Thread: Isengard no!
View Single Post
Old 06-12-2025, 04:27 PM   #20
Snowdog
Emperor of the South Pole
 
Snowdog's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: The Western Shore of Lake Evendim
Posts: 655
Snowdog is a guest of Tom Bombadil.
Pipe So you're saying Tolkien is wrong?

Quote:
Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin View Post
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.
So you're saying J. R. R. Tolkien is wrong about his own works?
Snowdog is offline   Reply With Quote