Thread: Ori's writing
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Old 09-11-2014, 04:04 PM   #9
Galin
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
 
Join Date: May 2007
Posts: 1,031
Galin is a guest at the Prancing Pony.Galin is a guest at the Prancing Pony.
In a late text titled Of Dwarves And Men it is said: 'Now the Common Speech, when written at all, had from its begining been expressed in the Feanorian Script.'


The text goes on to say that in the Third Age some Dwarves had been obliged to learn to read the Common Speech as written:

Quote:
'... and many had found it convenient to learn to write it according to the then general custom of the West. But this they only did in dealings with other peoples. For their own purposes they (as has been said) preferred the Runes and adhered to them.'

'Therefore in such documents as the Book of Mazarbul -- not 'secret' but intended primarly for Dwarves, and probably intended later to provide material for chronicles -- they used the Runes. But the spelling was mixed and irregular. In general and by intention it was a transcription of the current spelling of the Common Speech into Runic terms; but this was often 'incorrect', owing to haste and the imperfect knowledge of the Dwarves; and it was also mingled with numerous cases of words spelt phonetically (according to the pronunciation of the Dwarves) -- for instance, letters that had in the colloquial pronunciation of the late Third Age ceased to have any function were sometimes omitted.'

JRRT, Of Dwarves And Men, The Peoples of Middle-Earth
There are a few footnotes I'm not quoting here.

Although if any parts of this don't square with something in The Lord of the Rings (something that I can't recall at the moment perhaps), then for myself I would give weight to The Lord of the Rings rather.
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