You knew I would have to post on this sooner or later, didn't you,
Esty?
I can only echo
Mr Underhill - great thread and great posts so far.
The use of
thou & thee in the Troll song seems to me more dialectal than insulting, in accordance with the poem's folk song character - especially when you hear Tolkien himself sing it (a good recording is
here).
I just remembered a smashing occurrence of
thee & thou in the Silmarillion which is missing in
Miggy's list - Fëanor to Melkor:
Quote:
|
"Get thee gone from my gate, thou jail-crow of Mandos!"
|
Everything here is a calculated insult - the use of the familiar pronoun, the epithet reminding Melkor of the worst humiliation he had suffered until then, the final act of slamming the door "in the face of the mightiest of all dwellers in Eä". (Which, incidentally, makes this a great thing to say to bailiffs, Jehovah's Witnesses and other visiting nuisances.)
Some remarks to usage in the German (Carroux) translation: the hobbits in the Shire mostly use
du towards each other, but Frodo and Farmer Maggot address each other with
Ihr (which may reflect uneasy feelings from the past on Frodo's side, whereas on Maggot's it may indicate that he now treats Frodo with the respect due to the Baggins of Bag-End), and the Fellowship hobbits use
Ihr to the lords and ladies they meet on their journey, like Elrond, Galadriel, King Théoden and Denethor, but also to 'normal' people like Beregond - which goes quite against the grain of Tolkien's remark in Appendix F. Apparently Ms Carroux felt she had to deviate from Tolkien in this, because it would sound childish in German to say
du to an unfamiliar adult.
Sam calls Frodo
du, Herr Frodo, which is highly unusual in German, where only little children use
du and the honorific
Herr, Frau + surname together (as in
du, Frau Steimel), until they have learned the correct polite forms - but here it nicely reflects the mixture of deference and intimacy.
Gandalf is addressed with
du by Frodo and Bilbo, as befits a friend of the family, and by extension also by Merry and Pippin. To Sam, on the other hand, he is initially
Ihr, Herr Gandalf; by the time they come to Moria, this has become
du, Herr Gandalf (!), and at the end, on the Field of Cormallen, it's just
du, Gandalf - showing nicely how the wizard changes in Sam's eyes from somebody both respected and feared to a companion who has become more familiar, but is still leader and guide, to a friend who is still respected but mostly loved.