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Old 05-04-2004, 07:39 PM   #241
littlemanpoet
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Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: The Edge of Faerie
Posts: 7,072
littlemanpoet is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.littlemanpoet is battling Black Riders on Weathertop.
Tolkien That's the trouble with an old language....

... it just doensn't have the rich vocabulary we're all used to with modern English.

Blackmail? huh, that's not bad itself, actually, although I think "mail" is a French Norman word. (1066 and all that).

Black guard? again, norman french.

Turn-coat, maybe? No, that's traitoring.

Take basic English and compound, maybe. Um, it's a demand.... um..... order? he bade him... um..... to bid ......

Anglo Saxon "spanan" = urge, persuade, entice, but that doesn't help us at all. Arg! If only my Bright's glossary went both ways! oh heck, Norman English is good enough. Tolkien used lots of it. - - guard. tobacco was borrowing form Spanish, I think. So do your best.

insist? oh, I give up.
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