Neo-Quenya/2-letter words

Neo-Quenya has a number of words that end in a long vowel, but they all have only two letters:

má "hand"

quá "duck"

pé "lip"

ré "day (of 24 hours)"

nyé "bleat"

fé "last hour"

sé "eyeball"

tyé "tea"

pí "fly, insect"

hó "owl"

cú "crescent, arc"

lú "moment"

sú "rushing (of the wind)"

and the proper names Vé en Rú.

The following words also have this form, but in Neo-Quenya they sound old-fashioned, so they are replaced most of the time with the word next to them:

cá "jaw",   better: anca

rá "arm",   better: ranco

ló "night",   better: lómë

fá "air, atmosphere",   better: vilwa

ní "woman",   better: nís

sá "fire",   better: uru

wá "wind",   better: vaiwa

yó "son",   better: yondo

The words rá "lion", tó "wool" en nó "idea" don't belong to this category because they have a stem-form with 3 letters (see Exceptional stems).

They have some special features:

• When the case ending contains a double consonant, the vowel is shortened:

ressë "on a day" (locative)

i mannar "to the hands" (allative)

• In the u-duals the –u joins with the final vowel to make a diphthong:

mau "a pair of hands"

peu "a pair of lips"

• In the plural the –i- also joins with the final vowel:

cuinen "with arcs" (instrumental)

maiva "of hands" (possessive)

In the words in –é this gives us the diphtong –ei– that is very rare in Quenya:

pein "to lips" (dative)

• The genitive singular is not known for most nouns. The words on -é don't give any problems because éo is acceptable:

ré "day" → réo

pé "lip" → péo

Those on -ó have a genitive that is identical to the nominative.

The complete declination for hó "owl" can be found in next table:

	singular	plural	dual	part. plural
nominative	hó	hór	hót	hóli
genitive	hó	hóron	hóto	hólion
possessive	hóva	hoiva	hotwa	hólíva
dative	hón	hoin	hont	hólin
ablative	hollo	hollon(r)	holto	hólillo(n)(r)
allative	honna	honnar	honta	hólinna(r)
locative	hossë	hossen	hotsë	hólisse(n)
instrumental	hónen	hoinen	honten	hólínen
respective	hós	hois	hótes	hólis

The u-duals in this group are declined as follows (we use pé "lip"):

Nom. peu, Gen. peuo, Poss. peuva, Dat. peun,

Abl. peullo, All. peunna, Loc. peussë, Instr. peunen, Resp. peus.

The behaviour of the final long vowel before possessive endings is discussed on the page about Possessive pronouns.

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