Isengard no! - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

William Cloud Hicklin · 06-12-2025, 07:42 AM

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.

06-12-2025, 07:42 AM	#16
William Cloud Hicklin Loremaster of Annúminas Join Date: Oct 2006 Posts: 2,330	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. __________________ The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it.