[jallanite]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

Doesn't Christopher explain his choice? It is a bit indistinct but I have heard this before and I thought he did.. but not having done much (ie virtually no) AS it didn't sink in.

No he didn’t really explain it. Brian Sibley noted that he had written back to Christopher Tolkien pointing out that J. R. R. Tolkien had used the pronunciation The[ŋɡ]el which he felt sounded better than The[ndʒ]el and that Christopher Tolkien indicated that the change was acceptable to him. He provided no reason. Perhaps this is an Old English word of disputed pronunciation or perhaps Christopher Tolkien realized that he had perhaps mispronounced it.

Sibley then suggested that perhaps J. R. R. Tolkien was intending to give the name in genuine Rohirric as opposed to genuine Old English. That seems to me to be most improbable. Thengel is a genuine Old English name. It is also one that seems to me to be equally possible to be read either way in both Old English and Modern English.

I will see what I can find out from reputable sources.

I don't suppose it is at all relevant that west midlands accents now tend to sound ng closer to separate consonants than the IPA hooked n sound - sin-ging

Not that I can see. Christopher Tolkien quite definitely reads The[ndʒ]el, not something like The[ŋɡɡ]el or The[ng]el. And what he reads is one of the two pronunciations possible for the word under pronunciation guides which recognize both pronunciations as possible for ng in Old English as in Modern English.

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

You're rather missing the point. The absence of J in A-S is relevant to the extent that there was no alternate orthography for G which might shed light on the issue, unlike, say ME G-W.

Well, I now get what you were trying to indicate.

That ng is sometimes pronounced [ndʒ] in Old English is given by many pronunciation guides.

. By many, yes, but not all: that's the point- we really don't know and it's a matter of deduction.

Of course it is to some extent a matter of deduction. That is not the same as indicating that one deduction is as good as another (which indeed you don’t actually say). The two pronunciations [ndʒ] and [ŋɡ] for ng are found in more than one source and one of each is supported by one of the two Tolkiens, who were both experts in Old English.

Your gut belief that [dʒ] is not found in Old English has, as yet, no support from a trustworthy Old English pronunciation guide. The indications I have found give [dʒ] as only occurring in Old English following [n], which fits with Christopher Tolkien’s pronunciation.

Is it possible that when shown that your belief that [dʒ] probably did not occur in Old English conflicts with definite statements that it does, following [n], that you are now attempting to claim that because these are only deductions, they aren’t necessarily so but that your gut feeling has more likelihood if being true? At the moment, I don’t accept that. I want something better.

(Dotted G of course is a modern convention, not found in the sources)

Your information on dotted ġ was already indicated by me as I wanted to make it clear what was meant by “dotted ġ″in the passage I was linking to. You should read posts more carefully before answering.