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{{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>''[[The Fellowship of the Ring]]'', book 2, ch. 1 "Many Meetings"</ref>}}
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 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}}
== References ==
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