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Originally Posted by Fordim
I rather suspect that Tolkien spelled it that way not because it was old and archaic the way that "thees" and "thous" are (that is, nobody uses them anymore), but because it was how the word was spelled in his own childhood in the part of the world he grew up in.
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As a Yorkshireman I can't let this pass! thee, thine, thou (usually contracted to tha') are still common in Yorkshire dialect, as are middle english words like 'lake'/'laking' = play/playing. ('That's thine, tha' 'nus' = 'That's your's, you know'. 'Gi' o'er lakin' abaht' = 'Give over (stop) playing around')
Not perhaps a trivial point given Tolkien's interest in the way language both changes & survives over periods.
On to the 'loneliness' of the nazgul. One thing that I find interesting in Tolkien is that names have meanings - every place & personal name
means something, & often has a story attatched, a history. We only know two of the nazgul the Witch King of Angmar, & Khamul (&isn't Khamul a title) Do any of them still have personal names, or have they gone the way of the Mouth of Sauron? If they have no names, they have no lifestory, no personal history, no memories - were they married, did they have children? We'll never know about most of them, & we have very little knowledge about the Witch King - ironically, his enemies probably know more about him than he does himself. Imagine having no identity, no past, being simply driven by the will of Sauron. I wonder if the terror they inspire in others is perhaps down to those others catching some kind of glimpse into what it is to be a Nazgul. When you encounter a nazgul, its like looking suddenly into nothingness.