The Languages of Tolkien's Middle-Earth

[bmilder]

I just bought a book called "The Languages of Tolkien's Middle-Earth." It claims to be a guide to "all fourteen of of the languages Tolkien invented." The languages included are: Black Speech, Common Speech (Westron), Dunlending, Hobbit, Khuzdul, Languages of Men, Numenorean (Adunaic), Orkish, Pre-Numenorean, Quenya, Rohan, Sindarin, Sylvan, and Wose. Sounds interesting :)

It's just amazing that this man invented 14 languages to go along with his world.

[IronParrot]

Ooh! Ooh! I want one!

[anduin]

Is Ruth Noel the author? If so, it is a great little resource book. You'll enjoy it for certain! :)

[etherealunicorn]

You have to admire JRRT's imagination, even if you hate everything else about ME, I think. I wonder how he kept them all straight to write the books.
I believe I read somewhere once that JRRT's primary area of expertise(from a scholarly standpoint) was the history and evolution of language, but I can't remember enough to state for certain, though I am sure someone out there does know for sure. I guess if it is viewed from that perspective, it could be argued that all of the ME writings are nothing more than a framework on which to base a study of language.

[anduin]

Actually it was the other way around. The languages were created first, and the story of ME came about because of it. Tolkien was in fact a scholar of languages and he knew that an entire culture could be extracted from that culture's language, absent of artifacts.

From The Languages of Middle Earth by Ruth Noel.....

Language is so integral to culture that a linguist can reconstruct a culture from its language just as a biologist can reconstruct an animal from a bone.

[bmilder]

Yeah, that's the book :)

[Michael Martinez]

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, partner, but of all the books one could have bought, only Ruth Noel's "Little Red Horror" (as some of the Tolkien linguists call it) could be worse than a David Day book.

If you're interested in Tolkien's languages you should take a look at the links I've got on Suite101. Ardalambion is one of them, and it's the most respected linguistic site on the Internet.

[bmilder]

What's so bad about it?

Although I already found an error in it. It lists in the family tree that Theoden is the son of Fengel. I guess they forgot to include Thengel (idiots ;) )

[gatito]

That interesting another one of my favorite writers Shaw was also very into language, he was into phonetic speech. Hmm I think I might just have to take a linguistc's class in college. :)

Luv Always,
Gat

[Loopy]

Ardalambion is an awesome site. It could keep me busy for hours.
Anyone know if the English > Elvish dictionary is any good?

[Michael Martinez]

I am not qualified to pass judgement on Ruth Noel's book. People who really have an interest in linguistics will probably want to read this page, though:

www.elvish.org/articles/LRH.html (http://www.elvish.org/articles/LRH.html)

I have no idea of what the linguists mean when they start rambling unless I reach for a dictionary, and I just don't care to parse dictionaries all day long. Linguists are usually terrible at explaining what they are talking about and they resort to jargon in nearly every sentence.

I'm not sure of where I got the name "Ruth Noel's Little Red Horror" or "Ruth Noel's Little Red Book of Horrors" (I've used both), but I think I lifted it from an article posted to the news groups years ago. Unfortunately, Deja.Com seems to have lost everything before January 1, 1999, so I may never find that article again. But it probably just cited the same errors the above Web page mentions.

[Darth Tater]

That site that was pointed out earlier is AWESOME. I could spend the rest of my life there, and have been tempted to ever since someone pointed it out to me a few weeks back.

[IronParrot]

I'm addicted already.

[IronParrot]

The guy who runs Ardalambion shares a birthday with me! Cool! :p

[Snowdog]

I saw this book in a used book store but failed to buy it. I must go and see if its still there.

[Indril Anarion]

I'm dying to learn Quenya...it's a way to really tell who's a hard core Tolkien fan...