“Thee” and “thou” in “The Lord of the Rings”

[Pitchwife]

Originally Posted by Guinevere

Well, what is interesting is that beside the familiar "Du" Carroux used only "Ihr" - the archaic form of polite address; wheras Krege uses both "Ihr" and "Sie" - apparently to distinguish between the 20th century hobbits of the Shire and the archaic world of Middle-Earth.

I get his motive for that to some degree, but still, this sounds horribly wrong to me in a fantasy setting. I think it would be palatable in an urban fantasy set in modern times, but in Tolkien, yuck.

Originally Posted by Guinevere

Btw, "Ihr" as a polite address is still in use today in the Swiss dialect of Kanton Bern.

Not only there. I vividly remember my mother addressing her sister's elderly mother-in-law as "Ihr" in my early childhood (around 1970), because it struck me as archaic even then - but then, that was probably a rural as well as dialectal usage.

Originally Posted by Guinevere

Complicated business!! it's so much easier calling everybody "You"!

But so much less fun with interlingual jokes. Wasn't it our former Bundespräsident Heinrich Lübke who addressed a visiting anglophone statesman with the immortal words "You can say you to me"?

[Morthoron]

A brief note. I'm not sure how it is in translations, but in the English version you'll notice that the Shire and Bree folk are the only ones who use contractions in their dialogue. The high and mighty, The Dunedain, Elves of Rivendell and Lothlorien, and Gondorions such as Denethor and Faramir never use contractions. Ever.

Aint that somethin'?

[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

A brief note. I'm not sure how it is in translations, but in the English version you'll notice that the Shire and Bree folk are the only ones who use contractions in their dialogue. The high and mighty, The Dunedain, Elves of Rivendell and Lothlorien, and Gondorions such as Denethor and Faramir never use contractions. Ever.

Aint that somethin'?

For certain. I mean, that's how I always understood the "system" of it. I would assume most of the translations reflect it in some way, even though not all languages use the same tools to make it work that way. But there are some "effects" in the language which reflect the same thing: the "casual" manner of speech as opposed to the "high and cultivated" one. For instance, in the Czech translation, the hobbits/Breelanders (and Bergil!) speak in a sort of "casual" or "spoken" manner (as opposed to "written" - the way people don't normally speak when they actually speak, only in official speeches, but in literature you usually write that way and not in the "spoken" manner - I think the comparison to contractions in English fits quite well enough).

[Galadriel55]

The Russian translation also differentiates between the "simple" hobbit/Bree/Bergil speech and the "noble" speech. Sometimes there are ungramatical sentences (much oftener, negatives, etc) that make it sound hobbit. Also, the use of words that people like Denethor would NEVER use, because they are just unfitting for such a person. Bergil speaks speaks gramatically correctly, but his vocabulary is a child's vocabulary. There is one phrase that jumped out at me in his speech when I compared the translation to the original: when he says that Beregond wants to send him away with the maidens. The Russian translation uses a word that is more like "lasses"*. In the translation it gives Bergil a Tom-Sawyer-ish attitude. But in the original it makes him sound like a child who values honour (or has parents that value it).

*The word is "devchonki", the (slightly offensive out of context) variation of "devochki"=girls. The reason the translator chose the first one is to give Bergil that boyish "scorn-the-girls" attitude that makes him look his age, or possibly a bit younger. It's hard to find a word for "maiden" that would mean girls of his own age, and not older, but I suppose the translation could have gone with the more respectful second word. But that way it doesn't give Bergil the boyish attitude, and it doesn't give him the appearance of someone who values honour.

It's confusing. It's like there are two Bergils.

[Guinevere]

Originally Posted by Morthoron

A brief note. I'm not sure how it is in translations, but in the English version you'll notice that the Shire and Bree folk are the only ones who use contractions in their dialogue. The high and mighty, The Dunedain, Elves of Rivendell and Lothlorien, and Gondorions such as Denethor and Faramir never use contractions. Ever.
Aint that somethin'?

I know, these differences in style make it much easier to find the speaker of a quote in "Palantir of Fortune"
And I guess it's one of the things I love so much about Tolkien's language.

Recently there was another discussion on style here As you can see I didn't even know the term contraction until now.

The fact that the hobbits use these contractions makes their speech sound more modern, and that's what Krege (the translator of the new German translation) tried to achieve.

[Guinevere]

When reading "The Children of Húrin" I noticed that Christopher Tolkien had changed all the "thou"s to "you"! (in the conversations with Glaurung and Gurthang) Why do you think he did that?
Personally I (and my sons) relished thosed quotes from the Silmarillion (e.g. "die now and the darkness have thee!!")

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Guinevere

When reading "The Children of Húrin" I noticed that Christopher Tolkien had changed all the "thou"s to "you"! (in the conversations with Glaurung and Gurthang) Why do you think he did that?
Personally I (and my sons) relished thosed quotes from the Silmarillion (e.g. "die now and the darkness have thee!!")

Perhaps it was in the (unnecessary, to me at least) interest of "modernisation". though that's a mere guess.

I agree that the "archaic" language is in fact a point in favour of the UT and Silm versions.

[Faramir Jones]

People might be interested to know that Tolkien intended to use the old intimate 'thee' in an exchange between Samwise and Rose Gamgee.

In a planned but unpublished last chapter to LotR, set 17 years after Sam and his companions returned to the Shire, and when he receives a letter from King Elessar about the latter's forthcoming visit, we see Sam and Rose when their children have gone to bed:

Master Samwise stood at the door and looked away eastward. He drew Mistress Rose to him, and set his arm about her.

'March the twenty-fifth!' he said. 'This day seventeen years ago, Rose wife, I didn't think I should ever see thee again. But I kept on hoping.'

'I never hoped at all, Sam,' she said, 'not until that very day; and then suddenly I did. About noon it was, and I felt so glad that I began singing. And mother said: "Quiet lass! There's ruffians about." And I said: "Let them come! Their time will soon be over. Sam's coming back." And you came.'

'I did,' said Sam. 'To the most belovedest place in all the world. To my Rose and my garden.' (The History of Middle-earth: IX. Sauron Defeated, (London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993), pp. 127-8)

The use of 'thee' in this context adds, in my opinion, a little extra to this tender scene.

[Lalwendë]

This is an interesting thread. I've been looking at the English Dialect Dictionaries of Joseph Wright on and off the past few months and of course he was an immense influence on Tolkien. These collections of dialect usage are a wonderful resource if you can find a decent copy of them online (there are six volumes), or have the money to buy a rare paper copy.

Of course, one of the topics he deals with is the thorny issue of theeing and thouing. It's still a bit of a hot topic to this day in the North where we haven't all yet descended to more common language usage! Even the nickname of Sheffielders refers to this as they are called "deedars" which possibly refers to their over use of the words "thee" and "thar" ("thou" in the Sheffield accent) which is viewed, even in towns as close as Barnsley and Sheffield as deeply uncouth. It could also be a more aggressive insult which stems back to the past - "deedar" being "thee, thar" and hence a verbal insult intended to mark the inhabitants out as socially inferior. Or maybe just mocking the inability to sound "th". Who knows? The important thing here is the nickname, which is widespread (incidentally, it cuts both ways, Barnsley folk are nicknamed "Dingles" ).

One saying I heard when I was a child would be "Don't thee thee me!" which meant you needed to moderate your tone and treat your elders with more respect! And it's still something you hear today in various ways and combinations. Also the source of a joke you hear all the time up north which runs: "Where's the bin?" "Ahs bin nowhere. Why? Where's thar bin?"

Far from being cutely 'familiar', it's seen as a bit insulting to "thee" someone and has been for some time. It might be used between a couple, between good friends or by a parent to a child (my grandparents would "thee" me all the time), but for say Denethor to use to Gandalf would be seen as highly rude. And for Eowyn to use it to Aragorn it would make him very uncomfortable.

Here's an entry from Vol 6:

THEE, v, Wor. To treat or address haughtily; to speak in a patronising manner.

A superior speaking to his inferior, a master to his servant, &c, would be said to 'thee' him, if he spoke sharply, angrily, or haughtily.

And note that this instance was gathered in Worcestershire. Not the North! Tolkien will have known full well that it was a dodgy way to address someone, fraught with potential danger

The reason why people now associate thee and thou with high falutin' language use is that it's preserved in the Bible, particularly the King James edition, and religious writings usually addressed God or divinity in familiar terms rather than formal.

It's possible that the loss of thee and thou came about due to the influence of French. When they invaded and imposed their system and language on the English, they also brought this formal/informal langauge system, whereas before, there was no 'you' and 'thou' wasn't considered insulting. So there's also a class element at play here, with a word usage gradually becoming considered insulting over time (as also happened with what are now our swear words, once everyday language) because the ruling class didn't use it, except presumably to insult the servants.

I'll stop now before I get onto how modern English dialect usage has devised replacements for loss of the plural second person and what happens when various accents swallow chunks of their "thous"...

[Galadriel55]

Originally Posted by Guinevere

When reading "The Children of Húrin" I noticed that Christopher Tolkien had changed all the "thou"s to "you"! (in the conversations with Glaurung and Gurthang) Why do you think he did that?

What?! No!!! I never noticed that before. And now it all sounds wrong in COH.

I can't think of any reason CJRT would want to change it. But another question is why he changed it in COH but not in The Sil. He edited both of them, so why not change both, or leave both?

[Aiwendil]

I'm pretty sure the change was neither arbitrary nor an attempt at modernisation. I don't have the books at hand at the moment, but I'm almost certain that JRRT himself changed his mind once or twice about "thou" vs. "you" in various places in the Narn.

(I believe (though I could be mis-remembering) that he originally wrote "thou" in some places but later began, but didn't finish, systematically changing every "thou" to "you". Presumably, in UT Christopher Tolkien left this as it was whereas in CoH he completed the systematic revision. I could be wrong about the details, though; I'll try to find the source when I get home.)

[Aiwendil]

Hmm, maybe this is what I was thinking of, referring to the dialogue between Hurin and Morgoth:

As the speeches were typed they were set entirely in the second person singular, 'thou wert', 'knowest thou', etc.; but my father went through it changing every 'thou' and 'thee' to 'you', and the equivalent verb-forms – and changing 'Knowest thou' to 'Do you know' rather than 'Know you' (also 'puissant' to 'mighty'). In this form, of course, the text was printed in Unfinished Tales.

The dialogues with Glaurung and Gurthang originate from a different text (NE, as Christopher calls it), so perhaps they were changed in the interest of stylistic consistency.

I could have sworn I read something else about "thou" and "you" in the Narn, but if so I can't find it.