The elven languages did not use written or verbal communications exclusively, or even primarily…much of the nuances which are so very important to our communication lay in what I have come to refer as “sendings”…projections of thought, emotion, mental images sent directly from one being to the next. What verbal communications we did use were used to place emphasis on different aspects of a sending, or to add a certain nuance. You mentioned in a previous message…it was a posting to the “Gates” mailing list, I believe…that you sang a song which just could not be expressed in writing…this is but one aspect of the elven tongue…many of the verbal forms of our communication either just cannot be reproduced accurately from a human body, or the variances in pitch, tempo, the subtleties of afflection, just cannot be discerned by the human ear…indeed, our “language” has more in common with music than it does with human speech.
To get a closer feeling for what communication was like, sit down and listen to Beethoven’s Fifth, or the 1812 Overture, or Enya’s “The Memory of Trees”…don’t just hear the tones or sounds, but listen…not only with your ear, but with your spirit and with your heart…let the music move through you…become one with you. Then, I believe, you may get a feeling of what it was for us to communicate, and in so doing, understand, at least a little bit, what it is we have sacrificed for the good of our people…
I have included a graphical file (in GIF format) of the “word” used to describe our home realm in ancient documents…I hope you find it helpful, and I’m sorry I was unable to give you a simpler answer…”