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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|
=== 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
{{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 explained in the essay that the person inventing a language must address the "fitting of notion to oral symbol", and that the pleasure in such invention derives mainly from the "contemplation of the relation between sound and notion". He went so far as to state that he was "personally more interested perhaps in word-form in itself, and in word-form in relation to meaning (so-called phonetic fitness) than in any other department".<ref group=T>{{harvnb
The Tolkien scholar [[Tom Shippey]] notes that in ''[[The Fellowship of the Ring]]'', the poem ''[[A Elbereth Gilthoniel]]'', written in [[Sindarin]], one of Tolkien's invented Elvish languages, is presented directly without translation:{{sfn|Shippey|2005|pp=129–131}}<ref>A similar view is voiced in {{cite journal |last=Robbins |first=Susan |year=2013 |title=Beauty in language: Tolkien's phonology and phonaesthetics as a source of creativity and inspiration for ''The Lord of the Rings'' |journal=Žmogus ir žodis ['Man and Word'] |issue=1 |pages=
{{blockquote|<poem>A Elbereth Gilthoniel
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Fanuilos, le linnathon
nef aear, sí nef aearon!<ref name="Many Meetings" group=T/></poem>}}
[[File:Bree Map.svg|thumb|upright=1.2|Placenames of [[Bree-land]], with the villages of Bree, Combe, Staddle, and Archet in the Chetwood. The names are English, with British (Celtic) elements.]]
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
=== An unconventional view ===
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Tolkien's point of view was a "heresy" because the usual structuralist view of language is that there is no connection between specific sounds and meanings.{{sfn|Turner|2013|pp=330–331}} Thus "pig" denotes an animal in English but "pige" denotes a girl in Danish: the allocation of sounds to meanings in different languages has been taken by linguists to be arbitrary, and it is just an accidental by-product that English people find the sound of "pig" to be hoglike.{{sfn|Shippey|2005|pp=129–131}}
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 |
=== True names ===
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In Turner's view, Tolkien's "linguistic heresy" explains why he believed that his use of different linguistic choices would allow his readers to feel, without understanding why, the distinct nature of each region of Middle-earth.{{sfn|Turner|2013|pp=330–331}}
{| class="wikitable" style="margin: 1em auto;"
|+ Turner's analysis of Tolkien's "linguistic heresy"{{sfn|Turner|2013|pp=330–331}}
|-
! Place-names !! Linguistic origin !! Reader's feeling
|-
| [[Bree (Middle-earth)|Bree]], [[Crickhollow]] || [[Welsh language|Welsh]] (British, Celtic) || Slightly exotic
|-
| [[Hobbiton]], Bywater || (Old) English || Familiar
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Tolkien allows his characters to listen and appreciate "in highly [[John Keats|Keatsian]] style",{{sfn|Shippey|2005|p=219}} enjoying the sound of language, as when the Hobbit [[Frodo Baggins]], recently recovered from his near-fatal wound with the [[Nazgûl]]'s Morgul-knife, sits dreamily in the safe Elvish haven of [[Rivendell]]:{{sfn|Shippey|2005|p=219}}
{{blockquote|At first the beauty of the melodies and of the interwoven words in elven-tongues, even though he understood them little, held him in a spell, as soon as he began to attend to them. Almost it seemed that the words took shape, and visions of far lands and bright things that he had never yet imagined opened out before him; and the firelit hall became like a golden mist above the seas of foam that sighed upon the margins of the world. Then the enchantment became more and more dreamlike, until he felt that an endless river of swelling gold and silver was flowing over him, too multitudinous for its pattern to be comprehended; it became part of the throbbing air about him, and it drenched and drowned him. Swiftly he sank under its shining weight into a deep realm of sleep.<ref name="Many Meetings" group=T>
When the Hobbits meet Gildor and his Elves while walking through the Shire, they get the feeling, as Turner comments, that even though they do not speak Elvish, they "subliminally understand something of the meaning".{{sfn|Turner|2013|pp=330–331}} In ''The Two Towers'', while a party of the [[Fellowship of the Ring (characters)|Fellowship of the Ring]] is crossing the grassy plains of [[Rohan (Middle-earth)|Rohan]], the immortal [[Elf (Middle-earth)|Elf]] [[Legolas]] hears [[Aragorn]] singing a song in a language he has never heard, and comments "That, I guess, is the language of the Rohirrim ... for it is like to this land itself, rich and rolling in part, and else hard and stern as the mountains. But I cannot guess what it means, save that it is laden with the sadness of Mortal Men".{{sfn|Shippey|2005|pp=129–131}} When Gandalf declaims the [[Rhyme of the Rings]] in the [[Black Speech]] of the evil land of [[Mordor]] at the [[Council of Elrond]], his voice becomes "menacing, powerful, harsh as stone" and the Elves cover their ears.{{sfn|Shippey|2005|pp=129–131}} When the [[Dwarf (Middle-earth)|Dwarf]] [[Gimli (Middle-earth)|Gimli]] sings of the Dwarf-King Durin, the gardener Hobbit [[Samwise Gamgee|Sam Gamgee]] says "I like that! I should like to learn it. ''In Moria, in Khazad-Dum!''"{{sfn|Shippey|2005|pp=129–131}} Shippey remarks that Sam's response to the sound of language is "obviously ... a model one".{{sfn|Shippey|2005|pp=129–131}}
=== 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".
== References ==
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{{reflist|30em}}
=== Sources ===
* {{ME-ref|Letters}}
* {{cite book |last=Fimi |first=Dimitra |author-link=Dimitra Fimi |year=2010 |title=Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits |___location=London |publisher=[[Palgrave Macmillan]] |isbn=978-0230272842 }}
* {{cite book |last=Higgins |first=Andrew S. |title=The Genesis of Tolkien's Mythology |publisher=[[Cardiff Metropolitan University]] (PhD Thesis) |date=March 2015 |url=https://repository.cardiffmet.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10369/7528/Final%20submission.pdf }}
* {{cite book |last1=Honegger |first1=Thomas |author1-link=Thomas Honegger |last2=Vanderbeke |first2=Dirk |chapter=Introduction |title=From Peterborough to Faëry: the poetics and mechanics of secondary worlds: essays in honour of Dr. Allan G. Turner's 65th birthday |publisher=[[Walking Tree Publishers]] |publication-place=Zurich |year=2014 |isbn=978-3-905703-31-3 |oclc=898346156 |pages=i–v |url=https://www.academia.edu/12231185
* {{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/
* {{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}}
* {{cite book |last1=Tolkien |first1=J. R. R. |last2=Tolkien |first2=Christopher |title=The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays<!--inc. "A Secret Vice"--> |publisher=Allen & Unwin |___location=London |year=1983 |oclc=955831666}}▼
* {{ME-ref|FOTR}}
* {{cite encyclopedia |last=Turner |first=Allan |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}}▼
▲* {{cite book |last1=Tolkien |first1=J. R. R. |
▲* {{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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<!-- Categories -->
[[Category:Middle-earth themes]]
[[Category:Themes of The Lord of the Rings]]
[[Category:Tolkien linguistic studies]]
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