mittanya- vb. "to lead" (+ allative: lead into) (VT43:10, 22; Tolkien may have abandoned this form in favour of tulya-)
Quenya
mittanya-
verb. *to lead (into), induce
mittanya-
verb. to lead
álamë tulya úsahtienna
[and] lead us not into temptation
The ninth line of Átaremma, Tolkien’s Quenya translation of the Lord’s Prayer. The first word Álamë is a combination of the negative imperative particle ála “not” and the pronoun me “us”. It is followed by the aorist form of the verb tulya “lead” and the allative form úsahtienna “into temptation” of the noun úsahtië “temptation”. Thus, Álamë tulya úsahtienna is more literally “✱imperative-not-us lead temptation-into”. In the final version of the phrase, there is no Quenya element representing the English word “and”.
Decomposition: Broken into its constituent elements, this phrase would be:
> á-la-më tulya úsahtie-nna = “✱do-not-us lead temptation-into”
Conceptual Development: The word ar “and” appears only in version I of the prayer. It was omitted from all later versions for unknown reasons.
The earliest version used a different negative imperative particle úa (I-IIa). Versions IIa-IV also suffixed the pronominal element lye “you (polite)” to the imperative element, as was also the case in line 6 of the prayer. In all early versions of the prayer (I-IV), the object pronoun me appeared after the verb.
The early versions (I-IV) used a different verb mittanya- for “lead”. Tolkien considered several words for “temptation”: terfantië (I deleted) and terpellië (I-IIa), insangarë and sahtië (V deleted), before settling on úsahtië (V-VI). All appear with the allative suffix -nna: “(in)to temptation”.
| | I |IIa|IIb|III|IV|V|VI| |ar| | |{úna >>}|úa|úalye|alalye|Álalye|Álame| |mittanya|tulya| |{men >>}|me| | |{terfantie >>}|terpellienna|insangarenna|{sahtienna >>} úsahtienna|
úa
do not thou lead us
úa, with 1st person suffix úalyë, imperative particle á, a combined with the negation ú- to express a prohibition (úalyë mittanya me, *"do not thou lead us", VT43:9, 21-22). However, Tolkien apparently abandoned úa in favour of ala, alalyë, q.v. (later he also used the form áva for "don't"). Compare ua.
A verb used in drafts of Quenya prayers from the 1950s in the phrase {úalye >>} álalye mittanya me {terpellienna >>} insangarenna “lead us not into temptation” (VT43/8-11). Wynne, Smith, and Hostetter suggested it is probably connected to [ᴱQ./ᴹQ.] mitta “inwards, into”, so probably meaning “lead into = cause to go into”, or perhaps “cause to give into” [with the second element being a variant of anta- “give”]. In later iterations of the prayer, mittanya- was replaced by tulya- “lead = ✱bring”.
Neo-Quenya: Despite its replacement, I think mittanya- may remain viable as a verb for purposes of Neo-Quenya, with a sense of “lead = ✱guide or persuade [someone into a situation]” as opposed to tulya- “lead = ✱bring [someone or something to someplace]”. I personally suspect Tolkien intended mittanya- to mimic Latin “inducas” from the Medieval Lord’s prayer meaning “in-draw/lead”; this Latin verb became Modern English “induce”.