An Unexpected Journey, or the morning after

[Guinevere]

Originally Posted by Strider67

One of the ways in which Tolkien establishes that the events in Middle Earth take place in a time very different from our own is in his use of quite archaic-sounding speech-patterns.

That is the case in The Lord of the Rings, but not so much in The Hobbit.
For example, in LotR, only Hobbits and Bree folk use casual speech with contractions; ancient and cultivated races and people like Elves, Dwarves, Gondorians and Gandalf never do!

But in The Hobbit, everyone, from Gandalf to Elves uses contractions! And the language is much more casual, especially in the beginning. ( you surely remember the silly songs of the Rivendell elves!) However, towards the end the direct speech of Dwarves and Elves get much more archaic and "noble", in contrast to Bilbo's speech.

Btw, the incident about the invention of golf is in the first chapter, it is told by the narrator:

"Excitable little fellow," said Gandalf, as they sat down again. "Gets funny queer fits, but he is one of the best, one of the best-as fierce as a dragon in a pinch."
If you have ever seen a dragon in a pinch, you will realize that this was only poetical exaggeration applied to any hobbit, even to Old Took's great-granduncle Bullroarer, who was so huge (for a hobbit) that he could ride a horse. He charged the ranks of the goblins of Mount Gram in the Battle of the Green Fields, and knocked their king Golfimbul's head clean off with a wooden club. It sailed a hundred yards through the air and went down a rabbit hole, and in this way the battle was won and the game of Golf invented at the same moment.

So in the book, there is lighthearted, comical stuff too, but it's mostly in the beginning, and as the story progresses it gets more serious.

In the movie, some things appeared to me too serious, right from the beginning (Thorin's & Azog and the whole vendetta) alternating with stuff that was just too comical (Radagast and his rabbit sledge) and all those chases were just not believable. Jackson's sense of humour is not the same as Professor Tolkien's .