I’m posting the first half of this entry for purposes of discussion, because I’m very much on the on fence about how to address Neo-Quenya.

The subjunctive mood is used for various “unreal” (conditional or hypothetical) statements: things where the speaker is uncertain whether or not they are true. These are slightly different from the optative (things the speaker hopes or wishes were true) and the imperative (actions the speaker demands be done).

An optative is the expression of a wish, and Quenya usually formulates such expressions using the adverb nai “may it be that, be it that, maybe”. Its most famous use is in nai hiruvalye Valimar, nai elye hiruva “maybe thou shalt find Valimar, maybe even thou shalt find it” in the Namárië poem (LotR/378). Tolkien described this formulation in several places:

Modality is a linguistic concept having to do with the possibility, necessity or permissibility of an action. English expresses modality through a set of special auxiliary verbs called the “modal verbs”, followed by the verbal action:

A reflexive formation is one in which the subject and object of the verb are the same. In English, reflexive pronouns are formed with the suffix “-self” as in “the man washed himself”. Quenya has a similar set of reflexive pronouns from with the prefix im- or in- (VT47/37) that presumably would be used the same way: i atan sove inse.

P79 is skipped because it is another small bridge chapter introducing verbal moods.