“Thee” and “thou” in “The Lord of the Rings”

[Pitchwife]

Sorry, Miggy, I got you wrong then - I thought you meant what I said about Sam. My bad.

Anyway, Sam isn't the only one with that peculiar usage. The Gaffer calls the miller du, Herr Sandigmann, with a good deal of irony, but both he and Farmer Cotton address Frodo as du, Herr Frodo and du, Herr Beutlin, respectively. Apparently, this is the proper way among hobbits in the Carroux translation. It makes Shire society feel more egalitarian and pre- or non-bourgeois than it may have been meant to be, and it also makes Frodo's Ihr to Maggot stand out all the more - he still seems to have been kind of in awe of the farmer.

[OT]

Originally Posted by Esty

*When romantic novels are translated from English to German, for example, the translator has to find a place to insert the switch from formal to familiar - when do the lovers stop saying "Sie" and start saying "Du"?!

Some never do - like Sartre and Beauvoir, who I think vouvoyed each other all their lives. But then they were French, and the French are weird in that respect anyway - they even talk to God like that.[/OT]

Thanks for the Kalevala quote, Bêthberry! I knew Kullervo was one of Tolkien's models for the Túrin story, but had forgotten how closely Túrin's dialogue with Gurthang is modelled on this passage.

Which reminds me, I was told that the formal pronoun is becoming rare in Finnish, and the Kalevala, on the other hand, only uses the informal forms in the original...*hopes for a Finn to chime in here about the Finnish LotR translation*