I find the notion of the
Valar not 'needing' language intriguing, and also more believable than that they communicated through verbal speech. Indeed, as I understand it they only took physical form in order to either fulfill their duties in
Arda better (
Oromë hunting), or to enjoy the arts possible for a physical body (
Nienna dancing). Later, when the Firstborn came to be, they took physical form (I assume) in order to better interact with them.
I see what you mean and maybe this is also what
Tolkien was thinking when he decided the Valar did not make their own language.
It was sometime between 1951/52 and 1958 that the Quendi came to have invented their own language. I have been unable to narrow it down more than that based on the Coming of the
Elves portions of Annals of
Aman and LQ. Maybe someone else can?
It is very philological and pleasing to think that the Eldar named things as they saw them, and that their language was that rich from the very start ...
I agree, and do wonder if this was the primary reason Tolkien came to have them make their own language. But even that aside, I think it is pleasing because of what it does for the Quendi as a people... that they were lovers of the art of making
languages is a cool part of who they are. It may be (though I can't find anything in HoME about the idea of
Valarin being dropped, all I know of is that Letter) that both things were factors 1) Nice to have elves create their own lambe and 2) decided the Valar should not have had a language of their own. This is the main thing I have been trying to figure out recently. I do not doubt that the first reason was one of his reasons, and I expect it was the primary.
It was in 1959-60 That Quendi and Eldar and Osanwe-kenta were written, and it was in the 50s that Tolkien began to write more about
spirits and nature of incarnates and
Ainur. I think something like this may have happend: he decided he wanted the Quendi to make their own lambe. Then he thought there was no use for a Valarin lambe to have existed. Then he started to give thought to telepathy since he was writing more about spiritual stuff, and decided it must be a pretty big part of things, and then from that had to explain why Incarnates use/make speech if they can communicate without it, and he did so by explaining that bodily forms get in the way of it, and some other things. In the case of
men the ability of telepathy is even less than it is with elves, and it is most natural and easy for the Valar even when arrayed, but he wrote about how it is the nature of incarnates to make speech, a necessity for their forms, so the Valar, when in a form like the Children (which is the form they most often took) woud have ended up making speech for those reasons
Pengolodh gives.
This is what Pengolodh says on the reasons for why the Valar should have made a language:
From Quendi and Eldar
'Even if we had no knowledge of it,' he says, 'we could not reasonably doubt that the Valar had a lambe of their own. We know that all members of their order were incarnated by their own desire, and that most of them chose to take forms like those of the Children of
Eru, as they name us. In such forms they would take on all characters of the Incarnates that were due to the co-operation of hroa with indwelling fea, and otherwise the assumption of these forms would have been needless, and they arrayed themselves in this manner long before they had any cause to appear before us visibly. Since, then, the making of a lambe is the chief character of an Incarnate, the Valar, having arrayed them in this manner, would inevitably during their long sojourn in Arda have made a lambe for themselves.
And he also says:
Even when using bodily forms they had less need of any tengwesta than had the Incarnate; and they had made a lambe for the pleasure of exercising the powers and skills of the bodily form, and (more remotely) for the better understanding of the minds of the Incarnate when they should appear, rather than for any need that they felt among themselves.
...Of course I could be dead wrong and the idea of the Valar not needing their own lambe could have preceeded,
and been the primary reason for the Quendi making their own. The fact he did not end up changing it back to Valarin being the source of the
elvish languages, might be an indication that isn't so, but I think this is little evidence. It could be he had by then decided he liked the idea of elves making their own language. I'm out of my reckoning and maybe someone who knows can give a better answer.
).
