Grammar Question
 

If there are any of you who know your grammar well, I have a question for you. Repeatedly, Tolkien used the word further in relation to distance. For example:

"He put the ring in his pocket almost without thinking; certainly it did not seem of any particular use at the moment. He could not go much further, but sat down on the cold floor and gave himself up to complete miserableness, for a long while." -The Hobbit: Riddles In The Dark

I can't find any more at the moment, but I distinctly remember him using it in the same way several times.

For any of you who are thoroughly confused, the word further is in relation to degree whereas farther is distance. What I'm wondering is why he used further and not farther.

I realize that I'm probably missing something, because Tolkien could not be wrong. He was a professor of English at Oxford after all.

I'm thinking that Tolkien was taking artistic license with the language, which he does repeatedly also. For instance, in the passage above, he uses the word miserableness, which isn't a word. The proper word would be misery. I don't know.

Any thoughts?

It could also be a difference between dialects. British English differs from American English in many ways, and most of those differences are little things like "further" vs. "farther."

I believe I have heard the same, that farther is the indicator of distance. I have just looked it up in a dictionary (Websters Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary), and it has a note that says this: "Farther and further have been used more or less interchangeably throughout most of their history, but currently they are showing signs of diverging. As adverbs they continue to be used interchangeably whenever spatial, temporal, or metaphysical distance is involved. But where there is no notion of distance, further is used. [. . .] a polarizing process appears to be taking place in their adjective use. Farther is taking over the meaning of distance . . . " Thus perhaps it is that in Tolkien's time, no such polarization or divergence had yet taken place. My question is: why, if they originally were used interchangeably, was there a need for two such similar words?

Because nothing in English is spelled right.

Oh English is fine, its just that Americans (ok somewhat gross generalisation but it is kind true) have a tendency of changing the English language.. like Theodore Roosevelt proposed an education plan to change some English words to simplify the language. Words to hard to spell? Lets just change them!.. and words like aluminium they change to aluminum, replace the "s" in words to a "z" [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

But back to topic.. further and farther are used interchangeably [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

I think we should change words that aren't spelled like they're pronounced. Let's get rid of all those dang silent and useless letters (for instance, track should be spelled trak). With letters floating around in words that sometimes don't change the sound, it's no wonder children have a bit of trouble learning spelling. And some combos of letters sound exactly the same but they're not spelled the same, so we should get rid of some of them. (for instance, doubt should be spelled dowt)

Spelling is so dumb (and grammar can be too).

I tutor part time, and it is so frustrating to have to tell 6 year olds things like "I know you learned last year that this letter has this sound, but sometimes if it's before this letter, it sounds like this. But not all the time, because it can sound like this too."

(forgive my rant, one of my students started crying last night because he was so flustered by his spelling assignment)

Hmm. I wonder how many spelling/grammar errors Tolkien made before his editor corrected it? Probably close to zero.

But thank God for editors. If I ever write a book, I'll need one, and I'll be happy to pay for the luxery of typing fast, not using the spell checker, and refusing to look words up. [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]

[ September 10, 2003: Message edited by: the phantom ]

Don't give me any of that "Americans" nonsense. I meant exactly what I said when I said it. The whole of the language is misspelled, and the lion's share of that belongs to the Britons. If it didn't, we would still be talking like þær æt hyðe stod, which I just copied from Beowulf. If Europeans were any good at spelling, we would still be saying that. Aluminum was discovered and named by an American. The Britons renamed it within their borders for parallelism. You completely missed the point of my argument, dear.

http://www.barrowdowns.com/images/skwerlz05.jpg

Unless someone has something Tolkien-related to add to this thread, it will be closed and all off-topic posts deleted. A general argument on the relative merits of British vs. American spelling is definitely not an advanced book discussion!

Thanks guys for your answers. It's been bugging me for a while now.

Feel free to close the thread if no one has anything else. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

In one of his letters (#148, 1954), Tolkien was complaining that the proof-readers were altering his spelling:

...and that seems to wrap the question up neatly. Closed.