Sound and language in Middle-earth: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 17:08, 25 March 2023

Revision as of 12:16, 18 June 2023

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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}}