Ori's writing

[Alfirin]

Greetings,

I'm wondering if anyone here could answer a little question that's been bothering me

In LOTR when Gandalf reads the account of the death of Balin and the rest of the Moria reclamation party. He makes mention that is in written in "a bold hand, using an Elvish script", by which Gimli identifies that the writer must be Ori. My question is as follows

1. by "an Elvish script, does Tolkien mean Ori was actually writing in Elvish (presumably Sindarin) or simply using Elvish letters to write in some other language, presumably Westron, since I'm not sure it is POSSIBLE to write Kuzdul using Elvish characters. I'm not sure you can write Westron in them either, but maybe you can (like how many Eastern European languages can be written using either the Roman or Cyrillic alphabet)

2. If the former, why would he write a message like that in Elvish? Ori is old enough to predate the Dwarf/Elf reconciliation, so while he might know Sindarin or Quenya (for trade reasons, or as part of a classical education) I doubt it's his first language (though the fact that Gimli can identify him from this means he must have done it fairly regular. Any friendly party coming in who might read it would presumably be more dwarves so one would assume you would want to make the message as easy to read as possible, which would presumably mean Kuzdul would be the tongue of choice. Even Weston would be a better choice than Sindarin since it seems to be sort of the lingua franca of interspecies trade and hence, the most readable by any party.
Quenya seems even less likely than Sindarin, I might be the language of scholars and the learned, but few common people of ME still seem fluent in it. If part of the reason for writing the message was to warn any future interlopers into Moria of the danger, writing it in Quenya would be a bit like a castaway on an island sending a message in a bottle written in Classical Latin.

NOTE: if my mind is playing tricks on me, and the whole "Elvish" script thing is found only in the BBC radio version (where I know I heard it) please ignore this question.

[Formendacil]

When Gandalf says "an Elvish script," he means just that--an Elvish script, i.e. writing system.

As near as I have ever been able to tell from the Appendices, Elvish letters (script) was the main writing system of Middle-earth in the Third Age, and its use was more-or-less parallel to the use of Westron as the common tongue. And, if I have had the right impression all these years, the Book of Mazabul was in the Common Tongue*.

Thus, it follows, the various Dwarves writing in it might have used either the Runes, which were especially familiar to them, or the Elvish letters, which were the common way of writing that language.


*It really HAS to be the Common Tongue that is in the Book of Mazabul, for a couple reasons: 1. Gandalf is not fluent in Khuzdul, as evidenced by his remarks outside the Doors of Moria that he would have to call on Gimli if he were to need words in that tongue, and 2. Khuzdul was not, especially in these later days, apparently something that the Dwarves shared much--if at all--with outsiders. Granted, the logbook of the expedition was hardly intended to be sent to George, Allen, & Unwin for mass printing, but it does seem to have been intended as a record that COULD be shared with anyone who might come, either to find the Kingdom in splendour, or as a record of their failure as the case ultimately ended.

[Galadriel55]

No, the script part is definitely there. I have no idea why. Maybe to sound fancy and official - we still have a lot of Latin present in mottos of fancy official places - but why be so official in such quantities with your own kin and kind? Especially since this bunch was very, hmm, nationalistic. All I can say is that I've tried reading a language written with the wrong script, with various combinations of languages and scripts. Trust me, it is not an experience you'd want to do repeatedly. It's a pain in the neck trying to decipher simple words. So if Ori wrote in Kuzdul using Elvish characters, just why would he make life so difficult for his readers?

Edit: xed with Form. Hey! Good to see you around!

[Alfirin]

Ok so you DO use Tengwar to write Westron. Thanks, that clears a lot up.

It sounds like the book of Mazabul was probably written in both' That Gandalf specifies Ori's bit is in Tengwar indicates there are bits that are not.

In fact, now that I think of it I rather suspect Ori's was one of the few bits that was and was like that because he was writing in a hurry. The older parts of the book, from when the Dwarves ruled probably ARE in Kuzdul, as would befit a history of Moria. As a book designed to be a chronicle of the kingdoms history, the scribes would probably REQUIRE it be written in the Ancient Runes of their people (much as some official scientific papers (like the one describing a new species) are still written in Latin (or Greek, or Hebrew). On the other hand, Ori's notes would be more along the lines of a quick scribble. In which case, he probably WOULD use Tengwar since it is curvier, and therefore probably a bit faster to write in (much as many people can write in cursive faster than they can print) It would be a bit like the situation in Dynastic Egypt. Hieroglyphics were really more for monuments and official documents. For day to day messages, a scribe would be using Heiratic (or later Demotic) Egyptian which is much simpler.
And I can sympathize, Galdriel55 . I still remember my sister breaking down in tears when, as part of learning French in high school, she decided to bring in the copy of Babar our Grandfather brought back from Paris where he was over there in WWII to read to the class....and finding she couldn't because Jean de Brunhoff wrote all the text in Babar in his own cursive (actually I think the books STILL is printed that way; I never checked) Or when I tried to read a 1920s or so book in German, from the time when it was still common to print them in Gothic/Blackletter script ( I can't read German anyway, but with a modern one I probably could have looked up enough words to make it out)

[Galadriel55]

Just a small tangent about the Common Tongue:

I may be confusing things and missing a few details, but did the Hobbits not also speak it (and therefore write it)? Did they also use Tengwar? If so, did Bilbo not have to lean the alphabet when he studied Elvish (and taught it to Frodo)?

[Mithalwen]

The actual letter forms he probably knew but he may have had to learn to apply them to different sounds. I don't think hobbits would have developed their own writing system.

[Alfirin]

I also seem to noticed that when Hobbit writing is shown, it often appears to be a different, somewhat, shorter chubbier form of writing than the form most elves seem to prefer. Assuming this is actually the case (as opposed to a flourish by Tolkien or one of the later interpreters) Bilbo might not have recognized them when learning Elvish (again sort of like learning cursive after print, or "casual" Hebrew after the formal kind)

[Puddleglum]

Originally Posted by Alfirin

I'm not sure it is POSSIBLE to write Kuzdul using Elvish characters. I'm not sure you can write Westron in them either

Well, I'm reminded of the Ring inscription of which Gandalf tells Frodo "The letters are Elvish, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Mordor."

If Mordorish (or whatever the proper name of the language is) can be written in Elvish script, then I'm tempted to think *any* language can.

[Galin]

In a late text titled Of Dwarves And Men it is said: 'Now the Common Speech, when written at all, had from its begining been expressed in the Feanorian Script.'


The text goes on to say that in the Third Age some Dwarves had been obliged to learn to read the Common Speech as written:

'... and many had found it convenient to learn to write it according to the then general custom of the West. But this they only did in dealings with other peoples. For their own purposes they (as has been said) preferred the Runes and adhered to them.'

'Therefore in such documents as the Book of Mazarbul -- not 'secret' but intended primarly for Dwarves, and probably intended later to provide material for chronicles -- they used the Runes. But the spelling was mixed and irregular. In general and by intention it was a transcription of the current spelling of the Common Speech into Runic terms; but this was often 'incorrect', owing to haste and the imperfect knowledge of the Dwarves; and it was also mingled with numerous cases of words spelt phonetically (according to the pronunciation of the Dwarves) -- for instance, letters that had in the colloquial pronunciation of the late Third Age ceased to have any function were sometimes omitted.'

JRRT, Of Dwarves And Men, The Peoples of Middle-Earth

There are a few footnotes I'm not quoting here.

Although if any parts of this don't square with something in The Lord of the Rings (something that I can't recall at the moment perhaps), then for myself I would give weight to The Lord of the Rings rather.

[Galin]

By the way, you can see Ori's script -- he does employ the tengwar -- in the pictures Tolkien himself made of parts of these pages. JRRT made them look like burnt and torn pages, and I think the illustrations are now being published in an anniversary edition of The Lord of the Rings.

You can find them in some books that contain Tolkien's illustrations too... or at least one of them.

So we have torn and burnt pages of both runes and Feanorean characters, and I think 'page III' (again with respect to Tolkien's illustrations of the 'pages') has runes and also a line of tengwar.

[Tar-Jêx]

I doubt that Ori would know Sindarin, let alone Quenya, and if he did, what purpose would he have for writing in them rather than his first tongue? It's probably more of a writing style thing, as he may shape his letters similar to that that the elves do.

[Galin]

Well, Ori wrote in the Common Speech, using the tengwar.

Short version

[shadowfax]

Just my two cents worth on this.

In The Hobbit, we discover that the moon runes and other runic writings on the map are formed of runic characters but the language is ... Modern English.

Tolkien later attempted to explain this by claiming he was translating from the Red Book of the Westmarch, and that somehow the map had got translated as well (although otherwise it is still a completely authentic document).

In other words, when he was working on The Hobbit, Tolkien wasn't too concerned about authenticity. Initially he wasn't even aware that this children's story was set in the same world as his high mythological Silmarillion.

Maybe Ori's book was added in a similar vein. It is a remarkable coincidence, is it not, that such a book should accidentally open to the page that explains what's going on rather than some description of what we had for dinner and what a pain my rheumatism is. Maybe the fellowship didn't find out out what had happened until afterwards (Gimli took the book with him, remember, but it is never mentioned again, is that not strange?), so the book was added as a narrative crutch so the reader would know what they were fighting about.

[Galin]

But Gandalf 'pored over it [the book] for some time' and had guessed that 'the pages seem to have numbers referring to the years after their arrival.'

Meaning Gandalf didn't just open the book, by coincidence, to the right page.

Translating Westron into English for the book of Mazarbul is in step enough with translating Westron into English for the Red Book or its copies. The 'problem' is, once you show a document in an illustration (which Tolkien at least planned to do here), the implication, at least, is that one is looking at a depiction of the real thing...

... but JRRT didn't invent enough Westron for that in any case, nor even the real Mannish names for the Dwarves that appear on the Doors of Moria for example (or Balin on the tomb) -- thus the illustrations are to give a 'sense' of the original, real thing, with respect to which the runes and Elvish letters help visually.

Of course in The Hobbit Tolkien, in theory, went the extra league when using his Anglo-saxon like runes there... I believe Tolkien waffled a bit about that (how to explain them), but finally landed on the conceit of the translator.

[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.

[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).