Noob Needs help

[Alfirin]

Originally Posted by Pitchwife

Alfirin, Quenya and Sindarin aren't so much 'old' and 'modern' forms of the same language as distinct languages, about as different from each other in sound and grammar as, say, Latin and Welsh, although they're both descended from the same ancestor language, Primitive Quendian (just like both Latin and Welsh can be traced back to Proto-Indo-European). But I suppose you can say that Quenya is more 'classical' in so far as it's less changed from PQ than Sindarin is, and also it has at the time of LotR become a language of lore and ceremony rather than a living language - again, think of Latin in medieval and early modern Europe (actually, Tolkien occasionally called it 'Elf-latin', drawing attention to the analogy).

Okay I understand that, I wasn't actually thinking of the two as being connected (when my mind said Old Elvish it was actually thiunking in terms of "the Elvish spoken by the Old Elves" versus "The elvish spoken by the modern elves" (if one take LOTR as being "modern times" for the Elvish people, as it is thier last age) But that still brings up the question, if you wanted to "talk like an elf" wouldn't you want to learn Sindarin, not Quenya? Quenya sounds like a Ceremonial/Academic langauge in LOTR times (as you said like Latin in Europe). The closest analouge I can think of would be trying to converse in Church/Academic Latin if you hit a time warp and suddenly found yourself in ancient Rome, (or possibly trying to speak Hebrew in Israel when the only Hebrew you know is what you learned in synagouge.)