Bethberry -- good point, but I think the syllabification (sp?) is El-ess-ar and if so, Appendix E states:
Quote:
"In longer words it falls on the last syllable but one, where that contains a long vowel, a diphthong, or a vowel followed by two (or more) consonants."
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Which leaves us with "el-ESS-ar", which is how I always pronounced it. But I have no evidence to support this syllabification. The BBC radio play of LotR pronounces it this way, for what that's worth.
P.s. I think threads like this, while not as weighty as others, are useful. At one point I didn't even know how to pronounce "Tolkien" and someone (in a thread like this one) told me that it was definitely tol-KEEN. Or was it TOL-keen? I forgot again. [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img]
[ September 27, 2002: Message edited by: Turambar ]