* * Revised Fall of Gondolin pt 1 [General Revisions & 'Of Tuor' Revisions]* * - The Barrow-Downs Discussion Forum

Aiwendil · 10-25-2002, 12:53 PM

I'm torn between leaving Bad Uthwen in (with a circumflex over the a) and dropping it entirely. I do not favor trying to replace it with Quenya. I am not adamantly against Quenyanization in general, but I tend to view it with skepticism and I definitely don't think it's appropriate here. There are several reasons for this:

1. Only a very few Gondolin-related names were changed to Quenya in later years by JRRT, and none of these was (as far as I recall) a place name.

2. I'm pretty sure that Quenya was not used in daily speech in Gondolin. There is a passage in the Grey Annals saying that Quenya was retained in daily use in Gondolin, but this is struck out. This seems to be associated with the change in the Grey Annals whereby the population of Gondolin went from being mainly Noldor to being a mix of Noldor and Sindar. There is some room for doubt here, since in the Late Writings in XII, there is mention of Gondolin being mainly Noldor. This is usually assumed to be a mere slip of the pen.

3. My main problem with Quenyanization: it's difficult. It's no easy matter to come up with Quenya equivelants of Gnomish names. Usually the best we can do is to come up with three or four possibilities. Where are we then? We're forced to choose one more or less arbitrarily. In short, there's a lot of room for error in this kind of translation, and there can never be a lot of justification for the final choice.

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10-25-2002, 12:53 PM	#23
Aiwendil Late Istar Join Date: Mar 2001 Posts: 2,224	I'm torn between leaving Bad Uthwen in (with a circumflex over the a) and dropping it entirely. I do not favor trying to replace it with Quenya. I am not adamantly against Quenyanization in general, but I tend to view it with skepticism and I definitely don't think it's appropriate here. There are several reasons for this: 1. Only a very few Gondolin-related names were changed to Quenya in later years by JRRT, and none of these was (as far as I recall) a place name. 2. I'm pretty sure that Quenya was not used in daily speech in Gondolin. There is a passage in the Grey Annals saying that Quenya was retained in daily use in Gondolin, but this is struck out. This seems to be associated with the change in the Grey Annals whereby the population of Gondolin went from being mainly Noldor to being a mix of Noldor and Sindar. There is some room for doubt here, since in the Late Writings in XII, there is mention of Gondolin being mainly Noldor. This is usually assumed to be a mere slip of the pen. 3. My main problem with Quenyanization: it's difficult. It's no easy matter to come up with Quenya equivelants of Gnomish names. Usually the best we can do is to come up with three or four possibilities. Where are we then? We're forced to choose one more or less arbitrarily. In short, there's a lot of room for error in this kind of translation, and there can never be a lot of justification for the final choice.