Quenya is the fictional language Tolkien created for the High Elves.
Tolkien developed Quenya as part of his invented linguistic system for Middle-earth. He based aspects of its sound and structure on languages including Finnish, Latin, and Greek, while giving it its own vocabulary and history. Within the fiction, Quenya is associated especially with the Eldar and the ancient Elves of Valinor.
Quenya is not the same language as Sindarin. Sindarin became the everyday Elvish language of many Elves in Middle-earth, whereas Quenya was associated with learning, ceremony, poetry, and antiquity. Tolkien’s distinction between the languages helps explain why different Elvish names and phrases have different linguistic forms.
Tolkien’s interest in language came before his published fiction. He was a philologist and treated invented languages as evolving systems with sound changes, historical relationships, and dialects. The languages of Middle-earth therefore function not merely as decorative vocabulary but as part of the world’s deep cultural history.