Because we all need linguistic discussions at half past midnight.

[oloriel]

... so ladyelleth and me were talking about Quenya. More precisely, the dual case. (You know, the funny little thing between the singular and the plural case. Old English had it. Modern English doesn't. That's how the cookie crumbles.) So anyway, we were discussing whether the dual was used for any old pair of things or just for things that naturally come in pairs.

ladyelleth: I think I've read somewhere that the dual is only used for natural pairs like ears and eyes and hands.
ladyelleth: Tatschaschlik. The Quenya dual is used for expressing natural pairs. So when talking about the two eyes of one person, in Classical Quenya is used the dual, instead the ordinary plural is used when talking about eyes from different persons.
So that's why the dual is translated not simply by the number two but by "a pair of"
oloriel: Tolkien used it for ships too, though, and those aren't exactly natural couples.
oloriel: And leaves, which rather appear in bunches naturally. And all in all, that "eyes from different persons" thing seems a little far-fetched to me. I mean, how often do I talk about TWO eyes that belong to TWO persons?
oloriel: Ok, if two eye-patched pirates meet up, that might be relevant, but in general I'd assume that x people have x times two eyes, so you'd use the ordinary plural anyway.
ladyelleth: True that.
oloriel: Or the hands thing. Unless Maedhros and Beren meet up for Onehanded Anonymous, I'd think two people would have more than two hands between them anyway, right?
ladyelleth: ... QotD?


Although there were many, many potential QotDs at the party today already.

... I so should be in bed.

Happy birthday again, eliathanis!
The pasta was divine.

Comments

[ladyelleth.livejournal.com]

Der andere über die ATS ist auch nicht wirklich irgendwie relevant für Quenya - der Brief ist also doch nicht nur in einer Ausgabe von Vinyar Tengwar abgedruckt? Nice. ;)