Quote:
Originally Posted by SoundingShores
I have no idea what Tolkien intended, but I think at the very least, it wouldn't have sounded as weird to him as it does to most people. Samwise comes from the Old English sām- + wīs (half-wit). But he may have spelled it differently because he wanted it to be pronounced in the Modern English manner. There's the whole thing with him "translating" LotR into Modern English.
EDIT: The answer may be included in Appendix F. "I have therefore tried to preserve these features by using Samwise and Hamfast, modernizations of ancient English samwís and hámfæst which corresponded closely in meaning." Sounds like an argument for Modern English pronunciation.
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Thankfully you are correct; the first two sentences of Appendix E say "The Westron or Common Speech has been entirely translated into English equivalents. All Hobbit names and [Hobbit] special words are intended to be pronounced accordingly." Appendix E is devoted specifically to words
transcribed from Third Age scripts. So Samwise is in the clear.
But not Isengard, because from the last paragraph of Appendix E part I: "The 'outer' or Mannish names of the Dwarves have been given Northern forms, but the letter-values are those described. So also in the case of the personal and place-names of Rohan (where they have not been modernized)... the modernized forms are easily recognised and are intended to be pronounced as in English... Dunharrow... Shadowfax... Wormtongue."
Isengard is not modernised, despite being "given Northern form", so has to follow the rules of Appendix E... except that Tolkien didn't. ^_^
Interestingly, all this means that "Bilbo" and "Bilba" have different initial vowels: "Bilbo" uses English pronunciation, as in "pill", while "Bilba" is a Third Age word which pronounces its "i" as in "machine" - "Beelbah".
... of course, as the footnote to the Vowels section makes clear, if you read the everything with English pronunciation, you "will err little more than Bilbo, Meriadoc, or Peregrin". So Tolkien was reading his poem with a Shire accent!
hS