Tolkien and the 'other' N-word ;)

[Gothmog]

"That crazy balrog Gothmog"? So i'm not only villanious these days, I'm crazy too

About the finnish-elven tounge. I've lived close to Finland all my life and never really liked the way the language sounds. Sindarin and Quenya seems so much...Beautiful! No offence people of my neighbour in east, but your language sounds funny, but not beautiful.

One thing I've noticed: many of the pronouncation (sp?) that's supposed to be in elven tuonge, it comes natural to us swedes. Maybe to others too? Point is: it doesn't sound like in English which must have been hard for you anglo-speaking boys and girls in the beginning.

[Thinlómien]

Originally posted by that super-crazy balrog:
About the finnish-elven tounge. I've lived close to Finland all my life and never really liked the way the language sounds. Sindarin and Quenya seems so much...Beautiful! No offence people of my neighbour in east, but your language sounds funny, but not beautiful.

You should know how much we love swedish in Finland... As a Finn, I can say that quenya doesn't sound that familiar to me - there are many different things and written quenya doesn't resemble even that much because it has fg. 'c' instead of 'k'. Still, some words have clearly Finnish roots, tië is quenya and means 'path'. In finnish 'tie' (pronounced exactly the same way as the previous) means 'road'. I don't think this is a coincidence.

And back to the topic. The beautiful world 'alas' has always amused me since it means 'down' in Finnish...

[Aiwendil]

Thinlomien wrote:

As a Finn, I can say that quenya doesn't sound that familiar to me - there are many different things and written quenya doesn't resemble even that much because it has fg. 'c' instead of 'k'.

Actually, for a long time Tolkien did use "k" instead of "c" in Quenya (and Sindarin). Only around the time of the completion of LotR (or perhaps around its publication; I can't recall) did he switch to the Latinized orthography.

I must say that to me (whose native tongue is neither Finnish nor Quenya) the two languages do seem quite similar in phonology.

To keep this post from being wholly off-topic - it occurs to me that I didn't know the word "shibboleth" before reading HoMe XII.

[Earendilyon]

Originally Posted by Aiwendil

To keep this post from being wholly off-topic - it occurs to me that I didn't know the word "shibboleth" before reading HoMe XII.

You should read you Bible a bit better and you'd known it already

[Lalaith]

bivouac

Celebuial, I'm completely amazed that Tolkien used that word, but I've just checked in my Adobe edition, and by jove, you're right.

Dwimmerlaik is my favorite Tolkien word. If I had a full edition of the OED to hand, I'd check to see if had ever been used before....

[bilbo_baggins]

Well, I did not learn any 'new' words in LoTR, but I got a good handle for how big a league and fathom was.

Part of Tolkien's archaic terminology is because he wrote these stories nearly 70 years ago, and because as a studier of languagest, I believe he suffered from lingual nostalgia.

And Early Celtic is much, much harsher with gutturals and dentals, rather than the breathy and labial Elvish I read in the books.

[Fallenstar]

my first major English reading task (I gave myself four years ago when I first arrived to Canada) was the Fellowship...I understood parts of it...more like just one fourth of it if I was lucky..I learned just about tons of words, I mean I never knew that "cry" can also mean speak out loud or shout, and I started wondering when I reached chapter three that why is everybody crying when they are not sad..

I learned a lot of new words thanks to LOTR, and after tons of re-reading I think I understood more every time.

Still trying to increase my vocabulary.