(Unlike Galadriel who went, got in a snit, and came back again.)

Huh. Was this before or after the events of RotK?

So who are the Noldor, and what are the different races of Elves? Which of them speak Quenya and which Sindarin?

Lessee, off the top of my head: There is elfs, and at base they're all the same, and all invited to the Eternal Party in the undying lands. Way back when, some elves went all the way to the party, some of them got distracted before they arrived, and some of them didn't bother starting out. Then, some uncounted years later, some of the elves who were at the party had a screaming argument, and headed back to Middle-earth.

(There was drama! There was kin-strife! There were the Helcaraxe Ice Capades [tm Katie], in which some of the exiles took the boats and left the rest of the exiles behind, and the remainder of the exiles had to walk across the ice way in the frozen north! Galadriel was one of those walkers, FYI.)

[eta: Long past history. When Galadriel goes party-ward at the end of Return, she intends to stay there.]

The Noldor are the party-exiles. In Middle-earth, they're special elves, because they've been to the party, and "still have the light of it in their faces". Their children count as Noldor too: Elrond, Arwen, etc. [Elrond is a lot younger than Galadriel, but he's still pretty damn special.]

Then there are grey-elves (the ones that got distracted) and green elves (the ones who never left the house). Cirdan the Shipwright is one of the former, and is that random elf guy standing to the right of frame during the Grey Havens scenes in the movie; Thranduil and Legolas are the latter. [They're hot shit, you'll notice, but the Noldor shit is smokin' by comparison.]

As for languages, Quenya is sort of like the Latin of Middle-earth. Nobody speaks it conversationally, but Frodo's invocation of the Elvish flashlight and Strider's quatrain at his crowning are both in Quenya. I think much of the lore is supposed to be written in Quenya. But elves all speak Sindarin conversationally, and in the Faramir chapters it is sort of implied that much of Gondor speaks Sindarin, or some simplified dialect of Sindarin, in addition to the default mannish "westron" language.

[edited to prove I'm not illiterate, and to add a few details in brackets]

Then, some uncounted years later, some of the elves who were at the party had a screaming argument, and headed back to Middle-earth.

Showing that elves are much like people and feuds lasting thousands of years can often be traced to things like What Glorfindel Said About Our Neville.

Nutty is so much more fun than The Silmarillion.

So, before Thranduil was King of Mirkwood was he one of Thingol's people?

Calli, you have no idea how much Tolkien nerds love to show off.

We really, really do.

I think part of it is that we're just as geeky as, say, Star Trek geeks, but when a Star Trek geek goes off about phasers and warp coils and stuff, they immediately ping as geeky*, whereas when a Tolkien geek goes off about the Noldor, and the Silmarils, and who's the son of who and what happened when, it at least sounds sort of scholarly. For that, we Tolkien geeks endlessly thank the good professor and his mastery of language.

(*ETA: And I should know, having pontificated at length about those subjects, too)

And you don't think scholarly pings as geeky? I think we must know different scholars.

I think "history geek" pings differently than "Star Trek geek" does, and Tolkien geekdom pings closer to the former.

Oh yes. WHat Jess said. I'm not saying Tolkien geeks don't ping as geeks, just that they sound much more erudite while doing it.

What Jess said. As an occasional war-gamer, I can tell you that while history buffs don't always have a lot of use for sci-fi/fantasy, Tolkien is a big ol' exception.