Thursday, June 2, 2022

On Tolkien, Translation, Linguistics, and the Languages of Middle-earth

 From TOR:

Tolkien’s academic interest in Germanic languages, especially Old English, is most obvious in the Rohirrim. In the frame narrative, the language of the Rohirrim is unrelated to the language of Gondor (but is related to the Hobbits’ language, as noted when Théoden—or maybe it was Éomer—remarks that he can sort of understand Merry and Pippin’s conversation). Tolkien, as the translator of the RBoW for an English-speaking audience and as an Anglo-Saxon scholar, decided to use Old English to represent it. So the king is Théoden, which is an OE word for “king or leader,” from théod (“people”), and Éowyn is a compound word that means approximately “horse-joy.” The name they give themselves, Eorlings, contains the same eo(h)- “horse” root as Éowyn. Tolkien gives this as “the Men of the Riddermark.” Eorl is also the name of one of their early kings, much like the legendary Jutes who led the invasion of Britain in the 5th century were called Hengist and Horsa, both of which are words for horse (heng(e)st = stallion). (Read more.)

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