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Old 10-29-2017, 01:13 PM   #12
Morthoron
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Balfrog View Post
Hallelujah! Is there actually a point you're willing to agree on with Ms. Seth – namely Tolkien's seeming disdain for Shakespeare?
Seeing as you evidently sprang fully-formed from the head of Priya Seth like Athena from Zeus, I will forgive your lack of common knowledge regarding Tolkien while you sycophantically preen under the watchful gaze of your mistress. The aversion to Shakespeare has been known and discussed for decades. Known for decades -- a common theme in this discussion....

Quote:
Originally Posted by Balfrog View Post
As to:

By the way, they are not necessarily speaking cockney, but more like Mancunian, given that Tolkien would be more acquainted with guttural Manchester accents, having lived outside of Birmingham as a child and serving in the Lancashire Fusiliers in WWI. His brushes with London cockney would be limited.


Tolkien's knowledge of the English Language and dialects was vast. It would be wrong to belittle him. John Rateliff, probably, the most knowledgeable scholar on The Hobbit – calls the Trolls' accents 'cockney' (see The History of The Hobbit).
Lazy scholarship is nothing new, even on the part of Rateliff. Besides, Rateliff is from Arkansas and is not a philologist.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Balfrog View Post
By the way your words sound remarkably like Eledhwen (a Special Educational Needs Teacher) from The Tolkien Forum some 12 years ago (thread: about trolls' accents). When I type in on Google search: 'trolls cockney' – the first thing that comes up is:

That particular aspect of the trolls' accent seems more Mancunian (Manchester) to me than Cockney. Tolkien will have been more familiar with the accents of the West Midlands and the North West than Cockney, as he lived just outside Birmingham as a child, and served in the Lancashire Fusiliers in WW1, where he would have encountered such speech among the enlisted men.
You quoted a post from Eledhwen from 12 years ago. Are you aware that the Internet has been around since the 1990s and the trolls' accents have been discussed at length that entire time, and on websites and forums now unfortunately defunct? Are you also aware that Eledhwen and I were both Middle-earth fan-fiction writers, such as on the now defunct Middle-earth Fan-fiction Awards (MEFA) and fanfiction.net? Eledhwen is also a moderator over at TheOneRing.net (of which I am also a member). We have had interactions and discussions for years. We have come to the same conclusion (and previous to the post you referred to).

How interesting you should imply I borrowed from another post when you obviously haven't a single, original idea in your head, given you spend months and years quoting nothing but Priya Seth, advertising for Priya Seth and defending every written word from the Gospel of Priya Seth. We wonders if you aren't one in the same, eh? Yes we do, Precious-s-s.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Balfrog View Post
Tolkien wrote The Hobbit while in Oxford. Oxford to London is a mere 50 miles. It's far too presumptive to assume the Manchester connection. However I could be persuaded if, with your obviously deep acquaintance of English dialects, you could point out in a Manchester dialectal dictionary, the words:

Lumme, Blighter, Copped etc.
Your apparent lack of knowledge regarding the insular nature of Oxford in the early 20th century is astounding. Tolkien would have little to no relational basis with anyone speaking Cockney from a life experience standpoint, particularly since he despised big, sooty cities full of noisome and blaring automobiles with a passion. He spent WWI in the trenches with a Lancashire regiment, where he would pick up the patois of his fellow soldiers on an intimate and unfiltered basis. Where, exactly, would Tolkien garner a knowledge of Cockney? In between classes at Merton College?

He spent his childhood outside Birmingham. He went from King Edward's School in Birmingham right to Exeter College, Oxford, finished his degree, and then promptly joined the Lancashire Fusiliers in 1915. Once demobilized and recuperated from his injuries (in a cottage 25 miles north of Birmingham, and also stationed in Yorkshire), he worked as a reader at the University of Leeds (again in Yorkshire), and then back to Pembroke College at Oxford in 1925. When, precisely, did Tolkien speak at first hand with lower class Londoners for any length of time?

As for slang, the term "blimey" (as in "Mutton yesterday, mutton today, and blimey, etc.") has been used in Mancunian slang since the 19th century (and a sort of winter dress cap worn in WWI was referred to as a "Gor Blimey" by all rank of British soldiers), and "lumme" (Lord love me), was in regular use in Lancashire in the early 20th century. For instance, here is a monologue in which blimey and lumme are used by the famed British comedian Robb Wilton (1881-1957), know for his dry Lancashire accent:

http://monologues.co.uk/Robb_Wilton/...errminated.htm

As far as "blighter" and "copped", I see as many references to the terms in Lancashire or Manchester as elsewhere in Britain. They are not necessarily Cockney in derivation. In any case, Tolkien is on record as regretting using conventional English names for the trolls:

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien 153: To Peter Hastings (Draft), September 1954
I might not (if The Hobbit had been more carefully written, and my world so much thought about 20 years ago) have used the expression 'poor little blighter', just as I should not have called the troll William.
Therefore, any extravagant literary pun regarding Elizabethan playwrights, with so much jumping through hoops of allusion and allegory, seems nonsensical, given that Tolkien never mentioned such an arduous and overwrought bit of whimsy, and would rather have stricken the name(s) from the story if he had the chance.

The very tenor of the sentence emphasized in parentheses: "if The Hobbit had been more carefully written, and my world so much thought about 20 years ago", indicates he did not, in fact, give the naming conventions of the trolls much thought at all. Certainly not something as ornate as your demi-goddess of click-bait commands.
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Last edited by Morthoron; 10-29-2017 at 01:45 PM.
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