Quenya

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Quenya (; Quenya pronunciation: [ˈkʷɛnja]) is a constructed language, one of those devised by J. R. R. Tolkien for the Elves in his Middle-earth fiction. Tolkien began devising the language around 1910, and restructured its grammar several times until it reached its final state. The vocabulary remained relatively stable throughout the creation process. He successively changed the language's name from Elfin and Qenya to the eventual Quenya. Finnish had been a major source of inspiration, but Tolkien was also fluent in Latin and Old English, and was familiar with Greek, Welsh (the primary inspiration for Sindarin, Tolkien's other major Elvish language), and other ancient Germanic languages, particularly Gothic, during his development of Quenya. Tolkien developed a complex internal history of characters to speak his Elvish languages in their own fictional universe. He felt that his languages changed and developed over time, as did the historical languages which he studied professionally—not...

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