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09-23-2012, 07:52 AM | #81 | ||
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
Join Date: May 2007
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The Appendices also note...
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And 'those described' would appear to point back to what was said about F, indicating a final -v sound in Gandalf as in Old Norse (if one assumes the name Gandalf is to be included here anyway). Yet... Quote:
Still leaving Gandalf with a final -f sound. Last edited by Galin; 09-23-2012 at 08:00 AM. |
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09-23-2012, 10:13 AM | #82 | |
Shade of Carn Dûm
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: Toronto
Posts: 479
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I agree that the sentence you cite seems to mean that Tolkien’s rules about F should apply to the name Gandalf. However, as you point out, Tolkien elsewhere says that “Gandalf must be supposed to represent a Westron name”. Yet Tolkien elsewhere indicates that Westron represents English and Gandalf is not an English name. Tolkien is not always perfectly consistent. The tie-breaker is that Tolkien’s own pronunciation of Gandalf with the last letter pronounced f indicates what Tolkien intended despite places where, if Tolkien’s words are pressed to the full, that is not what he is saying. Gandalf, I see, as Tolkien’s representation of an Old Norse name in English and slightly Anglicized. Last edited by jallanite; 09-24-2012 at 11:58 AM. |
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09-24-2012, 10:00 AM | #83 |
Loremaster of Annúminas
Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 2,301
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In short, Gandalf was never considered by Tolkien when he wrote the bit about f at the end of names, nor should he have been. Like the Dwarves he bears a name understood to be adapted to Weston both in the original imagined tale and in the English translation.Why do you persist in ascribing to me statements I've never made and opinions I've never advanced? OF COURSE the bit on terminal F in App F refers to the Elvish tongues. "Adapted to Westron" is all well and good- except that Westron nowhere appears in the book (save a couple of "actual" hobbit-names presented in App F); the CS is feigned to have been turned into English. However, Gandalf is not an English name, not even an Old English name. Tolkien is just being inconsistent (or nonrigorous). He could after all make mistakes! Just recall the self-created mess he had to dig himself out of regarding Thror-Thrain. -------------------------- Just perhaps related -although I have no idea what JRRT's scholarly opinion was on the matter - might be the theory that in at least some regional OE pronunciations no distinction was made between voiced and unvoiced fricatives: [s] and [z], [f] and [v] were interchangeable (think of the slightly but not wholly stagey "Zummerzet" accent)
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09-24-2012, 02:17 PM | #84 | |||||
Shade of Carn Dûm
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: Toronto
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What you did say at http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthr...778#post674778 was: Of course, JRRT also moved a bit between theory and practice himself: in his recordings he invariably pronounces the final consonant of Gandalf [f] while himself averring that in 'proper' Norse it would be [v].As far as I can determine Tolkien never said that in ‘proper’ Norse it would be [v], though the statement itself would usually be considered to be quite correct. If Tokien did say what you say, exactly as you have cited it, that statement does not indicate that Tolkien ever pronounced his name Gandalf with the Norse [v], therefore there is no inconsistency. Quote:
And in those days also they forgot whatever languages they had used before, and spoke ever after the Common Speech, the Westron as it was named, …It appears at various other places in the Appendices other than the place you mention. I agree that Westron or the Common Speech “is feigned to have been turned into English”. Quote:
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General theory is that [s] and [z] were both normally spelled S/ſ/s, that [f] and [v] were both spelled F/f, and that [θ] and [ð] were normally both spelled either Þ/þ or Ð/ð. I do not remember ever encountering the idea that there was an Old English dialect that made no distinction between the two sound values of each of the letters. Pronunciation guides, so far as I have read, carefully distinguish when one of these letters should have the unvoiced pronunciation and when they should have the voiced pronunciation. Psychologically the speakers of Old English likely tended to be mostly unaware that these letters had two pronunciations, just as many Modern English speakers are unaware that the letter combination th has two common pronunciations heard in thin [θɪn], breath [brɛθ] and then [ðɛn], breathe [briːð], but still pronounce them differently. That the two sounds of each letter were usually related would have inclined them not to notice the difference. Similarly many speakers of modern English do not notice that the pluralizing -s is sometimes pronounced [s] and sometimes pronounced [z] but still differentiate the sounds. Both [bɛtz] and [bɛds] would sound wrong for bets and beds respectively. Last edited by jallanite; 09-29-2012 at 12:19 PM. |
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10-02-2012, 07:07 PM | #85 | |
Late Istar
Join Date: Mar 2001
Posts: 2,224
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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/. Last edited by Aiwendil; 10-02-2012 at 08:07 PM. |
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10-02-2012, 08:45 PM | #86 | |
Shade of Carn Dûm
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: Toronto
Posts: 479
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I note that both the online and printed Peter S. Baker Introduction to Old English gives the word þengel with a soft g (þenġel). See http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/resour...E/postyle.html . I have come to the conclusion that Christopher Tolkien’s pronunciation The[ndʒ]el is the commonly accepted pronunciation of the word. Why J. R. R. Tolkien’s pronunciation differs I do not know. Possibly it was the standard pronunciation in an earlier era. Possibly J. R. R. Tolkien had a different theory. Possibly even today the pronunciation the[ndʒ]el over the[ŋɡ]el is still not really proved. Perhaps some day I will stumble across the article which explains the deduction. |
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10-03-2012, 10:46 AM | #87 |
Loremaster of Annúminas
Join Date: Oct 2006
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"Westron nowhere appears in the book (save a couple of "actual" hobbit-names presented in App F”? Tolkien first mentions Westron in his Prologue where he writes:What I was saying was that examples of actual Westron nowhere appear but in those names, not mentions of the Common Speech or Westron as a language.
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The entire plot of The Lord of the Rings could be said to turn on what Sauron didn’t know, and when he didn’t know it. |
10-03-2012, 04:22 PM | #88 |
Shade of Carn Dûm
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Location: Toronto
Posts: 479
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10-16-2013, 05:45 PM | #89 |
Shade of Carn Dûm
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: Toronto
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Looking through some other Tolkien websites I found a post by Áhann Áhim posting under the name Mandos at http://www.lotrplaza.com/showthread....%28as-Bifur%29 , post #6, which comments on Tolkien’s pronunciation of Thengel. Áhann posts in part:
I just listened to Tolkien's reading of part of 'The Ride of the Rohirrim' (J.R.R. Tolkien Audio Collection, CD 2), where he does in fact pronounce Théoden's father as /þengel/. I'm unclear if this is a learned choice about Mercian Old English (if so, it goes against what his pupil, Alistair Campbell, wrote in his grammar, and against the standard view of most scholars before and since), or if Tolkien just aesthetically preferred that pronunciation, and so used it - since, after all, the Rohirrim aren't literally Anglo-Saxons, and he was therefore free to alter such details to his liking.So seemingly Christopher Tolkien’s pronunciation is indeed the standard one and J. R. R. Tolkien’s is non-standard. |
10-27-2013, 07:20 AM | #90 | |
Pile O'Bones
Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posts: 19
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Mostly just an interesting thought experiment, but something I wish I could at least try and see what happens. Another, related, thought experiment of mine would be to take Bakshi's animated and add or reshoot elements of that, along with dialogue, and make it truer to the books. Curiously, that probably *could* be done (from a technical perspective - I'm not going to touch the legal aspects, of course) using modern computer graphic software. One could even give Aragorn trousers, and get rid of Boromir's annoying horned helmet! Perhaps even have Gandalf say "Saruman!" instead of "Aruman!" By the by, I am semi serious about this; if anyone knows how one could accomplish the above (software required, rotoscoping, etc.) I would appreciate the insight. |
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