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#41 |
A Northern Soul
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Thanks to those keeping it civil, and those reminders of proper forum conduct.
You may wish to review a couple of our policies and guidelines. Accept the fact that others have different opinions. If you don’t agree, just state your own opinion; you don’t have to correct everyone else or argue until they agree with you. Violators will be entombed.
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#42 | ||
A Mere Boggart
Join Date: Mar 2004
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![]() But, he probably didn't think they would make good films even before they were made, either because (like a lot of us) he didn't realise just what modern SFX are capable of or he had an extremely fixed and strong vision in his own mind. Likely the latter. And thirteen years later, he is probably negatively affected by all of the hype surrounding them and the court case. Anyone going through a court case like that is bound to hate those films, it's not a case of someone saying they hate them but secretly quite enjoying them. CT hates them, full stop. However, given all the hype and marketing, even if there had been no court case I think he would still hate the films. Some of the hype I dislike, but overall, I think it's unfair to blame Alan Lee and John Howe for the visual images they created. It's as beautiful and thoughtful a vision that could have been created, seeing as they chose the two very best Tolkien visual artists to lead it, and they are two artists who took immense care over what they made. Blame Jackson for some bad script choices, yes, but not the artists. I come back again to what the journalist said, and I think he/she is likely unaware of the work of these two men and the respect they did and still do show to Tolkien's work as fans themselves. It's really not fair to blame them if marketeers used their imagery afterwards for some of the cheesier products - better this than something lurid by the Hildebrant Brothers ![]() Quote:
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#43 |
Pilgrim Soul
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It is odd because on the whole it is probably the aspect of the film he minds least. Alan Lee was requested to do the illustrations for the Children of Hurin which was a matter in which CRT presumably had a lot of clout. Noone can know exactly how Tolkien saw his world and he himself was the first to admit that he had not the skill to realise his vision in paint (though the more I read, the more I realise how skilled he was at doing it with words) but it seems that Alan Lee is, at least, the "least worst option" as far as CRT is concerned.
I am no great fan of the films and have never managed to sit through the second two in their entirety since seeing them in the cinema but I did enjoy the prop and costume exhibitions and got the feeling that those who designed and created them really cared about the source material. Where they fell down for me was that characterisation was always sacrificed to endless action scenes and cheap gags. But then I am not the desired demographic. And while the sets costumes and props were my favourite aspect, I wish the Hobbit had been treated independently. Jackson's is not the only possible vision, Those of us who knew the books first have our own and that must be "with knobs on" for CRT. He can have absolutely no need of film to make Middle Earth come to life. I don't see an inconsistency with the opinions expressed. He didn't think the book suitable and was not pleasantly surprised. For me one ot the strengths of the Radio version - and indeed the wonderful Bernard Cribbins Jackanory reading that was my introduction to Middle Earth, was that it left more scope for the listener to engage with the work firing one's own imagination rather than dictating. Of course they are a lot more faithful to the original.
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“But Finrod walks with Finarfin his father beneath the trees in Eldamar.”
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#44 | |
A Mere Boggart
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I think the opinion on Lee and Howe is that of the journalist, who is a dreadful writer. The article is all background pre-amble and the journo's feelings about the topic, with very scanty input from CT. I would guess he spoke for longer than two minutes so where is the rest of it?
Anyway, here we are, I've found the page where Alan Lee expresses beautifully his feelings about illustrating Middle-earth: Quote:
Linky to the Endicott Studio which he is part of, a loose group also included Neil Gaiman, Brian Froud and Charles Vess. One of the rare websites which can be called a thing of beauty.
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#45 | |
Gruesome Spectre
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Personally, even though they are hardly high works of art, nor are they slavishly faithful to the books (to say the least ![]() Did CT ever give an opinion of the earlier attempts?
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#46 |
Pilgrim Soul
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It always amuses me that they seem to favour the leather and bare leges Conan the Barbarian type look. Goodness knows what was going on in their psyches but it does seem rather impractical for nothern climes in winter. I know neither Boromir or Aragorn had mothers around for long to tell them they'd catch their death but really.. I suppose I should be grateful at least that Jackson's vision included trousers.
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“But Finrod walks with Finarfin his father beneath the trees in Eldamar.”
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#47 | |
Flame of the Ainulindalë
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What would have Tolkien thought about an HBO/GoT kind of a settlement with something like six seasons fex. (one season to every book) aka. 60 hours of top class drama? Would that kind of possibility, if presented to them, have changed their minds from the LotR being "in principle" unsuited to transform into a visual dramatic form?
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#48 |
Pilgrim Soul
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If more time meant more fildelity and development I imagine it would be preferable but I don't know whether it would solve the issues say related to depicting the various races of Middle Earth. Not being familiar with GoT I can't say whether they have similar issues to solve.
Elves are the killer really.... meant to be so beautiful, so elegant, graceful, old yet young. Cate Blanchett pulled it off but she has the advantage of being arguably the best actress of her generation as well as having the right physicality. Not many can do it and even though there aren't so many elves in LOTR as would be needed say for any filming of the Silmarillion. But they just get tall skinny slghtly odd looking humans.... doesn't quite work. Not for me anyhow.
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“But Finrod walks with Finarfin his father beneath the trees in Eldamar.”
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#49 | |
Cryptic Aura
Join Date: May 2002
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Quote:
![]() Ted Nasmith was also initially asked to be part of the movies but unfortunately at the time he faced some difficult family problems and couldn't participate. I think, though, even with Lee's and Howe's work, there are still aspects of Nasmith's work in the movies.
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#50 | ||
Illustrious Ulair
Join Date: Aug 2002
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An interesting documentary coming up on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday 4th August The Hobbit, the Musical http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01ld15z
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This other Radio 4 doc also looks fascinating Tolkien in Love http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01l8qr2 Quote:
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#51 | |
A Mere Boggart
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Going by the descriptions, I'm suspicious it's near where my old mucker's brother mistakenly bought an old house - well off the beaten track, wild boar everywhere which drove their dog insane to the point where she disappeared into the woods and went feral. It was all a failure because they realised Lancashire is much nicer
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#52 |
Pilgrim Soul
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Don't suppose that Christopher Tolkien would have retired to Lancashire. He is a Yorkshireman by birth after all.
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#53 | |||
Blossom of Dwimordene
Join Date: Oct 2010
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![]() I agree. But then I would not put CJRT alone like that - I think many people would not be happy with any movie. I know I wouldn't. Quote:
![]() I don't know. I'd feel guilty too if it was my father's work that I altered. Quote:
So I think that LOTR is, indeed, "on principle unsuited to transform into a visual form" as a whole. Parts have been done well in the movies, and there are many beautiful drawings, but I think you just can't reenact it from cover to cover and get it right. It's just like that. For lack of a better description - on principle.
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#54 | |
A Mere Boggart
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But Lord of the Rings is a Quest, and that's inherently an action based story. Constantly moving on. And without the action of challenges along the way, it would be incredibly boring. This is where I think it's a very tricksy book, because the feel of it is pure magic, and we don't always notice that driving narrative. And it's also part of the reason everyone can re-read then so often. Once you know the narrative and have gone on that adventure, next time around you can spend more time looking at the flowers Tolkien describes and drinking in the atmosphere. To be fair, I think the films did capture the same sense of movement and the same quotient of action as shown in the books. The sweeping panorama shots of the Fellowship moving through the hills are the filmic equivalent of Tolkien spending a few pages on exposition, describing a changing landscape.
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#55 | ||
Blossom of Dwimordene
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![]() LOTR was not a kind of story that I read because I was anxious about what happens next. If I want some of that, I'll reread my GoT. The action happens more subtly, peacefully, gently. You're interested about what happens next, but it doesn't have the kind of read-non-stop grip that some other books do. Instead, what gripped me was what is there besides the plot. Once again, even books without plot still have some kind of plot, unless they are math textbooks or something like that (though even in those you may find many a plot point.... ok, bad pun on analytic geometry). All novels have some kind of plot. But in LOTR, despite its being a Quest, the plot is not what makes it remarquable. Quote:
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#56 | |
Cryptic Aura
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#57 | ||
A Mere Boggart
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And yes, it was more than the plot, but the plot did drive it all. I remember first reading about Arwen and thinking "Why is she looking at Strider like that?" and not being satisfied until the end as to why. And feeling really upset when Gandalf fell in Moria. Quote:
I quite like his Ents, actually. They are like giant, 'twiggy' men, rather than trees with eyes, which is good.
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#58 |
Pilgrim Soul
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Looking for something else, I found this on the Estate Website regarding the illustration of the Children of Hurin:
"We have always admired the work of Alan Lee, ever since he was commissioned to illustrate The Lord of the Rings at the time of J.R.R. Tolkien's centenary. While preparing the story for publication, Christopher decided that to have the book illustrated from first publication would also underline its essential quality as a story rather than a scholarly work." For Christopher to have actively wanted Lee's illustration is quite a mark of approval. And the Estate website is surely a fairly reliable source.... ![]()
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#59 |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2012
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Lee's work is in a class of it's own. I doubt I would be able to vizualise lord of the rings etc without his artwork. It's so rich and adds to the whole middle earth atmosphere. Here are some of his hobbit artwork, I wonder if the movies have taken inspiration from his work.
http://tolkienilu.chez-alice.fr/epop..._porte_lee.jpg http://tolkienilu.chez-alice.fr/epop..._troll_lee.jpg http://tolkienilu.chez-alice.fr/epop..._smaug_lee.jpg http://tolkienilu.chez-alice.fr/epop...arrock_lee.jpg Last edited by Mumriken; 07-29-2012 at 06:00 AM. |
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#60 |
Pilgrim Soul
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I like Lee's work - certainly better than just about anyone's save Tolkien's own and Pauline Bayne's which is a different style - but I don't need them. I find the word pictures quite vivid.
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“But Finrod walks with Finarfin his father beneath the trees in Eldamar.”
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#61 | |
A Mere Boggart
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#62 |
Loremaster of Annúminas
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It's also worth noting that the Estate *requested* that Alan Lee do Children of Hurin *after* the films- so the notion of petty resentment or blackballing is shown to be another myth.
Note on "upper-class" accents: JRRT himself would be the first to point out that the "Oxford accent" is of very middle-class origin. (To hear a bona fide upper-class accent, listen to some 50s-era recordings of the Queen speaking).
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#63 | |
Spectre of Decay
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I haven't consulted my library yet, but it seems to me that the only aspects of French culture to which JRRT expressed any antipathy were specifically those which have been imposed on the English, either by the Normans (Woden's curse be upon them) or the aptly French-named bourgeoisie (in other words, precisely those people represented by the Sackville-Bagginses). It's easy to see how a product of industrial, no-nonsense Birmingham society might well heap a certain amount of disdain on the gratuitous and unnecessary use of French where a perfectly adequate English term exists, or the unjustifiable privilege given to French culture among the would-be arbiters of taste in this country. It's possible that Humphrey Carpenter overstated the case a little or misinterpreted what he discovered. In any case, I think CRT has earned the right to be cut a little slack by his father's ghost, having got such a hard time about military aircraft when he joined the R.A.F. I'm afraid I can't agree with JRRT about Spitfires.
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#64 |
Loremaster of Annúminas
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I don't believe CT ever flew Spits. He did his primary training in Tiger Moths and his advanced training in Harvards, then transferred to the RN- I don't know what he flew in the FAA or whether he reached an operational squadron before demob, but I know he never qualled or flew off carriers, which rules out Seafires.
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#65 |
Spectre of Decay
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Being a bit of a plane buff, that information interests me a lot. It's a standard progression for mid-1940s pilot training, but interesting nonetheless.
Perhaps I didn't make myself clear enough. I wasn't suggesting that CRT flew Spitfires; I was just selecting the type that's my personal point of departure from JRRT's comments in Letters #100. I had no knowledge of CRT's military service beyond the very basics until I read your post just now.
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#66 | |
Gruesome Spectre
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I know this is a bit far afield of this thread, but WWII aviation is an interest of mine too. ![]() I always wondered if combat aviation might not have been in the back of JRRT's mind when he wrote of battles between Eagles and Dragons, and aerial elements strafing the ground, like Smaug did to Lake-town.
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#67 |
Loremaster of Annúminas
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CT began his training at No. 7 Air School (Tiger Moths), Kroonstad, Free State; after completing Elementary Flying Training there he moved on to No. 25 AS (Harvards) at Standerton, Transvaal for Service Flying Training.
Upon graduation and commissioning in March 1945 he was sent back to England, and subsequently was transferred to the FAA; I don't know why but if I had to guess it would be because with the surrender of Germany there was a perceived greater need for RN pilots vs. Japan. By this time in the war the RN was operating few British-built aircraft; aside from the Barracuda and a small number of Seafires most of its TOE was made up of USN types (Martlet/Wildcat, Hellcat, Corsair, Avenger etc).
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The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it. |
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#68 |
Pile O'Bones
Join Date: May 2011
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Thank you CJRT
I thank God for Christopher Tolkien. Here is a man who has spent the rest of his life finishing his father's work...how rare is that in this day and age? And if he had not spent years being about his father's work, I would not have enjoyed or benefited from those works, especially The Silmarillion. He is an honorable man, and it warms my soul to know that there are folk like him out there.
I do not find it surprising that Christopher and the Tolkien Estate are opposed to the commercialization and circus surrounding the Jackson movies. I would expect that after having read the Professor's writings and letters. Not surprising at all! I do not think it is fair or right to throw Christopher under the bus for asking for a cut of the profits that came from the adaptations of his father's work; I would. JRRT was his FATHER after all. If it pains him as much as we have heard to see his father's work handled in such a way, then this would be some small redemption. More importantly, I do not believe it was about the money for Christopher (his history should prove that!) but rather about honoring his father in some way. In fact, it would be better if the people handling the adaptations, the movie studios, etc, would have chosen to honor the Tolkien estate by giving them their cut in the first place. It only goes to show, no matter how much one loves or hates the movies, that the folks who were behind making them (I am not speaking of Jackson here) are only in it as deep as the money goes. I know that even Peter Jackson struggled to create the adaptations that he did! I understand the way Christopher feels. I also understand that it all could have been much worse if someone other than Jackson had made the adaptations...much worse. Well, much of this is tragic, and I too am somewhat grieved to think that Tolkien's work could be so readily exposed to dilution or depravity if it were not for his children and his estate. Thank God for Christopher Tolkien and his work, his perseverance and the preservation of his father's legacy; and much more then that: rather, the preservation and telling of stories of which JRR Tolkien says, "I always had the sense of recording what was already 'there', somewhere..." May we all learn to get caught up in the Larger Story. Thank you JRRT and CJRT. Last edited by leapofberen; 09-16-2012 at 06:00 PM. Reason: clarification between CJRT and JRRT |
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#69 | |
Loremaster of Annúminas
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I think CT is in something of the position as the son of a great and legendary chef, who has lived to see his father's name slapped on a chain of wildly successful burger joints.... and is then foully pilloried for not endorsing fast food. (CT incidentally is a *very* nice man, and has a hysterically funny dry wit. He is no hermit, and is fact quite social, but doesn't like crowds or publicity.)
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#70 | |
Mighty Quill
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Christopher Tolkien has a right to be disappointed. He was there when his father was writing, after all. He probably knows better than anyone else alive what J.R.R.'s vision was for his works. Without Christopher Tolkien, we would know hardly anything about Middle-earth and its history.
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#71 |
Illustrious Ulair
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This is a brief excerpt from a recording made at Church House Bookshop back in 1981, launching the BBC Radio adaptation of Lord of the Rings. Its a short piece, where Brian Sibley goes into the contribution Christopher made to the series, & references the tape recording CT made as a pronunciation guide for the actors.
About 5 seconds of silence before the audio starts. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5spIP...ature=youtu.be |
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#72 |
Shade of Carn Dűm
Join Date: Apr 2001
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This tape is welcome here, at least to me.
Christopher Tolkien’s pronunciation of Thengel (using International Phonetic Alphabet symbols) as Then[dʒ]el where his father pronounced it as The[ŋɡ]el stands out as an odd differing pronunciation. It is probably not an error by either of the Tolkiens but would indicate different theories of how the Old English name may have been pronounced, and possibly theories of how the name was pronounced in different dialects of Old English. Old English grammars, at least those that I have seen, get vague in their rules for words which contain ng. See http://www.lotrplaza.com/archive7/fo...asp?TID=234771 for a discussion which in its later sections, towards the top, gets into Christopher Tolkien’s pronunciation. Another possible pronunciation is The[nj]el. It is noted in the forum I have linked to that Tolkien preferred to pronounce the name Hengest as something like Hen[dʒ]est or Hen[j]est where other systems of Old English pronunciation prefer He[ŋɡ]est. |
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#73 |
Loremaster of Annúminas
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The problem there is that in attempting to reconstruct ancient pronunciations, we rarely have much to go on besides what we can deduce from the sound-patterning of the language's surviving verse, whether rhyme, assonance, or alliteration; and that doesn't help much with medial consonants and consonant-pairs.
Occasionally orthography helps, as a sound-shift can be traced in a spelling change over time and/or colloquial spellings; but that's no help with -ng since there wouldn't have been an alternate orthography, "J" not existing in OE (except as an alternate written form of the vowel "I") So -ng is really anybody's guess, depending on whether one wants to use "frog DNA" from mod. German, or from Dutch-Frisian which is a closer cousin. FWIW, I'm disposed to think that dzh- in English, spelled either J or G, is a French import. But I certainly have no evidence to back up my gut there.
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#74 |
Shade of Carn Dűm
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That J did not exist in Old English is irrelevant. My only use of the letter is as the International Phonetic Alphabet character [j] which is sounded like consonantal Y in modern English.
But -ng- is in at least some Old English words pronounced as [ŋ] as in Latin. Some such words are longe (‘long’), cyning (‘king’), song (‘song’) with ng pronounced [ŋ]. But singe (‘I sing′) is considered to have been pronounced as sin[dʒ]e and engel (‘angel’) is pronounced as en[dʒ]el, similar to modern angel. For many words which exist in Middle English and Modern English the post-Old English forms are a great help. That ng is sometimes pronounced [ndʒ] in Old English is given by many pronunciation guides. See, for example, http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/resour...unciation.html , where it is stated: Dotted ġ is usually pronounced [j], as in Modern English yes, but when it follows an n it is pronounced [ʤ], as in Modern English angel.Dotted ġ only appears in some modernizations of Old English text to distinguish soft g from hard g. The International Phonetic Alphabet symbol [ʤ] was a former variant covering the two symbols [dʒ] but is now obsolete in official IPA usage. In current procedure one might use [d͡ʒ] if one wants to indicate specifically that [dʒ] represents a single phoneme. Christopher Tolkien’s pronunciation is indeed one possible pronunciation of the name Thengel following modern theories reconstructing Old English. It is not a French import. I do not know the bases for this decision. Last edited by jallanite; 09-20-2012 at 08:31 PM. |
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#75 |
Pilgrim Soul
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Doesn't Christopher explain his choice? It is a bit indistinct but I have heard this before and I thought he did.. but not having done much (ie virtually no) AS it didn't sink in.
I don't suppose it is at all relevant that west midlands accents now tend to sound ng closer to separate consonants than the IPA hooked n sound - sin-ging
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#76 | |
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That ng is sometimes pronounced [ndʒ] in Old English is given by many pronunciation guides.. By many, yes, but not all: that's the point- we really don't know and it's a matter of deduction. (Dotted G of course is a modern convention, not found in the sources)
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The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it. |
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#77 | ||||||
Shade of Carn Dűm
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: Toronto
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Sibley then suggested that perhaps J. R. R. Tolkien was intending to give the name in genuine Rohirric as opposed to genuine Old English. That seems to me to be most improbable. Thengel is a genuine Old English name. It is also one that seems to me to be equally possible to be read either way in both Old English and Modern English. I will see what I can find out from reputable sources. Quote:
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Your gut belief that [dʒ] is not found in Old English has, as yet, no support from a trustworthy Old English pronunciation guide. The indications I have found give [dʒ] as only occurring in Old English following [n], which fits with Christopher Tolkien’s pronunciation. Is it possible that when shown that your belief that [dʒ] probably did not occur in Old English conflicts with definite statements that it does, following [n], that you are now attempting to claim that because these are only deductions, they aren’t necessarily so but that your gut feeling has more likelihood if being true? At the moment, I don’t accept that. I want something better. Quote:
Last edited by jallanite; 09-22-2012 at 09:44 AM. |
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#78 | |
Late Istar
Join Date: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,224
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#79 |
Loremaster of Annúminas
Join Date: Oct 2006
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OK, my gut willingly stands corrected: OE ecg absolutely has the soft g, and so my categorical exclusion is simply wrong.
Perhaps I was misrecalling the suggestion that [dʒ] for "J", specifically, was a French import. Of course, JRRT also moved a bit between theory and practice himself: in his recordings he invariably pronounces the final consonant of Gandalf [f] while himself averring that in 'proper' Norse it would be [v].
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The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it. |
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#80 | |
Shade of Carn Dűm
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: Toronto
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Searching though websites and library books has convinced me that most authors just don’t bother to cover ng, but that those who do all give the two values of [ŋɡ] when the g has the hard sound and [ndʒ] when the g has the soft sound, and everyone seems to agree that Old English cg is to be pronounced [dʒ].
See http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/resour...unciation.html which in I have already linked to and which covers the entire book Introduction to Old English by Peter S. Baker (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2003). There were about four copies on the shelves, which is an unusual number of copies of the same book for the main branch of the University of Toronto Library. Then there is http://www.omniglot.com/writing/oldenglish.htm which is the Omniglot site of Old English/Anglo-Saxon. Last is http://weofodthignen.livejournal.com/158550.html which says: Although g after n is usually sounded g, occasionally (e.g. sprengan, ancestor of "spring") it is instead j as in "edge," but shorter than in cg words.None of this indicates how this is thought to be known, but perhaps that is because it is too obvious. Middle-English generally adopted the same spelling system as Old English, but simplified and modified it to mostly follow the Norman French spelling system. In particular the early Middle-English writers had introduced the French version of the letter g, but also kept as a letter of the alphabet a descendant of the Old English version of the alphabet. This letter is now usually known as yogh and was written something like Ȝ/ȝ. (You may not be able to see it here if you have an old computer, in which case you can see from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yogh what it sometimes looked like.) Middle-English writers generally used the letter gee (G/g) to transcribe the sounds of gee as it existed in Norman French. The French letter G/g is believed to have then had two sounds, a hard sound [g] like the hard sound of G/g in Modern French and English and Old English as well as a soft sound [dʒ] heard in Modern English and Old French but seldom if at all in Old English. The ḟormer Old French [dʒ] has since softened still further and is now [ʒ]. Middle-English writers generally used the letter yogh (Ȝ/ȝ) to transcribe the sounds of Middle-English gee which were assigned to gee in Old English but differed from the French sounds, namely [j] (the sound used in Modern English for consonantal Y) and [ɣ] which is a sound that has since become lost in English or is fronted to [f] but is now sometimes spelled as gh, for example in tough, though, cough, draught, laugh, straight, tough, plough, thorough, and in other words. In short, the linguists are assuming that if an early Middle-English scribe is using the letter G/g rather than Ȝ/ȝ, it must be because the sound to be represented is either [g] or [dʒ]. Therefore the Old English values must have been the same or very close to one of these choices. So when the scribes put down G/g and not Ȝ/ȝ, cg must have been pronounced as [dʒ] and Old English ng, if not to be pronounced as [ŋɡ], must be pronounced as [ndʒ]. However the closest I have come to finding verification of this theory is from Henry Sweet’s famous book A History of English Sounds (Oxford at the Clarendon Press, Oxford: 1888). Sweet uses Bell’s Visible Speech characters which cannot be reproduced over the web. I have replaced them by approximate IPA values in curly braces, although in this case the values don’t make sense to me and I believe they may be in error. On page 196 Sweet writes: 744. OE ġ becomes ȝ everywhere in ME, except in the combination nġ and nċ, where {ɲɟ, ɟɟ} gradually developed into their present sound of (nʒ, dʒ) as in senġen, briġġe MnE (sinʒ, bridʒ) = OE sęnġan, bryċġ.In short, if Thengel has a soft g then Christopher Tolkien’s pronunciation as Then[dʒ]el is a correct one according to current standards. I have found two modern listings which contain the noun ţengel and present it as ţenǵel, here using an acute accent to mark the soft sound. One of the volumes was J. B. Passenger’s A Short Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon Poetry: In normalized Early West-Saxon (University of Toronto, Toronto: 1962). My notes are not in order on the other book, but I recall that it was in German. However at least some earlier sources indicate the hard sound for ţengel. See http://www.bosworthtoller.com/031660 for the page on ţengel from Bosworth-Toller’s Anglo-Saxon Dictionary of 1898. According to the pronunciation guide at the centre top of the page the word is pronounced /θeŋɣel/. I cannot account for the vowel /ɣ/ but at least this is closer to J. R. R. Tolkien’s pronunciation. It suggests that the pronunciation provided by J. R. R. Tolkien was not simply an inexplicable error. There the matter stands at the moment. Possibly some newer discussion has indicated that the g in Thengel had a soft sound or possibly this is a matter which is still in common debate. Note, in many hard fonts in use in the 20th century the yogh symbol appeared in a from identical or almost identical to ʒ. Indeed it was often thought they were simply different forms to the same symbol. This was incorrect and in Unicode ȝ is usually now clearly distinguished from ʒ in fonts. Yogh sometimes appears in the HoME series and there it appears in a form indistinguishable from ʒ. Quote:
F represents f, except in at the end of words, where it is used to represent the sound of v (as in English of): Nindalf, Fladrif.But this is an account of the pronunciation of the Quenya and Sindarin Elvish tongues, except in a few cases where Tolkien thinks fit to explicitly bring in one of the other languages. The discussion begins with Tolkien stating: The Westron or Common Speech has been entirely translated into English equivalents. All Hobbit names and special words are intended to be pronounced accordingly: for example Bolger has g as in bulge, and mathom rhymes with fathom.In Appendix F I Of Other Races – Dwarves, Tolkien writes: Gimli’s own name, however, and the names of all of his kin, are of Northern (Mannish) origin. Their own secret and ‘inner’ names, their true names, the Dwarves have never revealed to anyone of alien race. Not even on their tombs do they inscribe them.The name Gandalf is to be understood as one of these Northern names which Tolkien has substituted for the real Northern names, just as he supposedly substituted Old English names of the real Rohirric names, and invented Hobbit names to replace real their real names. These supposedly substitute Dwarvan names are taken from the Norse Eddas and some of them are somewhat Anglicized. Notably the name Dwalin in the Old Norse sources is Dvalin. All these Northern names are to be understood as English-related substitutes for the the real names of the persons mentioned. In his essay on the Istari in Unfinished Tales Tolkien writes: Gandalf is a substitution in the English narrative on the same lines as the treatment of Hobbit and Dwarf names. It is an actual Norse name (found applied to a Dwarf in Völuspá) used by me since it appears to contain gandr, a staff, especially one used in ‘magic’, and might be understood to mean ‘Elvish wight with a (magic) staff’. Gandalf was not an Elf, but would be by Men be associated with them, since his alliance and friendship with Elves was well-known. Since the name is attributed to ‘the North’ in general, Gandalf must be supposed to represent a Westron name, but one made up of elements not derived from Elvish tongues.In short, Gandalf was never considered by Tolkien when he wrote the bit about f at the end of names, nor should he have been. Like the Dwarves he bears a name understood to be adapted to Weston both in the original imagined tale and in the English translation. Last edited by jallanite; 09-24-2012 at 06:49 PM. |
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