Cellar Door

[Eomer of the Rohirrim]

A great English word is 'uvula'. By the way Saucepan, your list of American - English was hilariously suitable for any international discussion.

Despite the Professor's dislike of anything to do with France, I have to stick up for the country and say that French is the most delightful language to listen to.


(edited to add) Sorry Estelyn, I posted right at the same time as you, meaning no disrespect of course. As we're speaking of language I thought here would be as good a place as any to ask why Tolkien, as a linguist, disliked France so much, the land of such a beautiful language.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Tangent posters, please read my above post. Any posts that are not Tolkien-related should be edited or deleted by their writers before it becomes necessary for the moderators/administrators to do so - thanks!

[Rimbaud]

As the Sylvia to my Ted is actually an Emily, I am very much familiar with the difficulties in certain trans-Atlantic translations. Neither of us are entirely sure how we respectively used to pronounce the word 'garage'.

I am also a 'devotee' of the afore-mentioned French 'j' sound for instance as occasioned by the vocalisation of 'occasionally'; this sound in phonetics is traditionally denoted by 'zh'.

And yes, I am rather smug about my trans-atlantic-poet description of my lady's terrible American affliction.

On a more Tolkien related note, I agree with the above comment questioning why, as JRRT so clearly loved the soft 'ce' of the word 'cellar', he hardened the names of such luminaries as Celeborn. To give it a more 'authentic' Celtic feel, one imagines, but I cannot help but feel slight regret whenever I hear Celeborn said this way; I too am more in favour of the softer sound. Ah well. You can't hear me saying it!

[Evisse the Blue]

Interesting, the Professor's fascination to 'cellar door'; the first time I hear of this, so thanks a lot, Lalaith for bringing it up! If you still wonder what could Tolkien have found so beautiful about it, try saying it aloud a few times, over and over, until it's devoid of meaning and you register only it 'melody'.

On the pronunciation of 'Celeborn': I must agree with those of you that say pronouncing it with a hard 'k' is not that pleasant to the ear. In my language, the combination of letters 'ce' is pronounced like the 'che' in 'chestnut', so I find myself always pronouncing it that way.

[Lalaith]

this is a rather nice article

[VanimaEdhel]

I am proud to be able to say that I liked Donnie Darko before it became the "in" Emo movie. I won't get into an anti-Emo rant here, however. Save that for another Forum.

I agree that "cellar door", with almost any English-speaking accent, sounds very beautiful if you take away the meaning.

On a more Tolkien related note, I agree with the above comment questioning why, as JRRT so clearly loved the soft 'ce' of the word 'cellar', he hardened the names of such luminaries as Celeborn. To give it a more 'authentic' Celtic feel, one imagines, but I cannot help but feel slight regret whenever I hear Celeborn said this way; I too am more in favour of the softer sound. Ah well. You can't hear me saying it!

I tend to disagree. Though I do love the soft "ce", myself, I actually prefer the harder sound in Celeborn. For some reason, giving it the softer "ce" makes it sound a bit too much like the word "celibate" or something close to it in my opinion. In names such as Selena (Spanish pronunciation), I think it sounds very beautiful, however.

Thank you so much for the link, Lalaith.

Tolkien had a love for beautiful language. Notice how little he developed the Black Speech for example. When one reads about the language on Ardalambion, it says,

Tolkien himself did not like the Black Speech at all. One admirer sent him a steel drinking goblet, but to his disappointment he discovered that it was "engraved with the terrible words seen on the Ring. I of course have never drunk from it, but use it for tobacco ash" (Letters:422). He evidently shared the opinion of Elves and Men back in the Third Age, who certainly did not think any better of the Black Speech than they did of the other tongues used by Orcs: "It was so full of harsh and hideous sounds and vile words that other mouths found it difficult to compass, and few indeed were willing to make the attempt" (PM:35).

Eek...I have to go, sadly.

[Isowen]

I've never seen it. It sounds cool though, I like the Tolkien input there. When I first saw the title of the thread, I thought it was about the hobbit (barrels out of bond) as it is how they escape the elvenking's palace. But this is a very interesting topic and I like to think that Tolkien is known to more people than just us lotr fans!