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Originally Posted by dancing spawn of ungoliant
That's a beautiful thought. Unfortunately the success and spreading of a language has little to do with how many people speak it. It's more about who the people are who speak it. The people who succeed internationally promote their language and thus give it better chances to spread. If we take a look at politics and countries military power, for example, it's clear why English and French are such widely-spread languages. As beautiful language as Quenya is, it lacks an appropriate base to become more used. If it had a wide economical vocabulary, for instance, I bet it could be much more popular.
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Well, what i meant by spreading it via internet, isn't to more people learn it (ok, that would be good
) but to people know.
You know that if a REALLY huge mass of people get to know that Quenya exists and the basic of it's history, i'm sure the serious linguists will include it as a living language, given that another huge mass is capable of writing a poem or two and proves it ! As i said before, quenya isn't to be spoken as a daily language, but as a language of lore and beauty.
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Originally Posted by Shelob
The other thing I've always assumed made a language "real" was if people, somewhere, learn it as their mother tongue. I grew up in a house that speaks English, so before I'm really aware of the world around me and able to reason things out I am able to speak English. Others are born to Spanish, or French or what-have-you this way. But to my knoweldge no one's mother tongue is Quenya, people have to learn Quenya and don't grow up speaking it.
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Ok, you've got quite a point, but what i intended to say is that although we cannot grow speaking quenya, ony learn it, it's a language of beauty.
Although it lacks vocabulary, i believe that this was to be a language capable of expressing highly poetical feelings as the soul of the elves are.
Quenya has been through a complicated evolution, inside Tolkien's mind of course, but has ! He created words, modified them, changed his mind but whenever he did this, he looked a way to etimologically justify his change (take in account his ability and knowledge on words etimology).
Also, Middle-Earth Quenya is quite different from Valinor quenya, spoken by the Valinorean noldor.
Noldor in middle-earth due to constant battles and little time to dedicate to the arts of language and lore and due to Sindarin use, the language changed a lot of things.
Sorry if anyhow i looked harsh on my words. I await replies. Thanks.
Namárië.