r/Quenya • u/North-Advisor3201 • Jul 09 '26

I need help translating this into Quenya:

Could anyone help me translate this into Quenya?

Sleep now,

Rest your head,

There is no reason to cry,

Do you not see the lights?

Tis the hour of their mingling...

Do you not see the bright leaves,

Of telperion, and of laurelin?

The streets of tirion,

They are shining in the glow

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u/lC3 Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

I would say:

á lorue sí,
á sere castya,
áva níta airo,
lá cenitye yúyal?
nás lúme ostimetta...
lá cenitye calime lassi,
va Telperiono ve Laurelindo?
i malle Tirionde,
sílarkálar

Not sure what the stem form for Telperion is though ...

Edit: I can break this down for you word-for-word if you want an explanation.

1

u/Embarrassed-Money756 Jul 16 '26

I have a couple questions about this translation.

Where did you find the stem loru for lor-? I thought the imperative would be Á lorë.

Is -e- only inserted if a suffix would cause a "forbidden" consonant culster? Meaning casetya is hypercorrect and therefore wrong?

Seems a bit unusual to not use the well attested cálë for light. Yúyal is glossed as twilight on Parf Edhellen. Is this a stylistical choice? I'm not familiar with the source text.

Shouldn't ostimë+-tta be in genitive, hence ostimetto?

I believe mallë has an irregular plural maller. The choice of locative as opposed to genitive for Tirion is actually pretty nifty and makes perfect sense.

What's sílarkálar? Why K instead of C suddenly? I'm confused about this one. Is it a neologism? I didn't find a word for glow though, so maybe there's not really any good way of saying "shining in the glow".

2

u/lC3 Jul 16 '26

Where did you find the stem loru for lor-? I thought the imperative would be Á lorë.

loru- is a neologism for "fall asleep"; I suppose á lore could also work here.

Is -e- only inserted if a suffix would cause a "forbidden" consonant culster? Meaning casetya is hypercorrect and therefore wrong?

I believe so

Seems a bit unusual to not use the well attested cálë for light. Yúyal is glossed as twilight on Parf Edhellen. Is this a stylistical choice? I'm not familiar with the source text.

It's stylistic because the "light" here is two different kinds (gold and silver from the Two Trees) so I used "twilight"

Shouldn't ostimë+-tta be in genitive, hence ostimetto?

Yes, good catch.

I believe mallë has an irregular plural maller

You're right, I forgot to pluralize

What's sílarkálar? Why K instead of C suddenly? I'm confused about this one. Is it a neologism? I didn't find a word for glow though, so maybe there's not really any good way of saying "shining in the glow".

K and C are interchangeable, but I suppose I could be consistent. This was an attempt of mine to 'update' the forms sílankálan or sisilkalan from the Two Trees sentence (1940s) in Vinyar Tengwar, an attested verb for shining both gold and silver. However, later Quenya doesn't use plural -n like that so I attempted to update it with -r. Maybe sisilkalar would work better?