Thread: Elves to Eldar?
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Old 02-09-2003, 09:13 PM   #5
Aiwendil
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Join Date: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,224
Aiwendil is a guest at the Prancing Pony.Aiwendil is a guest at the Prancing Pony.
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Welcome to the project, doug*platypus.

Concerning Elves: it may be interesting to speculate on whether Tolkien, if he had known how popular his works would be, would have used 'Elves'. He very well may have; certainly, when he abandoned 'Gnomes' he must still have thought that 'Elves' was somehow acceptable. Or he may have decided that it should be left as 'Eldar' or 'Quendi'.

However interesting this speculation may be, it is not our concern. This project is not aimed at improving in any way the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien. It is beyond the scope of the project to effect a change such as Elves>Eldar.

As it is also beyond its scope to alter Feanor to Faenor. Moreover, as Lindil points out, 'Feanor' is indeed what Curufinwe Feanaro was supposed actually to have been called in Beleriand. So in this case, it is not merely a question of presentation, but of content.

Tar Elenion is quite right in saying that the change with which the Shibboleth is concerned was 'th' (or 'thorne') to 's', and was an issue specifically related to Quenya. Note that 's' already existed in Quenya, separate from the 'th' sound. Indeed, one of Feanor's chief complaints against th>s was that it eliminated the distinction between those two sounds. This is why sometimes 's' is spelled with the 'silma' tengwa, and sometimes with 'thule'.
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