Movement
Verbs encode action in time. Each language does it differently — and the differences reveal what Tolkien valued.
Pick a root, a tense, and a pronoun. The verb carries subject, tense, and aspect in a single word.
Two verb classes, five tenses
Basic verbs have consonant-final roots (quet-, tul-, car-). A-stem verbs end in -a (lanta-, ora-). Different conjugation, same tense system.
The past tense uses nasal infixion — an n inserted before the final consonant: quet- → quentë. This is Latin/Greek, not Finnish. The verb system is where Quenya changes its source language.
The perfect tense augment — prefixing a copy of the stem vowel — comes from Ancient Greek: λέλυκα (leluka, "I have loosened").
Aragorn's exclamation at his coronation. One word = one sentence. Step through it.
Five morphemes. Tense, aspect, subject, object — all in one word. No separate "I" or "it" or "have." Turkish does the same: yapabilecekmiydim = "was I going to be able to do it?" The morphemes compose. The seams stay clean.
Where Quenya stacks suffixes, Sindarin changes the root itself. Pick a verb to see all four forms.
The past tense tells the story
Past tense of car- (to do): agor. Not a suffix — the whole word changed. Root vowel shift, prefix. Ablaut, like English sing/sang/sung. Meanwhile ped- becomes pent — nasal infixion, an n appearing inside the root.
Both languages descend from Common Eldarin. Quenya was preserved in the Blessed Realm. Sindarin evolved in Middle-earth for millennia.
When the Noldor returned, Sindarin had changed so much they could barely understand it. Thingol banned Quenya after learning of the Kinslaying. Quenya survived as a language of lore and names.