"How does one pronounce Tolkien?"

[davem]

This article got me thinking http://www.examiner.com/x-11527-JRR-...nounce-Tolkien - not so much about how to pronounce Tolkien's name (coincidentally, when I first encountered the books ( & for some time later) I did pronounce it as the author of the piece suggests - 'Tolk-ee-en').

That pronunciation is still very evocative for me of my first entry into Middle-earth- as are my other original (mis)pronunciations: Soron, Seleborn, Thee-o-dn, Ee-omer, Ee-owyn, Mynas Tirith/Morgul - even my original mis-reading of Half-ing for Halfling, etc, etc.

Now, as all other well-informed readers do, I know the proper pronunciations & make the effort to get them right, but I'm wondering if I've lost something in leaving behind my original readings? Tolkien himself didn't appear to mind much - in the First Edition Foreword he states:

Much information, necessary and unnecessary, will be found in the Prologue. To complete it some maps are given, including one of the Shire that has been approved as reasonably correct by those Hobbits that still concern themselves with ancient history. At the end of the third volume will be found some abridged family-trees, which show how the Hobbits mentioned were related to one another, and what their ages were at the time when the story opens. There is an index of names and strange words with some explanations. And for those who like such lore in an appendix some brief account is given of the languages, alphabets and calendars that were used in the West-lands in the Third Age of Middle-earth. Those who do not need such information, or who do not wish for it, may neglect these pages; and the strange names that they meet they may, of course, pronounce as they like.

Thinking about it today after reading the article I can't help feeling that, for all I may have got the pronunciations wrong on my first reading, those pronunciations are essential to my experience of Middle-earth, & hold part of the magic of that experience which has been absent from subsequent readings. Its the same with the actual edition of the book which you first read - you may have gone on to buy other (possibly nicer, or at least more expensive) editions, but the experience of re-entering Middle-earth through the same physical book is different to reading it from other editions - & doesn't that also apply to the names & places as you first encountered them?