Narqelion

"Narqelion" (Autumn) is a Qenya poem written by J.R.R. Tolkien in 1915-1916. It is one of the earliest texts in Elvish. There has been a rough melody for "Narqelion" in my mind for years, but I managed to complete it yesterday, on December 20th 2009.

N·alalmino lalantila
Ne·súme lasser pínea
Ve sangar voro úmeai
Oïkta rámavoite malinai.

Ai lintulind(ov)a Lasselanta
Piliningwe súyer nallar qanta
Kuluvai ya karnevalinar
V'ematte sinqi Eldamar.

San rotser simpetalla pinqe,
Súlimarya sildai, hiswa timpe
San sirilla ter i·aldar:
Lilta lie noldorinwa
Ómalingwe lir' amaldar
Sinqitalla laiqaninwa.

N·alalmino hyá lanta lasse
Torwa pior má tarasse:
Tukalla sangar úmeai
Oïkta rámavoite karneambarai.

Ai lindórea Lasselanta
Nierme mintya náre qanta.

Translation by Christopher Gilson:

From the elm-tree falling one by one
small leaves were in the wind,
like throngs ever large
of yellow birds on the wing.

Oh! Fall with its many swallows,
the airs are so full of golden feathers,
and orange-red ones too,
that they call to mind the gems of Elven-home.

Then pipes playing their thin music,
slender columns of pearl, a dim rain
at that time flowing through the trees:
the dancing Gnome-folk
sang a gentle tune with many voices,
sparkling green and blue.

From the elm-tree here a leaf falls,
the dark-brown fruit in the hand of the hawthorn:
attracting large throngs
of red-breasted birds on the wing.

Oh! with singing at dawn Fall
reminds me that it is filled with grief.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Elvish
• poem
• song
• Qenya
• Quenya
• Tolkien
• autumn
• fall
• nature
• Elf
• leaf
• bird
• longing
• metaphor
• colour

[Haakai]

As beautiful as the phonology is, there's no real excuse for 9 cases, 3 genders, and 4 numbers hehe. I study quenya, but it's so stupidly hard... Done on purpose obviously.

[ondotambaro]

It's nothing compared to my native Finnish: 15 cases, 51 possible declensions, 17 conjugations. Only 2 numbers, though, and one gender. ;-)

[Haakai]

Wait 15 cases? WTF. I thought Finnish had like six last I checked. Of course you'd know better =P. Looked at Finnish once 'cuz I like the phonology (in case you didn't catch it yet, I'm quite a linguaphile). But I'm sorry - I've had enough with cases in Russian lol.

Oh god just verified on wiki. Apparently there are 16 cases, so maybe you rarely use one of them or something?

[ondotambaro]

The excessive case -nta is only dialectical (I never use it, and never seen it used). There are three "marginal" cases: instructive, abessive and comitative. You can do well without them, but they're still used in literary language from time to time. The conclusion is that there are 12 cases you have to know in order to speak/understand Finnish.

[darris321]

@Haakai ithkuil has 96 cases and 9 degrees which explain everything from size to loudness

i'm making a language based on ithkuil now. it will be much simpler though- i'm just stealing the degrees and the cases lol

[LamaPaj]

This is cool, but i still think dark speech is cooler :P But, as it is a language created by fans, it hasnt got the same user base :/ (I guess you got a pretty good grasp on the lore, but just in case: Dark speech is the language Melkor (or sauron?) created for his servants. its basically orch-speech)

[Haakai]

Oh mmk. I still don't like cases though lol. They confuse me SO much. I can take tones, agglutination, more than two numbers, etc, etc. but not cases. Hehe. Anyway, I sent a PM so we don't flood this video or anything. I dunno what the protocol is for youtube video comments, so I may be worrying too much.