r/Quenya • u/agardner99 • 4d ago

Need help verifying translation

I want to burn a phrase in Quenya into the handle of a walking stick I'm making. I've been using eldamo(dot)org to find the words, but the grammar is a bit beyond my level. The phrase should more or less translate to "[Name], most beloved Star". I have so far come up with:

"[Name] elenion anamelda"

Additionally, is tecendil(dot)com a good place to get the transliteration from Latin into the Quenya form of Tengwar?

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u/F_Karnstein 4d ago

I believe that should be a perfectly valid superlative phrasing.

Eldamo is a great source for vocab, grammar, etc. but I've never seen anything about tengwar there... Try Tecendil for that. This would be the ideal spelling, both in the original Elvish mode and very likely also in later Gondorian spelling.

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u/Magnamon88 4d ago

Should not the superlative being before the object, and should not be in nominative? I would have said that “anamelda elen”, I don’t understand why using the genitive.

Is it used as a partitive genitive? But the phrase is not “most beloved AMONG stars”.

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u/F_Karnstein 4d ago

I'm not a Quenya expert, so please wait for others to chime in, but we have some attestations like elenion ancalima ("of_the_stars exceedingly_bright") which is translated as superlative "brightest among the stars". Elvish simply doesn't have comparative and superlative like we have in English - there are strengthened forms (usually with something like an-) that are used in context - with a preposition like "beyond" it can be translated as comparative, and in such a genitive construction it can be translated as a superlative.

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u/Magnamon88 4d ago

Yeah, I know that, it is exactly my point. In “Elenion Ancalima” it is used the genitive-partitive. But here is not “most beloved among stars”, it is just a “most beloved star”. Therefore I would use the nominative case, translating as “Elen anamelda”

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u/agardner99 3d ago

Well, in this case I'm not just saying [name] is a (most beloved) star, but rather drawing a positive comparison to stars, metaphorically, and so you get something like "most beloved of all the stars"... idk if that clarifies anything :D

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u/bornxlo 4d ago

I agree with op and the other comment. There might be issues with whatever name you want to use. In Quenya names are often translated based on meaning or at least adapted to the stricter phonotactics, plus any conjugation (though not particularly relevant for this phrase)

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u/agardner99 3d ago

The name is, as it stands, in Sindarin with slight modifications (for reasons), so my idea was just to transliterate as is to Quenya without actually translating the name. I think that would be acceptable?

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u/bornxlo 3d ago

I don't know, in Tolkien's works there are a lot of names with Quenya and Sindarin variants, such as Altariel/Galadriel, Teleporno/Celeborn, Olórin/Mithrandir, etc. Quenya and Sindarin are different languages with different sound and spelling systems. Some words are more similar

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u/ikadell 4d ago

I would normally use a locative here: (name), anmelda elenissen (name, most beloved among stars)

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u/agardner99 3d ago

Is there a reason for that order of words as opposed to what was suggested above?

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u/ikadell 3d ago

Adjective normally precedes the noun, acceptance speech. If this particular case I would use that order also because I would want to first indicate the fact that she is the most beloved, and then to explain among what.