Henneth Annûn Story Archive

While flipping through the admittedly incomplete Vocabularies at Ardalambion, I ran across the adjective sinta, "short," and began to wonder. Does Quenya differentiate between "short" with regard to length and "short" with regard to height? That is, could a short Elf compose a short poem (with sinta as the adjective for both the subject and the object)? I saw that anda and halla mark the distinction between "long" and "tall" in Quenya, as in English. (E.g. You can drive on a long road, but not a tall one), but did not find a corresponding distinction for "short." Any help would be wonderful, assuming of course, that the above makes sense. This is always a questionable proposition. HF

 

For what it's worth, sinta comes from the same root (STINTÂ) as Sindarin thinnas, the term for a mark indicating the short duration of a vowel. Based on that (and only that, it should be emphasised), I would say tentatively that there is a distinction between length-"short" and height-"short", and that sinta refers to the first of these only. -Aerlinnel

 

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