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→An aesthetic pleasure: Tolkien on pleasure in articulate sound |
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[[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 scholar of English literature 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
{{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."{{sfn|Tolkien|Tolkien|1983|p=208}} }}
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".{{sfn|Tolkien|Tolkien|1983|pp=206, 211}}
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}}
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