Seeking Quenya help

[aramel-calawen.livejournal.com]

Mods, feel free to delete this if it's too OT.

I'm preparing to embark on a glass-painting project that will (hopefully) someday become a glass plate with the emblem of the Feanorians on it - it looks wonderful in my head, but goodness only knows how it will turn out. (For the record, I'm using this as my reference image, since it's the prettiest-looking Feanorian sigil I've found so far, and I like the warm colours, as opposed to other versions I've seen that seem to have too much blue for my taste).

Feanor heraldry by ~Morsing on deviantART

I want to add some Quenya around the border. Being a Noldorin fan, I have dabbled a bit in Quenya, so I translated a few phrases myself, but I'm not sure of their correctness. If there's anyone who's had more practice, can I possibly get some input?




Nanye i tanna Feanáro Cundu Noldoron
Yondo Finwëo venno Nerdanello ar atar yondoron
Lierya laitar tanweryar

I am the sign of Feanáro, Prince of the Noldor,
Son of Finwe, husband of Nerdanel and father of sons.
His people praise his works.

I'm not so sure about the "prince" bit, because the actual word for that is a bit hazy, but it's the best I can think up right now. I'd hate to finish my project and then find I did it wrong!

Comments

[dawn_felagund]

Quenya expert I am not, but if you don't get an answer here, you might want to consider asking elvses, who is quite good with the languages and writes the "Linguistic Foolery" column for the newsletter.

On an entirely personal note, I'm glad to see you back around again! :)

Seeking Quenya help

[aramel-calawen.livejournal.com]

Hi Dawn! It's great to be back. Time really flies - it seems like only yesterday that I was hanging around LJ all day and grumping about high school, and now I'm all set for college!

Thanks for the tip: I certainly will go pester Elvses if I need to. Am currently hyper about crafts, anyhow.

[nelyo-russandol.livejournal.com]

May i ask what application / trick did you use to bend the Tengwar script in a circle? I have been looking at a way to do that for a while...

Seeking Quenya help

[aramel-calawen.livejournal.com]

Microsoft Word. Use Wordart, then set the "shape" setting to a circle.

Re: Seeking Quenya help

[nelyo-russandol.livejournal.com]

OMG, so easy.... Thank you!

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

First off: I'm by no means a Quenya expert (I mostly pretend that Quenya is Latin when I use it), so everything I say is based on my personal understanding of Quenya, not on The Absolute Truth About Tolkien's Languages (TM).

Nanye i tanna Feanáro Cundu Noldoron
Looks correct to me. (I've seen the genitive for words that end in "o" marked by (so to say) a "long o", i.e. ó - but I think that's a fannish convention, and you're probably safer in not using it as long as you don't mind the "unrecognisable" genitive.)
If you don't like cundu, perhaps you could replace "prince" with "lord" (heru)?

Yondo Finwëo venno Nerdanello ar atar yondoron
Again, looks correct.
I'm just wondering whether you don't want to add the number of sons (or, if you don't want to decide at which point in time? "Father of sons" with no further specification looks kind of random, though that's of course a question of personal taste. :)

Lierya laitar tanweryar
Laitar confuses me, and is probably an issue where nobody will ever know just which form is right. English is being complicated here - using a plural form of the verb, "praise", with a singular (albeit collective) noun "people" - which my native language, or French, or Latin, wouldn't do. Unfortunately I don't have the foggiest how Finnish would deal with it, which would probably be a good indicator for how to handle it in Quenya...
My intuition would be to go for the singular laita - but as I said, there's probably no way of deciding for "right" or "wrong" here. So that's up to you.

So, I'm not catching any mistakes! But as I'm only an occasional dabbler myself, you may want to wait for the experts. :)

Seeking Quenya help

[aramel-calawen.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I did wonder about the laitar - my native language, having no plural forms whatsoever, is no help here either. I suppose I could try to reword it in a way that skirts the problem, but meh.

The "father of sons" bit was intentionally vague and unnumbered since I didn't want to pin it down in a point in the timeline. I'd welcome an idea of what else could go in here, though.

Re: Seeking Quenya help

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Hm, unfortunately I can't think of anything better than "many" (rimba?). But while that would still leave a lot of licence as far as the point in time is concerned (everything from Celegorm onwards probably counts as "many" ;)), I suppose it isn't exactly satisfying, either...

Awesome idea, at any rate, and I'm looking forward to seeing the results! :)

Seeking Quenya help

[aramel-calawen.livejournal.com]

"Many" will do in a pinch, but it feels weird to have Fëanor as an elf boasting Anglo-Saxon style about his, ah, procreative abilities. Ahem.

(If any elf did boast about that, though, it would be him...)

On a prior note, I did think about using heru instead of cundu, but it seems to imply too much supremacy, which I don't think he would have claimed while Finwë lived. Mostly because Tolkien likes to use "lord" and "king" interchangeably.

Re: Seeking Quenya help

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Well, half the Oath is made up of formulae that appear in Beowulf, so I'm no longer putting anything Anglo-Saxon beyond Fëanor ;)

Hm, interesting point. Yeah, I suppose that makes sense.

[jilba.livejournal.com]

I think it looks great, and is a terrific project!!

[aramel-calawen.livejournal.com]

I didn't draw the design, but it was a stroke of luck that I found it. Both Morsing and Aautio on Deviantart have wonderful elven heraldry sketches.

[cirdan-havens.livejournal.com]

Am of absolutely no help but I think it's pretty.

[ithilwen.livejournal.com]

That's going to be absolutely gorgeous when it's done!

[zhie.livejournal.com]

I know of someone who is what I would call a master linguist when it comes to Tolkien's Elven languages, and my recollection is that she is much more fluent in Quenya than Sindarin (though, she rocks when it comes to either). Did not want to post her email here in public, though, so if you can email me (zhiester@gmail.com), I can put you through to her. She's helped me many a time on translations and did a lot of work with translations on one of the major Tolkien sites.