Linguistics Hcs: Voseo In (fëanorian) Quenya

linguistics hcs: voseo in (fëanorian) quenya

i am currently taking a course on spanish dialects and yesterday we talked about "voseo" which in oversimplified terms is a variation in 2nd person informal pronouns and verbs, e.g. tú tienes -> vos tenís. the rules and commonality of voseo depend largely on the region, so in some places it is the default, in some places it is not used or barely used at all, and in some places it is a complicated little shit (for example, here in chile, you will sometimes hear the tú pronoun with the vos form of the verb, e.g. tú tenís, and the vos pronoun is reserved for Very familiar or informal situations).

my knowledge of quenya grammar is pre-elementary, so everything i am about to say is based exclusively on what i think would be fun, but!!!! let's go back to valinor in the years of the trees. while i'm pretty sure tolkien never made a distinction between formal/informal 2nd person in quenya, i do think the noldor would have naturally created one (they were big fans of their monarchy which would lead to quite the hierarchical society, they canonically mess around w grammatical rules for fun, and i also can't imagine they wouldn't employ a high level of formality when speaking to the ainur or at least the valar in particular).

now, i am a big fan of the hc that fëanor created the exclusive 1st person plural in quenya (as in "WE do this but YOU the listener do NOT") so he could make subtle grammatical jabs at indis and her kids. we also know the fëanorians used linguistic differences as political markers (see: shibboleth of fëanor). ALL THIS TO SAY, i think fëanor also created a quenya equivalent of voseo. it's not an exact equivalent because of historical context and reasoning for the shift in spanish, but suspend ur disbelief. here's what i think happened in quenya:

c. the noldor's arrival in valinor, they introduced a formal 2nd person form ("usted" for the sake of comparing this to spanish) (this was probably also picked up by the vanyar, if u care) (i will think about telerin languages another day, i'm already giving myself a headache)

fëanor, in an effort to distinguish his house and followers from the rest of the finwëans (specifically the nolofinwëans bc this is fëanor we're talking about), introduced a More Familiar informal 2nd person (see: chilean voseo) used only among the fëanorians

fëanorian "voseo" functions very similarly to chilean voseo overall. the pronoun itself is reserved for very informal/familiar contexts, close relationships, etc, but the VERB takes over from the standard informal form ("tú" conjugations) in the fëanorian dialect as another political marker

so for example, fëanor would "vos tenís" his kids, but "tú tenís" fingolfin's kids

i am inclined to say that this shift happens after the unchaining of melkor, when the political divide is a lot more dramatic, and therefore the whole thing is very controversial, but definitely is the standard in formenos during the exile

could also be used for dramatic effect

imagine the scenes if fëanor addressed fingolfin w the Fëanorian Super Informal Pronoun in "get thee gone and take thy due place"

imagine the scenes if fingolfin addressed fëanor w the Fëanorian Super Informal Pronoun in "thou shalt lead and i will follow"!!!!!

the fëanorians in beleriand definitely preserved this, bc of course they did

whether this phenomenon exists in other languages besides quenya i am unsure

i am too exhausted after all that to write any sort of proper conclusion. i hope it made sense. feel free to ask questions or add things on. live laugh linguistics