entry TA in the Etym, Tolkien actually described tana an anaphoric word for "that", meaning that it refers back to something already mentioned.
	However, sina "this" and tan(y)a "that" are not the only Quenya demonstratives known. Though not actually observed in any Quenya texts, other demonstratives are mentioned in Tolkien's notes. Another word for "that" is enta, mentioned in the entry EN in the Etymologies and there described as an adjective meaning "that yonder". The root EN itself is said to be an "element or prefix = over there, yonder". Still letting the demonstrative follow the noun it connects with, we may perhaps construct a phrase like coa enta, expressing "that house" in the sense of "yonder house", "that house over there". 
It may be that Tolkien meant Quenya to distinguish three degrees of nearness or remoteness, as do certain languages of our own world. English typically only distinguishes two degrees, "this" and "that": To simplify matters rather drastically, we may say that "this" refers to something near the speaker, whereas "that" refers to something away from the speaker. But in some languages, the position of the listener is also considered. There are two words for "that", one referring to something away from the speaker but near the person addressed ("that thing over by you") and another word referring to something that is not close to either the speaker or the listener ("that thing we see over there"). Could it be that in Quenya, tana as a word for "that" refers to something close to the person addressed, whereas enta refers to something that is remote from both the speaker and the person (s)he addresses? There is presently little or no evidence to back up such a theory, but we can at least be certain that the word enta clearly connotes the idea of "over there", "that yonder", of something separated from the speaker by physical distance. It may be noted that one Sindarin word for "there", namely ennas (SD:129 cf. 128), is understood to represent an older locative form that could correspond to a Quenya word entassë = "in yonder [place]". (Perhaps tana is simply a more general word for "that", merely focusing on the special identity of someone or something: "that one" as opposed to any other.)
Yet another word for "that" is yana, mentioned in the entry YA in Etym: After the gloss "that", Tolkien added a parenthetical specification: "(the former)". Perhaps aran yana would mean "that king" with the implication that we are talking about a former king, now dead or at least no longer ruling. There may be interesting contrasts between yana and enta as words for "that": In the Etymologies, Tolkien noted that the root YA signifies "there, over there; of time, ago". He added that EN, the root producing enta, "of time points to the future". So "that day" may translate as aurë enta if we are talking about some future day, not yet come, whereas aurë yana is "that day" with reference to some day in the past. (A "neutral" wording, with no special implications, may be aurë tana.)

As for plural demonstratives, like English "these" and "those", we have no attested Quenya forms. Yet the words sina "this" and tana, yana "that" do look like adjectives by their form (-na being an adjectival or participial ending), and enta "that yonder" Tolkien explicitly identified as an adjective (Etym, entry EN). So in all likelihood, we can inflect all of these words as adjectives, and then we can derive their plural forms simply by changing the final -a to -ë:

	vanda sina "this oath" / vandar sinë "these oaths"
	nís tana "that woman" / nissi tanë "those women"
	coa enta "that house [over there]" / coar entë "those houses"
	aurë yana "that day [in the past]" / auri yanë "those days"
 
As in the case of normal adjectives with the ending -a, the plural forms in -ë would represent archaic forms in -ai (vandar sinai etc.) Indirect evidence confirms that demonstratives could receive the plural ending -i in older Elvish: In LotR, in the inscription on the Moria Gate, occurs the Sindarin phrase i thiw hin, translated "these runes". Tolkien would have meant this to represent something like in teñwâi sinâi at an older stage – and in Quenya, an old plural demonstrative sinâi "these" would first become sinai and then sinë.

It is not clear whether the demonstratives discussed above could occur by themselves, independently, and not only in conjunction with nouns. Can we use sina for "this" in a sentence like "this is a good house"? (And if we needed a plural form "these", should we inflect sina as a noun when it occurs by itself, so that the plural would now be sinar rather than sinë?) In PM:401, we have the sentence sin quentë Quendingoldo. Tolkien provided no translation, but it must mean either "this Quendingoldo said" or "thus spoke Quendingoldo". The latter interpretation has it that sin is an adverb "thus", but if sin means "this", it would be what we may call a demonstrative pronoun – corresponding to sina, the latter however being an adjective only occurring in conjunction with a noun. By this interpretation, it would be sin, rather than sina, we should use in sentences like "this is a good house" or "I have seen this". (And should the independent word for "these" be something like sini, then?) As for the other demonstratives, we have ta as an "independent" form of "that", corresponding to the adjective tana (see Etym, entry TA). Of other such "independent" forms, little or nothing is known, and in the exercises below, we will concentrate on the adjectival demonstratives sina, tana, enta, yana used in conjunction with nouns.

INFLECTING THE "LAST DECLINABLE WORD"
Now that we have presented all the Quenya cases, we may also point out that the various case endings are not always attached to the noun they logically "belong" to. Where that noun is part of a longer phrase, like when the noun is followed by an attributive adjective describing it, the case ending may be added to the last word of the phrase.
	Cirion's Oath provides the classical example. It includes a reference to Elendil Voronda, "Elendil the Faithful", voronda being a Quenya adjective meaning "steadfast, faithful". Wrote Tolkien: "Adjectives used as a 'title' or frequently used attribute of a name are placed after the name." (UT:317; as we have pointed out earlier, Quenya here differs from English by not inserting a definite article between the name and the adjective – hence not Elendil i Voronda, at least not necessarily). 
In Cirion's Oath, the name-and-title phrase Elendil Voronda is to appear in the genitive case: The Oath includes the words Elendil Vorondo voronwë, "Elendil the Faithful's faith" – or (as it is translated in UT:305, with an English-style word order) "the faith of Elendil the Faithful". Notice that the genitive ending -o, which we underlined, is added to the adjective voronda (regularly displacing a final -a) rather than to the noun Elendil. In a way, the adjective following the noun is treated as an extension of the noun proper, and so the case ending is added at the end of the whole phrase. Tolkien commented on the construction Elendil Vorondo: "As is usual in Quenya in the case of two declinable names in apposition only the last is declined" (UT:317). Voronda "faithful" here stands in apposition to "Elendil" as an additional "name" or title, and only the latter "name" is declined (inflected for case).
This principle would work with all the various cases. The allative of Elendil when the name occurs alone is attested as Elendilenna "to Elendil" (PM:401), but "to Elendil the Faithful" would apparently be Elendil Vorondanna, the last word of the phrase receiving the case ending.
Where a proper name followed by some epithet (like Voronda in this case) is concerned, the system of adding any case endings to the last word of the phrase may be more or less universal. Yet common nouns, not just proper names, may also be qualified by adjectives following rather than preceding the noun. Cf. for instance a phrase like mallë téra "road straight" = "a straight road" (LR:47). If we were to add the locative ending to express "on a straight road", to what word should it be attached? Should we apply the "last declinable word" rule again (mallë térassë) or attach the locative ending to the noun (mallessë téra)?
It seems that both constructions would be permissible. The Markirya poem provides a string of examples of noun-phrases where the noun proper is followed by an adjective (in most cases a participle). Three consecutive examples involve the noun isilmë "moonlight" combined with various participles (ilcala "gleaming", pícala "waning", lantala "falling"), and all three noun phrases are inflected for the locative case by attaching the locative ending to the last word of the phrase:

isilmë ilcalassë = "in gleaming moonlight"
isilmë pícalassë = "in waning moonlight"
isilmë lantalassë = "in falling moonlight"

(Tolkien's more poetic translation in MC:215 goes "in the moon gleaming, in the moon waning, in the moon falling".)
Another phrase, again involving the participle ilcala "gleaming" but here combined with the allative case, is particularly interesting:

axor ilcalannar = "upon gleaming bones"

Notice that the noun axo "bone" is here plural. The plural allative "upon bones" occurring by itself would of course be axonnar. But here, where the plural allative ending -nnar is attached to the last word of the phrase instead, the noun axo itself receives only the simplest plural ending -r. Normally, axor would be taken as a nominative plural, but actually the -r merely marks the word as a plural form in the simplest possible way: The actual case marker follows later in the phrase. Words with nominative plurals in -i would of course receive this plural marker instead, e.g. vendi lindalaiva = "of singing maidens" (home-made example involving the possessive case, but the principle would be the same for all the cases: dative vendi lindalain, allative vendi lindalannar, etc.) We must assume that dual nouns would also appear in their simplest (normally "nominative") form at the beginning of the phrase: The noun would merely assume the dual ending -u or -t, and the full dual case ending would follow later in the phrase. To construct a Tolkienesque example: Aldu caltalanta = "upon [the] shining couple of trees".
	However, it is apparently not a hard-and-fast rule that you must attach a case ending to the last word of the entire phrase rather than to the noun proper. Markirya contains examples of phrases where an attributive adjective follows the noun it describes, and yet the case ending is added to the noun, not the adjective. The first example involves a plural instrumental form (ending -inen), whereas the second example involves the locative case (the ending -ssë being added to a noun that is inflected for the somewhat obscure "partitive plural" marked by the ending -li):

rámainen elvië = "on [/with] starlike wings"
ondolissë mornë = "on dark rocks"

Of course, the adjectives elvëa "starlike" and morna "dark" are here plural (elvië, mornë) to agree with the plural nouns they describe. It could be that in both instances, the case ending is not added to the adjective because the adjectival plural inflection and the case inflection would somehow collide. (In the phrase axor ilcalannar "upon gleaming bones" there is no collision even though "bones" is plural, since participles in -la apparently do not agree in number.) It is less than clear how an ending like -inen could be added to a form like elvië anyway: ?elviëinen seems like an unlikely and awkward form, prone to collapse into the quite obscure word **elvínen. Perhaps that is why Tolkien preferred to add the case ending to the noun ráma instead, even though this noun is not the last word of the phrase.
	Yet the system of inflecting the "last declinable word" does seem to be a common phenomenon in the language. It seems that sometimes, only the last item on a list receives case endings that actually apply to all the nouns that are listed. Namna Finwë Míriello is translated "the Statute of Finwë and Míriel" (MR:258). Not only is the conjunction ar "and" that would have separated the two names omitted, but the genitive ending -o "of" is added to the last name (Míriel, Míriell-) only. The "full" construction would presumably have been Namna Finwëo ar Míriello, but it was apparently permissible to strip the phrase down to basics to provide the "Statute" with a more concise title.

Though we have no attested examples, the demonstratives listed above would seem to be good candidates for receiving case endings, if the word order observed in the phrase vanda sina "oath this" is normal. For instance, if we were to add the instrumental ending to express "by this oath", it would perhaps be best to say vanda sinanen. However, vandanen sina would probably also be permissible – and in the plural (nominative presumably vandar sinë "these oaths"), consistently adding the case ending to the noun would be the safest course: "By these oaths" would then be vandainen sinë rather than ?vandar sinëinen or sinínen or whatever.

U-STEM NOUNS
Apparently in the latter part of the "Common Eldarin" stage of Tolkien's simulated evolution of his Elvish languages, two parallel changes occurred, affecting what had earlier been short final -i and short final -u: they now turned into -e and -o, respectively. However, since this change only occurred where these vowels were final, they remained -i- and -u- whenever some ending or other element followed. We have already alluded to this phenomenon earlier in this course; in particular, the student will remember it from the variation observed in the aorist of primary verbs: silë "shines", but pl. silir "shine" (because original -i did not change to -e when there was a following ending, like the plural marker -r in this example). Similar variation may be observed in nouns and adjectives: We have already mentioned the noun lómë "night", which has the stem-form lómi- (SD:415) because it descends from earlier dômi- (see the entry DOMO in Etym). We must assume that (say) the locative form "at night" would be lómissë. The adjective carnë "red" descends from primitive karani (see Etym, entry KARÁN) and therefore has the stem-form carni-, for instance in a compound like Carnistir "Red-face" (PM:353).
	The behaviour of these "i-stems" of course finds its parallel in the U-stems, words that end in -o when this vowel is absolutely final, but preserve an original -u where some element follows this vowel. Such words seem to be predominantly (perhaps exclusively) nouns. One example of a U-stem noun is ango "snake": Its stem-form angu- is directly observed in the compound angulócë (simply glossed "dragon", but actually combining the word for "snake" with the word normally translated "dragon", lócë: see the entry LOK in Etym). In the Etymologies, Tolkien derived ango "snake" from older ANGU (or ANGWA, which would become angw and then angu), so the final -o of this word does indeed represent an older -u. Whenever the noun ango is to receive endings for case or pronoun, it would apparently assume the form angu-, e.g. dative angun "for a snake", ablative angullo "from a snake" or with a pronominal ending e.g. angulya "your snake". The genitive would presumably be anguo "of a snake". (As we have demonstrated earlier, "normal" nouns ending in -o do not have distinct genitive singular forms; the genitive ending -o simply merges with the final vowel.)
	Where U-stem nouns end in either -go or -co, they assume a peculiar form in the nominative plural. Normally, nouns ending in -o would of course have nominative plural forms in -or. However, where -go and -co represent older -gu and -ku, it seems that adding the primitive plural ending -î made the preceding u become w, so that the plurals came to end in -gwî or -kwî. Probably w merged with the g or k preceding it: The combinations gw, kw are evidently best taken as unitary sounds, labialized versions of g and k (that is, g or k pronounced with poised lips – look up Lesson One again). In Quenya, these labialized sounds persisted, though by convention, kw is spelt qu. Bottom line is, when we are told that ango "snake" has the stem angu-, we can also deduce that the plural form is neither **angor nor **angur, but angwi! The Etymologies confirms this; the plural form angwi is explicitly mentioned in the entry ANGWA/ANGU.
An example of a -qui plural is provided by the word urco "bogey", which has the plural urqui (= urcwi). Regarding this word, Tolkien noted that "as the plural form shows", urco must be derived from either urku or uruku in the primitive language (WJ:390). Thus, urco is definitely a U-stem noun, its final -o representing older -u, and we would still see urcu- in compounds and before most inflectional endings.
	
NOTE: The word urco "bogey" is akin to Sindarin orch, "Orc". In WJ:390, Tolkien notes that in the lore of the Blessed Realm, the word urco "naturally seldom occurs, except in tales of the ancient days and the March [of the Eldar from Cuiviénen], and then [it] is vague in meaning, referring to anything that caused fear to the Elves, any dubious shape or shadow, or prowling creature... It might indeed be translated 'bogey'." Later, when the Noldor returned to Middle-earth, the word urco pl. urqui was primarily used with reference to Orcs, since the kinship ("though not precise equivalence") of this Quenya term to Sindarin orch was recognized. In Exilic Quenya, a Sindarin-influenced form also appeared: Orco, the plural of which could be either orcor or orqui. The plural form orcor occurs elsewhere as well (MR:74), but if one prefers orqui, one should probably let orco "Orc" function as a U-stem in all respects. For instance, if one were to coin a compound "Orc-language", it should be orculambë rather than orcolambë. In the Etymologies, far predating the source reproduced in WJ:390, Tolkien also gives the relevant word (glossed "goblin!") as orco pl. orqui: stem ÓROK. In Etym, there is no hint that this word was borrowed into Quenya from another language; orco is referred to a primitive form órku. Tolkien's precise ideas about the history of the Quenya word for "Orc" were apparently subject to change, but the basic idea that nouns in -co derived from primitive forms in -ku should have plurals in -qui rather than -cor is seen to persist. – In accordance with our policy of avoiding specific references to Tolkien's mythos in the exercises, we will not refer to "Orcs" here, but we can use the word urco in its sense of "bogey" (it will occur in the exercises appended to Lesson Eighteen).

We will try to survey the words involved (excluding the earliest "Qenya" material). Ango "snake", pl. angwi, seems to be our sole entirely certain example of a -gwi plural. In the Etymologies, there was also lango "throat", pl. langwi (see the entry LANK). The form langwi is for some reason marked with an asterisk, which would normally indicate that this form is unattested, but possibly it has another meaning here. Anyway, Tolkien decided to change the word for "throat", turning it into lanco instead. It is entirely possible that this is also a U-stem, so that its plural should be lanqui rather than lancor, though we have no explicit information to this effect.
	One certain U-stem is the word for "arm", ranco (primitive form explicitly given as ranku). Just as we would expect, the plural form is ranqui; see the entry RAK in Etym. A word meaning "arm" would presumably often appear in its dual form to signify a natural pair of arms. We may wonder whether the dual form of ranco would be rancu (with the dual ending -u, quite unrelated to the original final -u that later became -o) or rancut (i.e., the U-stem noun ranco, rancu- with the dual ending -t). As we have argued from the attested example peu "pair of lips", nouns denoting body-parts occurring in pairs may consistently have "fossilized" dual forms in -u, since it was this ending that originally denoted a natural or logical pair. Once a pronominal ending is added, we may at least safely suffix -t to indicate a dual form. Indeed, without this ending there would be no distinction between ranculya "your arm" and ranculyat "your (pair of) arms", no matter what the dual of ranco may be when the word occurs by itself: Before endings, ranco must become rancu- anyway.
	Another U-stem is rusco "fox"; it our source, Tolkien mentioned both the stem-form ruscu- and the plural rusqui (VT41:10).
	Not all U-stems end in -co or -go, of course. One example is the word curo "a skillful device" (VT41:10, last word of gloss uncertain due to Tolkien's difficult handwriting). Tolkien cited the stem-form curu-, and it apparently also occurs in Saruman's Quenya name: Curumo (UT:401). This name seems to combine the element curu- with the masculine ending -mo "that often appeared in names or titles" (WJ:400). We may wonder what the nominative plural of curo, curu- would be. Could it be curwi, paralleling angwi as the plural of ango, angu- "snake"?
	Anyhow, the special nominative plurals ending in -wi (spelt -ui when part of -qui) would also be reflected in the genitive plural and the dative plural: If the nominative plural of rusco "fox" is rusqui (= ruscwi) the corresponding dative and genitive forms can hardly be anything else than rusquin (= ruscwin) and rusquion (= ruscwion), respectively. One would think that we would also see rusquiva (= ruscwiva) as the plural possessive, and rusquinen (= ruscwinen) as the plural instrumental. There is one form that can be cited against the two latter assumptions: the related adjective ruscuitë "foxy", mentioned in the same source that gives us rusco, ruscu- pl. rusqui (VT41:10). In the word ruscuitë, which includes the adjectival ending -itë, there is no development cui > cwi = qui; we don't see **rusquitë. The ending -itë may by its shape resemble the case endings -iva and -inen for plural possessive and plural instrumental. So if we have ruscuitë, perhaps we would – as phonologically parallel forms – also see ruscuiva and ruscuinen rather than rusquiva, rusquinen? We cannot know. I will not construct any exercises involving the plural form of the possessive and instrumental cases.
	In the other cases, where the plural case endings do not include the vowel -i, all one has to remember is to change the final -o of a U-stem noun to -u before adding whatever ending is relevant. Using ango, angu- "snake" as our example, we would for instance have the plural allative angunnar "to snakes" (not **angwinna or **angwinnar or whatever; cf. the singular angunna "to a snake"). Likewise we would have the pl. ablative angullon or angullor "from snakes" (sg. angullo "from a snake"), pl. locative angussen "in snakes" (sg. angussë "in a snake"). As the corresponding dual forms, we would presumably see angunta, angulto, angutsë = "to/from/in a pair of snakes". Pronominal endings would also be added to the stem-form angu-, and any further endings for number or case would then be added after the pronominal ending as described in earlier lessons: angulya "your snake", plural angulyar (hardly **angwilyar!) "your snakes", dual angulyat "your pair of snakes", dative angulyan "for your snake", plural dative angulyain (hardly **angwilyain!) "for your snakes", etc. etc.
NOTE: Nonetheless, the nominative plurals in -wi (-gwi, -qui) must be seen as the most striking feature of U-stem nouns. In at least one instance, this plural formation apparently spread to another noun by analogy: According to the Etymologies, entry TÉLEK, the noun telco "leg" has the plural telqui, but this plural is said to be "analogical". Presumably, Tolkien's idea is that telco is not a "true" u-stem noun (it does not come from Primitive Elvish teleku or telku, but rather descends from something like telekô, telkô). Therefore, its plural "should" have been telcor, and the actual form telqui is merely due to influence from such pairs as ranco pl. ranqui or urco pl. urqui. However, telco seems to be exceptional in this respect. I don't think we should replace (say) Naucor as the plural form of Nauco "Dwarf" with **Nauqui.

ORDINALS
We have already introduced three ordinal numbers, minya "first", (t)atya "second" and nelya "third". All three include the frequent adjectival ending -ya (occurring in the word Quenya "Elvish" itself). However, it turns out that most ordinals end in -ëa, displacing the final vowel of the corresponding cardinal number. Thus we have the following correspondences between cardinals and ordinals:

	canta "four" vs. cantëa "fourth"
	lempë "five" vs. lempëa "fifth"
	enquë "six" vs. enquëa "sixth"
	otso "seven" vs. otsëa "seventh"
	tolto "eight" vs. toltëa "eighth" (also toldëa, presupposing toldo as a variant word for "8")
	nertë "nine" vs. nertëa "ninth"

This table is based on an account of Eldarin numerals written by Tolkien in the late sixties, published in VT42:24-27 (also see the editorial notes on pp. 30-31). Tolkien indicated that the word for "fifth" had earlier been either lemenya or lepenya (with the same ending as in minya etc.), but this "irregular" form was later replaced by lempëa by analogy with the simple cardinal lempë "five". Tolkien's notes present varying views as to when this substitution occurred (whether already in pre-Exilic times, or later), but it is at least clear that in Frodo's day, lempëa would be the word to use when you need to express "fifth".
	Even the words for "second" and "third" could have the ending -ëa instead of -ya. The ordinal (t)atya "second" was "early replaced" by attëa, which would be a "regular" formation compared to the cardinal atta "two". Similarly, nelya as the word for "three" could also be replaced by neldëa, more clearly reflecting the cardinal neldë "three" (but in this case, nothing is said about neldëa wholly replacing nelya).
	VT42:25 also lists a word for "tenth", quainëa, but this presupposes another word for "ten" than the form cainen mentioned in the Etymologies. A root KAY- having to do with the number "ten" seems to have haunted Tolkien's imagination for at least thirty years, so I hesitate to throw it over board just because a divergent form turns up in one late manuscript – but this is not the place to discuss what forms we should accept as "valid" or "canonical". The ordinal corresponding to the cardinal cainen could be either cainenya or cainëa (but hardly ?cainenëa).
	Over the next three lessons, we will work our way through the attested ordinals, starting with the word for "fourth" (cantëa).

Summary of Lesson Seventeen: Quenya demonstratives include sina "this", tana "that" (one early source also has tanya), enta "that (yonder)" (apparently with emphasis on spatial position, though it may also refer to something that lies in the future) and yana "that (former)" (of time used of something that lies in the past, the opposite of enta). It may be assumed that the corresponding plural forms (the words for "these" and "those") end in -ë rather than -a, since these demonstratives probably behave like adjectives. Demonstratives are, or may be, placed after the noun they connect with; Cirion's Oath has vanda sina for "this oath" (we cannot know whether the English-style word order sina vanda would be equally valid, and the word order observed in Cirion's Oath is consistently employed in the exercises below). – Where there are several declinable words in a phrase, as when a noun is followed by an attributive adjective (or participle) describing it, a case ending may be added to the last word of the phrase. The noun itself, if not singular, would receive only the simplest endings for number (the endings normally associated with the nominative case, like -i or -r in the plural): The case ending that follows later in the phrase would still determine what case the entire phrase is. – U-stem nouns originally ended in the vowel -u, which in Quenya has become -o when the word occurs without endings, but where not final, the vowel remains -u-. Thus a word like ango "snake" appears as angu- in a compound (e.g. angulócë "snake-dragon"), and no doubt also before endings for pronoun or case (e.g. angulya "your snake", or allative angunna "to a snake"). The nominative plural of U-stem nouns is formed with the ending -i (rather than -r), and at least where the noun happens to end in -go or -co, the final vowel representing an older u turns into w before the plural ending. Thus the nominative plural of ango, angu- is angwi, and the plural of ranco, rancu- is ranqui (this spelling representing rancwi). These special plurals may also be reflected in the other cases that have plural case endings involving the vowel i, certainly the genitive plural (angwion, ranquion) and dative plural (angwin, ranquin). – The ordinal numbers from "fourth" to "ninth" are formed by replacing the final vowel of the corresponding cardinal number with -ëa, e.g. cantëa "fourth" from canta "four". Even the ordinals (t)atya "second" and nelya "third" may be replaced by attëa, neldëa (cf. the cardinals atta "two", neldë "three").

VOCABULARY
In addition to learning these new words, the student should notice that the noun ranco "arm" (introduced in Lesson Three) is a U-stem: rancu-.

cantëa "fourth"
tana demonstrative "that"
enta demonstrative "that [yonder]", "[the one] over there" (of time referring to some future entity)
yana demonstrative "that" = "the former" (of time referring to some past entity)
sina demonstrative "this"
ango (angu-) "snake"
sangwa "poison"
lómë (lómi-) "night"
polda adjective "strong, burly" (of physical strength only; the verb pol- "can" is probably related)
halla adjective "tall"
forya adjective "right"
Formen "(the) North" (cf. Formenos, the "Northern Fortress" constructed by Fëanor in the Blessed Realm; the final element -os is reduced from osto "fortress; city".)

This concludes our listing of the four directions Númen, Hyarmen, Rómen, Formen = West, South, East, North (this being their proper "Middle-earth" order). Just as Hyarmen "South" is related to the adjective hyarya "left", so Formen "North" is related to the adjective forya "right", since the reference-point is that of a person facing West (looking towards Valinor).

EXERCISES

1. Translate into English:

A. Engwë sina ná i macil hirna Calandil Hallanen. 
B. Ilyë lamni avánier nórë sinallo.
C. Ango harnanë forya rancurya, ar eques: "Nai ilyë angwi firuvar!"
D. Lómë yanassë hirnentë Nauco tana ambo entassë. 
E. I hallë ciryar oantier Formenna; ciryar tanë úvar tulë i nórennar Hyarmeno.
F. I cantëa auressë tári yana firnë anguo sangwanen.
G. I poldë ranqui i nerion Formello polir mapa i ehti ohtari mahtalallon.
H. Hrívë yanassë marnentë i cantëa coassë mallë tano.

2. Translate into Quenya:

I. Watch that Dwarf, and don't watch this Elf!
J. A land without snakes is a good land, for many Men [Atani] have died by (instrumental) snake-poison.
K. During (locative) the fourth night I saw a terrifying warrior on that road, and I raised my arms (dual).
L. Wish that [= nai] the strong son of Calandil the Tall will come to this land, for he will protect these cities in which we (inclusive) dwell!
M. That tower (or, yonder tower) is the fourth tower made by Elves in this land.
N. Those books are gone [vanwë the pl. of vanwa]; they have disappeared from your room.
O. On that day you shall see your son.
P. On that day they came from that [/yonder] mountain and went to this house.

LESSON EIGHTEEN
Independent pronouns. Impersonal verbs. U-stem verbs. The various uses of lá.

INDEPENDENT PRONOUNS
(inevitably entailing a discussion of certain Second Person obscurities) 
All the pronouns so far discussed have been endings. However, Quenya also has pronouns that appear as independent words. Some of them are emphatic; the pronoun appears as a separate word to put special emphasis on it. These emphatic pronouns we will discuss in the next lesson. Here we will concentrate on the simplest independent pronominal elements.
	We have already cited Quenya sentences including the dative pronoun nin "for me". The dative ending -n is here appended to an independent word for "I", ni, attested by itself in the "Arctic" sentence mentioned in The Father Christmas Letters. (Though this posthumously published work of Tolkien's has nothing to do with the Arda mythos, the "Arctic" sentence is transparently a form of Quenya.) The relevant part of the sentence goes ni véla tye, "I see you". The verb "see" is here apparently vel- rather than cen- (perhaps vel- is "see" in the sense of "meet"?), but more remarkable is the fact that for the subject "I", the independent pronoun ni is used instead of the ending -n or -nyë. There seems to be no obvious "reason" for this deviation from the normal system. It has been suggested that since the intended audience for The Father Christmas Letters was Tolkien's young children, he may have "simplified" the language to make it easier for them to figure out which word means what. However, since the latter part of the "Arctic" sentence employs a quite complex grammatical construction which is certainly not the literal counterpart of the English translation provided, we should hardly think of the language as "simplified". For "I" as subject, the ending -n(yë) added to the verb is normally to be preferred, but the independent word ni may be a valid alternative. It may be noted that in one of Tolkien's draft versions for Elendil's Declaration, the word that ended up as maruvan "I will remain/dwell" appears as nimaruva, Tolkien using ni- "I" as a prefix: SD:56. (It may be, however, that the idea of subject prefixes was dropped; no post-LotR evidence of such prefixes has ever been published. If I were to use the independent pronoun ni instead of the ending -n, I would let it stand as a separate word: Ni maruva.)
	Besides ni, we have a handful of other independent pronouns attested. One such pronoun is ta, meaning "it" or "that" (see Etym, entry TA – the demonstrative tana "that" is of course related). One relatively early source suggests that it can receive case endings. The ten-word Koivienéni sentence published in Vinyar Tengwar #27 is not LotR-style Quenya in its entirety, but the short phrase Orome tanna lende (translated "Orome came thither") may well have remained a valid wording after "Qenya" evolved into Quenya as we know it from later sources. The word tanna "thither" seems to be ta "that, it" with the regular allative ending -nna attached, hence "to that [place]" = "thither".
	In Namárië, one independent pronoun occurs in the phrase imbë met = "between us". This is a dual pronoun, referring to Galadriel and Varda, so met appropriately receives the dual ending -t (also known from nouns) to indicate that two persons are concerned. Removing the dual ending leaves us with me, probably covering both "we" (subject form) and "us" (object form). In our example, this is an exclusive "we/us", corresponding to the ending -mmë, which is obviously closely related. The party addressed is not included (Galadriel was singing to Frodo about herself and Varda). Me is also attested in its dative form, with the dative ending -n attached: men = "for us, to us".
	The ending -lyë "you" corresponds to an independent pronoun le, which was apparently present already in early forms of Elvish (WJ:363). In Sindarin it had been lost, but it is precisely this circumstance which allows us to say with certainty that it survived in Quenya: In his notes on the Sindarin hymn A Elbereth Gilthoniel, Tolkien stated that the reverential 2nd person pronoun le occurring in this Grey-elven text had been borrowed from Quenya (RGEO:73).
At Cormallen, the crowds hailed Frodo and Sam with the words a laita te, laita te, translated in Letters:308 as "bless them, bless them". Thus we have te as an independent object pronoun "them". (For this meaning, the Cormallen Praise also provides us with the already-discussed ending -t, as in laituvalmet = "we shall bless them". Presumably the pronoun te and the ending -t are related.) Whether this te can also be used as a subject form ("they") is unfortunately unclear. 
This te is possibly related to the word ta "that, it" discussed above: It may well be that ta early received the plural ending -i, the resulting form tai being as it were the plural form of "that" – hence meaning something like "those [ones]" or indeed "them". By this theory, the attested form te is simply the unstressed variant of tai (cf. adjectives in -a having plural forms in -ë, simplified from older -ai). A direct attestation of a form tai eventually turned up in VT42:34, and the context allows the interpretation that it may literally mean "those"; see below. Interestingly, the dative form "for them, to them" is apparently attested as tien. This could very well represent older taien, which would be tai "those" + the connecting vowel -e- + the dative ending -n. In this position, the diphthong ai is reduced to e, and as taien consequently morphs into te'en = tëen, this rather unstable form becomes tien by exactly the same mechanism that also turns (laureai >) laurëe into laurië (the plural form of the adjective laurëa "golden"). We may assume that the allative "to(wards) them" would likewise be tienna, whereas the ablative "from them" would be tiello. These forms would coincide with the corresponding case forms of the noun tië "path", but in context, one should normally be able to figure out what the intended meaning is.
Another attested object pronoun is tye, translated "thee" or "you". We have already quoted the phrase ni véla tye "I see you" from the "Arctic" sentence. Other attestations come from a source that is more definitely Quenya or at least "Qenya": In LR:61, Herendil addresses his father Elendil with the words atarinya tye-melánë, "my father, I love thee", and Elendil answers, a yonya inyë tye-méla, "and I too, my son, I love thee". There are a few strange things here (like -në rather than -nyë or -n being used as the pronominal ending "I" in the first sentence), but it is at least clear that tye is the object pronoun "thee", and this is probably a valid form in LotR-style Quenya as well.
At this point it should be noted that Quenya has (at least) two sets of pronouns in the second person. The object pronoun tye is not "compatible" with the ending -l(yë) or the corresponding independent pronoun le, though all of these may be translated "you" in English. We must distinguish between the "L" forms, represented by the ending -l(yë) and the independent pronoun le, and the "T" forms, represented by the object pronoun tye and also by the verb ending -t exemplified in WJ:364 (more about the latter in the next lesson; it is not to be confused with -t = "them" as in laituvalmet = "we will bless them"). All of these pronouns and endings have to do with the idea of "you, thou, thee", but Tolkien seems to have been changing his mind back and forth as to what the basic distinction between the T-forms and the L-forms really consists of. Back in Lesson Eight, we quoted a passage that was originally meant to go into the LotR appendices, but which was not in the event included there: Tolkien stated that "all these languages...had, or originally had, no distinction between the singular and plural of the second person pronouns; but they had a marked distinction between the familiar forms and the courteous" (PM:42-43).
Within this scheme, the "L" forms would represent a polite and courteous "you", whereas the "T" forms signal a familiar/intimate "you" used to address close friends and family members. This would agree well with the evidence: In Namárië, Galadriel naturally uses "L" forms when politely addressing a relative stranger like Frodo, and in Sindarin, the Quenya borrowing le is used as a reverential singular "thee" (as in the hymn A Elbereth Gilthoniel, where Varda is the party addressed). On the other hand, Herendil would obviously use a "T" form (tye) when addressing his own father. When Tolkien translated tye in the latter example as "thee" rather than "you", he probably meant it to be an intimate rather than an overly solemn form (though confusingly, he might also use "thou/thee" to represent a formal or polite "you"; indeed this is how he rendered the "L" forms of both Namárië and A Elbereth Gilthoniel).
What does not agree so well with this reconstruction is the fact that in WJ:364, Tolkien seems to imply that the "L" forms represent a plural "you", whereas the "T" forms stand for a singular "you" – sharply contrasting with his earlier statement to the effect that Elvish (just like English) fails to distinguish between sg. and pl. "you". Moreover, "L" forms are unquestionably used in a singular sense in Namárië, since Tolkien translated them using the distinctly singular English pronoun "thou". I think the only solution that comes close to incorporating all the material would be to assume that the "T" forms properly denote singular "you" whereas the "L" forms properly denote plural "you" – but the latter forms are also used as a polite singular "you" (so in Namárië). Bottom line is, one should not use the object form tye for "you, thee" if one otherwise uses "L" forms like the ending -lyë or the pronoun le: We are apparently dealing with two different kinds of "you" here, and the "T" forms are hardly interchangeable with the "L" forms.
Based on the object pronoun tye "you = thee" (not subject "thou"), some writers have ventured to extrapolate a First Person object form nye "me" (cf. ni "I"). Apparently the form nye actually appears in Tolkien's papers, so we will adopt this nye = "me" here. It should be noted, however, that any case endings are added to the simplest form of the pronoun, that is, what functions as the subject form when it occurs by itself – in this case ni "I". Case endings are not added the object form nye "me": The dative form "to me" is not **nyen, despite the English translation. As we know, the actual form is nin (ni-n = "I-for"). "For you/for thee" should likewise not be **tyen, for then we would be adding case endings to the object form again. Unfortunately, it is not clear what the subject form corresponding to tye "thee" really is, so the long-suffering student must forgive yet another batch of Second Person Obscurities: Mechanical extrapolation based on the attested ni/nye pair would of course land us on ?ti as the subject form "thou". However, the story is almost certainly more complicated than this. The Sindarin pronominal ending for "you" is said to be -g or -ch, indicating that these endings appeared as -k-, -kk- in earlier Elvish. In Quenya, a final -k would turn into -t (cf. for instance filic- as the stem-form of a noun meaning "small bird", closely reflecting the root PHILIK; but when this noun appears without any endings, its Quenya form turns into filit). If the above-mentioned ending -t "thou" likewise comes from an original -k, we must also assume that the object pronoun tye represents earlier kye (initial ky- regularly turns into ty- in Quenya, cf. for instance the entry KYEL in Etym, from which root Tolkien derived the verb tyel- "end, cease"). It is, then, this kye we must start from when trying to extrapolate the corresponding subject form. Its Quenya form would likely be ci (ki) or perhaps rather ce (ke): In the pronouns, the vowel i may seem to be peculiar to the 1st person (ni "I"), whereas e is more frequent (le "you", me "we" etc.) Thus, the dative form "for you, for thee" may be something like ?cen, and likewise in the other cases, e.g. ablative cello "from thee". If this is correct, what we have called the "T" forms must rather be termed the "C/T" forms, since the original k may be preserved in some Quenya forms as well (spelt c). But of course, we have now crossed over into the realm of Speculative Extrapolation. In the exercises below, only the attested object form tye appears.

To summarize, we have ni "I" (object form nye "me"), le "you" (plural or polite singular; the object form is likely also le), tye object form "thee, you" (intimate; the subject form that could also receive case endings is unfortunately uncertain, perhaps ?ce or ?ci), me "we" (exclusive; probably this can also be used as the object form "us"), te object form "them" (the subject form "they" is uncertain, but perhaps identical; in any case, it may be that this pronoun appears as tai when stressed, and before at least some case endings it assumes the form tie-). This does not add up to a complete pronoun table; I hope to discuss what little can be inferred about the gaps in an appendix to this course.
As for the functions of these pronouns, the examples cited above will already have provided the student with vital clues. These words (except the distinct object forms) can receive case endings; the dative form nin "for me, to me" is particularly well attested. Presumably we can also have allative ninna "to(wards) me", allative nillo "from me", locative nissë "in me" and perhaps even instrumental ninen "by me". It should be noted that pronouns normally receive "singular" case endings, even if the pronoun is "plural" by its meaning; thus me "we" takes the singular dative ending -n, not plural -in even though the word me is "plural" insofar as "we" must refer to several people. The dual ending -t can however be added to independent pronouns, as indicated by the example met "[the two of] us" in Namárië. Then any case endings would presumably also be dual: dative ment, allative menta, ablative melto, instrumental menten. (Another plausible dual form could be ?let = "you two".)
Another function of the independent pronouns would be to appear following prepositions, as in the example imbë met "between us [two]" in Namarië. In English, prepositions are followed by the object form (accusative case), hence for instance "as me" rather than "as I". If this applies to Quenya as well, the equivalent would be ve nye, but we cannot be certain; perhaps the Eldar would actually say ve ni = "as I". The attested example imbë met "between us [two]" is of no help in this matter, since me (with or without the dual ending -t) likely covers both the subject form "we" and the object form "us". At least we can't go wrong as long as we are dealing with me and le (and te?), since these pronouns don't seem to have distinct subject/object forms.
The function of the object forms (the attested words nye "me", tye "you/thee", te "them" + the probable non-distinct forms me "us" and le "you" just discussed) would obviously be to appear as the object of a sentence. After all, pronominal objects can't always be expressed as one of the two attested object endings -t "them" or -s "it" (though the full list of object endings is likely somewhat longer). These object endings may be added to extended infinitives in -ta (caritas "to do it") or to verbs that also has a subject ending (utúvienyes "I have found it"), but this grammatical environment is not always present. The independent object pronouns may for instance be used in imperative phrases, as in the attested example a laita te "bless them" already cited. Presumably such pronouns can also be used following gerunds inflected for dative (e.g. utúlien cenien tye "I have come [in order] to see you"). We may also have to use independent object pronouns where the verb has no subject pronominal ending to which an object pronominal ending can be added – because the subject is expressed as a separate word. So while "we will bless them" can be packed into one word as laituvalmet, a sentence like "the people will bless them" must perhaps be i lië laituva te with a separate word for "them". (We can't know whether it is permissible to say ?i lië laituvat with the ending -t added to the verb even though it has no subject ending; using a separate word for "them" is therefore safer as well as clearer.)
The preferred word order is somewhat uncertain. Quenya may seem to prefer placing independent pronouns in front of the verb. Sometimes Tolkien even prefixed the object pronoun to the verb by means of a hyphen, as in the example tye-melánë "I love thee" cited above. (Compare French je t'aime, literally "I you love" with the object preceding the verb instead of following it – though French, as well as Quenya, normally has the object following the verb.) So perhaps sentences like "I have come to see thee" or "the people will bless them" should rather be utúlien tye-cenien and i lië te-laituva, respectively? Sometimes, Tolkien even placed dative pronouns in front of the verb, as in the question occurring in the middle of Namárië: Sí man i yulma nin enquantuva? = "Now who will refill the cup for me?" (notice how the Quenya word-order differs from that of the English translation). We even have one extreme example, involving the verb lumna- "lie heavy", where a dative pronoun is not only prefixed to the verb but the dative ending -n is assimilated to the initial l- of the verb itself: Mel-lumna is translated "us-is-heavy" (LR:47), sc. "is heavy for us"; this must be the dative form men "for us, to us" + the aorist form lumna "lies heavy". The underlying, unattested form men-lumna apparently had to be altered because men completely glued itself to the following word and came to be perceived as part of it – and then there was suddenly a de facto cluster nl which Quenya phonology did not permit, so it had to become l-l instead. Yet such extra complications are apparently avoidable, for other examples indicate that independent pronouns may also follow the verb. In VT41:13 we have the sentence órenya quéta nin = "my heart is saying to me" (variant órenya quetë nin, page 11). Presumably órenya nin quéta (or even ...nin-quéta) would have been equally possible, but it is apparently not "necessary" to employ such a word order, or indeed to prefix object/dative pronouns directly to the verb.

As for the "subject forms" discussed above, they may of course appear as the subject of a sentence, like ni "I" in ni véla tye "I see you". Nonetheless, here Quenya would more frequently use pronominal endings (like vélan or vélanyë in this case – assuming that the verb ?vel- "see" is valid in LotR-style Quenya!) For poets trying to maintain some meter it may be useful to be able to choose between independent pronouns and pronominal endings. However, the "subject forms" discussed above would most often be encountered, not as grammatical subjects, but with case endings attached! Even so, it is probable that pronouns like ni or le would frequently function as the subject of sentences when the copula "is/are/am" is left out and understood: Ni aran "I [am] king", le halla "you [are] tall", etc.

IMPERSONAL VERBS
Having investigated independent dative forms like nin "for me, to me", we can fully understand our very few attested examples of sentences involving so-called impersonal verbs. 	In UT:396, Tolkien cites a verb óla- "to dream", adding a brief remark to the effect that this verb is "impersonal". Precisely what he meant by this was long obscure, but now we have at least one example that may be helpful in this regard.
	The sentences in question involves the primary verb or- "urge, impel, move" (elsewhere also given as an A-stem ora-). The regular aorist orë "urges, impels, moves" occurs in the sentence orë nin caritas, translated "I would like to do so" or "I feel moved to do so". Literally it means "[it] impels for me to do it". Notice that this sentence has no subject (though in our attempted literal translation, we had to fill in the dummy-subject "it" to achieve something like passable English –"it" has no real meaning here!) Quenya by its very grammatical construction indicates that the "urge" perceived by the speaker impacts on him from the outside, so to speak. Feeling moved to do something is not a deliberate "act" carried out by a subject; this feeling rather affects the person involved, and in Quenya this is appropriately denoted by the dative case. In our attested example, a dative pronoun is involved, but we must assume that it could just as well be a regular noun: Orë i Eldan lelya = "[it] impels for the Elf to go" = "the Elf feels moved to go". The verb is the first word of the sentence; normally the subject would come first, but here there simply isn't any subject.
	As for the impersonal verb óla- "to dream", we must assume that the underlying idea is the same: Dreaming is not an "act" done by a subject, rather it is something that happens to you; your dreams come to you quite independent of your own will, and therefore the dreamer is best presented as a person affected by his or her dreams: Hence dative for the dreamer! Tolkien gave us no examples involving óla-, but "the maiden dreams about Elves" could perhaps be rendered something like óla i venden Eldaron (notice that vendë "maiden" here appears as a dative form, indicating that "the maiden" is perceived as the receiver of the dreams rather than as their maker – cf. the use of the dative to denote the recipient in connection with the verb "to give").
	Such constructions, even in connection with the verb "to dream", are not unheard of in the languages of our own world. As David Kiltz wrote on the Elfling list (April 25, 2001): "The dative has many more functions than just that of an indirect object. It can...denote the 'subjective experiencer' as in...German mir ist kalt 'I'm cold' where you [would] use a nominative for the logical subject in English but not in many other languages." Mir ist kalt means "to-me [it] is cold"; the German dative form mir corresponds to Quenya nin. Given that the Quenya word for "cold" is ringa, it is entirely possible that mir ist kalt can be rendered directly into Quenya as nin ná ringa (or perhaps rather ná ringa nin "[it] is cold for me").
	We don't know very many Quenya verbs that invite such constructions, though. In the entry MBAW- in the Etymologies, Tolkien mentioned that the "Noldorin" verb bui "compel" is impersonal ("Noldorin" being the conceptual predecessor of the Sindarin language exemplified in LotR). The Quenya verb corresponding to "Noldorin" bui is given as mauya-. If this can also function as an impersonal verb (though it can probably occur with an explicit subject as well), we may have a clue as to how "I must" or "I need to" would be expressed in Quenya. Perhaps "I must go" would (or at least could) be expressed as mauya nin lelya = "[it] compels for me to go".
	In some cases, it may not even be necessary to complement an impersonal verb with a dative noun or pronoun. Regarding a "Noldorin" form of the verb corresponding to Quenya ulya- "pour", namely oeil or eil, Tolkien noted that it was used for "it is raining" (Etym, entry ULU). Again, English by grammatical necessity fills in a dummy-subject "it", but here there is obviously no real subject which actually "does" rain. Perhaps Quenya ulya, or continuative ulyëa, can likewise be used for "[it] is raining": The naked verb would be a full sentence in itself.

U-STEM VERBS
This is an obscure sub-group of verbs; having discussed U-stem nouns in the previous lesson, we may explore U-stem verbs now. Our data being very limited, this discussion must by necessity consist mainly of speculation.
	Verbal stems with the ending -u are not uncommon in Tolkien's early "Qenya" material, but as the decades went by, he may seem to have cut down their number. Of the well over 1,200 Quenya words mentioned in the Etymologies, there is only one single U-stem verb, namely palu- "open wide, spread, expand, extend" (and even this verb has an alternative form palya- with the much more common verbal ending -ya: see the entry PAL). Around 1960, in his essay Quendi and Eldar, Tolkien mentioned the verb nicu- "be chill, cold" with reference to weather (WJ:417). Some years later, he also used a few U-stem verbs in the latest version of the Markirya poem: fifíru- "slowly fade away" (elaboration of the simpler verb fir- "die, fade"), hlapu- "fly or stream in the wind", nurru- "murmur, grumble" (MC:223).
	How are these verbs to be inflected? Markirya as printed in MC:222 indicates that the active participle of hlapu- is hlápula, indicating that the active participle is formed by adding the normal ending -la and lengthening the main vowel if possible (hlapu- becoming hlápu-). The participle of nurru- "murmur" is attested as nurrula; here the vowel could not be lengthened because of the following consonant cluster (**núrrula being an impossible Quenya word). The formation of the active participle is just about the only thing we can be quite sure about regarding this class of verbs (and therefore also the only thing I touch on in the Translate-into-Quenya exercises below).
	The passive participle is problematic. The normal ending -na or its longer variant -ina would presumably be applied somehow. Some have argued that we may have an attested example of the passive participle of a U-stem verb. We have earlier referred to the mysterious form turún' (obviously shortened from turúna) in Nienor's cry: A Túrin Turambar turún' ambartanen, "[o Túrin] master of doom by doom mastered" (UT:138). A primary verb tur- "wield, control, govern" does occur in Tolkien's material, but we would expect its passive participle to be turna (cf. carna "made" as the attested passive participle of car- "make, do"). Could the strange form turúna "mastered" actually be the passive participle of a variant U-stem verb turu- "to master"? However, is not clear why adding the ending -na to turu- would produce turúna with a long vowel – and other indirect evidence points in another direction. As has been pointed out by some, the ending -(i)na that is used to derive passive participles also turns up in other parts of speech, and we have at least one example demonstrating what happens when it is added to a noun stem in -u: The adjective culuina "orange" is derived from a root KUL, KULU "gold". Here a diphthong ui arises when the final -U of the stem is combined with the ending -ina. Carrying this principle over to U-stem verbs, we could argue that the passive participle of palu- "expand" should be ?paluina "expanded". Analogy with A-stem verbs would point in the same direction (cf. hastaina "marred" as the attested participle of hasta- "to mar") – but lacking attested examples, we cannot be sure.
	The infinitive is quite problematic. It ought to be a stem with no additions. In the previous lesson we pointed out that U-stem nouns originally ended in a short -u. This original vowel is preserved unchanged whenever some ending follows, but in Quenya it had turned into -o when it was absolutely final. Applying the same principle to U-stem verbs, the infinitive of palu- "expand" could conceivably be ?palo. Of course, we would still see palu- before endings, for instance if this class of verbs may also have extended forms in -ta: hence ?paluta, or with an object ending ?palutas, "to expand it".
	The aorist is little less obscure. As we remember, primary verbs assume the ending -i, preserved as such before further endings, but turning into -ë when final (silë "shines", but pl. silir "shine"). Since the phonological shift that makes an original final short -i become -ë closely parallels the shift that turns an original final short -u into -o, we could plausibly argue that palu- "expand" ought to have the aorist ?palo "expands" (identical to the infinitive), preserved as ?palu- before any ending (e.g. palur "expand" with a plural subject, palun or palunyë "I expand", palus "he/she/it expands", etc. etc.) However, one piece of evidence diverges from this scenario: After mentioning the U-stem verb nicu- "be chill, cold", Tolkien also cited the form niquë, which he translated "it is cold, it freezes" (WJ:417). Is this verb niquë to be understood as the aorist form of nicu-? Are we to understand that just as in the case of primary verbs, the ending -i was added to the U-stem as well, and that a development nicui > nicwi ensued? After the change of final short -i to -ë, this would indeed produce the attested form (nicwe =) niquë. If so, the aorist of palu- could be ?palwë, or with endings ?palwi-. However, we may wonder why U-stem verbs take the aorist ending -i when A-stems do not. This would not be encouraging for our nice little theory that the ending -i is applied to primary verbs merely as a kind of stop-gap to make up for the lack of any other ending (for U-stem verbs obviously do have another ending – the -u itself!) Indeed it was the form niquë I was thinking of when I warned the student back in Lesson Seven, "This 'simplified' view is not wholly unproblematic, but it works most of the time." We have now reached the point where it may not work anymore.
	While the aorist of palu- may plausibly be assumed to be ?palwë or with endings ?palwi-, perfectly paralleling (nicwe =) niquë as the aorist of nicu-, we can only wonder how verbs like hlapu- or nurru- would behave if they received the ending -i already in the primitive language. They could hardly evolve into **nurrwë or **hlapwë, which would be quite impossible Quenya words. Perhaps the original diphthong ui would be preserved in all positions, and we would see ?nurrui and ?hlapui with no change of -i to -ë even where the vowel is absolutely final? However, I hardly have to tell the student that we have now entered the realm of Extreme Speculation.
	The present tense must also be speculative, but Tolkien provided one excellent clue. It should be remembered that the present tense (e.g. síla "is shining") actually represents a kind of "continuous" or "continuative" verbal stem, derived by lengthening the stem-vowel (if possible) and adding the ending -a. In the very last version of the Markirya poem, Tolkien replaced one of the participles with what would seem to be a continuative stem: As is evident from Christopher Tolkien's annotation in MC:222, his father altered nurrula "mumbling, murmuring" to nurrua. Here, the continuative stem in effect functions as a participle (still meaning "mumbling"), and the revision actually seems quite pointless, but at least Tolkien gave away that the ending -a may be added to a U-stem verb. In another context, nurrua could presumably have functioned as the present tense "is murmuring". In this case, the stem-vowel could not be lengthened because of the following consonant cluster, but the present tense of a verb like palu- "to expand" would in all likelihood be pálua "is expanding".
	In the past tense we can be reasonably certain that the regular past tense ending -në would be added. At least this was the case in Tolkien's earliest "Qenya": The Qenya Lexicon of 1915 lists allunë as the past tense of the verb allu- "wash" (QL:30). I use this system in the exercises below (but only in the Translate-from-Quenya section, so at least I won't seduce my students into constructing uncertain Quenya verb forms themselves!)
	The perfect tense is obscure. The augment (the prefixed stem-vowel) would presumably be prefixed as usual, while the vowel would – if possible – be lengthened in its normal position. So the perfect tenses of palu-, nurru- would presumably commence as apál-, unurr-. But what comes next is anybody's guess. How can the ending -ië that is associated with the perfect tense be added to a U-stem verb? Would the initial -i- of the ending merge with the final -u of the verbal stem to form a diphthong -ui-, so that we would see ?unurruië for "has murmured"? The perfect tense "has expanded" could hardly be ?apáluië, for the new diphthong ui would attract the stress and leave the syllable immediately before it completely unaccented. Then the long á could hardly survive, for there seems to be a phonological rule prohibiting a long vowel in a completely unstressed syllable unless this is also the first syllable of the word – and here it is not. Would we see ?apaluië with a short vowel, then? However, as we have argued earlier, the ending -ië that is used in the perfect tense apparently displaces the final -a when added to an A-stem verb, so it is entirely possible that it would also displace the final -u of a U-stem. From nurru-, palu- we would then simply see the perfect-tense forms unurrië "has murmured", apálië "has expanded". (Likely, -ië as a gerundial or infinitival ending would likewise displace the final -u, so that we could have ?nurrië for "mumbling". But "mumbling" as a mere verbal noun could almost certainly be nurrulë, though attested examples of the abstract ending -lë "-ing" involve A-stems instead.)
	In the future tense we would presumably see the usual ending -uva. However, we can only speculate as to whether the initial -u- of the ending would simply merge with the final -u of the stem, so that the future tense of palu- would be paluva, or whether the two u's would combine to form one long ú, so that we would see palúva instead.

THE VARIOUS USES OF LÁ
In Lesson Nine, we introduced the negative verb um- "not do, not be" (past tense úmë according to Etym., future tense úva according to Fíriel's Song). In all examples and exercises so far, we have used this verb + infinitive whenever a sentence is to be negated. However, using the negative verb is not the only option available in this regard. Like English, Quenya does have a separate word for "not", namely lá (or la when unstressed). This word may also be used for "no".
	The negative verb um- and the separate negation lá clearly coexist in the language, since both were listed in the Etymologies (entries UGU/UMU vs. LA). There are hardly any very specific rules for when to use one or the other. If one uses the negative verb um-, it apparently takes the relevant endings for tense and pronoun, while the verb it negates presumably appears as an infinitive: Úmen lelya, "I didn't [first person past tense] go [inf.]". If one uses the separate negation lá, the verb that is to be negated would itself receive all relevant endings, just as if no negation were present: Lenden "I went" could be negated as lá lenden or = "Not I went" = "I didn't go". (Our few examples suggest that the preferred word order is to place lá before the verb that is to be negated, though for all we know, lenden lá "I went not" would also be acceptable. But one should not use an alternative word-order where ambiguity can arise; see below.)
This is obviously an easier way to negate a sentence than using the negative verb + infinitive; one simply starts with the non-negated sentence and slips in one extra word. Indeed I introduce the word lá this late in the course partly because I didn't want to "spoil" my students with this easy-to-construct negation before they had the chance to get familiar with the negative verb. In many cases, using the negative verb may seem like the more elegant method of negating sentences, and sometimes the word lá "not" should perhaps be avoided because a similar form also has a quite different function (see below). Yet in some contexts it may be best to use lá instead of the negative verb. In particular, it may seem strange to construct the verb um- as a present or "continuative" form, corresponding to the English "is ...-ing" construction. The form would be úma, but should "the Elf is not watching the Dwarf" be translated i Elda úma tirë i Nauco? I guess anything is possible, but think I would rather start with the positive sentence i Elda tíra i Nauco and negate it by slipping in lá in front of the verb: I Elda lá tíra i Nauco. Likewise, it may be best to use the negation lá in the perfect tense, especially since it is slightly uncertain what the perfect form of um- would be: ?úmië with no augment since the stem begins in a vowel, or perhaps ?umúmië with the entire initial syllable repeated? In any case, "I have not come" is perhaps best expressed as lá utúlien. Though (um)úmien tulë should be intelligible, it seems like a rather weird construction.
Translating from Quenya to English one must sometimes take care to connect the negation lá with the right verb. Notice the sentence alasaila ná lá carë tai mo navë mára, translated "it is unwise not to do what one judges good". (VT42:34; mo is there said to be an indefinite pronoun "somebody, one", apparently an alternative to quen. More obscure is the form tai, which as we argued above may be a plural form of ta "that, it", hence "those". If so, the sentence literally means "unwise [it] is not [to] do those [things which] one judges good". Notice the element ala- "un-" here prefixed to saila "wise"; it is of course related to the negation lá.) For a person used to English word order, it might be tempting to interpret the words ná lá as a connected phrase "is not" and mistranslate **"it is not unwise to do what one judges good". However, if one bears in mind that lá connects with the following verb, in this case the infinitive carë "to do", the misunderstanding can be avoided: The phrases are correctly divided as alasaila ná "unwise [it] is" + lá carë... "not to do..." (etc.)
As this example shows, lá may be used to negate infinitives as well, and another example from VT42:34 indicates that it makes no difference if the infinitive is extended with the ending -ta to receive an object suffix: lá caritas, navin, alasaila ná – literally "not to do it, I deem, unwise is". Tolkien himself offered the translation "not doing this would be (I think) unwise". In one example, Tolkien even used lá to negate an extended infinitive in -ta that has no pronominal object ending attached: lá carita i hamil mára alasaila ná, "not to do what you judge good would be [literally 'is'] unwise" (VT42:33). Here the extended infinitive carita takes on the meaning of a gerund, the entire relative sentence i hamil mára "that [which] you judge good" being its object. It seems, then, very likely that lá can also be used to negate also the more regular gerund in -ië. We have no examples, but perhaps lá carië i hamil mára... would be an equally possible wording.
As for the unstressed variant of the negation lá, namely its shorter form la, our sole certain attestation of it occurs in the sentence la navin caritalyas mára, "I don't judge your doing it good" (VT42:33; this is a way of expressing "I do not advise you to do so"). Here the main stress presumably falls on the first syllable of the verb navin "I judge", the negation la receiving no stress. One would think, however, that an important word like the negation (totally reversing the meaning of the sentence!) would normally receive some stress, and in the exercises below, I have consistently used the long/accented form lá.

The short form la would however have one thing to recommend it, namely that it would not clash with a quite distinct word lá, which is used in phrases having to do with comparison (though material appearing in Tyalië Tyellelliéva #16 seems to indicate that this second lá may also occur as a shorter form la). According to Bill Welden's article Negation in Quenya (VT42:32-34), Tolkien was indeed somewhat troubled by this clash, and for a while he actually abandoned the negation lá "no, not". However, in the last years of his life he reintroduced it, so we must live with the double function of this word. In context, it is hardly difficult to distinguish between the two lá's. 
	According to a otherwise unpublished Tolkien manuscript cited by Welden in his article, the formula "A (ná) calima lá B" can be used for "A is brighter than B" (notice that the copula ná "is" may be left out and understood). If we want a full sentence with no algebra, we may fill in A and B to produce (say) Anar ná calima lá Isil, "[the] Sun is brighter than [the] Moon". However, this English translation differs from the actual Quenya wording in these respects: Calima is the simple adjective "bright", not the comparative form "brighter" (we are still not certain what that would look like), and lá does not really mean "than". We are told that this lá is properly a preposition "beyond", so the Quenya sentence actually means "the Sun is bright beyond the Moon".
We can certainly imagine sentences including lá occurring with both its meanings: I mindon lá ná halla lá i oron, "the tower is not taller than the mountain" (literally "...tall beyond the mountain"). Here the negative verb would certainly be preferable, if only for stylistic reasons: I mindon umë halla lá i oron. It may be possible to circumvent the ambiguities. We are told that instead of lá "beyond" in phrases of comparison, one may also use the preposition epë "before" – erroneously glossed "after" in Welden's article. Irrespective of this error, there actually is some evidence suggesting that epë or a similar form did mean "after" at one point of Tolkien's ever-evolving linguistic scenario (apparently it was a variant of the apa introduced in Lesson Fifteen). Because of the uncertainties relating to epë, we will let it rest in peace here, and use lá despite its ambiguity.

Summary of Lesson Eighteen: In addition to the pronominal endings discussed earlier in this course, Quenya also has various independent pronouns (see Vocabulary section below). A pronoun like me "we" or "us" can receive endings for case (e.g. dative men "for us, to us") or, where two persons are concerned, dual endings (e.g. met "[the two of] us"). – Some Quenya verbs are impersonal, requiring no subject, but where someone is nonetheless affected by the verbal action, this someone can be mentioned as a dative form: Ora nin = "[it] impels for me" = "I feel moved [to do something]". – Quenya U-stem verbs, like hlapu- "fly [in the wind]", form a particularly obscure group of verbs. The only thing that is known with full certainty about such verbs is that the active participle is formed by means of the normal ending -la, combined with lengthening of the main vowel of the verb (unless it has to remain short because of a following consonant cluster; thus the participle of nurru- "grumble" is simply nurrula, though the participle of hlapu- is hlápula). Early material suggests that the past tense of U-stem verbs is formed by adding the past tense ending -në, though we have no examples from the more LotR-compatible forms of Quenya. – The word lá has various uses. It can be used as a negation "not" (apparently placed in front of the word, usually the verb, that is to be negated). Lá is also a preposition "beyond", and as such it is used in phrases having to do with comparison – VT42:32 citing the formula "A ná calima lá B" for "A is brighter than B" (literally "A is bright beyond B" – notice that the adjective calima "bright" appears in its simplest form, with no ending corresponding to the -er of "brighter").

VOCABULARY
To cover all the attested ordinal numbers, we will introduce two at a time in this and the last two lessons.

lempëa "fifth"
enquëa "sixth"
urco (urcu-) "bogey"
lá 1) negation "not", 2) preposition "beyond", also used in comparison
ni independent pronoun "I", object form nye "me"
le independent pronoun "you" (plural or polite singular), probably unchanged when used as object
tye independent object pronoun "you", "thee" (intimate singular)
me independent pronoun "we" (exclusive, cf. the ending -mmë), probably unchanged when used as object "us"
ta independent pronoun "it" or "that", probably unchanged when used as object; the allative tanna may be used = "thither". This pronoun may have the plural form ?tai "those", of which te "them" could be an unstressed form (alternatively, tai may be an archaic form which had evolved into te in all positions; we will only use the attested form te here). This plural pronoun assumes the form tie- before case endings (or at least before the dative ending -n)
palu- "to expand"
or- (also ora-) "to urge, to impel" (impersonal verb; used with a dative form to express "[someone] feels moved [to do something]")
óla- "to dream" (impersonal verb; the dreamer is apparently introduced as a dative form)

EXERCISES
Notice that in the exercises below, as well as in the keys, we use "you" as the English equivalent of Quenya "L"-form pronouns (plural, or polite singular, "you"), whereas "thee" is used as the equivalent of the intimate singular object form tye. – As for negations, we will here practice the independent negation lá instead of using the negative verb. – We do not here use independent subject pronouns, only the pronominal endings discussed earlier.

1. Translate into English:

A. Utúlientë cenien me, lá cenien tye.
B. Nai óluva len Eldaron!
C. Neldë neri lelyuvar tanna, ar i Naucor tiruvar te, an i neri haryar harma i ná alta lá malta.
D. I enquëa auressë ornë tien tulë ninna.
E. I enquëa aran i nórëo ná saila lá atarerya i lempëa aran.
F. Palunes coarya, cárala ta i analta coa i mallëo.
G. Carnelyes tien; lá carnelyes men.
H. Cennemmë le i cilyassë nu me, an lantanelyë mir ta.

2. Translate into Quenya:

I. My right arm is stronger than my left arm.
J. Summon them to [allative] me!
K. The bogies are watching me, for I fear them [Quenya: "fear from them", ablative].
L. We [exclusive] will not come to see thee in the night.
M. The boy will not dream about [genitive] bogies.
N. The two women said: "Your king did not want to give us [dual dative] the things taken [or, "seized" – mapainë, pl.] from us [dual ablative] by his warriors."
O. The man expanding his house is doing that [or, it] (in order) to make many rooms for [dative] all his things.
P. The sixth day will be [nauva] better than the fifth day, and we [exclusive] will not feel moved to leave [auta]. ["Better than" = "good beyond"!]

LESSON NINETEEN 
Pronouns in imperative phrases. Emphatic pronouns. Question-words: Man, mana, manen. Postpositions.

PRONOUNS IN IMPERATIVE PHRASES 
Imperative phrases may include pronominal elements. These pronouns may refer either the subject of the imperative phrase (the party that is asked or ordered to do something), or to the direct or indirect object of the requested action.
Optional subject pronouns may be slipped in to make it clear whether the speaker wants one or several persons to do something. Starting from the imperative exclamation heca! "be gone!" or "stand aside!", Tolkien noted that this word "often" appeared in an extended form "with reduced pronominal affixes of the 2nd person" (WJ:364). If a single person is the addressee of an imperative, it can receive the suffix -t (doubtless related to the singular object pronoun tye "thee"). So whereas the imperative heca! may be directed at one person or several, the extended form hecat! is explicitly marked as singular. It may be translated "get thee gone!" (Perhaps Fëanor's harsh dismissal of Melkor when the latter came to Formenos, translated "get thee gone from my gate" near the end of Chapter 7 of the Silmarillion, went something like hecat andonyallo in the original Quenya?) Tolkien further noted that in the plural, the simple imperative heca! could receive the ending -l, so hecal! is an order with several addressees: "Be gone, [all of] you!" These examples also demonstrate that when he wrote this, Tolkien had come to see the distinction between the "T"-forms and the "L"-forms of the Second Person as being primarily a distinction between singular and plural "you". Of course, matters are slightly muddied by the fact that "L"-forms like the ending -l or -lyë also function as a polite singular "you" (translated "thou" in Namárië). Of course, none can say whether the ending -l could be used in an imperative phrase to denote a "polite" order with a single addressee.
Hecat! sg. and hecal! pl. are our only attested examples of this use of the endings -t and -l. The imperative heca! is perhaps not a very typical imperative. As outlined in Lesson Sixteen, instead of the ending -a an independent imperative particle á (or a) is normally employed, combined with a following verbal stem. Attested examples include á vala! "rule!" and a laita! "praise!" If the endings -t, -l are to be slipped into such a phrase, they must probably be attached to the verbal stem, e.g. a laitat! "praise!" (to one person), a laital! "praise!" (to several persons).
Laita- "bless, praise" is of course an A-stem. Primary verbs like car- "make, do" appear with the ending -ë in such commands, as is evident from the negative imperative áva carë! "don't do [it]!" (WJ:371). This -ë almost certainly comes from an earlier -i, and before endings we would still see -i-, just as in the aorist of these verbs. Hence probably áva carit! "don't do [it]!" (to one person), plural áva caril! "don't do [it!]" (to several persons). Or with a positive command like á tulë! "come!", we could likewise have á tulit! if one person is asked to come, whereas á tulil! would refer to more than one: "Come ye!"

An imperative phrase may also include pronominal elements referring to the direct or indirect object of the requested action. In the previous lesson we referred to various independent pronouns. Nye "me", me "us", le "you", tye "thee", ta "it" and te "them" can all appear as independent words; indeed our sole attestation of te "them" involves an imperative phrase where this word occurs by itself: A laita te, laita te! "bless them, bless them!" (from the Cormallen Praise). However, Tolkien's Quenya rendering of the Lord's Prayer indicates that object pronouns may also appear suffixed to the imperative particle á. The principle can be illustrated by a home-made example: Consider a simple imperative phrase like á tirë! "watch!" If we want to say "watch them", slipping in the object pronoun te, it would be possible to let it follow the verb (as in the attested example a laita te "bless them"), hence á tirë te. However, it would apparently be equally permissible to let the object pronoun come before the verb, in which case it glues itself to the imperative particle á. "Watch them!" could therefore be átë tirë! 
NOTE: Since te "them" now becomes the final syllable of a word of several syllables, the spelling conventions we have adopted require that the final -e is here spelt with a diaeresis: -ë. The same would apply to the final -e of the object pronouns nye, me, le, tye if they were directly suffixed to á – e.g. ámë tirë "watch us".  Of course, this is just an orthographic complication that has nothing to do with the structure of the language: In many texts, Tolkien does not use the diaeresis at all.

Also dative pronouns (like nin "to/for me", men "to/for us", tien "to/for them") can be directly suffixed to the imperative particle á; at least Tolkien's Quenya Lord's Prayer contains an example of men being so suffixed. A phrase like, say, "sing for us!" could thus be rendered ámen linda! 
What happens if an imperative phrase contains two pronouns, denoting both the direct and the indirect object? We have no Tolkien-made example to guide us, but the imperative particle can hardly receive more than one pronominal suffix, and the example a laita te indicates that a pronoun does not necessarily have to be suffixed to the particle. So it would certainly be permissible to let one of the pronouns, for either direct or indirect object, remain an independent word and suffix only the other pronoun to the particle á. "Do it for me!" could then be either ánin carë ta! or áta carë nin!, according to preference. (Perhaps one could also say ánin caritas!, using an extended verbal stem carita- and the suffix -s for "it".)
Tolkien's translation of "do not lead us into temptation" in his Quenya Lord's Prayer reveals that the negated form of the imperative particle ("do not!") can also receive pronominal affixes. By ca. 1960, in Quendi and Eldar, Tolkien used áva as the negative imperative, combining the particle á with the negation vá (-va). In his earlier Lord's Prayer rendering he used a slightly different word for "do not" (incorporating the negation lá instead of vá), but there is no reason to doubt that pronouns denoting the direct or indirect object can be attached to the later form áva as well. So while "watch us!" could evidently be translated ámë tirë!, the negative command "don't watch us!" may probably be translated ávamë tirë!

EMPHATIC PRONOUNS
In the previous lesson, we discussed a number of independent pronouns (also mentioned in the section above). There also exist certain other pronouns that likewise appear as separate words, though they are closely related to the corresponding pronominal endings. These words function as emphatic pronouns.
	Consider the final lines of Namárië: Nai hiruvalyë Valimar! Nai elyë hiruva! In LotR, Tolkien provided the translation "maybe thou shalt find Valimar! Maybe even thou shalt find it!" Of course, hiruvalyë means "thou shalt find" – "thou" being expressed by means of the pronominal ending -lyë. But then this is repeated as nai elyë hiruva, "maybe even thou shalt find [it]". Notice how the ending -lyë is replaced by the independent word elyë, which is obviously closely related. Elyë means simply "thou" or "you", but with special emphasis on this pronoun. Using such an independent form is like italicizing the pronoun in English: "Maybe [none other than] thou shalt find." Tolkien used the translation "even thou", adding an extra word, to bring out the emphatic quality of the pronoun. (The shorter independent word for "you, thou", le, is apparently not emphatic.)
	Another independent emphatic pronoun is inyë "I" – or, since it is emphatic, rather "I myself" or "even I", "I and no one else". In LR:61, Herendil tells his father Elendil that he loves him, and Elendil responds in Quenya: A yonya inyë tye-méla, "and I too, my son, I love thee" (the initial a, apparently translated "and", would seem to be a variant of the more usual word ar – though a can also be a particle of address). Here the pronoun inyë, translated "I too" by Tolkien, gives special emphasis to Elendil's own identity: "I love you [just as you love me]". Inyë is more emphatic than the shorter form ni, just like elyë is more emphatic than le.
	The form inyë is obviously related to the pronominal ending -nyë, and Namárië clearly demonstrates that elyë corresponds to the ending -lyë. (Draft versions of Namárië have the pronoun ellë and the ending -llë instead. Some think this has another meaning, perhaps plural "you" instead of singular "thou", but I tend to believe that Tolkien simply revised the form of the pronoun without altering the sense.) It is evident from these examples that emphatic pronouns can be derived from the corresponding pronominal endings by adding the ending to some vowel. But what vowel? We have an e- in elyë "you", but an i- in inyë "I". This emphatic word for "I" may be exceptional in preferring i- as its initial vowel. The student may remember that the ending for "my", -nya, seems to prefer -i- as its connecting vowel where one is required (as in atarinya "my father", LR:61). The close association of these First Person pronominal forms with the vowel i seems to reflect the stem-vowel of the most basic stem NI "I", listed in the Etymologies. We may tentatively conclude that the other emphatic pronouns show the initial vowel e-, as in elyë. This is supported by Tolkien's Quenya version of the Lord's Prayer, where he used emmë as the emphatic pronoun corresponding to the pronominal ending -mmë for exclusive "we". It occurs in his translation of the line "and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us". Here, the pronoun is emphatic to draw special attention to it (stressing the parallelism: "we" want God to forgive us just like we in turn forgive others). It feels natural to let this pronoun be emphatic in English as well, though this is indicated merely by putting extra stress on it, and the distinction is not represented in writing (unless one uses italics!) The Quenya system of using distinct emphatic pronouns is undeniably more elegant.
	While inyë, elyë (changed from ellë) and emmë are all the emphatic pronouns occurring in published and soon-to-be-published material, we can confidently extrapolate at least some more forms. The exclusive emphatic pronoun for "we", emmë, would obviously correspond to the inclusive variant elmë (just like the exclusive ending for "we", -mmë, corresponds to the inclusive ending -lmë). Possibly the ending -ntë for "they" would correspond to an independent word entë.
	Other forms are somewhat less certain. The ending for dual inclusive "we" is uncertain, but if it is -lwë, we would expect elwë as the independent emphatic pronoun. The form elyë can function as a singular "you", as is evident from Tolkien's translation "even thou" in his LotR rendering of Namárië. As I have suggested earlier, the "L" forms of the Second Person may seem to indicate either a polite singular "you" or a plural "you"; perhaps elyë could assume the latter sense as well. The "T" forms of the Second Person, exemplified by the object pronoun tye and the ending -t that may be used in the imperative, seem to denote an intimate and usually singular "you", but it is uncertain what the emphatic form would be. It depends on how we reconstruct the longer form of the ending -t. If it is -tyë, the emphatic pronoun would most likely be etyë. But I have also given some reasons for believing that Tolkien meant -t to represent an older -k, in which case the longer variant of the ending might well be -ccë – and then emphatic pronoun would probably be eccë.
	Things are also rather obscure in the Third Person. It is clear that the emphatic pronouns are derived from the long forms of the pronominal endings. The word inyë "I" corresponds to the long subject ending -nyë, not its shorter (and more common) form -n; likewise, elyë "thou" corresponds to the long ending -lyë, though this ending may also appear in the shorter form -l. There are hardly any short emphatic pronouns **in, **el to go with the short endings. Our problem is that in the Third Person, the short ending -s is the only form attested in material Tolkien certainly intended to be LotR-compatible. We have earlier theorized that -s may correspond to a longer ending -ryë (for earlier -syë, -zyë); it would then have the same relationship to the ending -rya "his, her" as the ending -lyë "you" has to the ending -lya "your". If such an ending -ryë exists, it could correspond to an emphatic pronoun ?eryë "(even) he/she". But when we start extrapolating from extrapolations, the risk of losing contact with Tolkien's actual intentions obviously becomes acute.

We know a few more things about the emphatic pronouns, though. They can receive case endings; in Tolkien's Quenya rendering of the Lord's Prayer, the emphatic pronoun emmë "we" once occurs with the dative ending -n attached: Emmen. (This also confirms that pronouns take the simplest case endings, that is, the ones used with singular nouns – even if the pronoun is plural by its meaning: "We" must refer to several persons, but the simplest dative ending -n is used instead of the plural form -in.) As pointed out in the previous lesson, the 1st person dative form nin "to me, for me" is particularly well attested, but if one wants to say "for me myself", "for me [and no one else]", it would be better to start from the emphatic form inyë and derive the dative form inyen.
	We have already cited the final lines of Namárië, where part of one sentence is repeated with special emphasis on the pronoun: Nai hiruvalyë Valimar! Nai elyë hiruva! From this example it appears that if a pronominal ending is replaced by an independent pronoun, the ending is removed from the verb (not nai elyë hiruvalyë with both an independent pronoun and the corresponding ending still attached to the verb). Yet in the draft version, when the pronoun elyë was still ellë, Tolkien did use precisely that system: Nai ellë hiruvallë. He apparently decided that this version was somewhat over-complete, and writers should probably avoid this system.
	Yet the verb following an emphatic pronoun should perhaps receive at least the plural ending -r if the pronoun is plural. If we want to transform (say) hiruvammë "we shall find" into two words to put special emphasis on the pronoun "we", I guess the resulting phrase would be emmë hiruvar, not **emmë hiruva. If the pronoun elyë does denote both singular polite "you/thou" as well as plural "you", the following verb may then reveal in what sense it is used. In nai elyë hiruva! the pronoun must be singular ("thou") since there is no -r attached to the verb. Perhaps nai elyë hiruvar! would also be a possible sentence, but here it would be clear that a plural "you" is intended. If this is so, Frodo could after all be certain that Galadriel addressed Namárië to him alone ("thou"), not to the entire Fellowship ("you") – though the pronoun elyë as such is perhaps ambiguous in this regard.

As pointed out above, the emphatic pronouns can receive case endings, as can the shorter independent pronouns discussed in the previous lesson. It is, however, somewhat uncertain whether the endings for genitive and possessive should be added to such independent pronouns. Obviously, some kind of independent words for (say) "mine" or "yours" would be required to have a fully functional language. The ending -lya can be used to express "your", as in parmalya "your book", but how do we say "the book is yours"? Published examples of Quenya provide no clues.
	It has long been theorized that not only the subject endings that may be suffixed to verbs, but also the possessive endings that may be added to nouns (like -nya "my" or -lya "your"), have corresponding emphatic forms. This has never been explicitly confirmed. However, given the fact that the ending -lyë "you, thou" corresponds to an independent form elyë "you" (emphatic), it certainly seems plausible to assume that the ending -lya "your" could correspond to an independent form elya "yours". This word could then be used in a sentence like i parma ná elya, "the book is yours". But it could also be used for special emphasis, so that while parmalya means simply "your book", elya parma would mean "your [and no one else's] book".
	If the theory holds, other emphatic possessive pronouns would be erya "his, her", elma "our" [inclusive]" and emma "our [exclusive]" – of course corresponding to the endings -rya, -lma, -mma. The attested word elya for "your, thy" would be either a plural "your" or a polite singular "your" (or "thy"); the intimate singular "your" could be something like ecca or etya. If the ending for dual inclusive "our" is -lwa, we could have elwa as the corresponding emphatic pronoun. An even bigger "if" relates to the emphatic word for "their", since it must be extrapolated in two steps: Assuming that the ending -ntë for "they" corresponds to an unattested ending -nta "their", we may assume that it this ending in turn corresponds to an emphatic possessive pronoun enta. As for the independent form of the possessive pronoun "my", corresponding to the ending -nya, we would probably expect the form inya (since the subject ending -nyë corresponds to an independent form inyë).
	These extrapolations are not entirely unproblematic. Some of these forms actually occur in Tolkien's published writings, but with quite different meanings. Inya, for instance, is mentioned in the Etymologies – but there it is not an emphatic word for "my", it as an adjective "female", of a quite different derivation (see the entry INI). Erya, which we have suggested as an emphatic word for "his" or "her" (corresponding to the ending -rya), would coincide in form with the adjective erya "single, sole" (Etym, entry ERE). The student may already have noticed that enta as an emphatic word for "their" would clash with the demonstrative "that, yonder" (Etym, entry EN). Since demonstratives may seem to follow the noun they connect with (cf. UT:305: vanda sina = "this oath"), we could perhaps distinguish coa enta "yonder house" from enta coa "their house". As for our extrapolated forms inya and erya coinciding with Tolkien-made adjectives of quite different meaning, what can I say? Some, no doubt, would feel that this throws considerable doubt on this whole business of extrapolating emphatic possessive pronouns to go with the attested subject pronouns. Actually I think these extrapolations are about as plausible as any forms not directly attested can be. Given the fluid state of the Quenya language in general and its pronouns in particular, different stages of Tolkien's ever-changing conception are quite likely to involve coinciding word-forms of different meaning. However, in the exercises below, I focus on the better-attested subject pronouns, like inyë and elyë.

QUESTION-WORDS
Many English words frequently used in questions show an initial wh-: "who?", "what?", "where?", "which?", "whose?", "why?" etc. In Tolkien's Elvish, an initial ma- has similar connotations; he referred to the "Eldarin interrogative element ma, man" (PM:357). This "element" Tolkien seems to have borrowed from Semitic languages; cf. for instance Hebrew ma = "what?"
	We have nothing like a complete list of Elvish interrogative words, but some of them do occur in published material. Best attested is the word for "who", man, which occurs in a question in the middle of Namárië: Sí man i yulma nin enquantuva? "Now who will refill the cup for me?" Man = "who" occurs repeatedly in the Markirya poem, e.g. in the question man tiruva fána cirya[?] "Who will heed [/watch] a white ship?" (In one out of five occurrences, Markirya as printed in MC:221-222 has men instead, but this must be a misreading of Tolkien's manuscript; there seems to be no grammatical variation that could explain the variant form.) Perhaps man can receive case endings, so that we can have (say) the genitive form mano = "whose?"
	If man is "who" (referring to people), what is the word for "what" (referring to things)? In LR:58, Tolkien apparently lets man cover "what?" as well: Man-ië? is translated "what is it?" This is hardly LotR-style Quenya; the ending -ië = "is" was almost certainly abandoned later. Fíriel's Song also uses man in the sense of "what": Man...antáva nin Ilúvatar[?] = "What will the Father [Ilúvatar, God] give me?" Whether Tolkien at one point intended man to mean both "who" and "what", or whether he simply changed his mind back and forth regarding the precise meaning of man, cannot be determined now. Turning to a post-LotR source, we find the question mana i·coimas Eldaron[?], which is translated "what is the coimas ["life-bread" = Sindarin lembas] of the Eldar?" (PM:395; a variant reading occurs in PM:403). How are we to interpret this word mana, that would seem to correspond to "what is" in the translation? It could be a word ma "what" (which would be a direct borrowing from Hebrew!) + the copula ná "is", here directly suffixed and shortened to -na. However, the form ma is known to have at least two different meanings in Quenya (see the next lesson), so I tend to doubt that Tolkien intended it to mean "what?" as well. Rather mana is simply a word for "what", and there is no explicit copula "is" in the sentence mana i·coimas[?]  = "what [is] the life-bread?" It may be that mana "what" can receive case-endings. Published material provides no word for "why?", but by one suggestion we can work around this gap by adding the dative ending -n to mana – the resulting form manan meaning literally "what for?"
By its form, mana resembles the demonstratives sina "this", tana "that" and yana "that (yonder)". Since vanda sina means "this oath" (UT:305, 317), perhaps vanda mana? would mean "what oath?" or "which oath?" Mana vanda? would rather mean "what [is] an oath?", given Tolkien's example mana i·coimas[?] = "what [is] the life-bread?"
The same late document that provides this example also includes a word for "how?", appearing as part of the question manen lambë Quendion ahyanë[?] = "How did the language of Elves change?" (PM:395). Interestingly, this word manen "how?" seems to include the instrumental ending -nen, added to the "interrogative element" ma- (PM:347). Manen could mean, literally, "what by?" (it may even be a contraction of mananen for all we know). It seems highly plausible that other case endings than that of the instrumental can be added to ma-. Perhaps we can have locative massë? "where?", ablative mallo "whence?/where from?" and manna "whither/where to?", filling further gaps in our vocabulary. However, the exercises below only involve the attested forms man "who?", mana "what?" and manen "how?"

POSTPOSITIONS
We have introduced various prepositions, such as nu "under", or "over" or ve "as, like". Prepositions are so called because they are typically "positioned" before (pre) the word(s) they connect with. In Quenya and English alike, one would say nu alda "under a tree" – not **alda nu "a tree under". (Of course, the word order may be quite garbled in poetry, as when the LotR version of Namárië has Vardo tellumar nu luini "Varda's domes under blue" for "under Varda's blue domes". Here, we are rather discussing the normal, non-poetic word order.)
	There are also postpositions, similar in function to the prepositions, but coming after (post) the word or words they connect with. In English, the word ago may be seen as a postposition, since it comes at the end of phrases like "three years ago". Some languages would use a preposition instead, expressing this meaning something like "before three years". Interestingly, a word simply glossed "ago" is mentioned in the Etymologies: Yá. It is not mentioned or exemplified elsewhere, and since its English gloss is all we have to go on, we may assume that yá is a postposition in Quenya as well. If so, "three years ago" could be translated directly as neldë loar yá.
	At an older stage, Elvish apparently had many postpositions. Tolkien stated that at the oldest stage, "prepositional" elements were normally "attached" – apparently meaning suffixed – to noun stems (WJ:368). Many of the Quenya case endings Tolkien clearly meant to represent originally independent elements that had merged into the noun they followed. For instance, the ending -nna for allative is obviously related to the preposition na or ana, likewise meaning "to, towards". Yet Quenya had at least a few postpositions that had not evolved into case endings, but still appeared as independent words. Whereas yá discussed above is only attested as an isolated word mentioned in Etym, the word pella "beyond" appears in actual Quenya texts, and it does seem to be a postposition. Namárië has Andúnë pella for "beyond the West", and this is apparently not just another example of a poetic word order, for Tolkien did not alter this phrase in his prose version of the song. (The word Andúnë "West" is an alternative to the more usual word Númen. Andúnë may also be defined as "sunset" or even "evening".) Pella is used as a postposition in the Markirya poem as well, where it connects with a noun inflected for plural ablative: Elenillor pella is translated "from beyond the stars" (literally "from stars beyond").
	Whether pella could also be used as a preposition, just like its English gloss "beyond", is impossible to say. Another word for "beyond", the lá that is also used in comparison, does seem to be a preposition (and perhaps the final syllable of pella is meant to be related to this lá). Even so, I would use pella as a postposition only, employing the word order observed in Namárië and Markirya alike. 

Summary of Lesson Nineteen: Imperative phrases may in various ways include pronouns. If an order has one single addressee, the ending -t (basically meaning "thou") may be added to the verb of the imperative phrase; if several people are asked to do something, the ending -l (basically meaning "you", plural) may be used instead. Pronouns denoting the direct or indirect object of the imperative may glue themselves to the imperative particle á. – The (long forms of the) pronominal subject endings that may be suffixed to verbs may also be used to derive independent emphatic pronouns by adding the relevant ending to e-. For instance, the subject endings -lyë "you, thou" and -mmë "we" correspond to the independent emphatic pronouns elyë "(even) thou" and emmë "(even) we". The emphatic word for "I", corresponding to the ending -nyë, however shows i- rather than e- as its initial vowel: inyë. – Quenya interrogative words apparently show an initial ma-; attested examples are man "who", mana "what" and manen "how". – Postpositions are similar in function to prepositions, but follow rather than precede the word(s) they connect with. The word pella "beyond" seems to function as a postposition; Namárië has Andúnë pella (not ?pella Andúnë) for "beyond the West". The word yá is glossed "ago" (Etym, entry YA), so perhaps it functions as a postposition just like its English gloss.

VOCABULARY

otsëa "seventh"
toltëa "eighth" (In a late document Tolkien actually changed this form to toldëa: VT42:25, 31. Apparently he considered changing the word for "8" from tolto to toldo. We may accept toldo "8" and toldëa "8th" as valid variants, but in the exercises below I prefer toltëa  – to go with tolto, the form of the word "8" as listed in the Etymologies.)
inyë "I" (emphatic pronoun)
elyë "you, thou" (emphatic pronoun)
emmë "we", exclusive (emphatic pronoun)
elmë "we", inclusive (emphatic pronoun). (This form is not directly attested, but since it forms the logical counterpart of emmë, this extrapolation from the ending -lmë seems so plausible that I will use it in the exercises below.)
man "who?"
mana "what?" (according to one interpretation of the sentence where this word occurs)
manen "how?"
pella "beyond" (postposition)
yá "ago" (postposition like its English gloss?)
írë "when"

NOTE on the word írë "when": This is (almost certainly) not an interrogative word, despite its English gloss. A question like "when will you come?" can hardly be translated **írë tuluvalyë? No Quenya word for "when?" as a genuine question-word has been published, though it may be possible to work around this gap – for instance, we could use a circumlocution like lú mana(ssë)? = "(at) what time?" The word írë is used for "when" in the sense that it introduces information about when something occurs; it is attested in Fíriel's Song. The relevant phrases are not quite LotR-style Quenya, but the use of írë may be noted all the same: Yéva tyel ar i-narquelion, irë ilqua yéva nótina = "there will be an end and the Fading, when all is counted"; man...antáva nin Ilúvatar...írë Anarinya queluva? = "what will the Father give me...when my Sun faileth?" At present we have no later attestation of such a word, and since it is highly useful, we may well adopt írë "when" into our attempted Unified or Standard Quenya. Many post-Tolkien writers have used it already. It has been suggested that the initial í- of írë is related to the definite article i "the", whereas the final -rë can be equated with the word ré "[24-hour] day" (the word aurë refers to the daylight period only). If so, írë basically means "the day" – and of course, "what will the Father give me...the day my Sun faileth" would still make sense. However, it may seem that the word írë "when" existed long before the word ré "day"; the latter apparently emerged as Tolkien was writing the LotR Appendices. I wouldn't hesitate to use írë for "when" in general (not limiting its application to "the day when...")

EXERCISES
As described above, Tolkien sometimes added extra words when translating emphatic pronouns, e.g. elyë = "even thou" (to bring out the emphatic quality of the word). However, in the keys to the exercises below, as well as in the "Translate into Quenya" section, we have adopted the simpler system of italicizing emphatic pronouns (e.g. elyë = you; by the way, we will use this translation rather than "thou" since the "L"-form pronouns may seem to be ambiguous as to number, just like English "you").

1. Translate into English:

A. Man marnë i coassë cainen loar yá, írë inyë lá marnë tassë?
B. Mana elmë polir carë?
C. Áta antat nin, ar ávata nurtat nillo!
D. Man elyë cennë i otsëa auressë?
E. Antuvantë ilyë i annar inyen ar lá elyen!
F. Mana i neri hirner i nóressë i oronti pella?
G. Manen elyë poluva orta i alta ondo írë inyë úmë polë caritas?
H. Sellemma marë coa yanassë; emmë marir i toltëa coassë mallë sinassë. Á tulil ar á cenil coamma!

2. Translate into Quenya:

I. Who has done that [ta]?
J. What did you find in the seventh room when you went there [or, "thither" = tanna]?
K. When you have come, I want to leave [auta].
L. Give us the wine! (an order explicitly addressed to several persons).
M. Give the wine to us and not [lá] to the warriors! ("Us" is exclusive here. "To" = dative, not allative. This order is explicitly addressed to one person only.)
N. The seventh warrior has come from beyond the great mountains.
O. Beyond [or, behind] the eighth door [or, "gate", ando] you found a great treasure; we [exclusive] who came after you [apa le] did not find a thing!
P. How did the evil Dwarves find them seven days ago?

LESSON TWENTY
The obscure verb "to be". Ma as a possible interrogative particle.
Sa introducing nominal clauses. 

We are now fast exhausting the reasonably certain "facts" about Quenya (though as I have tried to make clear, even many of the "facts" must be considered tentative deductions). This last regular lesson is already moving far into the twilight zone of linguistic obscurities.

THE VERB "TO BE" 
(including some remarks on the form ëa)
The various forms of the verb "to be" have always been a problem. The LotR version of Namárië includes the copula ná "is". A draft version of the same poem combines the copula with a plural subject, resulting in the form nar "are". In July 2001, the future-tense form nauva "will be" finally turned up in Vinyar Tengwar 42 p. 34. We have mentioned and practiced all of these forms before.
	Several tense-forms, as well as the infinitive, are missing. To start with the infinitive, what is "to be" in Quenya? We have no other clue than the apparent fact the infinitive of A-stem verbs is identical to the verbal stem itself, with no additions. In Etym, NÂ is listed as the "stem of [the] verb 'to be' in Q[uenya]". So conceivably, ná may also function as an infinitive: "I want to be an Elf" = ?Merin ná Elda. But of course, Tolkien may have imagined something entirely different.
	Can ná, nauva and other tense-forms be combined with the normal pronominal endings? For decades, this was unclear and uncertain, but in January 2002, the Tolkienian example nalyë "thou art" was finally published in VT43:27. This example clearly incorporates the well-known ending -lyë "you, thou", and it also seems to tell us that the copula assumes the short form na- when endings are to be added. The form nar "are" (used with plural subjects), rather than ?nár, points in the same direction.
The published corpus may not be wholly consistent, though. In the very early (some would even say first) "Qenya" poem Narqelion, written in 1915 or 1916, Tolkien used the form náre. Since there is no straightforward Tolkien-made translation of this poem, we cannot be entirely certain what it means. Christopher Gilson, analyzing the entire poem in light of the almost contemporaneous Qenya Lexicon, concluded that náre may mean "it is" (VT40:31). A 3rd person marker -re (or if you like, -rë) was perhaps present in Tolkien's later forms of Quenya as well, though at the later stages we might expect it to mean "she" rather than "it" – see Lesson 15. 
However, it seems better to extrapolate from the post-LotR example nalyë. If so, the following pattern might emerge:

	nan or nanyë "I am"
	nat "you [intimate singular] are", perhaps also with a longer form (naccë or natyë???)
	nal or nalyë "you [polite] are"
	nas "he/she/it is", conceivably with a longer form ?naryë; there may also be gender-specific forms naro "he is", narë "she is"
	nammë "we [exclusive] are", nalmë "we [inclusive] are", and perhaps something like nalwë "we [dual inclusive] are"
	nantë "they are"

In the original version of this lesson, published before the example nalyë became available, I suggested a similar but not wholly identical system. I used the short form na- whenever a consonant cluster was to follow, as when the endings -mmë, -lmë, -lwë, -ntë are attached. I assumed that the endings with a consonant + y (-nyë and -lyë, plus the two extrapolated endings ?-tyë and ?-ryë) would not have the power to shorten a preceding vowel. Compare the á of má "hand" remaining long before the possessive pronominal ending -rya "her" in Namárië: máryat "her hands", dual. This system would produce nályë rather than the now-attested form nalyë for "you are". I still don't think this is entirely implausible; the copula ná may appear in the short form na even when it stands alone (VT43:26), so variants like nályë and nalyë could probably coexist in the same form of Quenya. When endings are to be added, I have consistently used forms with short na- in the exercises below, though.
The future tense nauva "will be" would be able to receive all pronominal endings with no modifications: nauvan or nauvanyë "I will be", nauvalmë "we will be", etc.
	Perhaps the verb ná can even receive two pronominal endings, for subject and predicate, e.g. nanyes = "I am he". (Compare the Tolkien-made form utúvienyes = "I have found it", the second ending denoting the object.) 
	
Instead of adding pronominal endings to the copula na-, one may also simply use an independent pronoun and leave out the copula altogether: It is understood. When translating "blessed art thou" in his Quenya rendering of the Hail Mary, Tolkien simply wrote aistana elyë, sc. aistana "blessed" immediately followed by the pronoun elyë "thou". There is no copula "art" in the Quenya text. So we can apparently feel free to build copula-less sentences like inyë Elda "I [am] an Elf" or elyë vanya "you [are] beautiful". The shorter, less emphatic pronouns would presumably work just as well: Ni Elda, le vanya, etc.
	Yet we can't always do without the verb "to be", and another problem has to do with the past tense "was". We have no certain attestations of it. Adding the normal past-tense marker -në to the stem NÂ would of course produce something like ?nánë, but this awkward form seems most improbable. In all likelihood, Tolkien actually envisioned an irregular form. A form né "was" has long been rumored to occur in Tolkien's unpublished papers. The closest we have ever got to having this assumption confirmed would be Christopher Gilson's analysis of the same very early "Qenya" poem referred to above, Narqelion. In Vinyar Tengwar #40, page 12-13, we find Gilson trying to decipher what he calls an "especially enigmatic" phrase from the poem. It incorporates the form né, and Gilson argues (p. 13):

The preterite [= past tense] of the verb 'to be' is not given in [the] Q[enya] L[exicon], but this tense-form is listed for many verbs, and frequently identified as such. The Qenya preterite has a variety of formations, but one of the familiar types is seen in kanda- 'blaze', pret. kandane... It is possible that forms like kanda-ne actually arose as a construction with the verb-stem plus a form of the verb 'to be', i.e. that a meaning like 'blazed' derived syntactically as in English phrases like 'was blazing' or 'did blaze', with an originally tenseless form of the stem kanda- '(to) blaze, blazing' combined with the past tense expressed in the ending -ne 'was'... The present tense of the verb 'to be' is given in QL as ná 'it is'...and if the preterite is né or ne, there would be a parallel with certain other verbs where the present vs. preterite is marked solely by a change of -a to -e, as in panta- 'open, unfold, spread', pret. pante, or sanga- 'pack tight', pret. sange.

Since it so happens that Mr. Gilson has access to virtually all of Tolkien's linguistic papers, he must know perfectly well whether a form né "was" occurs in the material or not. We may assume, then, that Gilson feels that he would be violating somebody's copyright if he were to say loud and clear that "né is the Qenya word for was" – and so he has to pretend that he is merely deducing this word from already published material. Remembering that Tolkien must surely have discussed the various forms of "to be" in the vast amount of linguistic manuscripts that he left behind, and combining Gilson's article with more recent statements made by his group to the effect that they would not write something they know to be wrong, we can apparently treat né = "was" as an as-good-as-attested word.
However, even if such a word did exist in the early forms of "Qenya", it may of course have been abandoned in the more LotR-compatible forms of the language that emerged decades later. It may be noted, though, that the past tense ending -në was never abandoned – and if Gilson's theory that there is a connection between this ending and the verb "was" does reflect Tolkien's actual ideas, the word né "was" may have survived into LotR-style Quenya. Anyhow, writers can hardly do without a word for "was", and currently we have no better alternative than né. Some writers have used it, and based on the pair ná "is" / nar "are", people have also extrapolated a form ner "were" to be used in conjunction with plural or multiple subjects.
Since the example nalyë demonstrates that the present-tense form of the copula can take pronominal endings, we may assume that this is equally true of the past-tense form "was". It would perhaps appear as ne- before the various endings: nenyë "I was", nelyë "you were", nes "he/she/it was", nentë "they were", etc. But rather than being combined with pronominal endings, it may well be that the copula would most often simply be omitted in the past tense as well, an independent pronoun being used instead of an ending: Elyë vanya = past tense "you [were] beautiful" or present tense "you [are] beautiful", according to context. (However, I suspect that the future-tense copula nauva "will be" would rarely be omitted like this.)
Five Quenya tenses are attested: Present (or continuative), aorist, past, future and perfect. The verb "to be" may not make any distinction between present and aorist (ná "is" covering both); the past tense "was" may be né as discussed above, and the future tense is attested as nauva "will be". This leaves only the perfect tense – "has been". Normally, the perfect is formed by prefixing an augment similar to the stem-vowel, lengthening the stem-vowel in its normal place and adding the ending -ië, e.g. utúlië "has come" from the stem TUL "come". However, it is less than clear how the stem NÂ could be fitted into this pattern. A form ?anáië would be quite unstable; the group ái would tend to become a normal diphthong ai. Yet ?anaië still does not strike me as a particularly likely form, and I could recommend it to really desperate writers only. Presently it is simply impossible to tell how the Eldar would say "has been" (presumably a very frequent word, since Tolkienian Elves "were ever more and more involved in the past" – VT41:12!)
The imperative of ná is also a matter of conjecture. It is far from obvious how to say "be!" as in "be good!" I have used the form ána, combining ná (-na) with a prefixed variant of the imperative particle á. By its form, this imperative ána "be!" would have the same relationship to ná as Tolkien's word áva "don't!" has to the simple negation vá "no!" Yet ána remains an extrapolation, and if we could have asked Tolkien what he actually had in mind, I would have been somewhat surprised if this had been his answer. So please think of ána as a form which would fit into Tolkien's general system, but which is not (as far as I know!) Tolkienian as such.

In addition to the "N" forms of the verb "to be" (ná/nar, né, nauva) a few entirely different forms of related meaning occurs in the material. The pre-LotR text Fíriel's Song has ye for "is" and yéva for "will be". Instead of appearing as independent words they may also be turned into endings, -ië and -iéva, attested in such forms as márië "is good" and hostainiéva "will be counted" (cf. mára "good", hostaina "gathered, countered"). However, as I pointed out in Lesson Four, Tolkien may seem to have abandoned such forms. The ending -ië has so many other meanings (gerundial ending as in enyalië "recalling", abstract ending as in verië "boldness", feminine ending as in Valië "female Vala") that Tolkien may have decided that it should not be burdened with the meaning "is" as well. A few writers have used the ending -ië "is", but my advice would be to let these formations from Fíriel's Song rest in peace.

Another verb we should consider is definitely not a word Tolkien abandoned, for it is found in writings postdating the publication of LotR – with Namárië, incorporating the verb ná "is", in it. Thus it is clearly meant to coexist with ná, and probably expresses a somewhat different shade of meaning. We are talking about the verb ëa (or with a capital E, Eä). 
Readers of the Silmarillion will remember this word from Tolkien's creation myth. God, Eru Ilúvatar, grants objective existence to the Music of the Ainur with this word: "I know the desire of your minds that what ye have seen should verily be...even as ye yourselves are, and yet other. Therefore I say: Eä! Let these things Be!" (Ainulindalë). Tolkien explained that Eä as a name of the universe is not originally a noun, but actually a verb: "The Elves called the World, the Universe, Eä – It is" (footnote in Letters:284). "This world, or Universe, [the Creator] calls Eä, an Elvish word that means 'It is' or 'Let it Be' " (MR:330).
So ëa can be either the present (or aorist) tense "[it] is" or the imperative "let it be!" (In the latter sense it would parallel such one-word imperatives in -a as heca! "be gone!" or ela! "look!") How does ëa "is" differ in meaning from ná? It has been suggested that one of these verbs means "is" referring merely to some particular instance, while the other refers to a permanent or habitual state. In a sentence like "the man is drunk", one word for "is" would simply indicate that "the man" is drunk right now, whereas the other would imply that he is a drunkard by habit. Parallels to such a system can be found in Spanish (a language Tolkien loved).
Given the extreme scarcity of source material, nothing can be ruled out at this stage, but I would put my money on another theory. It should be noted that Tolkien translated ëa not only as "is", he also used the rendering "exists" (VT39:7). This suggests that ëa has a more absolute meaning than ná. The verb ëa is related to the noun engwë "thing", a "thing" being perceived as "something that exists". It may be that ná is a mere copula used in phrases describing the state of something, introducing a noun (sambë sina ná caimasan "this room is a bedchamber"), an adjective (sambë sina ná pitya "this room is small") or even a prepositional phrase (sambë sina ná ve i sambë yassë hirnenyet, "this room is like the room where I found them"). On the other hand, ëa refers to the solid, independent existence or presence of some subject, and it can perhaps be used with no other additions than this subject (e.g. Eru ëa = "God exists"). Tolkien informs us that the word ëala, by its form obviously the active participle of ëa, was also used as a noun "being" – denoting a spirit whose natural state is to exist without a physical body. Balrogs, for instance, were ëalar (MR:165). Basically, the word only refers to "existing" ones. At the beginning of a sentence, the verb ëa may possibly be used in the same sense as English "there is", to assert the existence or presence of something: Eä malta i orontissen "[there] is gold in the mountains", ëa nér i sambessë "[there] is a man in the room", ëar neldë nissi i coassë, "[there] are three women in the house". 
However, all the sentences in the previous paragraph were constructed by me. One of our very few Tolkien-made examples of ëa occurring in an actual sentence forms part of Cirion's Oath. Eä turns up as the verb of a relative sentence: i Eru i or ilyë mahalmar ëa tennoio, "the One [God] who is above all thrones forever". Since the literal meaning could well be that Eru exists in this sublime position, this does not contradict the interpretation set out above. In his translation of the Lord's Prayer, Tolkien rendered "[our Father] who is in heaven" as ...i ëa han ëa, which apparently is not a direct translation of the traditional wording. It has been theorized that this means "[our Father] who is beyond Eä", sc. beyond the created universe, though the second ëa is not capitalized as a name in Tolkien's text. The first ëa is certainly the verb "is". 
It should be noted that ëa, rather than ná, is the verb to use when describing the position of something (the position being specified either by a phrase including a preposition, like or ilyë mahalmar "above all thrones" or han ëa "beyond Eä" [?] in the sentences above, or by a noun appearing in the locative case). Perhaps we could have sentences like i sambë yassë ëa i harma ëa or i sambë yassë ëa i nér sí "the room where the treasure is, is above the room where the man is now" – referring not so much to mere states as to existence, presence, position. This is the best the present grammarian can do with so few examples.
How is ëa inflected? Eä itself would seem to be the present or aorist form; the imperative (used by Eru in the Ainulindalë) is identical. Perhaps ëa can also function as the infinitive. The future tense could be something like euva. The perfect "has existed" seems impossible to reconstruct with even a shadow of confidence. As for the past tense, it was uncertain when I first published this Quenya course, but as I argued, it had to be either ëanë or engë. The latter form is now confirmed by VT43:36, occurring in Tolkien's abortive translation of the Gloria Patri: Alcar i ataren ar i yondon ar i airefëan tambë engë i... "Glory to the Father and the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as [it] was [in] the..." (the next word would be "beginning", but Tolkien never got that far).
Engë as the past tense of ëa may seem like a rather surprising form, but it is historically justified: Tolkien apparently meant ëa to represent primitive eñâ, the symbol ñ representing the ng of English king. In Quenya, this sound had been lost between vowels. However, the past tense had been formed by means of nasal infixion, and before ñ the infix manifested as another ñ. Thus we get eññ-, and this double ññ later became Quenya ng (as in English finger, with a distinct g sound): Thus the past tense of ëa came to be engë. Only one other verb of this class is known, tëa "indicate" with past tense tengë (see VT39:6-7). It was this example that suggested that the past tense of ëa is engë, before VT43:36 provided explicit confirmation of this.
The verb ëa can presumably receive pronominal endings like any other verb, e.g.  ëan "I exist",  ëalmë "we exist", enges "it existed", etc.

MA: AN INTERROGATIVE PARTICLE?
In the previous lesson, we introduced the words man "who?", mana "what?" and manen "how?" They can be used to construct certain kinds of questions,  but the commonest kind of question is not exemplified in published material: How do we construct the kind of question that may be answered with a simple "yes" or "no"?
	English uses various procedures to get from a simple assertion to a question about whether something is actually true. Assertions like "it is so" or "he has come" can be turned into a questions by fronting the verb: "Is it so?", "Has he come?" However, in contemporary English, this procedure only works with a few verbs. An assertion like "he wrote the book" is turned into a question by adding a form of the verb "to do" at the beginning of the sentence and turn what used to be the finite verb into an infinitive: "Did he write the book?"
	Obviously, the simplest way of turning an assertion (a declarative statement) into a question would be to simply slip in some kind of particle that merely signals, "This is not an assertion that something is so and so, but a question about whether it is so and so." Many languages of our own world do employ such particles (e.g. Polish czy), and this simple and elegant way of constructing yes/no questions seems to have considerable appeal to language-constructors as well. Esperanto has the interrogative particle chu (cxu), apparently based on the Polish word, and the sentence "he wrote the book" – li skribis la libron – is turned into a question "did he write the book?" simply by adding chu at the beginning: Chu li skribis la libron?
But what about Quenya? Still clinging to this example, how do we turn the declarative statement tences i parma "(s)he wrote the book" into a question? Does Quenya have an interrogative particle we can slip in?
In PM:357, quoted in the previous lesson, Tolkien refers to ma or man as an "Eldarin interrogative element" (PM:357). Man is the Quenya word for "who", but may the shortest possible "interrogative element" ma function as an interrogative particle? Some writers have made this assumption. It may be noted that one Quenya verb for "ask" is maquet- (past tense maquentë, PM:403). Since maquet- transparently means "ma-say", it may be suspected that in some way or another, Quenya questions often involve the element ma.
It has come to my knowledge that there is a Tolkien manuscript which does refer to ma as an interrogative particle. If Tolkien meant a particle like Polish czy or Esperanto chu, we may apparently turn a declarative statement into a yes/no question simply by slipping in a ma, most likely at the beginning of the sentence (no attested examples):

Tences i parma "(S)he wrote the book" > Ma tences i parma? "Did (s)he write the book?"
Nís enta ná Elda "That woman is an Elf" > Ma nís enta ná Elda? "Is that woman an Elf?"
Eä malta i orontessë "[There] is gold in the mountain" > Ma ëa malta i orontessë? "Is [there] gold in the mountain?"
I nér caruva coa "The man is going to build a house" > Ma i nér caruva coa? "Is the man going to build a house?"

Conceivably ma might also be used in so-called dependent questions, with the force of English "whether": Umin ista ma utúlies, "I don't know whether (s)he has come." This is speculation, however, and it must be emphasized that we have yet to see the interrogative particle ma in any actual Quenya sentence written by Tolkien. The manuscript in which he refers to ma as an interrogative particle is apparently quite early, so this particle may well belong to some variant of "Qenya" rather than the more LotR-compatible forms of Quenya. 
Even assuming that the system I presupposed when constructing the examples above does indeed correspond to Tolkien's intentions at some stage, he may very well have decided upon something else later. Indeed certain fragments of post-LotR Quenya material includes a word ma of a quite different meaning: it functions as an indefinite pronoun "something, a thing" (VT42:34). Whether this implies that ma as an interrogative particle had been abandoned is impossible to say (PM:357 at least confirms that ma as an interrogative "element" survived into the post-LotR period). Whether the two ma's can coexist in the same version of Quenya is a matter of taste, unless it turns out that Tolkien actually addressed this question in some manuscript (and I wouldn't hold my breath). Presently, the system sketched above is probably the best we can do when it comes to constructing yes/no questions in Quenya.

SA INTRODUCING NOMINAL CLAUSES
We have introduced several words that may be translated "that": the pronoun ta and the demonstratives enta and tana (tanya).
There is, however, another kind of "that" as well – very common in any substantial text. We are talking about "that" as a particle introducing so-called nominal clauses.
As we know, nouns can take on various functions in a sentence. Very often they appear as the subject or object of a verb, as when the noun Elda "Elf" functions as the object of the verb ista- "know" in the sentence istan Elda "I know an Elf". Sometimes, however, it is useful to treat an entire sentence as a noun, so that it can take on noun-like functions in a sentence. Consider a simple sentence like "you are here". If we want to treat this sentence as a noun and slip it into a longer sentence to function as (say) the object, English may signal the noun-like status of the words "you are here" by placing the word "that" in front of them: "That you are here". Now this entire phrase, a so-called nominal clause, can function as the object of a verb: "I know that you are here". It could also be used as the subject of a sentence, as in "that you are here is good". (But in the latter case, English would often prefer to slip in a meaningless dummy-subject "it" at the beginning of the sentence and place the true subject at the end: "It is good that you are here.)
What, then, is the Quenya equivalent of "that" as a particle forming such nominal clauses?
Our sole attestation of this important particle comes from a rather obscure source. A few years ago, a person who called himself Michael Dawson made a posting to the Tolkien Internet mailing list. He claimed to be quoting at two removes from an old Tolkien letter which could not be dated more precisely than "years" earlier than 1968. It was a Quenya greeting including the words merin sa haryalyë alassë – which is supposed to mean, literally, "I wish that you have happiness". (The initial merin actually appeared as "meriu" in Dawson's post; lower-case n and u are often very difficult to distinguish in Tolkien's handwriting. "Meriu" would be a quite meaningless form, and the translation provided settles the matter.) As we see, the word sa is here used as a particle turning the sentence haryalyë alassë "you have happiness" into a nominal clause, so that it can function as the object of the verb merin "I want/wish".
There are several questionable points here. For one thing, not everyone is convinced that the "Merin" sentence, as it is often called, is genuine at all. I am told that various efforts to get in touch with this Michael Dawson have so far proved futile, and it is somewhat disturbing to notice that his posting was made on April 1. On the other hand, Carl F. Hostetter (who has seen nearly all of Tolkien's linguistic manuscripts) briefly commented on this sentence in VT41:18 and apparently recognized it as genuine, though he has later specified that it does not occur in any manuscript he knows of. The word sa is not inherently implausible; it could mean basically "it" (related to the ending -s), so that merin sa haryalyë alassë originally or basically signifies "I wish it [, namely that] you have happiness". But of course, even if the word sa is genuine Tolkien, it is impossible to say what stage of Q(u)enya it belongs to. Assuming that the Merin sentence is actually written by Tolkien, I would say that it is probably quite early, since its vocabulary corresponds so well to that of the Etymologies (of the mid-thirties – notice the use of the verb harya- "have, possess", otherwise only attested in Etym). So given the ever-changing nature of Tolkien's conception, sa as a particle forming nominal clauses may well have been abandoned by the time Tolkien published LotR. Yet writers can hardly do without this important word, and presently sa is our sole alternative.
Accepting sa as a word for this meaning, our example above – "I know that you are here" – could perhaps be rendered into Quenya something like istan sa ëalyë sinomë (cf. ista- "to know", sinomë "in this place; here" – and above we theorized that ëa rather than ná is the word used for "is" when a certain position is discussed). "That you are here is good" could presumably likewise be rendered sa ëalyë sinomë ná mára. "It is good that you are here" could correspond to something like ná mára sa ëalyë sinomë (if the verb ná "is" can be fronted). In this or any other context, Quenya would hardly need a dummy-subject like the "it" of the English sentence, so I would not expect to see nás or whatever.
In (slightly archaic) English, a "that"-clause may describe an intention; here is a Tolkienian example: "The titles that [the Vala Oromë] bore were many and glorious; but he withheld them at that time, that the Quendi should not be afraid" (WJ:401; modern idiom would slip in a "so" before "that", but the meaning remains the same). It would be interesting to know whether a Quenya sa-clause can be used in this sense. If not, we do not really know how to express this meaning in Quenya.

Summary of Lesson Twenty: The verb "to be" is poorly attested in Quenya. Ná means "is"; it has been hinted that né is the word for "was"; nauva is attested as the future tense "will be". The attested example nalyë "thou art" seems to indicate that the normal pronominal endings can be added to forms of the verb "to be"; ná assumes the shorter form na- before endings (cf. also nar "are"). If né is indeed the word for "was", analogy would suggest that it appears as ne- when endings are to be added. Instead of using forms of "to be" with a pronominal ending attached, it is also permissible to use an independent pronoun and leave out the copula altogether (cf. a wording like aistana elyë "blessed [art] thou" in Tolkien's Hail Mary translation). Another verb also translated "is" is ëa (past tense engë), which more properly means "exists": it would be used for "is" in contexts discussing the presence, existence or position of something (in the latter case ëa may connect with a prepositional phrase, as in the attested example i or ilyë mahalmar ëa "[God,] who is above all thrones"). – According to certain pieces of evidence, Quenya (or at least some variant of "Qenya") had an interrogative particle ma. Presumably it can be added (at the beginning?) of declarative statements to turn them into yes/no questions. – According to one (possibly dubious) source, the form sa can be used for "that" as a particle introducing nominal clauses (as in "I know that you are here", "he said that this is true", etc.)

VOCABULARY

nertëa "ninth"
quainëa "tenth" (So according to a text on Eldarin numerals published in VT42. This presupposes another word for "ten" than the form cainen occurring in the Etymologies – perhaps quainë, not attested by itself.  Maybe cainen would correspond to an ordinal "tenth" something like cainenya, and perhaps writers should use either cainen/cainenya or quainë7quainëa, but to complete our list of Quenya ordinals 1st-10th we will use the attested form quainëa here.)
ma, possible interrogative particle
sa, "that" introducing nominal clauses (according to a source of somewhat questionable value)
nómë "place"
sinomë "in this place" or simply "here" (apparently combining si- as in sina "this" with -nomë, a shortened form of nómë "place", hence sinomë = "[in] this place")
tenna preposition "until, as far as"
ëa verb "is" = "exists" (past tense either ëanë or engë, future tense perhaps euva)
mal conjunction "but"
né has been hinted to be the past tense of ná "is", hence "was"
ista- "to know" (notice irregular past tense sintë instead of **istanë; perhaps the perfect "has known" should similarly be isintië)
lerta- "can" in the sense of "be allowed to" (English often uses "may" in this sense; see note below)

NOTE #1: Quenya has several verbs corresponding to English "can". As explained in a Tolkien manuscript published in VT41, at least three Quenya verbs can be used to express the idea of "be able to". The verb pol- that we have introduced earlier primarily means to be physically able to do something (cf. the adjective polda "[physically] strong", apparently related to this verb). The verb lerta- means to be allowed to do something, to be free to do something because there is no prohibition – though in some contexts it may also be interchangeable with pol-. The verb ista- "to know" (pa.t. sintë) may be combined with an infinitive to express "can" in the sense of "know how to", referring to intellectual ability. Thus istas tecë would mean "he can write [because he knows the letters of the alphabet]". Polis tecë would be "he can write" in the sense of "he is physically able to write [because his hands are not paralyzed or tied up or something]". Lertas tecë would mean "he can write" in the sense of "he may [= is allowed to] write".

NOTE #2: Above I listed mal as the Quenya conjunction "but". Actually many words for "but" appear in Tolkien's material, indeed so many that it seems dubious whether he really meant them to belong to a single form of Quenya. The Etymologies, entry NDAN, lists ná or nán as Quenya words for "but". Firiel's Song uses the short form nan (LR:72), a word many post-Tolkien writers have also used. However, ná also means "is", and nán or nan might perhaps also mean "I am". Other words for "but" turn up in various tentative Quenya renderings of the Lord's Prayer: anat, onë, ono (VT43:8-9); yet another late source has nó (VT41:13). However, nó may also mean "before", and the forms anat, onë and ono were perhaps superseded by the word Tolkien used for "but" in the final version of his Lord's Prayer rendering: Mal. Of all the words for "but" that have so far been published, mal strikes me as the least ambiguous, and this is the word we will use here.

EXERCISES

1. Translate into English:

A. Elyë Nauco, lá Elda.
B. Cennen sa i nero ranco né rácina.
C. I aran né taura, mal i tári né saila lá i aran.
D. Ma sintelyë sa nu i coa ëa nurtaina harma?
E. Ma lertan lelya nómë sinallo?
F. Áva sucë, an ëa sangwa yulmalyassë!
G. Ma engelyë sinomë i quainëa auressë írë tullentë?
H. Istammë sa ëa nulda sambë coa sinassë, mal lá ihíriemmes, ar tenna hirimmes úvammë ista mana ëa i sambessë.

2. Translate into Quenya (for convenience using L-forms rather than T-forms to translate "you"):

I. I was rich [several possible translations].
J. The king said: "You may not go to the place whence [yallo] you have come", but I know that I will go thither [tanna].
K. I can [= know how to] read, but I cannot read in the darkness.
L. We (incl.) know that Elves exist.
M. Did they dwell [mar-] here until he ninth year when the warriors came?
N. We (excl.) know that the men could speak the Elven-tongue [Eldalambë], but not the Dwarf-tongue [Naucolambë].
O. The women said that you have seen the great worm [ango] that was in the mountain.
P. On the tenth day the Sun was bright.

This is the last regular Quenya lesson. Various appendices may be downloaded from this URL:
http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/qappend.rtf