[Gothmog]

Me, being from Sweden, had a hard time reading LotR in english for the first time. I was maybe around 12 years or something. Luckily, my father had used the same books when studying english at the university many years ago, so the most uncommon words were underlined and translated. Though I wouldn't made it through if I hadn't read them in swedish first. I also tried Silm in english back then, but gave up. Now I try to read only in english.

I learned a lot of words from Tolkien. I was too lazy to look up some words too, so I guessed out of the context. This gave me an approximate translation but not always the correct. A lot of the words I learned adjectives because of the wonderful descriptions of places and people featured in LotR.

One word that I remember is Alas. I thought it sounded real cool...

I don't recommend LotR to first time english readers though. The language isn't that easy and some words used can hardly be find in my dictionary...

And I didn't know the word niggard until today Wish one could be better at english...