|
Sprinkler Systems
Uhaul move
Lawn care
Roses and trees
Ford Parts
Chrysler Parts
Lake Powell
New IPod Touch Apps
New IPhone Apps
IPhone Apps
IPad Information
IPad Apps
Android APPS
Android Games APPS
Android Systems
Android Tablets APPS and Beyond
Smartphone Apps
Smartphone Games Apps Repair and Tools
Tablet PC
Car Sharing Car Leasing
Tabler Pc
Fly Fishing
Toyota Cars
Vacation Rentals
Stock market
NYSE
SSE Stock
Freight & Shipping News
Gluten
Lactose
Gout
My Coupon Life
Campgrounds Check
Outdoor
Kitchen Design and Redoo
Bath Remodeling
Palm Springs
Las Vegas Vacation Tipps
Lake Powell Boating
Homes for lease
Electric and green Car Blog
Pearls and diamonds
Whatsapp and forget SMS Blog, What is Whatsapp App
Solar Panel Solar Energie Sun Power Blog
|
Fantasy » alt.fan.tolkien » COTW: APPENDIX F1The Languages and People of the Third Age
| COTW: APPENDIX F1The Languages and People of the Third Age [message #122133] |
Do, 01 September 2005 21:42 |
|
[NOTE: We're 150 miles inland but still had a lot of downed trees,
etc., from the recent passage of Katrina, though not anything like the
devastation along the coasts and in Mississippi and Louisiana. I have
the power back on but it's apparently a technical challenge to have
both power and a dial tone at the same time, so I am connecting via
cell phone modem and that's very limited; most of it has to be
dedicated to my work and I can only steal a little time to check out
how the COTW is going. I noticed Larry's note of the 29th but a Google
search just now turned up no other posts from him since; I can't take
the whole incoming load of group messages right now and so am just
going to have to assume the FI summary hasn't been posted yet; if it
has and I missed it, my apologies, but maybe this will be useful in
that case as a supplement. I couldn't get FII done today and will have
to post that later.]
APPENDIX F1
The Languages and People of the Third Age
I have always found this appendix to be both fascinating and difficult.
There is so much history and lore of Middle-earth here, and yet the
amount of material detail on JRRT's invented languages has usually been
beyond my ability and (I must admit) interest. Only lately, after
reading the biography and /Letters/ has that interest increased and
some ability to delve beneath the surface developed. For many years,
however, such was the power of /The Lord of the Rings/ over me that I
was blind to the story's roots, to which this appendix is a beautiful
link.
"...what is I think a primary 'fact' about my work, that it is all
of a piece, and /fundamentally linguistic/ in inspiration...The
'stories' were made rather to provide a world for the languages
than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story
follows."
--JRRT to the Houghton Mifflin Company in 1955, Letter 165 (emphasis
in the original)
The main difficulty in summarizing both parts of this appendix is that,
to do a good job of it, one has to be both a linguist and an expert on
JRRT's life and works. I am neither and so will just describe some of
the most obvious (to me) "bare bones" of the appendix, which exists in
the secondary world of JRRT's creation, and their connection with the
primary world in which he worked, and I will step aside to let others
more familiar with the languages and history of Middle-earth and JRRT's
biography and works correct, expand upon and supplement this note.
THE COMMON SPEECH
In the primary world, JRRT noted that "the story has to be told, and
the dialogue conducted in a language; but English cannot have been the
language of any people at that time. What I have, in fact done, is to
equate the Westron or wide-spread Common Speech of the Third Age with
English; and translate everything, including names such as /The Shire/,
that was in the Westron into English terms, with some differentiation
of style to represent dialectical differences." (Letter 144, 1954, to
Naomi Mitchison.) More on this in detail will be in the summary for
Part II, "On Translation."
In the secondary world, the Common Speech had become the native tongue
of almost all speaking peoples (except the Elves) who lived within the
boundaries of the old kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor. It had also spread
north up the River Anduin to the lands west of Anduin and east of the
Misty Mountains as far as the Gladden Fields. While a few groups still
preserved their native tongue, even among these there were people who
could use the Common Speech, either well (the Rohirrim) or brokenly
(the Wild Men of Drudan Forest or the Dunlendings).
OF THE ELVES
In the primary world, JRRT would have included much more Elvish in the
book, had it been thought early on before publication that it would
appeal to readers. There is much more detail about the Elvish
languages and their development in /Letters/ and in the biography.
Tolkien had begun inventing languages at a very early age; this is
traced beautifully in the biography. Then around the time of World War
I he discovered that language and legend go together:
"It was just as the 1914 War burst on me that I made the
discovery that 'legends' depend on the language to which they
belong; but a living language depends equally on the 'legends'
which it conveys by tradition....So though being a philologist by
nature and trade (yet one always primarily interested in the
aesthetic rather than the functional aspects of language) I began
with language, I found myself involved in inventing 'legends' of
the same 'taste'. The early work was mostly done in camps and
hospitals between 1915 and 1918-when time allowed. But I think a
lot of this kind of work goes on at other (to say lower, deeper,
or higher introduces a false gradation) levels, when one is
saying how-do-you-do, or even 'sleeping'. I have long ceased to
/invent/ (though even patronizing or sneering critics on the side
praise my 'invention'): I wait till I seem to know what really
happened. Or till it writes itself."
-- Letter 180, a 1956 draft to an unidentified reader (emphasis in
original)
In the secondary world, the languages of the Elves split at the first
division of Elves into the Eldar (West-elves) and East-elves. Although
most of the Elves of Mirkwood and Lorien were of East-elven kind, the
languages represented by names and words in /The Lord of the Rings/ are
of Eldarin form. Two Eldarin tongues shown in this work are Quenya
(developed by the Elves who departed Middle-earth and dwelt for a time
in the Blessed Land with the Valar) and Sindarin (developed by Eldar
who did not leave Middle-earth to go west when the Valar first called).
At the time of the War of the Ring Quenya was used formally as a sort
of "Elven-latin," and also for "high matters of lore and song," while
Sindarin was most often used for daily speech. In his discussion here
of the languages, JRRT manages to once again bring in topics from /The
Silmarillion/, naming King Thingol of Doriath in Beleriand, for
example, and pointing out that Galadriel was the sister of Finrod
Felagund, King of Nargothrond. Language and myth, intertwined quite
deeply here.
OF MEN
I couldn't find much information on the languages of Men per se in the
primary world, although there is some on translation and the derivation
of names, etc. (more on this later). This, of course, is because that
language is "translated" into English.
In JRRT's secondary world Westron, or the Common Speech, was a language
of Men that had been enriched and softened by contact with the Elves.
It was originally the language of the Three Houses of the Elf-Friends
who in the First Age aided the Elves in the War of the Jewels and were
rewarded the land of Numenor, "most westerly of all mortal lands."
Once again the greater mythology is brought into this tale via
language, and as we learn how the Common Speech formed we learn a
little also of the history of Numenor, how in their pride the kings of
Numenor returned to their Mannish tongue and how this was established
in Middle-earth during the days of Numenor's domination of the coast
lands and then mingled with many words of native peoples and turned
into a Common Speech that spread all along the coast lands. After the
fall of Numenor, Elendil and his kin and people fled to Middle-earth
and being far fewer in number they adopted the Common Speech for their
dealings with the native peoples, whom they ruled, but they enriched it
with many words drawn from Elvish. The Common Speech spread during the
years and displaced Elvish so that by the time of the War of the Ring
the Elven-tongue was known only in Gondor, and then only to a few.
OF HOBBITS
The same lack of information in the primary world holds true for
hobbits as for Men. In the secondary world "the language of hobbits
was remarkably like English, as one would expect: they only lived on
the borders of The Wild, and were mostly unaware of it." (Letter 25 in
1938 to the editor of /The Observer/). There is no record of a
language native to Hobbits because they always used the language of Men
they settled near.
OF OTHER RACES
ENTS: In the primary world, JRRT ascribes their name to a line in an
Anglo-Saxon poem "The Wanderer": 'eald enta geweorc,' translated as
'the old creations of giants' in the notes. I believe somewhere else,
though I don't remember which letter it is, JRRT describes being
fascinated by the word 'enta' and eventually coming up with Ents as we
know them in his work today. In the secondary world, Ents have a
language uniquely their own that not even the Elves are able to learn:
the fragment that Merry and Pippin record is "the only extant (and
probably very inaccurate) attempt to represent a fragment of actual
Entish." Generally the Ents used Elvish, sometimes stringing the Elven
words together in Entish fashion; Treebeard and a few other Ents were
also proficient in Westron.
ORCS AND THE BLACK SPEECH: In the primary world, I think we see the
inspiration for Orc speech in the comment later in this Appendix about
the "orc-minded; dreary and repetitive with hatred and contempt, too
long removed from good to retain even verbal vigour, save in the ears
of those to whom only the squalid sounds strong." JRRT derived the
word "orc' from the Old English 'orc' meaning demon, "but only because
of its phonetic suitability" (Letter 144, in 1954, to Naomi Mitchison).
In the secondary world, Orcs spoke almost as many different and
unintelligible dialects as there were tribes and so needed to use the
Common Speech when different tribes were present. The Black Speech is
very rarely seen in /The Lord of the Rings/, occurring only in the Ring
inscription, a sentence used by the Orcs of Barad-Dur during the
passage across Rohan, the word 'Nazgul' and I think one or two words
like 'ghash' for fire and "Olog-hai" (see Trolls, below).
TROLLS: In the primary world, I think JRRT regretted the language he
had the Stone-trolls of /The Hobbit/ use as much as he did giving them
the names he did, though I can't quote the exact letter. He made the
best of it in the secondary world by saying that they were "dull and
lumpish" and took what language they could from the Orcs and in the
Westlands, "a debased form of the Common Speech." The Olog-hai, the
later 'badder' trolls that appeared in the Third Age, were driven by
the will of Sauron and spoke little and then only the Black Speech.
DWARVES: In the primary world he said that he did "think of the
'Dwarves' like Jews: at once native and alien in their habitations,
speaking the languages of the country, but with an accent due to their
own private tongue" (Letter 176 in 1955 to Naomi Mitchison). The Dwarf
names in his works Tolkien took from the Elder Edda. In the secondary
world Dwarvish was a secret tongue, used only in private and not even
inscribed on their tombs; it had changed little over the years and was
a tongue of lore that they treasured and guarded closely. Their names
in Dwarvish were never used in front of other peoples.
DISCUSSION:
I have wholly skipped over many of the fascinating details here,
particularly of Elvish (such as the influences of Finnish, Welsh, etc.,
and how JRRT developed his private languages and used them in his
diaries, and so forth; I am leaving that to others here to bring up.
Also I believe these are mentioned in the FAQ but it would be well if
someone could mention the groups, societies, mail lists, Web pages and
so forth dedicated to JRRT's language - I don't know them all.
One thing that occurred to me on looking this over was how hobbits and
orcs both seemed to derive their languages from others. Why is that, I
wonder, and how does it illuminate both peoples in Middle-earth.
Note: I am shamelessly bringing in material from /Letters/ here
primarily because I am reading it now, but also in preparation for the
discussion in later weeks of the overall picture. It is out of print
now, but I hope those who haven't read it will get a chance to read a
copy between now and then. It's really good and very useful in these
discussions.
I will have to post the FII summary later in the week. Time and
Internet availability are limited for me right now, unfortunately, and
there is a lot to this; I never really appreciated how good this
appendix is until I started writing the summary for it.
Barb
|
|
|
Gehe zu:
aktuelle Zeit: Mi Mai 23 21:55:09 CEST 2012
Insgesamt benötigte Zeit, um die Seite zu erzeugen: 9,49878 Sekunden |
