aistana

adjective. *blessed

aistana elyë imíca nísi

blessed art thou amongst women

The third line of Aia María, Tolkien’s translation of the Ave Maria prayer. This is a declarative statement. The first word aistana “blessed” is the predicate. The second word elyë “thou” is the subject, the emphatic form of the pronoun lye “you (polite)”. The last two words are the prepositional phrase imíca nísi “among women”, the latter being the plural of nís “woman”. As in the second line, there is no Quenya equivalent of the English word “are (art)” in the final version of the prayer.

Decomposition: Broken into its constituent elements, this phrase would be:

> aistana elyë imíca nís-i = “✱blessed [art] thou among woman-(plural)”

Conceptual Development: The first two versions of the prayer used manna for “blessed” instead of aistana. Tolkien considered several different prepositional elements for English “among”: mil (I deleted), mi (I-II), mitta (III deleted), mika (III) before settling on imíca (IV).

In version I-II, he used another word for “women”: nínaron, apparently genitive plural of an otherwise unattested word nína. In version I, he considered and deleted many variants before settling on nínaron. I’ve omitted them from this discussion because they appear nowhere else, and including them would obscure the development of the phrase. For further details, see VT43/27, 31.

| |  I  | II |III|IV| | |elye|manna|aistana| |{manna na >>}|na manna|nalye|elye| |{mil >>}|mi|{mitta >>} mika|imíca| |[various >>]|nínaron|nísi|

#aista-

verb. to bless

#aista- (2) vb. "to bless", verbal stem isolated from the passive participle aistana "blessed" (VT43:30)

ar aistana i yávë mónalyo yésus

and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus

The fourth line of Aia María, Tolkien’s translation of the Ave Maria prayer. The first word is ar “and”. This is followed by a declarative statement. The second word aistana “blessed” is the predicate. The next two words i yávë “the fruit” are the subject. As in the second line, there is no Quenya equivalent of the English word “is” in the final version of the prayer. Thus, ar aistana i yávë means “and blessed [is] the fruit”.

The next word functions as the subordinate clause: mónalyo “of thy womb”, a combination of móna “womb”, the second person singular possessive suffix -lya and the genitive suffix -o. The final word Yésus is simply a Quenyarized form of “Jesus”.

Decomposition: Broken into its constituent elements, this phrase would be:

> ar aistana i yávë móna-ly(a)-o Yésus = “✱and blessed [is] the fruit womb-your-of Jesus”

Conceptual Development: In the second version, Tolkien considered but rejected a variant form are (II deleted) for ar “and”. The first two versions of the prayer used manna (I-II) for “blessed” instead of aistana (III-IV). Tolkien used several variations for “fruit”: yáva (I-II), yávë (III), yave (IV). In the first two versions of the prayer Tolkien used carva (I-II) for “womb” instead of móna (III-IV).

|  I  | II |III|IV| |ar|{are >>} ar|ar| |manna|aistana| |i| |yáva|yávë|yave| |carvalyo|mónalyo| |Yésus|

-na

suffix. slain

A shorter ending -na also occurs, e.g. nahtana "slain" (VT49:24); the example hastaina "marred" would suggest that *nahtaina is equally possible. In the example aistana "blessed" (VT43:30), -na may be preferred to -ina for euphonic reasons, to avoid creating a second diphthong ai where one already occurs in the previous syllable (*aistaina). In PE17:68, the ending -ina is said to be "aorist" (unmarked as regards time and aspect); the same source states that the shorter ending -na is "no longer part of verbal conjugation", though it obviously survives in many words that are maybe now to be considered independent adjectives. See -na #4.

manna

adjective. *blessed

amanya

adjective. *blessed

manaquenta

adjective. *blessed

nanca

slain

nanca adj. *"slain" (PE17:68); see -na