[< Previous Phrase] Átaremma [Next Phrase >]

---

The third line of Átaremma, Tolkien’s Quenya translation of the Lord’s Prayer. The first word aranielya “thy kingdom” is the 2nd person singular polite form of aranië “kingdom”. It is followed by the word na, serving a subjunctive or imperative function, and tuluva, the future tense of tul- “to come”. This future tense probably reflects the fact that God’s kingdom is not yet manifest on Earth, and its literal meaning may be “*be it that thy kingdom will come”.

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

aranie-lya na tul-uva = “*kingdom-thy be come-(future)”

Conceptual Development: In earlier versions of this phrase, Tolkien vacillated over whether to use á or na for the subjunctive/imperative element. He also considered other words for “kingdom”: túrinasta and túrindië. Finally, he used aorist forms or “double imperative” forms of tul-, such as tule or á tula, adopting the future tense only in version V.

Tolkien experimented with different word orders for this phrase in different versions of the prayer. In versions I-IIb, he used particle-verb-subject, while in the version III-VI he used subject-particle-verb. The reasons for the different orders is unclear.

	I	IIa	IIb	III	IV	V	VI
{na >>}	nā	na	á	túrindielya		aranielya
{túrinastalya >>}	túle	tule	tula	á		na
{tūle >>}	túrinastalya			tuluva