Friends of Nimrodel: Tapestry of Dreams - Discussion

[littlemanpoet]

Tolkien exercised one very critical element of language that most of his followers tend to overlook...... contraction. Many words in Sindarin and Quenya, I recollect, are built from compounds of smaller words. The new word almost never contains every last letter and syllable of the two words used. If I had any smarts at all, or time, I'd do some research to back this up, but well......

Anyway, Nethgwador is a case in point. Some aspect of the word would disappear, that which the tongue passes most lightly over in the language. You can see this all over the English language.

Kneel. ... knife..... thought..... through...... notice the silent letters? They weren't always silent. the latter two were spoken with a guttural in the throat, like a dog growling, I suppose. Hard to do. No wonder we don't anymore.

Back to Nethgwador. Say it fast. Notice what starts to disappear when you say it fast enough? The Elves, I'm thinking, intuitively know what letters are going to drop out of a compound word, and would name accordingly, especially taking into account the daily wear and tear.

So I'll make a suggestion or two on this account, base on my own attempts to say this name really fast: Nekwador. Nethador. Nethwador. The latter may be the best one. You decide.