Ori's writing

[shadowfax]

Originally Posted by Alfirin

Given that Gandalf admits he really doesn't know much dwarfish, his reaction to what Ori wrote could simply have boiled down to "AT LAST, some part I can READ"

As for why the book isn't mentioned again, the fact that it was no longer relevant to the story is the most likely. But an alternate explanation may be that the rest of the book never got read because it couldn't. If the book was already so aged and in such poor condition that Gandalf had to be careful as he read lest the pages crumble, I would question how well it would LAST on the rough and tumble journey Gimli went through. Unless Gimli actually left the book in Lothlorien with the elves for them to carry to the dwarves (which seems massively unlikely, given how the average elf feels about the average dwarf and how well an elven messenger could expect to be received by Dain's court) or in Rohan (more or less the same sorts of problems) the book may have been dust long before Gimli ever got to read the rest, or get it into the hands of someone who could.

Could be.

But why would Tolkien even bother mentioning that Gimli took the book. Surely it was not the only souvenir that was acquired along the way?

And there is nothing in the narrative that would not work if Gandalf had not read the book there and then.

It could easily be that the reading occurred in a quiet moment at a much later point in the narrative, but to make things coherent for the reader, Tolkien decided to take that moment forward and so not leave any threads dangling that would only have made the narrative unncessarily complicated further downstream.

[Galin]

There is more than one reference to Gandalf's difficulty reading the book, and they are with respect to the book being cut and stained, blurred or burnt, or hastilly written and much damaged. We are given plenty of reasons to think the difficulty was not due to language.

Gandalf even notes the lack of light directly before noting Ori's script: I think the bold hand, and possibly the use of the Elvish characters, made it easier for Gandalf to read this part.

Was there any Dwarvish in the book? In Of Dwarves And Men Tolkien notes that book was not 'secret' even if primarily intended for Dwarves, and refers generally to the Common Speech, and in a footnote notes that the end was probably written in hopes that 'friends' would find it and learn what happened.

In any case Gandalf had already read bits of Westron before he came to Ori's part, so I still don't get the suggestion that he means... finally I can read this part, it's in Westron... rather I would say he means: wait! Even in this light and under these conditions, here is a bold hand I can read, written in the Elvish characters, the more usual way other folk write the Common Speech (compared to runes in the mode of Erebor).