A term for the older form of Quenya spoken in the centuries before the exile of the Noldor, preserved mainly in writing (PE18/75, PE19/68). This name is a compound parma “book” and questa “speech”. This stage of the language is also known as “Classical Quenya” (see the Plotz Letter, VT6/14).
Conceptual Development: In The Etymologies and the Lhammas from the 1930s, this term was given as ᴹQ. Parmalambe “Book-tongue” (Ety/PAR, LR/172). In contemporaneous linguistic documents from the 1930s, the term appeared as Parmaqestarin (PE22/15, 61) or ᴹQ. Parmaqesta (PE18/25; PE19/29; PE22/61). The latter term reappeared in linguistic documents from the 1950s (PE18/75, PE19/68).
book-language