Posted: August 20, 1999 at 06:05:30: by Ar
HI. Been a lurker on this board for a while. Not hasd anything to say thay wasen't already said. But Languages I know.: I was in a debate with someone in which I *finally* managed to convince him that the Rohirrim did not actually speak Anglo-Saxon. A Tolkien rendered ('translated') all the language in the red book. Westron, the main language, become modern English. Since the difference in soud (older) was about the the same, Rohirrim was rendereed into old english. : Along the way, he said that Sindarin (and Quenya, by association) was based on Welsh Yes and no. It is not based on Welsh, but because Tolkien liked the sound of Welsh, Sindarin has a similar sound. Same thing exist for Quenya, but the sound here is that of Finnish. But structure, grammar and words are copletly different. > and that Adunaic/Westron was based on Semitic or Punic (I think he meant Hebrew). Dwarven structure is that of Semitic, but that's about it. >He said that he read it in a book, but didn't remember the title. I don't know any of these languages, so I can't comment on the validity of the claim. Do any of you know whether or not this claim has any foundation of truth? Even if the book did exist, there's so much Tolkien apocrypha out there... We all love Ruth's book. She DID have less material to work with, but she got even that wrong. The more you read the book, the less you know about Tolkien's languages.
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