Sound and language in Middle-earth: Difference between revisions

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{{short description|Tolkien's theory of language}}

{{good article}}

{{Use British English|date=February 2022}}

[[J. R. R. Tolkien]] was both a [[philologist]] and an author of [[high fantasy]]. He had a private theory that the sound of words was directly connected to their meaning, and that certain sounds were inherently beautiful. Scholars believe he intentionally chose words and names in [[Languages constructed by J. R. R. Tolkien|his constructed Middle-earth languages]] to create feelings such as of beauty, longing, and strangeness. Tolkien stated that he wrote his stories to provide a setting for his languages, rather than the other way around. Tolkien constructed languages for the [[Elf (Middle-earth)|Elves]] to sound pleasant, and the [[Black Speech]] of the evil land of [[Mordor]] to sound harsh; [[Poetry in The Lord of the Rings|poetry suitable for various peoples]] of his invented world of [[Middle-earth]]; and many place-names, chosen to convey the nature of each region. The theory is individual, but it was in the context of literary and artistic movements such as [[Vorticism]], and earlier [[nonsense verse]] that stressed language and the sound of words, even when the words were apparently nonsense.

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=== Author ===

As well as being an author of [[high fantasy]], [[J. R. R. Tolkien]] was a professional [[Philology|philologist]], a scholar of comparative and historical [[linguistics]]. He was an expert in [[Old English]] and related languages. He remarked to the poet and ''[[The New York Times]]'' book reviewer [[Harvey Breit]] that "I am a philologist and all my work is philological";<ref>{{cite news |title=Oxford Calling |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/01/02/11/specials/tolkien-oxford.html?_r=2&oref=slogin |access-date=2 June 2022 |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=5 June 1955}}</ref> he explained to his American publisher [[Houghton Mifflin]] that this was meant to imply that his work was "all of a piece, and ''fundamentally linguistic'' [sic] in inspiration. ... The [[Languages constructed by J. R. R. Tolkien|invention of languages]] is the foundation. The 'stories' were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows."<ref>{{harvnb|Carpenter|19812023|loc=letter 165 to [[Houghton Mifflin]], 30 June 1955 }}</ref> Human [[sub-creation]], in Tolkien's view, to some extent mirrors divine creation as thought and sound together bring into being a new world.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Cook |first=Simon J. |year=2016 |title=How to Do Things with Words: Tolkien's Theory of Fantasy in Practice |journal=[[Journal of Tolkien Research]] |volume=3 |issue=1 |at=Article 6 |url=http://scholar.valpo.edu/journaloftolkienresearch/vol3/iss1/6}}</ref>

=== Artistic and literary movements ===

[[File:Gino Severini, 1912, Dynamic Hieroglyphic of the Bal Tabarin (detail).jpg|thumb|upright=0.9|Early 20th century movements like [[Italian Futurism]] stressed language and the sound of words.{{sfn|Fimi|2010|pp=86ff}} [[Gino Severini]]'s 1912 ''Dynamic Hieroglyphic of the Bal Tabarin'' (detail shown) incorporates words like "Bowling" and "POLKA" in its imagery.]]

The Tolkien scholar [[Dimitra Fimi]] notes that around 1900 there were multiple artistic and literary movements that stressed language and the sound of words, and the possibility of conveying meaning even with words that were apparently nonsense. These included [[Italian Futurism]], British [[Vorticism]], and the [[Imagism]] of the poet [[Ezra Pound]]. Fimi further observes that in the late 19th century, [[Nonsense verse|nonsense poets]] such as [[Lewis Carroll]] with his ''[[Jabberwocky]]'' and [[Edward Lear]] sought to convey meaning using invented words.{{sfn|Fimi|2010|pp=86ff}}{{sfn|Higgins|2015|pp=21, 39}}

== Tolkien's "linguistic heresy" ==

{{further|Themes of The Lord of the Rings#Language}}

=== An aesthetic pleasure ===

{{further|Phonaesthetics}}

[[File:Aerlinn in Edhil o Imladris.png|thumb|Untranslated, but still appreciated:{{sfn|Shippey|2005|pp=129–131}} the long version of "A Elbereth Gilthoniel," written in Tolkien's [[Tengwar]] script]]

The scholarlinguist of[[Allan English literatureTurner (scholar)|Allan Turner]]{{sfn|Honegger|Vanderbeke|2014}} writes that "the sound pattern of a language was the source of a special aesthetic pleasure" for Tolkien.{{sfn|Turner|2013|pp=330–331}} In his essay about [[Constructed language|constructing languages]], "[[A Secret Vice]]", Tolkien wrote that

{{blockquote|The communication factor has been very powerful in directing the development of language; but the more individual and personal factor—pleasure in articulate sound, and in the symbolic use of it, independent of communication though constantly in fact entangled with it – must not be forgotten for a moment."<ref group=T>{{harvnb|Tolkien|1983|p=208}}</ref> }}

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Shippey asks rhetorically what any reader could be expected to make of that. He answers his own question by stating that Tolkien had a private theory of sound and language. This was that the sound of words was directly connected to their meaning, and that certain sounds were inherently beautiful. He intentionally chose words and names in his constructed Middle-earth languages to create feelings such as of beauty, longing, and strangeness. Shippey gives as one example Tolkien's statement that he had used such names as [[Bree (Middle-earth)|Bree]], Archet, Combe, and Chetwood for the small area, outside [[the Shire]], where [[Hobbit]]s and [[Man (Middle-earth)|Men]] lived together. Tolkien selected them for their non-English elements so that they would sound "queer", with "a style that we should perhaps vaguely feel to be '[[Celtic languages|Celtic]]'".{{sfn|Shippey|2005|pp=129–131}}

Shippey calls this "Tolkien's major linguistic heresy". It would work, he explains, if people could recognise different styles in language, somehow sense the depth of history in words, get some degree of meaning just from the sounds of words, and even judge some sound combinations beautiful. Tolkien, he writes, believed that "''untranslated'' elvish would do a job that English could not".{{sfn|Shippey|2005|pp=129–131}} Shippey notes, too, that Tolkien is recorded as saying that "cellar door" sounded more beautiful than the word "beautiful";{{sfn|Shippey|2005|pp=129–131}} [[Cellar Doordoor (phrase)|the phrase]] had however been admired by others from at least 1903.<ref name="Barrett 2010">{{cite news |last=Barrett |first=Grant |title=On Language |url=http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14FOB-onlanguage-t.html?_r=0 |access-date=1 March 2022 |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=14 February 2010}}</ref>

=== An unconventional view ===

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Tolkien was somewhat embarrassed by the subject of his linguistic aesthetics, as he was aware of the conventional view, due to [[Ferdinand de Saussure]] and from the 1950s strengthened by [[Noam Chomsky]] and his [[generative grammar]] school, that linguistic signs (such as words) were arbitrary, unrelated to their real-world referents (things, people, places). The Tolkien scholar Ross Smith notes that Tolkien was in fact not the only person who disagreed with the conventional view, "unassailable giants of linguistic theory and philosophy like [[Otto Jespersen|[Otto] Jespersen]] and [[Roman Jakobson|[Roman] Jakobson]]" among them.<ref name="Smith 2006">{{cite journal |last=Smith |first=Ross |title=Fitting Sense to Sound: Linguistic Aesthetics and Phonosemantics in the Work of J.R.R. Tolkien |journal=[[Tolkien Studies]] |volume=3 |issue=1 |year=2006 |doi=10.1353/tks.2006.0032 |pages=1–20|s2cid=171047658 }}</ref>

More recently, [[sound symbolism]] has been demonstrated to be widespread in natural language.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Blasi |first1=Damián E. |last2=Wichmann |first2=Søren |last3=Hammarström |first3=Harald |last4=Stadler |first4=Peter F. |last5=Christiansen |first5=Morten H. |title=Sound–meaning association biases evidenced across thousands of languages |journal=[[PNAS]] |date=27 September 2016 |volume=113 |issue=39 |pages=10818–10823 |doi=10.1073/pnas.1605782113|pmid=27621455 |pmc=5047153 |bibcode=2016PNAS..11310818B |doi-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Joo |first1=Ian |title=Phonosemantic biases found in Leipzig-Jakarta lists of 66 languages |journal=[[Linguistic Typology]] |date=27 May 2020 |volume=24 |issue=1 |pages=1–12 |doi=10.1515/lingty-2019-0030|hdl=21.11116/0000-0004-EBB1-B |s2cid=209962593 |doi-access=free |hdl-access=free }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Erben Johansson |first1=Niklas |last2=Anikin |first2=Andrey |last3=Carling |first3=Gerd |last4=Holmer |first4=Arthur |title=The typology of sound symbolism: Defining macro-concepts via their semantic and phonetic features |journal=[[Linguistic Typology]] |date=27 August 2020 |volume=24 |issue=2 |pages=253–310 |doi=10.1515/lingty-2020-2034 |s2cid=209913202 |doi-access=free }}</ref> The [[bouba/kiki effect]], for example, describes the cross-cultural association of sounds like "bouba" with roundness and "kiki" with sharpness.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Bremner |first1=Andrew J. |last2=Caparos |first2=Serge |last3=Davidoff |first3=Jules |last4=de Fockert |first4=Jan |last5=Linnell |first5=Karina J. |last6=Spence |first6=Charles |title="Bouba" and "Kiki" in Namibia? A remote culture make similar shape–sound matches, but different shape–taste matches to Westerners |journal=[[Cognition (journal)|Cognition]] |date=February 2013 |volume=126 |issue=2 |pages=165–172 |doi=10.1016/j.cognition.2012.09.007 |pmid=23121711 |s2cid=27805778 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ćwiek |first1=Aleksandra |last2=Fuchs |first2=Susanne |last3=Draxler |first3=Christoph |last4=Asu |first4=Eva Liina |last5=Dediu |first5=Dan |last6=Hiovain |first6=Katri |last7=Kawahara |first7=Shigeto |last8=Koutalidis |first8=Sofia |last9=Krifka |first9=Manfred |last10=Lippus |first10=Pärtel |last11=Lupyan |first11=Gary |last12=Oh |first12=Grace E. |last13=Paul |first13=Jing |last14=Petrone |first14=Caterina |last15=Ridouane |first15=Rachid |last16=Reiter |first16=Sabine |last17=Schümchen |first17=Nathalie |last18=Szalontai |first18=Ádám |last19=Ünal-Logacev |first19=Özlem |last20=Zeller |first20=Jochen |last21=Perlman |first21=Marcus |last22=Winter |first22=Bodo |display-authors=6 |title=The bouba/kiki effect is robust across cultures and writing systems |journal=[[Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B]] |date=3 January 2022 |volume=377 |issue=1841 |pages=20200390 |doi=10.1098/rstb.2020.0390 |pmid=34775818 |pmc=8591387 |s2cid=244103844 }}</ref> Svetlana Popova comments that Tolkien "came very close" to the findings of [[psycholinguistics]] including the bouba/kiki effect, and that his ideas of what makes the sound of a language pleasurable agree with [[David Crystal]]'s findings.<ref name="Popova Magsymov pp. 8–26">{{cite journal |last1=Popova |first1=Svetlana |last2=Marsymov |first2=А. | title=Sound symbolism as a phonetic phenomenon and a means of artistic expression |journal=Issues of Applied Linguistics |publisher=The Business and Vocational Foreign Languages Teachers National Association | volume=41 |date=30 March 2021 |issn=2306-1286 |doi=10.25076/vpl.41.01 |pages=8–26 |s2cid=233562358 |language=en |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350501330 |doi-access=free }}</ref>

=== True names ===

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=== Phonetic fitness of Tolkien's constructed languages ===

{{further|Elvish languages|Black Speech|The Etymologies (Tolkien)}}

The [[Linguistics|linguist]] Joanna Podhorodecka examines the ''lámatyáve'', a [[Quenya]] term for "phonetic fitness", of Tolkien's constructed languages. She analyses them in terms of Ivan Fonágy's theory of symbolic vocal gestures that convey emotions. She notes that Tolkien's inspiration was "primarily linguistic"; and that he had invented the stories "to provide a world for the languages", which in turn were "agreeable to [his] personal aesthetic".{{sfn|Podhorodecka|2007|pp=103–110}} She compares two samples of Elvish (one Sindarin, one Quenya) and one of Black Speech, tabulating the proportions of [[vowel]]s and [[consonant]]s. The Black Speech is 63% consonants, compared to the Elvish samples' 52% and 55%. Among other features, the sound /I:/ (like the "i" in "machine") is much rarer in Black Speech than in Elvish, while the sound /u/ (like the "u" in "brute") is much more common. She comments that in aggressive speech, consonants become longer and vowels shorter, so Black Speech sounds harsher. Further, Black Speech contains far more [[voiced plosives]] (/b, d, g/) than Elvish, making the sound of the language more violent. Podhorodecka concludes that Tolkien's constructed languages were certainly individual to him, but that their "linguistic patterns resulted from his keen sense of phonetic metaphor", so that the languages subtly contribute to the "[[Aesthetics|aesthetic]] and [[Axiology|axiological]] aspects of his mythology".{{sfn|Podhorodecka|2007|pp=103–110}} She notes, too, that Tolkien commented that in his 'Elven-latin' language Quenya, he chose to include "two other (main) ingredients that happen to give me 'phonaesthetic' pleasure: [[Finnish language|Finnish]] and [[Greek language|Greek]]"; and that he gave Sindarin "a linguistic character very like (though not identical with) British-Welsh: because that character is one I find, in some linguistic moods, very attractive; and because it seems to fit the rather 'Celtic' type of legends and stories told of its speakers".{{sfn|Podhorodecka|2007|pp=103–110}}<ref name="Letter 144" group=T>{{harvnb|Carpenter|1981}}, 2023|loc=#144 to [[Naomi Mitchison]], 25 April 1954 }}</ref> Christopher Robinson concurs that Tolkien took extreme care to ensure phonetic fitness in his languages, arguing that Tolkien's detailed philological analysis and knowledge of linguistics enabled him to achieve a highly polished result.{{sfn|Robinson|2013|pp=65–74}}

== References ==

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* {{cite book |last=Martin |first=Philip |title=The writer's guide to fantasy literature : from dragon's lair to hero's quest: how to write fantasy stories of lasting value |publisher=Writer Books |publication-place=Waukesha, Wisconsin |year=2002 |isbn=978-0-87116-195-6 |oclc=49379142}}

* {{cite book |last=Podhorodecka |first=Joanna |year=2007 |chapter=Is ''lámatyáve'' a linguistic heresy. Iconicity in J. R. R. Tolkien's invented languages |editor1-last=Tabakowska |editor1-first=Elżbieta |editor2=Ljungberg, Christina |editor3=Fischer, Olga |title=Insistent Images. Iconicity in language and literature. Proceedings of the Fifth Symposium in Language and Literature |pages=103–110 |___location=Amsterdam/Philadelphia |publisher=[[John Benjamins Publishing Company|John Benjamins]] |isbn=978-9027243416 |url=https://www.academia.edu/19105666|doi=10.1075/ill.5.11pod}}

* {{cite journal |last=Robinson |first=Christopher L. |title=What Makes the Names of Middle-earth So Fitting? Elements of Style in the Namecraft of JRR Tolkien |journal=[[Names (journal)|Names]] |volume=61 |issue=2 |year=2013 |pages=65–74 |doi=10.1179/0027773812Z.00000000040 }}

* {{ME-ref|ROAD}}

* {{ME-ref|FOTR}}

* {{cite book |last1=Tolkien |first1=J. R. R. |author1-link=J. R. R. Tolkien |title=[[The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays]]<!--inc. "A Secret Vice"--> |publisher=Allen & Unwin |___location=London |year=1983 |oclc=955831666}}

* {{cite encyclopedia |last=Turner |first=Allan |author-link=Allan Turner (scholar) |editor-last=Drout |editor-first=Michael D. C. |editor-link=Michael D. C. Drout |title=Language, Theories of |encyclopedia=[[J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia|J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment]] |year=2013 |orig-year=2007 |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-0-415-86511-1 |pages=330–331}}

== Further reading ==

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[[Category:Middle-earth themes]]

[[Category:Themes of The Lord of the Rings]]

[[Category:Tolkien linguistic studies]]