The published Sil sidesteps the issue as Earendil "called aloud in many tongues, both of Elves and Men" without specifying the tongues, and for grammar to work just one tongue of Men would suffice - though I wouldn't say 3 languages is "many" (Quenya, Sindarin, Mannsih?) - but then is 4 many (if you have 2 Mannish tongues)? or 5? How many do you need?
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Originally Posted by Huinesoron
He tries to say "Great Powers of the West" and ends up saying "Big Bossypants over there".
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Hey, he was doing his best.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Formendacil
Certainly, given its kinship to Hadorian proto-Adūnaic, I think Bėorian would have been fairly easy if he had a knowledgeable teacher--a reason, perhaps, why Bėorian would have been learned, rather than the tongue of Haleth--like an Englishman learning Dutch.
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If Tolkien's ever said anything on the matter of these languages, I've forgotten, but my headcanon was that the Mannish tongues were related to each other - if not different dialects of the same speech, then languages of the same family. Similar to the different languages/dialects of Elvish. And at least between the people of Beor and Hador there seemed to be enough connections and intermingling throughout history to make it plausible that the two languages did not drift that far apart.
And I also agree about other mortal refugees at the Havens. Lots of people fled Dorthonion with Emeldir, and lots more probably fled in a less organized fashion, and surely they didn't all settle in the same spot. Of course everything went awry after the Nirnaeth, so if there was any Beorian-established settlement in South Beleriand it probably did not survive, and the more solitary refugees might not have held on to their language - but if there were any survivors, the environs of the Havens was the only place they could end up in significant enough concentrations. And they very well might have held on to their language, because people do in real life, moving doesn't always mean forgetting - immigration and assimilation come on a spectrum. Elwing might even have found a bunch of "compatriots" at the Havens who would have hailed her as a figure of honour in their community just by virtue of being Beren's granddaughter and the last heir of the line of Beor. I think it's not impossible that Earendil could have picked it up at the Havens (new fanfic idea: Earendil learning Beorian while courting Elwing
).