Yeah, but ... it's fake

[Thinlómien]

Originally Posted by Shelob

But to my knoweldge no one's mother tongue is Quenya, people have to learn Quenya and don't grow up speaking it. As with any language you learn later in life it, therefore, is not as natural for you -- true after years and years of speaking Spanish it would become naturaler for me but it would never be as natural as English. It's because the section of our brains which learns languages is most malleable when we're really young, by the time we're really old enough to sit down and study a language that part of our brain has become fairly set in its ways and we have to force it to learn something new. A language which no one knows naturally (grew up speaking) can never be quite as "real" as a language people have learned naturally.

The new Barrow-Downs challenge: Every 'downer has to master quenya. When/if they get children, they must teach the language to them first before any other language. Slowly, but firmly, we'd have a small population whose mother tongue is quenya. Is anyone in?