Quenya
cemendë tambe erumandë
on Earth as [it is] in Heaven
Element in
- Q. Átaremma
Elements
Word Gloss cemen “the earth; earth, the earth; earth, [ᴹQ.] soil” tambë “*as, so” Eruman “Heaven” Variations
- {kemende ar yé >> ye >>} ier menelle ar tér {kemenze >>} cemenze ✧ VT43/08
- ier menelze {ar ter >>} tier cemenze ✧ VT43/09
- {ier >>} ya(n) {menelze >>} menelde {tier >>} ar san {cemenze >>} cemende ✧ VT43/10
- san {cemendel >>} cemende ya melelde na ✧ VT43/11
- san cemende ya menelde na ✧ VT43/11
- cemende sívë [>> tambe] menelde [>> Erumande] ✧ VT43/12
- cemende tambe Erumande ✧ VT43/12
The fifth line of Átaremma, Tolkien’s Quenya translation of the Lord’s Prayer. The first word cemendë “on Earth” is an assimilated locative form of cemen “earth”. The word tambë likely corresponds to “as”, while Erumandë “in Heaven” is an assimilated locative form of Eruman “Heaven”. The English words “it is” are not represented in the Quenya phrase.
Decomposition: Broken into its constituent elements, this phrase would be:
> cemen-dë tambe Eruman-dë = “✱earth-on as [it is] Heaven-in”
Conceptual Development: In earlier versions of this phrase (I-V), Tolkien used menel for “Heaven”. Elsewhere, Tolkien said that menel referred to the dome of the sky or “the firmament”, and therefore was not proper for “Heaven” (MR/387, PE17/152), which is probably why he changed the word to Eruman in version VI of the prayer.
Tolkien experimented with various ways of comparing Earth to Heaven: ier ... ar tér (I), ier ... tier (IIa), ya(n) ... ar san (IIb) and san ... ya (III-IV), each probably meaning something like “as ... so ...”, as suggested by Wynne, Smith and Hostetter (VT43/16-7). In versions V and VI Tolkien switched to a single word “as”: sívë (V) and tambë (VI).
The English words “it is” are only expressed in version III-IV, with the Quenya verb na, appearing at the end of the phrase as is typical of declarative statements.
| | I |IIa|IIb|III|IV|V|VI| |{yé >> ye >>}|ier|ya(n)|san| | |menelle|menelze|menelde|cemende| |ar tér|tier|ar san|ya|sívë|tambe| |{kemenze >>}|cemenze|cemende|melelde|Erumande| | |na| |