"How does one pronounce Tolkien?"

[Mnemosyne]

Originally Posted by davem

...but when it comes to pronunciation of names & words people simply accept that because Jackson got in 'experts' to give cast & crew the correct pronunciations they must be accepted - I rarely if ever hear the comment 'The cast's pronunciation of 'Minas Tirith'/ Legolas/(fitb) was exactly/not at all as I imagined it'. Its almost as if some people are afraid to get it wrong (which seems to imply that reading the books is, or involves, a test of some kind, which the reader can either pass or fail).

This would be an acceptable nitpick if the cast's pronunciations were always correct and included a general concept of accent marks and diareses. (Still waiting on the extra syllable in "Earendil".) As it is I cringe most at whenever Frolijah says "Mohdoh," considering that book!Frodo is supposed to be canonically good at foreign sounds.

Because Tolkien gave specific rules on pronuncation, I think a better parallel would be to compare pronunciation to, say, the doors at Moria, where we're given a specific drawing as to how it looked. If the Jackson films had deviated from that at all, claiming that it was Frodo's faulty memory reconstructing it (which would be well within their rights, since Moria is explicitly called Moria ['black shadow', only used post-Balrog] on the door), there would have been so much howling!

Although to be fair the parallel isn't perfect as the pronunciation rules come from the Appendices and not from the text itself, and the Appendices are specifically only for those who really want to know more.

Ultimately I think the whole thing is a bunch of pedantry as we geeks try to one-up each other. As I said earlier, I personally try to get my own pronunciation as close to the recommended ones as possible, but that's because I am a pedant and a linguistics geek to boot. If you want to pronounce them differently that's fine... but woe to you if you want to market that pronunciation!

Mirkgirl's points are actually really good ones: to what extent have translators adapted spellings to fit with pronunciations? Does Tolkien's translator's guide give any hints?


P.S. to Eonwe... Frodo at least probably got his transcriptions and pronunciations right; the other hobbits however tended to have really bad Shire accents when it came to the Elvish tongues.