New interview with Christopher Tolkien

[Aiwendil]

Originally Posted by Jallanite

However at least some earlier sources indicate the hard sound for þengel. See http://www.bosworthtoller.com/031660 for the page on þengel from Bosworth-Toller’s Anglo-Saxon Dictionary of 1898. According to the pronunciation guide at the centre top of the page the word is pronounced /θeŋɣel/. I cannot account for the vowel /ɣ/ but at least this is closer to J. R. R. Tolkien’s pronunciation. It suggests that the pronunciation provided by J. R. R. Tolkien was not simply an inexplicable error.

For what it's worth, I don't think the pronunciations given in the online Bosworth and Toller are all that reliable. Note the little asterisk that, when hovered over, says that the pronunciation is an experimental feature. I expect it is generated automatically by a computer program for each word.

I noticed this the other day when I saw that the spelling variants 'gyld' and 'gild' gave different pronunciations for the initial 'g' (apparently, /ɣ/ is assigned when the 'g' is followed by 'y' and /j/ when it's followed by 'i', which is perhaps a decent rule of thumb but by no means universally true). And for some reason, /ɣ/ seems to appear in all the places one would expect /g/, which would explain the strangeness with /θeŋɣel/.