View original postSo everybody knows that Tolkien was an expert on languages, right? That he made up languages for the elves and everyone else in Middle Earth and rather than have them speaking English like he had to write them doing ANYWAY, because no one would read the damn books, he came up with Sindarin & FinnishQuenya,but if you don't speak Quenya or Finnish, it REALLY looks like Finnish because why not two languages? Okay, but since he's a much better linguist than a geographer and doesn't want to have to think up more than one elf country, he had to come up with a reason for there to be two elf languages (but Gonder & Dale & Bree all speak the same language). And the reason for that, is the divisions of the elves at the dawn of the First Age, before anyone was keeping track of Ages in Middle Earth. See, first they divided into the Eldar & the Avarri, the former traveling west into Beleriand and beyond to Tirion, Alqualonde & Eressea in Aman. Then they divided along the way, with some Eldar staying east of the Misty Mountains and some stopping in Beleriand and some passing over the great sea to Aman. And because of this geographical estrangement, their languages changed. The Noldor, Vanyar & Falmari Teleri kept speaking Quenya, although there is a line that says the Falmari's speech changed on Eressea before they were able to cross the sea and build Alqualonde. But anyway, over in Aman, they still spoke Quenya, which since their own name for Elves was "Quendi" meaning people who speak, I assume Quenya means speech or soemthing like that. Meanwhile, back in Beleriand, the Elves become known as the Sindar, the Gray Elves, because their king is Elwe Singollo or Elu Thingol (because languages), and their speech becomes known as Sindarin. And then the Noldor come back to Beleriand and we get the two different languages, and somehow, the Noldor get really good at speaking Sindarin and so that becomes the lingua franca of the elves (they also use it when speaking to the Dwarves, because they have trouble learning Dwarven and the Dwarves think it's easier to learn Sindarin than to teach Elves to speak Dwarf - because that makes sense, that Middle Earth's master race and Firstborn Children of Iluvatar can't learn another language but Dwarves can. ANYWAY, eventually, Thingol finds out why the Noldor came back and is pissed and so he outlaws Quenya. No one is allowed to speak Quenya if they are under his rule or want to have any dealings with his people, and the Noldor, all proud and haughty and in this fix because they don't take no for an answer are just fine with that and start using Sindarin except for their rulers among themselves for like Elf ceremonies I guess? So Quenya falls into disuse and becomes what Tolkien himself calls Elf Latin.