Quettar home page (original) (raw)

crossorigin="anonymous">Quettar was founded in 1980 by Susan Rule as the Bulletin of the Linguistic Fellowship of the Tolkien Society. Under the successive editorships of Susan Rule, Steve Pillinger, Michael Poxon, David Doughan and Julian Bradfield, it was published three or four times a year (nominally) until 1995, when the last published issue (number 49) appeared.

_Quettar_’s aim was described thus on its back cover:

QUETTAR is Quenya, or ‘High-Elven’. It means ‘words’, and is the bulletin of the Linguistic Fellowship of the Tolkien Society, whose members are referred to as Quendili, which means ‘lovers of language’ or ‘lovers of Quenya’, (though there are some Sindarindili among us). Those who describe themselves as philologists tend to say Lambendili. Feanorian calligraphers are known (perhaps inaccurately) as Tengwardili, runemasters as Certatúri.

The languages which principally interest us are those sub-created by J. R. R. Tolkien, including:

Quenya	Khuzdul
Qenya	Adûnaic
Sindarin	Rohirric
Nandorin	Wose-speech
Wood-Elven	Arctic
Telerin	Black Speech
Eldarissa	Common Speech / Westron
Goldogrin	Other Mannish languages

This also involves a degree of interest in Finnish, Welsh, Old English and other ‘real world’ languages. We stress ‘interest’. While expertise is welcome, in order to become a Quendil all you need is love. We trust that knowledge will follow.

Back issues

Back issues of Quettar were not routinely available for many years. In the 2000s, I started on the task of scanning the originals or copies. For various reasons, this ground to a halt after the fourth volume, but is now complete. The back issues are published as print-on-demand, because some issues contain copyright material, and our permission requests at the time did not include electronic distribution.

However, one commonly requested back issue is the Special 1 on the writing systems of Middle-Earth. This is now available: <special1.pdf>.

If you have a special need, for research, for just one or two back issues, please mail me (user back-issues, domain quettar.org).

NEWS Feb 2022: Volume V is now published – see below. These issues have been recreated from the original source files, and may not be precisely identical to the originals in fine details of layout.

The complete Quettar is published in five volumes:

Volume I, containing issues 1 to 10 (originally published in 1980 to 1981). Volume I.

Volume II, containing issues 11 to 20 (originally published in 1981 to 1984). Volume II.

Volume III, containing issues 21 to 30 and Specials 1 and 2 (originally published in 1984 to 1988)/ Volume III.

Volume IV, containing issues 31 to 40 (originally published in 1988 to 1990). Volume IV.

Volume V, containing issues 41 to 49 (originally published in 1991 to 1995). Volume V.

Problems?

The back issues in Volumes I to IV were scanned from paper copies, some of which are faint in places. If you find some important piece of text that you can’t read, let me know, and I’ll try to work it out and put a note here. Volume V was regenerated from source files, and may not be precisely identical to the originals: if you have originals, and notice any difference, please let me know.

Index to back issues

An index to issues 1–48 of Quettar, compiled by Antony Appleyard, is in <qindex.txt>.

Notification of further availability

If you wish to be notified of any other formats (e.g. electronic) of back issues, or indeed of any future publication under the_Quettar_ name, please subscribe using this form. Your email address will be used for this purpose only.

Julian Bradfield.

Last modified: Sat Feb 25 10:04:58 GMT 2023