Thread: Isengard no!
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Old 06-12-2025, 07:42 AM   #19
William Cloud Hicklin
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William Cloud Hicklin is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.William Cloud Hicklin is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.William Cloud Hicklin is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
I am not sure what Tolkien was thinking in that recording! Because - all discussions of Appendix E aside - Isengard is definitely not Sindarin, nor is it Westron. It's Rohirric, that is, Old English. (The Sindarin name is Angrenost, a literal translation; both mean Westron/English "iron fortress.")

But there is no question that in OE, I is the frontmost of fronted vowels; it has a long and a short form but those forms are [i] and [ɪ], that is roughly "ee" and "ih." Doesn't matter that modern German would render its cognate Eisen; German and English vowels drifted apart a long time ago.
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