[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by Huinesoron

But, the source actually says that the Atani "still used their Mannish speeches", so that's out, and Form is right - there are Men at the Mouths of Sirion.

I love it when my Tolkien instincts are proven right--even if I over-hedged myself by saying "absent any definitive statement they were NOT" (since we have a definitive statement that they were).



I still think there's room for more than one source of transmission, and that Eärendil and Elwing are each unlikely to have learned it from their parents. They could easily represent the two streams (i.e. an "Elven" source: probably a better vocabulary, a purer grammar--closer to what Bëor himself actually spoke, and a "Mannish" source: Bëorian refugees, speaking a living, if less educated, language). There's certainly plausible motivation for the last Heir of Barahir and the last Heir of Bregolas to have wanted to learn the language for their own reasons--and it's absolutely the sort of desire that their circumstances and Elvish halves would have made easy and possible.

Elwing can easily be imagined to have motivation out of reverence for memories of her Father--there's a good fanfiction nugget in her hearing a Bëorian word in the streets of the Haven that she hadn't heard since it came off Dior's lips years before. Eärendil, I think, would be less personal, more "dynastic," insofar as we're told he identified himself more closely with his father, and insofar as he had no living personal connection to the Bëorian tongue. Learning the tongues of both Huor and Rían could even have been a project he shared with Tuor, whose own first tongue was probably Northern Sindarin--Tuor could plausibly have spoken poor Hadorian indeed before he reached Gondolin (though I doubt it: even in hiding, I think the Grey-Elves would have taught him his native tongue, and he would have had enough chance to exercise it as a slave in Dor-Lómin--but Bëorian is another matter.)

What I don't think is likely is that Eärendil planned it out as a speech to make in Valinor--as pointed out already, the Drúedain were near at hand and it should have been possible to learn enough Halethian to make a statement (from the Drúedain even!) to the Valar if that was his plan. It seems much more likely to me that Eärendil was a polyglot, being a half-Elf in an unusually multi-lingual community, and was moved in the moment in front of the Valar (by destiny or divine inspiration, perhaps) to make his statement. There's a strong element of fate about him, that he was the perfect messenger to plead for Middle-earth, but this is not his own careful planning as much as Divine Providence (which, admittedly, he may cooperate with).