379 – A Big Wide Sounding Name

Summary

The Prancing Pony Podcast Episode 379 – A Big Wide Sounding Name Release Date: July 13, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 379 of The Prancing Pony Podcast, hosts Alan Sisto and James Tauber delve deep into the intricate world of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, focusing specifically on the diverse languages that inhabit this legendary realm. This episode marks the continuation of their comprehensive exploration of Appendix F from The Lord of the Rings, offering listeners a detailed analysis of the linguistic tapestry that Tolkien meticulously crafted.

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Guest Interview: Brad Heinote

Timestamp: [03:24]

The episode begins with an engaging interview segment featuring Brad Heinote, a dedicated Tolkien enthusiast and patron of the podcast. Alan and James welcome Brad to the "North Wing," a special segment reserved for their most committed listeners.

Key Discussion Points:

• Background and Passion for Tolkien: Brad shares his journey, starting from his early exposure to The Hobbit at an elementary school book fair to his deepened appreciation during his college years. Despite a less-than-ideal Tolkien course, Brad's passion only grew, leading him to explore Christopher Tolkien's expansive works.

  "The journey just keeps on going, doesn't it?"
  — Brad Heinote [08:15]

• Family and Tolkien: Brad discusses how his love for Tolkien intersects with his family life, including reading The Hobbit to his young children, fostering a new generation of Middle-earth enthusiasts.

• Favorite Works and Characters: He highlights his favorite parts of the legendarium, particularly Book One and Book Five of The Lord of the Rings, and his admiration for Finrod Felagund from the First Age.

• Engagement and Participation: Brad expresses his desire to attend a Tolkien moot, emphasizing the community aspect of the podcast and the broader Tolkien fandom.

Lightning Round:

• Favorite Scene: Gandalf healing Theoden.
• Favorite First Age Elf: Finrod.
• Favorite Hobbit: Mary, balancing silliness with seriousness.
• Choice Between Noldor or Teleri: Chooses the Telery, reflecting his love for the coastal and watery landscapes.

Brad's insightful contributions and enthusiastic engagement provide a personal touch to the episode, illustrating the deep connection fans have with Tolkien's work.

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Main Discussion: Appendix F – Languages of Middle-earth

Timestamp: [13:48]

Transitioning from the guest interview, Alan and James embark on their primary discussion centered around the languages detailed in Appendix F of The Lord of the Rings. They dissect the complexities of Tolkien's linguistic creation, offering listeners a nuanced understanding of each language's origins, evolution, and cultural significance.

1. Languages of the Elves

Timestamp: [15:28]

Key Points:

• Division of the Elves: The Elves are split into the West Elves (Eldar) and the East Elves, with the latter residing in regions like Mirkwood and Lorien.
• Primary Elvish Tongues:
  • Quenya (High Elven): An ancient language from Eldamar, akin to Latin in its ceremonial use.
  • Sindarin (Grey Elven): Developed from Quenya but evolved separately among the Sindar in Beleriand.

Notable Quote:

"Folks, we're reading and talking our way through Middle Earth with plenty of speculation and bad jokes along the way."
— Alan Sisto [04:00]

Insights:

• The hosts discuss Tolkien's drafts (F1, F2, F3, etc.), highlighting Christopher Tolkien's efforts to preserve the depth of the Elvish languages despite space constraints.
• They explore the historical context of language development, including the impact of events like the Sundering of the Elves and Thingol's decree banning the Noldor's tongue.

2. Languages of Men

Timestamp: [46:49]

Key Points:

• Westron (Common Speech): The predominant tongue modeled after English, serving as a lingua franca across Middle-earth.
• Adûnaic (Numenorean): The ancestral Mannish language, closely related to Westron.
• Dialectical Variations: Regions like Gondor and Rohan maintain remnants of older languages, such as Sindarin influences in place names and personal names.

Notable Quote:

"Westron was used as a second language of intercourse by all those who still retained a speech of their own."
— Appendix F Excerpt [17:00]

Insights:

• The discussion touches on linguistic preservation and change over millennia, comparing Middle-earth's language evolution to real-world language shifts.
• They analyze how prestige and cultural identity influence language retention, especially among noble lines like Gondor's Dúnedain.

3. Languages of Hobbits

Timestamp: [79:18]

Key Points:

• Adoption of Westron: Hobbits have used the Common Speech for over a millennium, integrating it seamlessly into their daily lives.
• Lack of a Distinct Hobbit Language: Unlike Elves or Dwarves, Hobbits never developed a unique language, instead adopting the tongues of neighboring Men.
• Preservation of Ancient Terms: Some Hobbit words and place names retain archaic elements, reflecting their historical migrations and interactions.

Notable Quote:

"Hobbits were of course fully aware of this contrast and amused by it."
— Discussion on Naming Conventions [90:44]

Insights:

• The hosts explore how Hobbit naming conventions reflect their literary and cultural roots, often blending serious and whimsical elements.
• They discuss the concept of "inner names," emphasizing Hobbit insularity and linguistic modesty.

4. Languages of Ents

Timestamp: [91:51]

Key Points:

• Entish Language: Described as slow, sonorous, and deeply complex, Entish is beyond Elvish in its intricacy and is seldom used outside their own kind.
• Elvish Influences: While Ents primarily use Quenya and Sindarin for communication with Elves, their native language remains largely undeciphered.
• Cultural Integrity: Ents prioritize the preservation of their language as a treasure of the past, rarely revealing their true names even on tombs.

Notable Quote:

"I remember reading the Hobbit to my son when he was almost six."
— Brad Heinote [09:10]

Insights:

• The discussion highlights the uniqueness of Entish, contrasting it with the more widespread languages of Elves and Men.
• They speculate on Tolkien's creative process in developing an entirely alien language for the Ents, reflecting his dedication to linguistic authenticity.

5. Languages of Orcs and Trolls

Timestamp: [92:36]

Key Points:

• Orcish Jargon: Orcs lack a unified language, resulting in multiple, fragmented dialects that are largely unsuitable for intertribal communication.
• Black Speech: Sauron's attempt to create a unifying language for his forces ultimately failed, with only select groups like the Nazgûl and high-ranking orcs retaining its use.
• Trolls: Earlier Trolls spoke no language, but later breeds like the Olog-hai were taught the Black Speech, making their communication more sophisticated yet still brutish.

Notable Quote:

"They hated even their own kind quickly developed as many barbarous dialects as there were groups or settlements of their race so that their orcish speech was of little use to them in intercourse between different tribes."
— Appendix F Excerpt [95:28]

Insights:

• Alan and James discuss the implications of Sauron's language manipulation, drawing parallels to real-world attempts at linguistic imperialism.
• They examine how the fragmentation of Orcish dialects reinforces the inherent chaos and malice within Orc societies.

6. Languages of Dwarves (Khuzdul)

Timestamp: [117:37]

Key Points:

• Khuzdul: The secretive language of the Dwarves, developed independently and rarely shared with outsiders.
• Cultural Significance: Dwarves guard their language jealously, using it primarily for lore and craftsmanship. Only a few secret names and battle cries penetrate into other languages.
• Language Retention: Despite close interactions with Men and Elves, Dwarves maintain linguistic isolation, preserving Khuzdul's purity over centuries.

Notable Quote:

"Hobbits were of course fully aware of this contrast and amused by it."
— Alan Sisto on Hobbit Naming [90:44]

Insights:

• The hosts explore the depth of Khuzdul's development, noting Christopher Tolkien's contributions and the challenges of expanding on a language intentionally kept limited by its creators.
• They discuss the interrace linguistic influences, particularly how Dwarves borrow elements from Men without compromising their linguistic heritage.

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Insights on Tolkien's Language Development and Drafts

Throughout the episode, Alan and James provide valuable commentary on Tolkien's methodology in developing the languages of Middle-earth. They emphasize the fluidity and evolution of these languages through Tolkien's drafts (F1, F2, F3) and Christopher Tolkien's efforts to compile and preserve them in published works.

Key Points:

• Draft Variations: Different versions of Appendix F reveal Tolkien's ongoing revisions and deepening understanding of his world's languages.
• Linguistic Realism: The hosts compare language evolution in Middle-earth to real-world linguistic changes, highlighting Tolkien's commitment to creating a believable and immersive linguistic landscape.
• Cultural and Political Influences: Language often serves as a tool for cultural preservation, identity, and political control within the narrative, reflecting broader themes in Tolkien's work.

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Conclusion and Next Episode Preview

As the episode draws to a close, Alan and James hint at the upcoming continuation of their exploration into Appendix F, promising to further unravel the complexities of Tolkien's linguistic creations. They encourage listeners to engage with the podcast's community through Patreon and social media, fostering a collaborative environment for all Middle-earth enthusiasts.

Closing Remarks:

"May you rekindle hearts in a world that grows chill."
— James Tauber [126:55]

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• "It's summertime and that means travel time for me."
  — Alan Sisto [00:00]

• "Folks, we're reading and talking our way through Middle Earth with plenty of speculation and bad jokes along the way."
  — James Tauber [03:59]

• "The journey just keeps on going, doesn't it?"
  — Brad Heinote [08:15]

• "Hobbits were of course fully aware of this contrast and amused by it."
  — Alan Sisto [90:44]

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Stay Connected: For more in-depth discussions, listener interactions, and exclusive content, visit patreon.com/prancingponypod and follow The Prancing Pony Podcast across all major social media platforms.

Transcript

[Alan Sisto]

It's summertime and that means travel time for me. Whether it's a Tolkien moot or a podcast conference, I am constantly dealing with packing. What can I fit in this stupid little tiny bag so they don't have to check anything? One thing that has helped me start packing smarter this summer is Mando. They've got this four in one acidified cleansing bar. Believe it or not, it serves well, I must say, as a shampoo, body wash, face wash and deodorant all in a single bar. This it even works as shaving lather too. That means less in my toiletries bag when I'm packing, and really importantly, fewer liquids to worry about trying to get through security. I have to say though, Mando's new Sweat Control deodorant stick is my new favorite. Now that it's summer, I don't want just a deodorant. You know, I need something that's going to fight sweat too. Just remember though, unlike their full body deodorant, this Sweat Control deodorant stick is just for your pits. Now, Mando's starter pack is perfect for new customers. Comes with a solid stick deodorant, a cream tube deodorant, and two free products of your choice like a mini body wash or some deodorant wipes. Once again, perfect for travel along with free shipping. But as a special offer for our listeners, new customers get 20% off site wide with our exclusive code. So please use code [e-mail] for 20% off site wide plus free shipping. That's S H o P M A n d o.com and please support our show and tell them that we sent you. Mando's got you covered. Protect your pits. Smell great doing it. Folks. I am excited to tell you about a new Middle Earth sponsor here at the Prancing Pony Podcast, osha. They're a small family company based in Scotland and they have created some of the most beautiful designs that faithfully capture the feel of both the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit. Their Middle Earth collection is a genuine passion project for the OSHA team and I'm telling you, you're gonna find something to love. Their gorgeous woven accessories, things like blankets, throws, scarves. They're all made locally out of responsibly sourced yarns and their homeware mugs, tea towels, tote bags. They are perfect gifts or perfect for your own home. I know I've ordered their Realm of Middle Earth and Ancients of Gondor mugs, but I'm telling you I had a hard time just picking one or two. They are all fantastic designs, just timeless and gorgeous. Don't just take my word for it though. I want you to visit oshaslings.com I'm going to spell that out for you. That's o s c h a slings.com they started out making baby carriers, hence the slings, which by the way reminds me if you're a new or expecting parent. Yes, they have Lord of the Rings themed slings and baby wraps too. Small family business faithfully captured Middle Earth designs, ethically made products and free international shipping. Oh, and 10% off for new customers with Code Pony at checkout. So visit oshaslings.com that's O S C H-A slings.com and use code pony to get 10% off your first order. Good evening little masters, and welcome to episode 379 of the Prancing Pony podcast, where it seems everybody is speaking Westeron except us.

[James Tauber]

That's right, we're still clinging to our own languages, it seems. Folks, pull up a bench in the common room and join us. I'm James Tauber, the Sage of the south, and I'm here with the man of the west, whose language has not been enriched or softened under any influence.

[Alan Sisto]

Alan, what are you talking about? You got a problem? Come over here and say that. No, I speak freely and carelessly, James. Just like the hobbits. Folks, join us as we take a look at the languages of, well, just about everyone as we begin our two part look at Appendix F of the Lord of the Rings on language and translation.

[James Tauber]

Language and translation in this economy.

[Alan Sisto]

Well played, sir.

[James Tauber]

Folks, no matter how you arrive, you're all welcome Here in the common room at the Prancing Pony podcast, we're reading and talking our way through Middle Earth with plenty of speculation and bad jokes along the way. We're.

[Alan Sisto]

That's right. Now, we do love our deep dives into the lore, discussing our favorite themes and a whole lot more, but we.

[James Tauber]

Try to keep it light and fun like a couple of friends chatting at the pub. And we're glad you've joined us.

[Alan Sisto]

Indeed we are. And I'm sure you'll be glad you joined as well. But before we get to tonight's chapter discussion, it's time to step into the north wing and visit with one of our listeners. Now, today we're bringing you another new installment of the North Wing. As you know, Barlam and Butterbur had a room or two in the North Wing at the Prancing Pony Inn made special for Hobbits. This is our place made special for some of our listeners to give us a chance to get to know them. Now, rooms at the North Wing are a bit hard to come by, so only our patrons at the Elronds honorarium and Kierdan's contribution tiers are eligible. So if you'd like to be one of the next patrons to join us, be sure to check out patreon.com prancingponypod now, we do have a waiting list for the North Wing right now, and tonight's guest could tell you he's been waiting quite a while. But we will get to them all soon and we'll make room for if necessary. But let's not delay any further since we've already delayed many, many months. Let's welcome tonight's guest of the North Wing, Brad Heinote.

[Brad Heinote]

Absolute pleasure to be with you, Alan.

[Alan Sisto]

It is a pleasure to have you, Brad, and thanks again for just being so patient. We'll start out and I'm sure you've heard these before, since this is the 56th one recorded. I'm sure you've heard a few. Tell us a little bit about yourself, where you're from, what do you do. But then what do your loved ones think of all this Tolkien stuff you're into? Do you get a lot of grief? Do they love it with you, that kind of thing?

[James Tauber]

Sure.

[Brad Heinote]

I am a lifelong Massachusetts resident. I live now out on Cape Cod, which if anybody knows their geography, it's the hook that sticks out of New England. I live about halfway out on that in the town of Harwich. I work for one of our communities out here as the municipal assessor. So I'm the one who gets yelled at when everyone's tax bills go out.

[Alan Sisto]

I was going to say not the most popular guy in town.

[Brad Heinote]

Sure. And, well, it's unfortunate in a pot in a part of the part of the country where properties sell for 1 $2 million habitually, they can afford to pay it. So I don't get too worked up with them. I'm very happy here. I love it. This Tolkien stuff, I'm very lucky. I'm married to a woman who is not as into it as I am, but she's, she loves the films and she, she embraces it all the way. When the, when the library expands with Tolkien books, nice book after Tolkien book.

[Alan Sisto]

So that's good. That's a very good thing right there.

[James Tauber]

Absolutely.

[Alan Sisto]

I love that. Well, then of course, the question we ask everybody who comes to the Prancing Pony. When and how did you first discover Tolkien's works and then tell us a little bit about what your experience was like and why you keep coming back?

[Brad Heinote]

Well, first exposure to Tolkien was a book fair in elementary school where I took. I came home with a copy of the Hobbit, an old paperback of it. And I read it and I loved it. And I read it again because the language was just so unlike anything else any probably elementary school student had ever read at that point. And I made my dad read it to me.

[James Tauber]

Oh, great.

[Brad Heinote]

And then I didn't return to Tolkien until college when the films were on their way.

[James Tauber]

Okay.

[Brad Heinote]

And then I said, oh, I remember reading the Hobbit when I was little and one of my roommates had read it. He said, oh, you should read the books. So I did. And. And that just from. By the end of book one, I was in hooked. Absolutely. Because it was just such a draw. Such a draw. And at that point in my senior year of college, I had credits to burn to graduate, so I took a Tolkien course. They had a whole semester on Tolkien and it was awful.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh no. Oh no.

[Brad Heinote]

The school was clearly just taking advantage of the popularity of the movies.

[James Tauber]

Oh, yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

Timing.

[Brad Heinote]

The professors were not prepared in the least for it. So it was terrible. Which is why I just ended up. When you realize the breadth of what Christopher Tolkien put out in the world, I just started doing it myself and.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[Brad Heinote]

And since then it's just been the journey.

[Alan Sisto]

And that's the thing. The journey just keeps on going, doesn't it?

[Brad Heinote]

It's just wonderful.

[James Tauber]

Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

And I take it that's the part that keeps you coming back.

[Brad Heinote]

Absolutely. And now as a, as a father of a three year old and a one year old.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, lovely.

[Brad Heinote]

A night doesn't pass where we, my wife and I read to our son every night. And he, at the end of it, you know, he wants you to sit there with him for a little while.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, yeah.

[Brad Heinote]

And he'll look at me and say, dada, Dada. Tell me, Bilbo Baggins. And I've got, I've got my. I've got it down to a solid seven minute read through of the Hollow.

[Alan Sisto]

That's awesome.

[Brad Heinote]

It is. It's great. And the only thing I have to leave out is the spiders because he does not like spiders. No, nothing too scary. He's fine with a giant dragon, but spiders, no data. Don't like spiders.

[Alan Sisto]

Well, that's the thing. A dragon is purely an imaginary creature. He sees spiders. So sure. It's a little too real. We'll give him a few years and you'll be reading the full version of it to him. That's exciting.

[Brad Heinote]

I can't wait. I'm going to be in front of the fireplace with the whole thing.

[Alan Sisto]

I remember reading the Hobbit to my son when he was almost six. Was about when I started with the Hobbit. Of course he's 13 now, so we've read the rest, but it's. That's a whole different story. Well, which is your favorite book in the legendarium? Obviously you've read a lot of them. Then if you've been reading History of Middle Earth and why and then if you have a favorite non legendarium book, which one is it?

[Brad Heinote]

So toss up again. Book one of the of the Lord of the Rings was just such a grabber. And then getting to book five in the Lord of the Rings where these one, these events just, just, just hit.

[Alan Sisto]

You one after the next common. Yep.

[Brad Heinote]

And then with the ending with the eagles coming just kind of is like oh what did I, what did I just go through here as a reader? Yeah, those are the part when I return to the Lord of the Rings. Those two always jump out of me. So I have to give it to both of them. Non legendarium. I will go back to under my college years again and say that I did take a great course on old literature and they used part of Tolkien's old translation of Beowulf and Beowulf was. I really, I really dug. I did. I like.

[Alan Sisto]

And his translation is really interesting too. I mean it's, it is, it's not the one that most people think of when they think of Beowulf. I think a lot of people today go to the Seamus Haney translation. But there is a lot to be said for Tolkien's.

[Brad Heinote]

Yeah, I think I'm probably, maybe I'm just biased but I just. The Tolkien's is what I like.

[Alan Sisto]

I agree, I agree. Well, any Tolkien goals that you'd like to share? Maybe tracking down a special book for your collection because you kept talking about the expanding shelves or maybe going to a moot, something like that.

[Brad Heinote]

Oh, moot would be wonderful. I think that's something I've broached that already with with the missus and said, you know, I know the people. I know the PPP is all has done moots and we're not too far from where Signum is. Yeah, I know moots are a doable thing. So if you, if you guys have one in a fun part of the country. Yeah, I may be able to. I may be able to swing it.

[Alan Sisto]

I hope so. I think that'd be a lot of fun. I'd like that. Yeah. Well, we're going to go ahead and move into our lightning round of relatively quick questions and answers. I mean, it's the ppp. We all digress. So I'm not going to give you a hard time. Favorite scene or moment in the legendarium? Try to narrow it down to one favorite scene.

[Brad Heinote]

Gandalf healing Theoden.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, that's an excellent one. Who is your favorite First Age elf?

[Brad Heinote]

Finrod.

[Alan Sisto]

Yes. Right answer. I mean, there is no wrong answer unless it's Fean or, you know, or maybe Myglin would be the other really bad choice. But yeah, Finrod's a good one. Who's your favorite hobbit?

[Brad Heinote]

Favorite hobbit. I gotta go with Mary.

[James Tauber]

Okay.

[Alan Sisto]

I like that Mary's Mary strikes the.

[Brad Heinote]

Balance of the silliness he does and the seriousness, I think.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[Brad Heinote]

Also doesn't help that my daughter. My daughter, I call her Mary.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, that's cute.

[Brad Heinote]

Her name is Marissa, but we. We call her Mary.

[Alan Sisto]

That's fair. That's a good one. Yeah. All right, you get to choose between the Noldor or the Teleri to spend, you know, an age with. Now, of course, the Noldor you're hanging out with are not Feanor and his son. So these are good Noldor. Which. Which group do you choose? Do you choose the fishermen or the craftsman?

[Brad Heinote]

I choose the fisherman. I'm a Telery all the way.

[Alan Sisto]

I kind of thought that might be the case, being out on the Cape. I don't know.

[Brad Heinote]

Just struck me where I'm sitting right now. I mean, five minutes in either direction, east, north of north or south. I'm on a beach with nothing but water in front of me. I could not. I could not live any other way. So.

[Alan Sisto]

All right. The Telery it is. I love that.

[James Tauber]

Yes.

[Alan Sisto]

All right. I don't know why I highlighted this question, because we always choose from like, I don't know, 20 different questions, but here's yours, and it's not a fun one. What happened to the ant wives?

[Brad Heinote]

They're gone.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, they are sadly gone.

[Brad Heinote]

Hopefully far into the east, where maybe just no one knows where they are. But.

[Alan Sisto]

So they're not all dead. They just disappeared.

[Brad Heinote]

They're just gone.

[James Tauber]

Okay.

[Alan Sisto]

We can hold some hope that they're gone.

[Brad Heinote]

As the professor would say, you know, there are no tales that concern them at this point.

[Alan Sisto]

That's a good point. All right. Well, those are some great answers. Thank you, Brad. And thanks for sticking around and, you know, being so patient to get on. I want you to My pleasure, Alan.

[Brad Heinote]

Thank you so much for opening this up to us.

[Alan Sisto]

Absolutely. It's been a lot of fun and I hope to see you at a moot soon.

[Brad Heinote]

If not, we'll see each other in lotro, I hope.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, yes, absolutely. We're on peregrine now for the server for the kinship. Well, we have really enjoyed having you here in the north wing, Brad, but it is time for us to head back to the common room to join the rest of the listeners. But thank you again and hopefully we'll see you back at our next questions after nightfall, if not sooner. And now we will return, folks, to the podcast in progress.

[James Tauber]

Okay, let's get started with the first part of Appendix F. Alan, take it away.

[Alan Sisto]

All right, sir. The Languages and Peoples of the Third Age the language represented in this history by English was the Westron, or common speech, of the Westlands of Middle Earth in the Third Age. In the course of that age, it had become the native language of nearly all the speaking peoples, save the Elves, who dwelt within the bounds of the old kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor, that is, along all the coasts from Umbar northward to the Bay of Forochil, and and inland as far as the Misty Mountains and the Ephel Duath. It had also spread north up the Anduin, occupying the lands west of the river and east of the mountains as far as the Gladden Fields. At the time of the War of the Ring, at the end of the Age, these were still its bounds as a native tongue, though large parts of Eriador were now deserted, and few Men dwelt on the shores of the Anduin between the Gladden and Rauros. A few of the ancient Wild Men still lurked in the Druidon Forest, in Anorien, and in the hills of Dunland, a remnant lingered of an old people, the former inhabitants of much of Gondor. These clung to their own languages, while in the plains of Rohan there dwelt now a northern people, the Rohirrim, who had come into that land some 500 years earlier. But the Westron was used as a second language of intercourse by all those who still retained a speech of their own, even by the Elves, not only in Arnor and Gondor, but throughout the Vales of Anduin and eastward to the further eaves of Mirkwood, even among the Wild Men and the Dunlendings, who shunned other folk. There were some that could speak it, though brokenly.

[James Tauber]

So before we get too deep into this, we do want to point out that if you're really interested in this, you've got to look at peoples of Middle Earth, where, oh, yeah. Christopher Tolkien lays out a very long and thorough discussion of the many texts that preceded the published version of Appendix F. So when we talked about the calendars, a couple of episodes, we mentioned D1 and D2, and similarly, there are plenty of drafts for Appendix F, and they're long, too.

[Alan Sisto]

They are. It's a very long discussion, which is why we can't cover it completely in depth here. There was one version of it that was actually written as a foreword rather than an appendix that Christopher refers to as F with an asterisk.

[James Tauber]

And then F1 and F2 are the primary and fuller versions that Christopher illuminates in that volume of Home. But there's also F3 and F4 and four more texts that Christopher doesn't include, saying, for the purposes of this account, it is not necessary to describe them.

[Alan Sisto]

For the purposes of this episode, it won't be necessary either. Just like with the calendars, Tolkien found himself very frustrated with the limitations of size. Christopher writing, even if my father had not said so very plainly himself in his letters, it would be very evident from these drafts that the writing of an account that would satisfy him was exceedingly tasking and frustrating, largely, I believe, because he found the constraint of space profoundly uncongenial. Love that phrase.

[James Tauber]

And it also. It makes me think of all the stuff that we're now able to do digitally without those.

[Alan Sisto]

I know. Without the limitations of space in a physical medium.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. But we will, where possible, and as time allows in this episode, bring in information from F, F1, and F2, maybe some of the other bits and bobs. But for those interested in the deep, deep dive, do be sure to check out that part of people's Middle Earth.

[Alan Sisto]

Absolutely. Now, there, Christopher publishes the full version of F2 and then records in his notes the differences from F1, because Tolkien otherwise followed F1 pretty closely.

[James Tauber]

And Christopher adds, In general, I treat F2 as the representative text of the original version and only distinguish F1 when necessary.

[Alan Sisto]

The funny thing about this, and I remember thinking about this as I was writing the outline for the episode, is I'm a huge F1 fan. So every time he was referencing F1, my brain would be like, you got excited? I can't help it, folks. I'm sorry. Now, looking at the text here, Actual Appendix F. It is interesting that we get a description, first, of the role and even the reach of Westeron, but not the nature of the language itself. And we'll get there, don't worry. But Tolkien begins by simply explaining that English in the story is meant as a translation of Westeron, what he calls the common speech, saying it had, over.

[James Tauber]

The course of the Third Age, become the native language of just about everyone in the part of the world where the story takes place. And I just want to point out, as well, he uses the term history in this. History.

[Alan Sisto]

Yes, Once again, sort of this idea of a frame narrative being an actual history. The conceit of that.

[James Tauber]

But it's an interesting geographic spread, reminding us, of course, that lands like Harad and Hrun would not have received Westrun as their, quote, native language.

[Alan Sisto]

Right, exactly. Now, this is the case, the geographic spread, even though a lot of those western regions are now completely empty of people. I mean, Eriador ever since. Well, I mean, the plague wiped out a bunch of people, really thinned the population, but then when Arnor collapsed into the three Petty Kingdoms, and then they all got wiped out, there's just not a lot of folks in these regions. And yet that's still the language of people that are in there.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, we get a mention of the Druidain, the ancient Wild Men, as well as the Dunlendings, along with a reminder that the Dunlendings were the original, at least former inhabitants of the land of Gondor.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, that is going to be an interesting thing to talk about next season, folks. I am really looking forward to exploring this whole idea of, you know, the Dunlendings being displaced and sort of the. The original inhabitants of the land dealing with the Numenor imperial expansion. So we're going to be talking about that as we get into the story of Eldarion and Arendus, because Aldarion, of course, was largely responsible for some of the early expansion of Numenor. But we're going to look especially at the tale of Tal Elmar, but that's next season. Anyway, not surprisingly, those folks, and I can't blame them, they don't want to speak the language of the people who've driven them out of their homes. Right. They cling to their original tongues, and they certainly have my understanding for that.

[James Tauber]

Then we get mention of the Rohirrim in the context of clinging to their own languages, although that's not made explicitly.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, it's weird. The mention of the Rohirrim is right after the mention of the Wild Men and the Dunlendings. But here's the thing. Everybody, and I mean everybody, even the Dunlendings, or some of them, used the common speech as a lingua franca that included the Elves. Even if we're talking about exiled Noldor or if we're talking about Sindar, it included the Dunlendings, of course, but even the Druedyne, as we would see later on with Khan Brihan. Not all of them, of course. And even those that could, probably couldn't speak it very well. Again, as we experience with the leader of the Druedyne there.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. I just want to mention Tolkien doesn't talk about it here, but we get another instance where the orcs themselves speak of common speech because different tribes of orcs don't have a common tongue other than the common speech. It's quite interesting that, that. Yeah, yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

And we'll get into that at length later in this episode. But, yeah, their. Their own language got so. Because they were so tribal, they had to find a common language. And this ended up being a lingua franca for essentially the entire world, basically. If you're going to have any interaction with another race of people, people that speak another language, you've got to have a way to communicate the common speech was that.

[James Tauber]

Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

And that's why Tolkien represents it with English, because English is arguably one of the more frequently spoken lingua francas in the world.

[James Tauber]

Right. And I mean, one analogy I like to think of is the situation in India, which, you know, has a huge diversity of language, but as a result, the common language that's spoken between people from different states in India is often the colonialist language of England, of English. You know, that's. That's because the colonizer language is the only one that they know. If you're from different parts of India.

[Alan Sisto]

That is fascinating.

[James Tauber]

Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

There's a lot of fascinating stuff in this episode ahead. I mean, the languages are so interesting, and we're going to keep moving. We're going to start off with some of the Elvish languages. James, would you take us away from there?

[James Tauber]

Absolutely. Of the Elves. The Elves, far back in the elder days became divided into two main branches, the West Elves, the Eldar, and the East Elves. Of the latter kind were most of the Elven folk of Mirkwood and Lorien, but their languages do not appear in this history in which all the Elvish names and words are of Eldaran form. Of the Eldaran tongues, two are found in this book. The High Elven or Quenya and the Grey Elven, or Sindarin. The High Elven was an ancient tongue of Eldamar beyond the sea. The first to be recorded in writing, it was no longer a birth tongue, but had become, as it were, an Elven Latin, still used for ceremony and for high matters of lore and song by the High Elves who had returned in exile to Middle Earth at the end of the First Age. The Grey Elven was in origin akin to Quenya, for it was the language of those Eldar who, coming to the shores of Middle Earth, had not passed over the sea, but had lingered on the coasts in the country of Beleriand. There, Thingol, Greycloak of Doriath, was their king, and in the long twilight their tongue had changed with the changefulness of mortal lands and had become far estranged from the speech of the Eldar from beyond the sea. The exiles dwelling among the more numerous Grey Elves had adopted the Sindarin for daily use. And hence it was the tongue of all those elves and Elf lords that appear in this history. For these were all of Eldaran race even where the folk that they had ruled were of the lesser kindreds. Noblest of all was the Lady Galadriel of the royal house of Finarfin and sister of Finrod Felagund, King of Nargothrond. In the hearts of the exiles, the yearning for the sea was an unquiet, never to be stilled. In the hearts of the Grey Elves, it slumbered, but once awakened, it could not be appeased.

[Alan Sisto]

The sleeper has awakened. There's a lot in this passage. I mean, I kept wanting to interrupt you. You're like the exiles dwelling among the numerous Gray Elves and the ones that had threatened to kill them if they spoke their language had adopted the Sindhadin for daily use. We'll get to that, though.

[James Tauber]

I was just going to say, what's amazing about this is that there's history in this that we otherwise wouldn't know prior to the Silmarillion.

[Alan Sisto]

I know, that's the thing. There's so much behind this. It sort of glosses over, like we talked about with the tale of years being written with this sort of pro Elendil, you know, like, let's legitimize Elendil as the rightful heir, so to speak. Here we have sort of glossing over what thing called, but we'll definitely expand on that.

[James Tauber]

So not only glossing over certain things, but this is the only time we come across some of these people in this part of the history that's true too.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, you're right. Who's Finrod?

[James Tauber]

Right.

[Alan Sisto]

Where's Nargothrond? We've. You know, and by the way, folks, we'll probably still, or I will probably still slip and call it Nargothrond every now and then. But those of you turning in last week know from the writing and spelling, the pronunciation stuff, that it is in fact, because of the th and the R, that's two consonantal sounds that makes it Nargothrond, not Nargothrond. So hard to do that. Anyway, going back to the beginning of that. That passage. And again at the end, even there's weird. Like you said, it's the only place we're going to get some of that history. But it also feels weird because how does that fit in with the languages? Why is this relevant?

[James Tauber]

Well, and we did discuss that in the. In the Pingalov episode.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, yeah.

[James Tauber]

In particular, of course, was all about this question of, you know, questions got raised by this. Of how did it. Because we got. I just want to quickly mention, they say that in the long Twilight that their tongue had changed with the changefulness of mortal lands. And that ties in with the whole Pengalog discussion that we had. Yeah, yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

Except that it was more like they kept crafting it and making it better because there was like an intentionality of it from the elves.

[James Tauber]

That's what we learned. That's what we learned from that.

[Alan Sisto]

From good old Thus Quoth Pengala. So going back to the beginning of this, first we're told about that Eldar Avari split, though here they're just called the East Elves, not the Avari, because. Well, the term Avari is not in the Lord of the Rings. So that makes sense.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. Yeah. Just again, speaking of terms that. That get introduced, I've mentioned this before, that the name Quenya and Sindarin are not mentioned in the main text of Lord of the Rings either.

[Alan Sisto]

No, they're not.

[James Tauber]

Here's where we find out that that's what the names of these languages are.

[Alan Sisto]

Yep.

[James Tauber]

But Anyway, in manuscript F2 we do get the Avari term. And I quote, the primary division was into Eldar and Avari. The Avari were those elves who remained content with Middle Earth that was struck out and refused the summons of the powers. But. But they and their many secret tongues do not concern this book. That's what was. What F2 said.

[Alan Sisto]

Exactly. Now, the Avari, also known as sir not appearing in this book, are described as making up most of the Elven population east of The Misty Mountains, which is, again, interesting, because we don't. When we think of Elves, we don't think of the Avari. We're thinking of the named characters who are leading the Avari, but they are the numerous group. So they're the ones who make up most of the population to the east of the Misty Mountains. So we're talking about Lorien and Mirkwood, but they are linguistically irrelevant here.

[James Tauber]

Well, they are Lesser. Lesser Kindred.

[Alan Sisto]

They are Lesser Kindred. Ooh, that's got to hurt. Yeah, that makes for an awkward Thanksgiving. You get the Lesser Kindred. Table. Wow. So, yeah, no, we're looking solely at the Eldaran words, so we're not looking at any kind of language that the Avari might have spoken.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. And we get a useful footnote here, though, reminding us that Lorien, there, the language spoken is Sindarin, but Tolkien says it's spoken with an accent, since most of its folk were of Sylvan origin. And in fact, that accent or dialect threw Frodo off, along with his own limited knowledge of Sindarin.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, because he was very. He was confused again. Just like the letters where he thought he knew the Elvish letters, but he was reading them in a different mode. Right back when he was looking, when.

[James Tauber]

He sees the Balerion mode on the Westgate door, I got confused there.

[Alan Sisto]

Like, that looks kind of familiar, but it doesn't. And then similarly, when he gets to Lorien and they're speaking, he can understand snippets, but not much, because, of course, it is Sindarin, but it's spoken in sort of a Sylvan accent. So the note then goes on to tell us that all the Elvish words cited in book two, chapters six, seven and eight, so that's the entire Lorien experience, are in fact Sindarin. And so are most of the names of places and persons. But Lorien, Karasgaradhon, Amroth, Nimrodel are probably of Silvan origin, adapted to Sindarin. But I've got a question for you, James. This can't be right, because Galadriel's lament is quite famously Quenya. Did he just kind of oversight here, just kind of forgot.

[James Tauber]

I think he just means. Well, it's weird because he doesn't just say the names of places and persons. He specifically says all the Elvish words, and so are most of the names of places and persons. So what does he mean if he's contrasting all the Elvish words, and so are the most. Most of the names of places and persons that. Yeah, I think he's made a mistake.

[Alan Sisto]

I think it's just an oops. I'm like, wait a minute, that's Quenya.

[James Tauber]

Because the vast bulk of the words that are not names of places and persons are in fact Quenya, because they're in the Lament. You don't get much cinder and speech in that text.

[Alan Sisto]

No, I mean, you get. What's the word that. That Haldir says when he's basically telling him to be still, you know? Halt. I can't remember the word. It's two syllables with an o, but I can't remember the word off the top of my head.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, that's.

[Alan Sisto]

But that's about it.

[James Tauber]

All you get. You get more cinder and elsewhere.

[Alan Sisto]

And the word for rope. Right, The. The mist. Rope. Hithlim, hithline or something like that.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

There's not much else that we get.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. Speaking of Sindarin and Quenya, we'll get to that discussion next. The High Elven is described as an ancient tongue of Eldamar, beyond the sea. And an Elven Latin, like we talked about a couple of weeks ago.

[Alan Sisto]

I love that it's absolutely explicitly said to be like an Elven Latin, whereas last time we were talking about it, sort of like. Well, this is sort of like the way Latin is. Right. It's this here. It's explicitly. It's an Elven Latin.

[James Tauber]

It's how Tolkien thought of it.

[Alan Sisto]

It's even how he thought of it. Yeah. By the way, I looked up real quickly. The word is daro.

[James Tauber]

That's right.

[Alan Sisto]

The halt was dado. I knew it had an O in it, and it was two syllables. That's all I could remember. So that Quenya, that High Elven, that Elven Latin, it's said to be used only by the High Elves in exile. That would be, of course, the Noldor, while the Sindarin or the gray Elven tongue was related. And we get the explanation. I like this. It's a partial explanation, at least, as to why those two tongues diverged. And it was because the Eldar who didn't go to Valinor stayed in Beleriand and living under Thingol's rule in Mortal Lands, because that's where things change. Their language became far estranged from Quenya.

[James Tauber]

Yep. And in F2, we get a bit more about the split in the Elven peoples and their tongues. And I quote, most of the Eldar then passed over the sea and came to that land in the ancient west which they called Valinor, a name that means the land of the powers or rulers of the world. But some of the Eldar of the Kindred of the Teleri remained behind in the northwest of Middle Earth. And these were called the Lembi or lingerers. It is with Eldaran tongues, Valinorian or Lemberran changed to Telerian that these tales are concerned. So it's interesting because the use of Lembi or lingerers actually enables Christopher to date F2 to no later than the middle of 1950.

[Alan Sisto]

Correct.

[James Tauber]

We get this a lot where Christopher knows when his father decided to change a name.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[James Tauber]

Therefore, he can date things based on when he used this name. So therefore it must predate the name change.

[Alan Sisto]

Exactly.

[James Tauber]

But even then, by the way, Tolkien wrote that Quenya was, as it were, Elven Latin, even in F2.

[Alan Sisto]

Clearly, he's been thinking about that, you know, like, the entire time. That's the structure, the framework in his mind. So then we're told that the Noldor took the Sindarin language for their regular use, retaining Quenya for matters of lore and song. But can we revisit this? Because that does sort of gloss over a little bit, you know, Remember King Thingol? After learning of the actions of some of the Noldor at Alqualande, not all told the sons of Fnarfin, Never again in my ears shall be heard the tongue of those who slew my kin in Alqualonde. Nor in all my realm shall it be openly spoken. While my power endures, all the Sindar shall hear my command, and that they shall neither speak with the tongue of the Noldor nor answer to it. And all such as use it shall be held, slayers of kin and betrayers of kin, unrepentant. That is some strong words from Thingol.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. And this extinguishing of a language worked, right?

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, absolutely.

[James Tauber]

It came to pass even as Thingol had spoken, for the Sindar heard his word. And thereafter throughout Beleriand, they refused the tongue of the Noldor and shunned those that spoke it aloud. But the exiles took the Sindarin tongue in all their daily uses. And the high speech of the west was spoken only by the lords of the Noldor among themselves. And I want to ask a question that we've asked a few times here. Given that we're not really getting the full story in Appendix F, who's point of view does that benefit?

[Alan Sisto]

Right. And why is it being glossed over?

[James Tauber]

Right.

[Alan Sisto]

I mean, because it wouldn't have Taken much more space to say, you know, the High Elves had to adopt the Sindarin tongue because Quenya was forbidden by the king. And maybe it doesn't explain why, because that's a long story. Sure. But, you know, you could have said that, but you didn't say that. You said, like, they just. Why? What's the purpose here? Just like in Appendix B, we figure out that the purpose of those changes was to legitimize the line of Elendil as the rightful heir, the king of Numenor and therefore his descendants would be the rightful kings. Are we trying to not point out Thingol's sort of attempt at linguistic genocide?

[James Tauber]

Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

I mean, is that who we're trying to protect here? I don't know.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. I don't know who it is that we're trying to protect.

[Alan Sisto]

It's weird. It really is. But, yeah, I have to wonder if that hadn't happened, right? If he had just been like, okay, all of the Kinslayers, you're out. You're gone. You're banished for forever. The rest of you, you're fine. You can stay and you can speak your language. Eventually, the Sindar would have spoken some of the Noldorin, but also the Noldor would have adopted some of the Sindarin. We'd have more of a mixed language rather than two separate languages. And you wonder what form that would have taken. That's an interesting. I mean, that's a question well beyond the scope of a single episode. That's conlang right there. But, I mean, it's just interesting to kind of envision that maybe not all of the changes that happened to Sindarin would have happened because it would have been influenced more by Quenya and Quenya would have had some changes within it because the two would eventually have become maybe a merged language but with some lingering things that are only spoken in lower context.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. Although it's. It's. It's not as if. It's not as if the language was completely forgotten. Everyone still knew Quenya, so the influence was still possible. It was just not.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, that's fair. But you wonder how much influence it would have had. I mean, certainly, as Elven children were born in Beleriand after the Noldoran exiles returned but then were forbidden to speak Quenya, they wouldn't have any influence at all. They wouldn't have known Quenya. And nobody. Their parents wouldn't have spoken it because it was forbidden in their land.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. I mean, they would have still come across it in again. The ceremonial and law stuff. So again, it comes back to the Latin analogy. Right. They would have learned it, but not necessarily as a spoken language.

[Alan Sisto]

That's a fair point.

[James Tauber]

Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

And probably just like Latin in the real world, a few people would have been very interested and learned it in depth. And most of the rest of the people would have been like, whatever, I'm just going to use what I speak every day. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. That's a good point.

[James Tauber]

Pengalov being a great example of somebody that's like, yeah, I'm totally going in for this elf Latin stuff.

[Alan Sisto]

So, yes, the. The Noldor took the Sindharin language for their daily use, but let's not make it sound like it was a choice. And then we get bit. That felt sort of. And we'll get to the question of the relevancy. But get this bit about Galadriel. First of all, I love this. She was the noblest of all.

[James Tauber]

Right. And this has always struck me, and there's a couple of passages like this that really, really sound like interpolations by some later pro Galadriel scribe. I don't know if Tolkien was consciously thinking of it that way, but this happens all the time in medieval manuscripts. You get these statements that are clearly later insertions just bang smack in the middle of something. There'll be something that says, oh, but this king was the greatest of all.

[Alan Sisto]

A total non sequitur.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. And there are a couple of cases where that happens. Always with Galadriel, there's always some insertion about she was the greatest of all.

[Alan Sisto]

She's the greatest.

[James Tauber]

And I wonder if this is an example of that.

[Alan Sisto]

It kind of feels like that, doesn't it?

[James Tauber]

I like. That's my headcanon. Anyway.

[Alan Sisto]

I like it.

[James Tauber]

There's all these insertions of how wonderful Galadriel was.

[Alan Sisto]

Celeborn got his hands on the script.

[James Tauber]

It does occur to me, though, that I can't imagine Galadriel would have been. Well, I don't know what I'm trying to think now what Galadriel would have made of the banning of Quenya and Thingol's actions, because she certainly would have been sympathetic to his reasons. Oh, yeah, right. He was annoyed at the Annoyed, annoyed.

[Alan Sisto]

Mild way of putting it. Yeah.

[James Tauber]

You know, it was the Alqualande kinslaying was a big part of why he. Why he didn't want it spoken. And of course, Galadriel would have shared that sentiment completely. Oh, yeah. So it's interesting. It can't just be a pro Galadriel thing.

[Alan Sisto]

No, it can't be. Because, of course, she was also part of the reason why he didn't find out earlier. She knew. She wouldn't answer. She's like, I'm not telling you. Melian.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, Melian's kind of.

[Alan Sisto]

That's in my past. Can we leave you in the past? And Melian's like, but there's something important going on. You're hiding something. Yep.

[James Tauber]

Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

Gonna tell you.

[James Tauber]

Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

Not gonna do it. Yeah.

[James Tauber]

But then we get this fascinating bit about the yearning of the. For the sea.

[Alan Sisto]

Another weird bit. Like, what?

[James Tauber]

Yeah, again, just these little snippets that make total sense if you read the Silmarillion. But they would have been quite, quite new to readers of Lord of the Rings. That's true for the first couple of decades because we're told that the Noldor face this all the time, this yearning for the sea, while the Sindar are fine until it's awakened, which we see.

[Alan Sisto]

You know, in Legolas. Once that's awakened, it's like, oh, man, I can't stick around, Gimli. You want to take a road trip? But, yeah, it's a reminder that the Noldor face this all the time. And you think about what Galadriel is enduring, and you hear her speak about it during the Lament.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. Also, I mean, I have to just shout out to my boy Cirdan, just because Cirdan's the ultimate. Like, I desperately want to. I desperately want to get there.

[Alan Sisto]

You wanted to get over there before.

[James Tauber]

I know there's stuff that needs to be done.

[Alan Sisto]

I mean, what's that story we read about him in History of Middle Earth that he basically says, okay, okay, now that they've all gone, I'm so. I missed the boat. I'm going to make my own boat and I'm going to sail to Valinor. And they're like, no, actually, you can't do that yet. You need to wait.

[James Tauber]

It's like you're not able to build a good enough boat. First of all, I'm going to keep working on building the best boat until I can build a boat that's capable of doing it. And then, plot twist, you're not the one that's going to get to sail the boat after all this.

[Alan Sisto]

Not until the very end of time, basically. Amazing. You've got the world's longest job and shortest retirement. But both of these little bits, the bit about Galadriel being the noblest of all, which is, like you said, feels like an insertion, and then this bit about the yearning, the sea yearning from both the Noldorin perspective and the Sindarin perspective, they're really interesting inclusions. But. But they're in a section that's nominally about language. Why do you think, in a place where Tolkien was so pressed for space, as Christopher explained, why did he choose to use some of that space on information that has zero to do with Quenya or Sindarin?

[James Tauber]

Well, it's interesting because obviously he does spend a bit of time in this section talking about the history of the elves and their sundering and so on. And that is vital to understand.

[Alan Sisto]

That's rel. Oh, totally rel. I mean, that's.

[James Tauber]

That is. And in fact, you know, we know that Tolkien actually invented the Sundering story to explain the language.

[Alan Sisto]

Exactly.

[James Tauber]

Why.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[James Tauber]

When he did this, initially, the languages were very different, and it was the language of the Noldor that was actually the Welsh, like one, and so on. Right. So he completely changed his conception of what Gnomish was and all that kind of stuff. And Sindarin didn't exist as a term, but given this notion of two languages, both spoken by elves that had an earlier origin but were now sundered, he had to come up with a story of how two groups of elves got sundered. And that was sort of the beginning.

[Alan Sisto]

Basically, the root of the Silmarillion was. Yeah, I need a reason to explain why these languages are different.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. Now, I can't help but wonder if there's a little. Especially the sea yearning.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[James Tauber]

Feels like that's still an important part of that. And I mean it. Obviously, as you said, the sea yearning in the context of Galadriel in particular, is important to understanding her and what she's gone through and passing the test and all that kind of stuff. And so I wonder if that's why he felt it was so important to include here. Even though it's not, as you say, it's not about language.

[Alan Sisto]

It's not connected to the language, but.

[James Tauber]

It'S just so important to the story he wanted to tell.

[Alan Sisto]

And, I mean, certainly the sea longing I see being connected to Galadriel very clearly. And that's relevant in a big way because it reminds you of the sacrifice that she's making as a Noldor in exile and fighting that desire compared to a Sindarin elf who would be able to be fine until that desire got awakened. It's just weird that they're connected to this section on languages.

[James Tauber]

Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

It just feels like an odd little inclusion I'm glad he included it, especially because, like you said, if you don't. If you hadn't read the Silmarillion, which you couldn't have done for more than 20 years after this came out, this is the only place you're going to get this bit of history, and I love that. But it is really, really interesting that he put this in here.

[James Tauber]

The only, the only other thing that occurs to me is if he somehow saw the history of the languages as ultimately culminating in the reunification of the Speakers.

[Alan Sisto]

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You mean finance?

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[James Tauber]

That's cool.

[Alan Sisto]

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[James Tauber]

The PPP has an amazing listener community. They're always coming up with great questions and discussions across all our social media spaces. Check out our Common Room on Facebook, our dedicated subreddit, Twitter and more now on Facebook.

[Alan Sisto]

Just look for the Prancing Pony Podcast. You're going to follow the page to get the news and episode drops, but you're going to want to join the group to get involved in some great.

[James Tauber]

Discussions on Twitter, Instagram, Blue Sky, Twitch, TikTok, and YouTube. We're @prancingponypod or if you prefer Reddit, find us there at R prancingponypod.

[Alan Sisto]

And if you want daily Tolkien content and come on, I mean everybody wants daily Tolkien content. So go listen. Go watch today's Tolkien times, folks. Go watch or listen on the PPP YouTube channel or your favorite podcast apps. That's my short format Daily Show. It's like eight to ten minutes a day. I've got everything from Middle Earth Map Monday to Word Nerd Wednesday and silverillion Saturdays. We also have a twice weekly stream of all fun things Middle Earth on the PPP plays. So be sure to check both of those out on the YouTube channel for all the PPP [e-mail] okay, so we.

[James Tauber]

Talked about the Elvish languages. We next get a discussion about the languages of men. Alan, as man of the west, would you like to read the next section for us?

[Alan Sisto]

Indeed I will. Of Men. The Westeron was a mannish speech, though enriched and softened under Elvish influence. It was in origin the language of those whom the Eldar called the Atani or Edain, fathers of men, being especially the people of the three houses of the Elf friends, who came west into Beleriand in the First Age and aided the Eldar in the war of the Great Jewels against the Dark power of the North. After the overthrow of the Dark power, in which Beleriand was for the most part drowned or broken, it was granted as a reward to the Elf friends that they also, as the Eldar, might pass west oversea. But since the Undying Realm was forbidden to them, a great isle was set apart for them most westerly of all mortal lands. The name of that isle was Westerness. Most of the Elf friends therefore departed, and dwelt in Numenor, and there they became great and powerful mariners of renown, and lords of many ships. They were fair of face and tall, and the span of their lives was thrice that of the men of Middle Earth. These were the Numenoreans, the kings of men, whom the elves called the Dunedain. The Dunedain alone of all races of men, knew and spoke an Elvish tongue, for their forefathers had learned a Sindarin tongue, and this they handed on to their children as a matter of lore, changing little with the passing of the years. And their men of wisdom learned also the High Elven Quenya and esteemed it above all other tongues. And in it they made names for many places of fame and reverence, and for many men of royalty and great renown. But the native speech of the Numenoreans remained, for the most part, their ancestral Mannish tongue, the Adunaic. And to this, in the latter days of their pride, their kings and lords returned, abandoning the Elven speech, save only those few that held still to their ancient friendship with the Eldar. In the years of their power, the Numenoreans had maintained many forts and havens upon the western coasts of Middle Earth for the help of their ships. And one of the chief of these was at Pelargir, near the mouths of Anduin. There, Adonaic was spoken and mingled with many words of the languages of lesser men. It became a common speech that spread thence along the coasts among all that had dealings with Westerness.

[James Tauber]

Okay, so now we move past the role and reach of Westeron and get to its origins. Yes, it's a mannish speech, but the text adds that it was enriched and softened thanks to influence from the elves.

[Alan Sisto]

Like a loaf of Weber bread. I don't know why that just popped into my. Like that super squishy bread that, like.

[James Tauber]

There you go. Enriched. Because you do get enriched. Yeah, it's a word that's enriched.

[Alan Sisto]

It's basically because they strip all the goodness out of the wheat and then shove it in somehow.

[James Tauber]

Exactly.

[Alan Sisto]

Can you tell I don't eat that stuff?

[James Tauber]

I don't either.

[Alan Sisto]

I think I had a peanut butter sandwich with it when I was 9, and that's about it.

[James Tauber]

So, anyway, this language was originally the tongue of the Edain, specifically the three Houses of Elfren. So the House of Beor, the House of Hador, and the House of Haleth. Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

And then, of course, we get a brief summary, a very brief summary of the history behind the establishment of Numenor, which, of course, we got in a lot more detail in Appendix A, which Don Marshall and I covered earlier this season. Now, all that before we're told that the Dunedain, the men of the west, were the only men that knew an Elvish language. And of course, because they're amazing Numenoreans, they knew too. They spoke Sindarin as a matter of lore, with a few of their wisest also learning Quenya and using it for the names of places and people. And this is a perfect place to remind you all. All the kings of Gondor had Quenya names, even Aragorn, who was known as King Elessar. And Aragorn is, of course Sindarin, but Elessar is Quenya.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. We're told, though, that even though they knew and spoke Sindarin and a few new Quenya, their native speech was their ancestral Mannish tongue, the Adonaic. Now, in the F2 manuscript we read, the language of the Dunedain was thus the Elvish Noldorin, though their high lords and men of wisdom knew also the Quenya. That would have been when there was a split between those two. It was only when Elendil and the faithful fled to Middle Earth and established the realms in exile that they found a common tongue in use along the coastlands from the mouths of the Anduin to the icy Bay of Farhell in the north. This tongue was in Noldorin called Falathren, or Shor language, but by its users it was called Yandune, which was changed to Andunar, Adunar, that is Westron or Sovol, Fahre, that is Common speech.

[Alan Sisto]

It's so interesting to read that in the other version of the draft because in this version, then the common speech was a later form of the native language of the fathers of men from back in the First Age. That is a language that then developed in their absence. But then we get this very interesting tidbit about the Common speech. One of the greatest of the havens had been at Pilargir above the mouths of Anduin. And it is said that it was the language of that region which was afterwards called Gondor that was the foundation of the Common speech. But Sauron, who could turn all things devised by elves or men to his own evil purposes, had also favored the spread of this Common speech, for it was useful to him in the governing of his vast lordship in the dark years. And I want to talk a little bit about how this version differs from the published version, because, yes, it still references Pitlargir, but there's a couple of big differences. It sounds like in this version, the version that he discarded in favor of the final version, that the common speech developed in the absence of the new. It was no longer Adonaic it was like Adonai plus whatever changes it had undergone while the Numenoreans were in Numenor. And then, of course, the second big change is this idea that Sauron actually favored the spread of this common speech.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. It's interesting. Just going a bit deeper on Sauron's motivation, I think, again, it comes to this idea of. In this case, it's not necessarily colonialist, it's a different kind of imperialism that's being enforced here. But that having a common language is a good way of.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, yeah.

[James Tauber]

Governing is used as a word here, but also lordship. Right. That lording it over people is easier if you can. Well, certainly the governing right. If you're governing a large territory, then having a common language makes that easier. Having local languages enables groups to splinter off, rebel, and so on.

[Alan Sisto]

That is interesting. There's a lot there. I think it was interesting that the idea that it was a different tongue. I also thought the words that Tolkien originally used to describe it, Soval farre. Which is not. I've never seen that phrase anyplace else.

[James Tauber]

No. And I presume it literally means common speech in that language.

[Alan Sisto]

Dunaik.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, yeah. Or the Falathren, as the Noldorin call it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Shor language. Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

It's just interesting.

[James Tauber]

Anyway, yeah, so in the paragraph we skipped, we read about the Dunedain after the Downfall and their return to Middle Earth.

[Alan Sisto]

That's right. Now, the people who were descended from the Numenoreans didn't remember the Elvish language that the exiles spoke. Right. So when I say descended from the Numenoreans, they're descended from the same people the Numenoreans were descended from. So the Edain.

[James Tauber]

Right, right.

[Alan Sisto]

Most of those folks ended up becoming the Numenoreans. The ones that didn't. Their descendants didn't remember Sindarin, but the exiles did. So instead they used this common speech, but then it was enlarged and enriched with the Sindharan words. And that's great. Now we're starting to get this merging of the languages. Yes, it's still Westeron, it's still Adonaiak, but we've added some things from. From Sindaran in terms of words, in terms maybe of some structural changes, who knows? But, yeah, really good stuff. Of course, that's not all about the Manish languages. If I'd taken all of that, we'd still be reading. James, would you finish up the section about the Mannish languages?

[James Tauber]

Absolutely. In the days of the Numenorean kings, this ennobled Westeron speech spread far and wide, even among their enemies and it became used more and more by the Dunedain themselves so that at the time of the War of the Ring the Elven Tongue was known to only a small part of the peoples of Gondor and spoken daily by Fuir. These dwelt mostly in Minas Tirith and the townlands adjacent and in the land of the tributary princes of Dol Amroth. Yet the names of nearly all places and persons in the realm of Gondor were of elvish form and meaning. A few were of forgotten origin and descended doubtless from the days before the ships of the Numenoreans sailed the sea. Among these were Ambar, Arnach and Erech and the mountain names Eilenach and Rimmon. Forlong was also a name of the same sort. Most of the Men of the northern regions of the Westlands were descended from the Edain of the First Age or from their close kin. Their languages were therefore related to the Adonaic and some still preserved a likeness to the common speech. Of this kind were the peoples of the upper vales of Anduin the Beornings and the Woodmen of Western Mirkwood and further north and east, the Men of the Long Lake and of Dale. From the lands between the Gladden and the Carrok came the folk that were known in Gondor as the Rohirrim. Masters of horses, they still spoke their ancestral tongue and gave new names in it to nearly all the places in their new country. And they called themselves the Aulings or the Men of the Riddermark. But the lords of that people used the common speech freely and spoke it nobly after the manner of their allies in Gondor. For in Gondor, whence it came the Westron kept still a more gracious and antique style. Wholly alien was the speech of the Wild Men of Druadan Forest. Alien, too, or only remotely akin, was the language of the Dunlendings. These were a remnant of the peoples that had dwelt in the vales of the White Mountains in ages past. The dead Men of Dunharrow were of their kin but in the dark years, others had removed to the southern dales of the Misty Mountains. And then some had passed into the Empty Lands as far north as the Barrow Downs. From them came the Men of Bree. But long before, these had been subjects of the North Kingdom of Arnor and had taken up the Westeron tongue.

[Alan Sisto]

Thank you, James. There's a lot here I'm really excited to sort of Dive in. Because we start with the concept of Westeron spreading even among the enemies of Numenor. So we get a hint about the sort of. About the Sauron thing that we talked about at the end of the last reading. And I thought that was interesting to start with.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, yeah. And there's a bit of use it or lose it too, as Westeron becomes the dominant tongue of the Dunedain. And as time passes, it's been over 3,000 years after all.

[Alan Sisto]

That's true.

[James Tauber]

Children becomes less and less known.

[Alan Sisto]

Well, you know, I mean, that actually raises a good point. I'm not much of a linguist. I know you are. So I'm going to ask you, my linguist friend, talk about primary world language change over the course of that kind of time frame. Three millennia.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. I mean, that's huge in terms of language. And it doesn't take long for languages to change if there's a lot going on. I guess in terms of the amount of travel and commerce and so on, languages don't change at an even rate.

[Alan Sisto]

That's true.

[James Tauber]

And you can see this particularly in something like Greek, where the modern Greek is actually not that far from Greek that was spoken, say 1500 years ago. Most of the changes in the Greek language actually took place in the first few hundred years of the first millennium. And that was when Greek was the lingua franca. Yeah. So when languages are the lingua franca and they're spoken across entire, you know, broad geographic spaces.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[James Tauber]

You tend to get accelerated change that makes sense in the languages as a result of that, when you have it in more isolated communities, it can last a bit longer.

[Alan Sisto]

But still, that makes me think of Icelandic, which is strikingly similar to Old Icelandic. I mean, it virtually hasn't changed at all.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. I mean, the comment that I've read a few times is that as you get further and further out from continental Scandinavia out to Iceland, the language just becomes more and more conservative. And so whereas somebody in Sweden would read Old Norse the way we would read Old English, someone in, say, the Faroe Islands would see Old Norse as more like we would see Middle English. And then, of course, in Iceland. Iceland is. It's more like Shakespeare.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[James Tauber]

What's the difference? It sounds funny as the, you know, the story I've told before of trying to speak Old Norse to the Icelandic flight attendant on Air Iceland.

[Alan Sisto]

Why are you talking like my grandfather?

[James Tauber]

Yeah, she understood me, but said, we don't talk like that anymore. Right. So that's not something that you would. A Swede would never Say that if you spoke Norse to them, they wouldn't understand what you're saying. And so again, you get the sort of different rates of change of languages, for sure. But this is a huge. 3000 years is a huge amount of.

[Alan Sisto]

Time, especially one thinks, for a Mannish tongue. I don't know why I get the feeling that an Elvish tongue, I know they change because we talked about that during the Pengaloth episode, but deliberately so. But you feel like the rate of change would be different in an Elvish language, like because of the lifespans of the people speaking.

[James Tauber]

You would imagine so. But I mean, that's the whole thing.

[Alan Sisto]

There's evidence.

[James Tauber]

That's the whole thing that the, the Dangrath Pengalov is trying to unpack.

[Alan Sisto]

He's trying to say, hey, we change too.

[James Tauber]

And yeah, we do, we do change. But yeah, certainly in terms of the Manish change, I mean, just to put things into perspective, 3,000 years for human language, I mean, it's not quite as great as modern back to Proto Indo European, but it's certainly more than proto Germanic. So in other words, by 3,000 years ago, every single Germanic language would have been the same. They probably would have been similar to other proto Indo European languages, to other Indo European languages. So if you take the difference between any of the Germanic languages, even something like. I mean, let's pick something like a Slavic language, that's sort of the difference that we're talking about with 3,000 years, say the difference between English and Russian. Wow, that would be a 3,000 year difference. So, you know, occasionally if you squint really hard, you might say, I can see how that word might be related to this word. I know, but it's certainly not intelligible at all. No, I mean, even you can go back 500 years and it's not particularly intelligent.

[Alan Sisto]

No, I was going to say, and.

[James Tauber]

Certainly a thousand years, it's in most cases completely, completely unrecognizable. Unrecognizable. So 3,000 years is a, is a. Is a big time. A big period of time for language change.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. 3,000 years. Long time. No wonder.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, yeah. But we're told that the folk who still know and speak Sindarin are the ones in and near Minas Tirith and Dol Amroth. Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

Why is that?

[James Tauber]

So one of the things that comes into play with all this, and we've seen touches of this before in the, in the use of the Quenyan names that you already mentioned and we had in our readings, is this whole Notion of prestige. Right. There's sort of this association with certain languages or dialects that can preserve certain things. And it works both ways. Right. You can have situations where a group wants to distance itself so will deliberately not use a particular. Yeah. Language or dialect. And you get other cases where, where groups are like, no, we want to be associated with the past and so on. And it makes sense that people around Minas Tirith and Dol Amroth. Yeah. Would have had a closer connection and affinity for the glory days of. Of, you know, Isildur and so on. And, and so perhaps would have wanted to retain that sort of more conservative language used. The fact that Sindarin was spoken among the Numenoreans that came over the realms.

[Alan Sisto]

In exile, which would include Dol Amroth because they were established even before the downfall.

[James Tauber]

Right. Yes. And had an Elvish. And had an Elvish connection as well.

[Alan Sisto]

Exactly.

[James Tauber]

Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

All right. Well, then we get this clear reminder, of course, that most of the names of the places and people are Sindarin, but also the fact that some names, interestingly enough, were actually of pre Numenorean origin. So we're talking about, you know, like the language of the original inhabitants of the land. Several examples, including some very well known names, like two of the Beacon Hills. I had to wonder though, and I wonder if this is something that's ever occurred to you as well, is Tolkien sometimes using the excuse, oh, that's a pre Numenorean word. Is that ever just a way to avoid retconning some sort of weird language fix?

[James Tauber]

I'm absolutely convinced it is.

[Alan Sisto]

Okay.

[James Tauber]

I wasn't sure, and here's why. So there's this whole thing in. Right. So obviously this happens in primary languages as well. So if you look at languages in Western Europe that are mostly descended from proto Indo European, you get some counterexamples. The Basque language, which some people think might actually have Indo European origins, but for the longest time was thought not to be related. And you get Hungarian and Finnish and stuff like that. But even within the language that's sort of established as an Indo European language, you get some words that don't fit the rules. They have letter combinations that you would not expect in the language. And for example, this happens in Greek. You occasionally get a name of a place or a person, and it's kind of like that doesn't really work in terms of the way we think the phonology of the language works and how it descended from proto Indo European and so on.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[James Tauber]

And there are a lot of people that speculate that maybe that was what's referred to as pre Greek. This was a name that was given to this place before the Indo Europeans moved in. Okay. Within amongst, you know, Indo European scholars and Greek scholars, there's variation in how much this is accepted. Very famously. There's a. There's a proto Indo European scholar, Indo European scholar, a Dutch scholar at University of Leiden. And it's very. This is very much associated with the University of Leiden. That is really big on any. Any word that doesn't fit the pattern we're expecting must be pre Greek. And so this is very much a thing. And I can absolutely believe that Tolkien is doing the same thing, which is, I really like this name. It. It doesn't fit or no longer fits my phonological conception of this language. How can I keep this name in this place even though it doesn't fit the language that they're supposed to have spoken there? Yeah, well, I'll just say that it predates that. It's a pre Numenorean origin. I think that's a wonderfully realistic way of getting around the problem and letting Tolkien fulfill that phonoesthetic goal that he's like, I really want to have a word, Erich.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, I like this word. Even if it doesn't fit, I'm going to use this word.

[James Tauber]

And we know Christopher talks about this in some other cases as well. Like, there's an inconsistency in some places with what the plural of Orod is. So mountain is the plural ered or erud with a y. And Tolkien just waves his hand and basically says it's a dialect difference. Right. In some regions it's spelled this way. In other regions, it's been another way. And there's no reason to think he's not doing exactly the same thing. That makes sense if he wants to keep it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think you're absolutely right. It's to avoid retconning the language.

[Alan Sisto]

I think that only came to me after reading the rivers and hills of Gondor. The rivers and beacon hills of Gondor in the nature of Middle Earth. And it was kind of like, hmm, I smell something here. I think he's just trying. He's just finding a way to keep these names without having to come up with a linguistic, you know, twist to make it work.

[James Tauber]

That's great. And, you know, we're going to get later to him basically doing that with the. The whole concept of the Dwarves having outer names and stuff like that.

[Alan Sisto]

Beautiful retcon of the ultimate Nick.

[James Tauber]

But we'll get to that. We will, yeah. So we. We get this reminder of how most of the Men, the exceptions being the. The. The Druidine and the Dunlendings, among others that live in the area where the stories take place of the Westlands, were kin and to one degree or another, of kin of the Edain themselves, which explains why their own tongues were connected to Adonai and thus also to the common speech, which descended from Adonai.

[Alan Sisto]

Right. And specifically, it's the people of the Upper Vales of Anduin. These are the Beornings and the Woodmen, as well as the Men of Dale in that area. But we're also pointed specifically to the Eotheod, though they're not named that here. These are the ancestors of the Rohirrim.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. And we're told that they speak their own tongue, but the lords used Westron and spoke it nobly, like in Gondor spoke it nobly because in Gondor they still spoke it in a, quote, more gracious and antique style.

[Alan Sisto]

I liked that. That was a really interesting call out because it made me think of something that we notice in the Council of Elrond. Well, anybody who's read the Council of Elrond chapter, and you, of course, have looked at that a thousand times for the digital Tolkien project, is how each of the different people speak. And Boromir certainly speaks in the more gracious and antique style, but it's nothing compared to when Gandalf is quoting Isildur and isildur's speech from 3,000 years before and how very gracious and antique that style is. And once again, it comes back to this idea of sort of that prestige and, you know, that feeling of a little bit of superiority for sure, the proper way. You know, it's really interesting. The more gracious and antique style does explain a lot. And in F2, though, Tolkien actually gives us a bit more specifically referring to the relatively recent move of the Rohirrim and to the idea that more than just their lords spoke the common speech. He writes there, the Eorlings, or the Rohirrim, as they were called in Gondor, still use their own northern tongue. For the writers of Rohan had come out of Eotheod near the sources of anduin only some 500 years before the days here spoken of. Yet all but their humbler folk spoke also the common speech after the manner of. Of Gondor. And I'm like, only some 500 years before. I mean, you look back at our own English language and I'm sorry, but if I'm reading something written in the 1520s, that's not going to look like modern English, even if it's still technically modern English. It's a long time linguistically, like we talked about.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. I mean, it's one of those things. You'd understand it, but you wouldn't talk like that.

[Alan Sisto]

No, I don't think I could. Right. Unless it was a script that I memorized.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very difficult to fake.

[Alan Sisto]

But in this case, of course, we're not talking about adopting a new language, taking that long. Right. It's not taking the Rohirrim 500 years to adopt the common speech. They've done that. It's just that over those 500 years, the old language hasn't died out, which. That I get. That sort of makes a little more.

[James Tauber]

Sense again because of the isolationism. Right. They're not interacting with a lot of different groups, so. And they've got a strong sense of identity and so on. So the language change would be more conservative.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. And 500 years is a lot less than the 3,000 that we saw for, you know, the descendants of the Numenoreans or the descendants of the Edain split off from the Numenoreans.

[James Tauber]

Well, again, think of the Icelanders, right. 500 years is not a huge amount for them in terms of.

[Alan Sisto]

That's true. No, It's a very.

[James Tauber]

500 years is a lot less than the distance between the poetic Edda, say, and modern Icelandic. Finally, we get the examples of the two races of men whose language is completely different. Yeah. So the first is the Druedyne. Nothing is really made of this beyond the claim that their language is alien. And even in the chapter on the Druedyne in Unfinished Tales, we don't get a lot on their language. No, just that the word druig was a word of their own tongue.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, that's really it. The other alien tongue, of course, is out of the Dunlendings, the descendants of the original inhabitants of the White Mountains. But we do get the additional note that the original inhabitants of the White Mountains and their descendants would have included the dead men of Dunharrow, which I find interesting because then once again, we also get the Stone of Erech being a word that is not a Sindarin word, but an original pre Numenorean name.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Many of these folk had migrated either east to the Misty Mountains or north towards what we now know as the Barrow Downs. And interestingly, the men of the Bree descended from these People, but they adopted Weston long before.

[Alan Sisto]

I have a hard time seeing Barlaman, like, related to the people calling for Theoden's head outside of Helm's Deep. But, yeah, it is only in Dunland itself, where these men rejected Westeron and kept to their own ways. Right. It was symbolic of their rejection. We talked before, you know, it's. These are the invaders. We're not going to take their language. Right. So they reject the Dunedain and the Rohirrim as well, who they obviously saw as, like, secondary invaders. I mean, it's bad enough the Numenoreans came and took most of our land, and now they're giving it to you. You're also invading our land.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we're given one word from their language, forgoyle, meaning straw heads. Reference to the blond hair of the Rahir.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, man, I love that.

[James Tauber]

Interestingly, the name of their people and the land, Dunlendings. Dunland. Little side note here. I was going to say Rohirric, but we've got to be really careful. And this is, again, something I know I'm going to trip myself up on. So often when we say that something is Rohiric, what we really mean is it's the Old English that Tolkien is using to represent Rohirric or the Rohanese language and so on. So I'll say Rohirric representative rather than.

[Alan Sisto]

That's fair. That's a good way of putting it. It's not Sindarin, though. That's the point.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, it's not Sindarin, but it's not actually Rohirric either. And we will get. We do get a couple of examples of Rohirric words. But this is the. But this is the point, right, that this is connected. It's not the Sindarin Dun, meaning West, as in Dunedain. It's the Old English dun, meaning dingy brown or dark colored. Right. And this connects to Tolkien's description of them, their swarthy appearance. Yeah. So that word, the Dun in Dunlendings or Dunlend, is an Old English word representing the language of the Rohirrim.

[Alan Sisto]

Because just as English represents Westeron, Old English represents Rohirric or Rohirrin.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. As we'll discuss in the next episode in more detail.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, that's more next week when we get into the. On translation.

[James Tauber]

But I did want to mention that there's a few places, I'm sure, where we're going to talk about, oh, this is a Rohirric word or Rohanese word. And we need to Be a little. It's one of those things. We need to be a little careful that. It's like saying that the word the is Westeron. Well, no, but, but, but it is a word.

[Alan Sisto]

That English translation of a word that represents something.

[James Tauber]

Westron would have had a word.

[Alan Sisto]

And yeah, you're right, because in Weston, we sort of.

[James Tauber]

We.

[Alan Sisto]

We. We've read enough to understand that we're reading a translated language.

[James Tauber]

Right.

[Alan Sisto]

But it's a little trickier when we're seeing a language that itself needs to be translated to us. Most of the time. Old English needs to be. We need to understand what that word means in Old English. Yeah, we're struggling with the idea of that language representing yet a third language. Yes, because it's already a second language.

[James Tauber]

And I definitely want to talk a lot more about this in the next episode, particularly with regard to how you then handle the translation of these books into other languages. How do you do this whole thing if you're doing a French translation of Lord of the Rings?

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, my goodness.

[James Tauber]

Well, how do the Rohirrim speak in the Spanish translation?

[Alan Sisto]

Well, here's my question for that. Would Tolkien even bother with. With a French translation? I know he detested French food, at least. I'm not sure how much more. No, I'm just. I'm kidding to our French listeners.

[James Tauber]

But we will talk about that in. This is definitely something I want to talk about in the next episode.

[Alan Sisto]

We definitely will. Yeah, I think that's a good point. I need to remember to bring in. When I'm prepping that episode, I need to bring in stuff from the nomenclature, because that is.

[James Tauber]

Because it's not really key. Well, the interesting thing there is not to preempt too much the episode, the interesting thing is that Tolkien's approach in the nomenclature kind of goes against what you might think in terms of this representative translation. And to be honest, spoiler alert, I think it's just because he didn't trust anyone else to be philologically sophisticated enough.

[Alan Sisto]

Given his experience with the early translators. Can you blame it?

[James Tauber]

He's kind of like, if I were doing the translation, you can imagine Tolkien would have actually used, like, Old Spanish for the Rohirrim in the Spanish translation. Lord of the Rings or something. But he's like, I don't trust the Spanish translators to know enough philology to know.

[Alan Sisto]

And that would have gone for everybody.

[James Tauber]

Exactly, exactly.

[Alan Sisto]

No disrespect to the Spanish translators. He would have felt that way about all of them, but particularly the Swedish translator, who he had zero appreciation for. Exactly Understandably, but we will get to that.

[James Tauber]

Well, and what really annoyed him was the attempt to translate the Elvish. And he's like, do not.

[Alan Sisto]

Do Elvish. And also, how dare you write your own foreword. But anyway, we totally digress.

[James Tauber]

We do. We do.

[Alan Sisto]

We. We'll come back to that some other time.

[James Tauber]

All right, we will.

[Alan Sisto]

On WhatsApp, no one can see or hear your personal messages. Whether it's a voice call message or sending a password to WhatsApp, it's all just this. So whether you're sharing the streaming password in the family chat, we're trading those late night voice messages that could basically become a podcast. Your personal messages stay between you, your friends and your family. No one else, not even us. WhatsApp message privately with everyone. With a Venmo debit card, you can Venmo more than just your friends. You can use your balance in so many ways. You can Venmo everything. Need gas? You can Venmo this. How about snacks? You can Venmo that. Your favorite band merch.

[James Tauber]

You can Venmo this.

[Alan Sisto]

Or their next show.

[James Tauber]

You can Venmo that.

[Alan Sisto]

Visit Venmo me Debit to learn more. The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp bank and a pursuant to license. My MasterCard International Incorporated card may be used everywhere. MasterCard is accepted. Venmo purchase restrictions apply. Folks, if you're enjoying the ppp, please consider supporting the show by joining the Fellowship of the Podcast. It's what gives me the time and resources to work on making this show the best that it can be. And when you join, you become part of an amazing discord community that includes live episode recordings. One is happening right now. We've got dozens of folks listening in live as we're doing this hangouts every month. You also get episode post scripts, ad free episodes, free merch and more.

[James Tauber]

There are dozens of us. Dozens.

[Alan Sisto]

Dozens.

[James Tauber]

You can also become part of our Questions After Nightfall episodes or even join us as a guest in the north wing. So Please go to patreon.com prancingponypod to show your support and join the Fellowship of the Podcast.

[Alan Sisto]

And of course, you can always help us out by giving us a rating and review on Apple Podcast and a rating on Spotify. And please recommend us to your friends.

[James Tauber]

Okay, so we've talked about the languages of elves and men. Let's move on to talking about Hobbits.

[Alan Sisto]

Hobbits. I love this one. All right. Of Hobbits, the hobbits of the Shire and of Bree had at this time for probably a thousand years adopted the common speech. They used it in their own manner, freely and carelessly though the more learned among them had still at their command a more formal language when occasion required. There is no record of any language peculiar to Hobbits in ancient days. They seem always to have used the languages of Men near whom or among whom they lived. Thus they quickly adopted the common speech after they entered Eriador and by the time of their settlement at Bree they had already begun to forget their former tongue. This was evidently a Mannish language of the Upper Anduin akin to that of the Rohirrim though the Southern Stours appear to have adopted a language related to Dunlendish before they came north to the Shire. Of these things in the time of Frodo there were still some traces left in local words and names many of which closely resembled those found in Dale or in Rohan. Most notable were the names of days, months and seasons. Several other words of the same sort, such as Mathem and smile, were also still in common use while more were preserved in the place names of Bree and the Shire. The personal names of the Hobbits were also peculiar and many had come down from ancient days. Hobbit was the name usually applied by the Shire folk to all their kind. Men called them Halflings and the Elves, Pereannath. The origin of the word Hobbit was by most forgotten. It seems, however, to have been at first a name given to the Harfoots by the Fallohides and Stoors and to be a worn down form of a word preserved more fully in Rohan. Holbitla, meaning hole builder.

[James Tauber]

Okay, so finally we get to the language of the heroes of our story, the Hobbits. Yes, and it opens by telling us that for about a millennium now the Hobbits of both Bree and the Shire have been using the common speech.

[Alan Sisto]

That's right. Which suggests, interestingly that for at least the first 400 years or so of their time in the Shire the Hobbits were not using the common speech. But will talk about that in a little bit. There's a little mix up here.

[James Tauber]

Yep. So the Shire was founded in third age 1601. And the at this time is talking about the War of the Ring, which was in third age 3019. So more than 1400 years later.

[Alan Sisto]

That's right. Now we're also told, and I love this, they speak Westeron freely and carelessly in sharp contrast to the more gracious and antique style of Gondor.

[James Tauber]

So what did they speak prior to adopting The Common Speech. Well, the text tells us that they never had their own Hobbit language. They just used the tongues of whatever men were closest to them.

[Alan Sisto]

And now we get more clarification on the timeline of adoption. It started when they entered Eriador. Okay. Tale of years tells us the Harfoots came in around 1050, the Fallohydes 100 years later, around 1151, which was the same year that the Stuarts moved into the Angle or to Dunland. So that's actually closer to 1900 to 2000 years ago.

[James Tauber]

By the time they settle in Bree, 1300, about 300 years before the founding of the Shire, they've already begun to forget their previous language much more quickly than, say, the Rohirrim.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. Now, what was the language they used to speak? Well, it was a Mannish tongue, so it was related to Adonaic and therefore to the Common Speech to some extent. And it was close to the language of the Rohirrim. And that reminded me of this moment in the muster of Rohan. But most of the time, especially on this last day, Mary had ridden by himself just behind the king, saying nothing and trying to understand the slow, sonorous speech of Rohan that he heard the men behind him using. It was a language in which there seemed to be many words that he knew, though spoken more richly and strongly than in the Shire, yet he could not piece the words together.

[James Tauber]

So it's similar to perhaps what hearing Old English would be like.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. Every once in a while you'd catch a word, you'd be like, wait a minute, that sounds familiar. But I can't possibly piece together the whole sentence.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. So you get things like, you know, that was good Kenning in Beowulf. And you're kind of like, oh, I sort of understand that it's almost English, but other times it's like, no idea. We do get another example of the stores just being different. Recall that they didn't go with the half foots and the fowler hides. Some of them ended up in Dunland and adopted a language similar to that one before they came to the Shire. Which didn't happen until 1630.

[Alan Sisto]

Right. It's about 30 years after the other ones did, by the way, shout out to Lord of the Rings online for touching on this idea of Stoors or Stuart descendants being in Dunland. I thought that was really interesting.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. Yet another brilliant thing they do to tip the hat to this sort of thing. Yeah. In the much longer discussion of the Hobbits in F1. Sorry, F2, featured in People's Middle Earth. Tolkien added a few things. Initially. He wrote that no tradition, however, remains of any difference of speech between the three kinds of Hobbits. But then he struck that out.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, no, there's gotta be something. We also get more on this notion that they never had a language of their own, he wrote. They had, of course, many words and usages peculiar to themselves, but the same could be said of any other folk that used the Westeron as a native tongue. It is true that none of the legends of Hobbits refer to times earlier than some centuries after the beginning of the Third Age, while their actual records did not begin until after the Western Hobbits had settled down somewhere about third age 1300, and had then long adopted the Common speech. Yet it remains remarkable that in all such traditions, if any tongue other than the Common speech is mentioned, it is assumed that Hobbit spoke the language of men, among whom, or near whom they dwelt.

[James Tauber]

He also offers an explanation of this quote remarkable fact among Hobbits. Now there are two opinions. Some hold that originally they had a language peculiar to themselves. Others assert that from the beginning they spoke Mannish tongues, being in fact a branch of the race of Men. But in any case, it is agreed that after migration to Eriador, they soon adopted the Westron under the influence of the Dunedain. The first opinion is now favored by Hobbits because of the growing distaste for Men. But there is in fact no trace to be discovered of any special Hobbit language in antiquity.

[Alan Sisto]

I love that the first opinion is now favored by Hobbits because they don't like us anymore. Now, in a footnote, he even adds that this first obviously incorrect belief that they did have a peculiar language was supported, as it appears to them to be, by the fact that among themselves they speak now a private language, though this is probably only a descendant, the last to survive, of the old Common speech. So much more in F2 as he explains that the speed with which they adopted Westron was because their old language was just about the same as that of the Eotheod, and it was kin to the languages of Dale and Esgaroth.

[James Tauber]

He even adds this interesting paragraph. An example of this is provided by the name Stoor itself. It seems originally to have meant big, and though no such word is found in the Common Speech, it is usual in the language of Dale. The curious Hobbit word Mathem, which has been mentioned, is clearly the same as the word Maathum, used in Rohan for a treasure or rich gift. The horn given at parting to Merrydoc by the lady Eowyn was precisely a Marthum. Again, smile or smile as in Smile vs. Smial. In the Hobbit language, the word for an inhabited whole especially one deep dug and with a long, narrow and often hidden entrance seems related to the word smuggle in Rohan, meaning a burrow and more remotely to the name Smeagol and to Smaug, the name among Men of the north for the dragon of the Lonely Mountain. Love that.

[Alan Sisto]

So smile related to. We've talked about this before. Related to a burrow, which is also related to the Germanic word for digging or burrowing. Which is why Smaug. I mean, it's. It's all fantastic wordplay.

[James Tauber]

But notice. Notice that he does say. That makes clear Smaug is the name that the Men of the north give.

[Alan Sisto]

The dragon which connects to the Germanic.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, exactly right. It explains why he has a name that's cognate with these other English words and Old English because he's almost setting.

[Alan Sisto]

Himself up for the Dwarvish outer names. Yes, you know, I mean, he really is. He's talking about the tongue of the Men of the North. And that is very much a lead in to that.

[James Tauber]

Exactly.

[Alan Sisto]

And he also ties it to Appendix D that we covered last episode saying that the most remarkable of all these Hobbit words found not in Westeron but in the languages of Rohan and Dale are actually the names of the months in the Hobbit calendar. Just like we talked about last episode.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. And we talked about the fact that they're so conservative even in our language. Right. The names of our days and months go back thousands of years. Right. We still refer to Thor's Day and we still refer to January and stuff like that. Right. But not necessarily making the connection with why they got this name. So it makes sense that those words would be particularly conservative and not change over a long period of time. And in an example of how material that eventually found its way into the prologue on Hobbits was originally part of Appendix F, we read this. As soon as they had settled down, the Hobbits took to letters. These they learned with many other matters from the Dunedain. For the North Kingdom had not yet come to an end in Eridor. At that time time, the letters used by the Dunedain and learned and adopted by the Hobbits were those of the Noldorin or Feanorian Alphabet. It was soon after the learning of letters about third age 1300 that hobbits began to set down and collect the considerable store of tales and legends and oral annals and genealogies that they already possessed. The lore loving Fallahides played a chief part in this. The original documents had of course in Bilbo's time long been worn out or lost. But many of them had been much copied when the Shire was colonized about third age 1600. It is said that the leading families among the migrants took with them most of the writings then in existence.

[Alan Sisto]

I love that the lore loving Fallohides because of course the Fallohides are the more. They're the more elf like strain of the Hobbits. We also get a mention of the great writ of Tuckborough that we talked about in the Tale of Years. The yellow skin in the. The draft here originally. And then we also get this fun little extra in this way it came about that the hobbits of the Shire, especially in the great families such as Touk, Oldbuck, later Brandy, Buck and Bolger developed the habit, strange and yet not unparalleled in our times of giving names to their children derived not from their daily language nor from fresh invention, but from books and legends. These to the hobbits high sounding names were often in somewhat comic contrast with the more homely family names. Hobbits were of course fully aware of this contrast and amused by it.

[James Tauber]

Do you think this is another Retcon?

[Alan Sisto]

I think it might be. I also think it's a dig at anybody he knows who's named their kids like, you know, names that come from like from old legends and books rather than current language. I love that though. I mean I'm thinking my. The Hobbit, the high sounding name that I'm thinking of, the first one is Peregrine's father, Paladin Took, you know, or even Peregrine or even Peregrine because I'm thinking Pippin is okay, but Peregrine. Yeah, Peregrine, Paladin, Meriadoc.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, exactly.

[Alan Sisto]

These are all very high, you know, highfalutin fancy names. They're not Bilbo, they're not Sam. Yeah, yeah, And I love how he's able to do that even though all of those names of course are translated.

[James Tauber]

Right, right.

[Alan Sisto]

Because none of those are actual Westeron. Those are English representations of Westeron names as we'll get to next week. Yeah, yep, good stuff. Well James, we'll see this very interesting thing that Tolkien broke down these next races in a unique order. Not quite sure why he did, but I'm going to have you read about the languages of the Ents And Orcs, okay.

[James Tauber]

Of other races, Ents. The most ancient people surviving in the Third Age were the Onodrim or Enid. Ent was the form of their name in the language of Rohan. They were known to the Eldar in ancient days. And to the Eldar indeed. The Ents ascribed not their own language but the desire for speech. The language that they had made was unlike all others slow, sonorous, agglomerated, repetitive indeed long winded formed of a multiplicity of vowel shades and distinctions of tone and quality which even the loremasters of the Eldar had not attempted to represent in writing.

[Alan Sisto]

I'm sorry, I'm just picturing Pengelad being like. Ah, forget it.

[James Tauber]

Exactly.

[Alan Sisto]

I can't do this.

[James Tauber]

They used it only among themselves but they had no need to keep it secret, for no others could learn it. Kind of helpful. Ents were, however, themselves skilled in tongues learning them swiftly and never forgetting them. But they preferred the languages of the Eldar and loved best the ancient High Elven tongue. The strange words and names that the Hobbits record as used by Treebeard and other Ents are thus Elvish or fragments of the Elf speech strung together in Ent fashion. Some are Quenya as Tauralimo mea tumba lemorna tumba le Taurea lome Anor which may be rendered forest, many shadow, deep valley, black deep valley, forested, gloomy land and by which tree bed meant more or less There is a black shadow in the deep dials of the forest. Some are Sindarin as Fangorn, beard of tree or Fimbathrel, slender beech, orcs. And the Black Speech, Auk is the form of the name that other races had for this foul people as it was in the language of Rohan. In Sindarin it was Orh related, no doubt was the word Uruk of the Black Speech though this was applied as a rule only to the great soldier orcs that at this time issued from Mordor and Isengard. The lesser kinds were called especially by the Uruk hai snaga, or slave. The orcs were first bred by the dark power of the north in the Elder Days. It is said that they had no language of their own but took what they could of other tongues and perverted it to their own liking. Yet they made only brutal jargons scarcely sufficient even for their own needs unless it were for curses and abuse. And these creatures, being filled with malice, hating even their own kind quickly developed as many barbarous dialects as there were groups or settlements of their race so that their orcish speech was of little use to them in intercourse between different tribes. So it was that in the Third Age, Orcs used for communication between breed and breed the Westron tongue. And many, indeed of the older tribes, such as those that still lingered in the north and in the Misty Mountains, had long used the Westron as their native language, though in such a fashion as to make it hardly less unlovely than Orcish. In this jargon, tark was a debased form of Tarkil, a Quenu word used in Westeron for one of Numenorean descent. It is said that the Black Speech was devised by Sauron in the Dark years and that he had desired to make it the language of all those who served him. But he failed in that purpose.

[Alan Sisto]

You wanted to make a lingua franca. You wanted to make an administrative tongue. You did not succeed. All right, let's go and look at the tongues of other races. And again, I thought it was interesting that Tolkien chose to bracket the section with two good races. We got the Ents leading it off and the Dwarves ending it, but we put the Orcs and Trolls in the middle, because in F2 he discussed the Dwarven speech first, then that of the Orcs, followed by the Trolls, and the Ents don't even get a mention. And the fact that the Ents don't get a mention might suggest an even earlier writing of F1 and F2.

[James Tauber]

Right.

[Alan Sisto]

We've already discussed. They can't be later than 1950. Christopher Tolkien's demonstrated that because of his use of the lingerers thing.

[James Tauber]

Yep.

[Alan Sisto]

But Tolkien himself would say that the creation of the Ents happened spontaneously during his writing of the Treebeard chapter. This is in one of his letters. Thus, though I knew for years that Frodo would run into a tree adventure somewhere far down the great river, I have no recollection of inventing Ents. I came at last to the point and wrote the Treebeard chapter without any recollection of any previous thought, just as it now is. And then I saw that, of course, it had not happened to Frodo at all. Now he wrote the Treebeard Chapter, 1942. And I know I'm sort of arguing by the absence of evidence, but it seems to me that it's possible, at least, that F1 and F2 were even written before 1942, before he'd even come up with the idea of Ents. I don't know. Just throwing that out there as a possibility. What do you think?

[James Tauber]

Yeah, I mean, it's possible that he had come up with Ents and just decided not to include them in the language discussion because there wasn't much to say.

[Alan Sisto]

Or maybe he hadn't developed the Entish language in any way to the extent.

[James Tauber]

That it even exists. I mean, the bits of so called Entish that we got, as we're told here, are actually just Quenya.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, exactly. Which, by the way, I'm just going to tell you, I'm terribly jealous. I almost took this passage just because I wanted to say those Quenya words that lovely, the one that's translated into the New Land at Disneyland. It's between Tomorrowland and Frontierland. It's called Forest, Mini Shadow, Deep Valley, Black Deep Valley, Forest of Gloomyland. The rides there are fantastic, but you can only get on if you can say it in Quenya.

[James Tauber]

The funny thing is I just have to mention this. Of course, we're used to the Ents.

[Alan Sisto]

Speaking very slowly, but that's not what Tolkien did.

[James Tauber]

But if, yeah, if you listen to that recording of him saying that, it's fast. It's extremely fast.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah.

[James Tauber]

It shocks you.

[Alan Sisto]

It really did. I know. I was like, wait a minute now.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, yeah, it's sort of, you know, it's that sort of.

[Alan Sisto]

He moves fast.

[James Tauber]

Not where you would expect from Peter Jackson films, but anyway.

[Alan Sisto]

Or even from the way Tolkien describes the language as slow, sonorous.

[James Tauber]

Sonorous, yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

Kind of ponder, you know, just very. Just. It would take me forever to. To say your name. Why? You speak at a million miles an hour. No, Tolkien does.

[James Tauber]

Anyway, on to the language of the answers as, as they're described in this passage. They're described as the most ancient people around in, in the Third Age. Still around in the Third Age, yeah. Any thoughts on that, Alan?

[Alan Sisto]

I'm curious, like, aren't the elves older than the Ents or are they right?

[James Tauber]

Well, yeah, I mean, it depends on.

[Alan Sisto]

How you have to look at the creation of the Ents. Did Yavanna's sort of, you know, when she went to Manwe and said, hey, but Manwe, if you're gonna have the. If Allay's people are gonna be cutting down trees, I need some guardians of the forest. Can we do that? And he goes, yeah, yeah, I approve the project. Here's my signature. Let's go ahead and, you know, we'll have the buyer order some.

[James Tauber]

Although isn't that notably one of the more Christopher invented passages in the Silmarillion? It is.

[Alan Sisto]

So I don't know.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. Interesting that we're told the name Ent is. So it's funny that. That Tolkien himself here says, right, that the name Ent is. Is a. Their name in the language of Rohan. But of course, he means it's an Old English word that is representing the language of. So Tolkien's making that same shortcut that I'm trying to avoid us making. Right. It's not Rohirric, It's Rohirric representative. Right. The Eldar called them the Onodrim or Enid. The Ents themselves credit the Elves not for their language, but for their desire to speak the creation of language, which is interesting. And that language, the Int. Language, was very unique, impossible to replicate in writing. As you said. Pengalog probably just gave up, threw up.

[Alan Sisto]

His hands, like, I can't. No.

[James Tauber]

Our gutters. Impossible for a non Ent to learn. Yeah. But fortunately, they could learn and remember other languages easily. Right. So you can imagine them each with Duolingo on their phones.

[Alan Sisto]

They were like, you know, they're learning languages left, right, and center. They loved Quenya the most. And that's why many of the words that we read that are spoken by them are Quenya, or at least Sindarin. Though a footnote here does tell us that at times, the hobbits tried to write down actual entities. Speech Tolkien gives us one example.

[James Tauber]

Also.

[Alan Sisto]

Is not Elvish and is the only extant, probably very inaccurate, attempt to represent a fragment of actual Entish.

[James Tauber]

And Entish is very heavy with compound words.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, yeah. As we learned earlier. Right. With this. That. That forest, Mini shadow, deep valley, Black. I mean, just. Right.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. It's like, yeah, they say to the Germans, hold my beer. Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

They definitely do.

[James Tauber]

The names are mostly Sindarin, including Treebeard and his wife. Though those are certainly not their Entish names for one another.

[Alan Sisto]

No, they're Entish names for each other. About an hour long.

[James Tauber]

Right.

[Alan Sisto]

Makes like, you know, pillow talk. A little awkward, I'm sure. Anyway, we get to Orcs and their language, what there is of it. First, we're reminded that Orc is the name of these creatures. Creatures again in Rohirric or Rohirric representative, because it is Old English name. It's very much an Old English word, as we'll get to. It's. Or in Sindarin, it's Orko in Quenya, Urku in Adunaic, Orca or possibly Orc in Westron, Uruk in Black Speech. Ruks in Kuzdul and Gorgun in the language of the Druidain, though that's likely the plural. Hmm.

[James Tauber]

In letter 144, Tolkien writes that the word, as far as I'm concerned, actually derived from Old English Orc. Yeah. But only because of its phonetic suitability. So in other words, he just liked the sounds like the sound of it. The meaning of. The meaning of it's irrelevant.

[Alan Sisto]

They're not demons, even though they're evil.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. Right. And we're told that while Uruk might be their name in the Black Speech, that name was typically only given to the great soldier or Orcs, while the rest was simply Snaga, meaning slave.

[Alan Sisto]

Even. We even see that in the text. Right, that. That moment when Frodo and Sam are overhearing the argument between the great soldier Orc and sort of more like a tracker.

[James Tauber]

Yep.

[Alan Sisto]

The soldier Orc calls him Snaga.

[James Tauber]

Yes. Yeah. Yes, that's right.

[Alan Sisto]

We're also given a very brief reminder of their origin, Orc origin, which we will not get into here. That is far too big a discussion before we're told that just like the Hobbits, they never really had a language of their own. They just took from other languages.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. Still, they only created their own jargon filled with nothing but curses and abuse. And because Orcs were so tribal in nature, and this is something I mentioned earlier, what little Orcish language that came about was not of any use in talking with other Orcs like we see in Rohan, with three different groups of Orcs or goblins coming together. So they had to, like we saw.

[Alan Sisto]

Earlier in the reading, so that their Orcish speech was of little use to them in intercourse between. Between different tribes. Not that we want to imagine intercourse between different tribes of Orcs. We're not going to talk about Orc reproduction in any way, shape or form. Instead, they too adopted the common speech, even if it was just as ugly as any native Orcish might have been. And we are given one specific word, Tark. Told that it means man of Gondor, but even that originated from a Quenya word.

[James Tauber]

And that takes us back to Book six, chapter one, the Tower of Gond Cirith Ungol. That's enough from you, snarled Shagrat. I had my orders. It was Gorbag started it, trying to pinch that pretty shirt. Will you put his backup being so high and mighty and he had more sense than you anyway, he told you more than once that the most dangerous of these spies was still loose. And you wouldn't listen. And you won't listen now. Gorbak was right. I tell you, there's a great fighter about one of Those bloody handed Elves or one of the filthy Taks. He's coming here, I tell you. You heard the bell. He's got past the Watchers and that's Taq's work. He's on the stairs and until he's off them, I'm not going down. Not if you are a Nazgul. I wouldn't.

[Alan Sisto]

Well, I'm not so sure about that last part. We also learned that Sauron had tried his hand at some conlang developing that unifying administrative language but the effort failed. In the part that we skipped reading we learn some of the words from the Black Speech that did make it out into the wild, as it were among the Orcs. One of them was Gosh Fire, for instance.

[James Tauber]

This language, of course, died at the end of the second age, some 3,000 years ago and only the Nazgul still spoke it but it became the language of Baradur and Sauron's captains. Of course, the 1 rings inscription famously was in Black Speech.

[Alan Sisto]

Though as you rightly pointed out last week, the word words were in black speech. But that brings us back to the whole idea of the Feanorian letters being used in modes.

[James Tauber]

Right.

[Alan Sisto]

So the letters were elvish letters, but representing Black speech.

[James Tauber]

Exactly. And we get one other representation of Black Speech pointed out as the appendix references the Curse of the Mordor Orc, which was in a debased form used by the soldiers of the Dark Tower.

[Alan Sisto]

Of course it was a debased form. But we cannot read the mention of the Curse of the Mordor Orc without reading the actual Curse of the Mordor Orc. So let's go back to book three, chapter three. The Uruk.

[James Tauber]

Hai.

[Alan Sisto]

One of the orcs sitting near laughed and said something to a companion in their abominable tongue. Rest while you can, little fool, he said then to Pippin in the common Speech, which he made almost as hideous as his own language. Rest while you can. We'll find the use of your legs before long. You'll wish you had got none before we get home. If I had my way, you'd wish you were dead now, said the other. I'd make you squeak, you miserable rat. He stooped over Pippin, bringing his yellow fangs close to his face. He had a black knife with a long jagged blade in his hand. Lie quiet or I'll tickle you with this, he hissed. Don't draw attention to yourself or I may forget my orders. Curse the Isengard. As he passed into a long angry speech in his own tongue that slowly died away into muttering and snarling.

[James Tauber]

Nicely done.

[Alan Sisto]

Thank you, sir.

[James Tauber]

You said that curse before.

[Alan Sisto]

I have said that curse before. Just ask people on the freeway.

[James Tauber]

And this is where we get to dive into the notes on F2, where Christopher Tolkien references the even later drafts that otherwise were not published. He adds, there is scarcely anything in the last text that call for special notice. But it should be recorded that in the penultimate draft, my father revealed the meaning of the sentence in the Black Speech uttered by one of the orcs who was guarding Pippin in the chapter. The Uruk Hai. Ugluk, Ubagronk Shah, Pushdog, Saruman Glob, Bushkosh sky. The translation Ugluk to the cesspool Shah, the dung filth, the great Saruman fool.

[Alan Sisto]

Sky, the dung filth, Pushtug and Cesspool. I mean, of course this is how Orcs are going to speak. It's fantastic. I absolutely love it.

[James Tauber]

Okay, enough about the Orcs. Let's talk about trolls.

[Alan Sisto]

Sure, why not? Right? We're all on the Internet every day. Oh, not those kind of trolls. All right.

[James Tauber]

Not those kind of trolls.

[Alan Sisto]

All right, trolls. Troll has been used to translate the Sindarin Torog in their beginning, far back in the twilight of the Elder Days. These were creatures of dull and lumpish nature and had no more language than beasts. I'm feeling called out by that passage, by the way. Dull and lumpish nature, all right. But Sauron had made use of them, teaching them what little they could learn and increasing their wits with wickedness. Trolls therefore took such language as they could master from the Orcs. And in the Westlands, the Stone Trolls spoke a debased form of the Common Speech. But at the end of the Third Age, a troll race, not before seen, appeared in southern Mirkwood and in the mountain borders of Mordor. Olag hai they were called in the Black Speech. That Sauron bred them none doubted, though from what stock was not known. Some held that they were not Trolls, but giant Orcs. But the Olog Hai were, in fashion of body and mind, quite unlike even the largest of Orc kind, whom they far surpassed in size and power. Trolls they were but filled with the evil will of their master. A fell race, strong, agile, fierce and cunning, but harder than stone. Unlike the older race of the Twilight, they could endure the sun so long as the will of Sauron held sway over them. They spoke little, and the only tongue that they knew was the Black Speech of Barad Dur. Dwarves. Dwarves. The Dwarves are a race apart of their strange beginning and why they are both like and unlike elves and men, the Silmarillion tells but of this tale, the lesser elves of Middle Earth had no knowledge. While the tales of later men are confused with memories of other races. They are a tough thrawn race, for the most part. Secretive, laborious, retentive of the memory of injuries and of benefits. Lovers of stone, of gems, of things that take shape into the hands of the craftsman rather than things that live by their own life. But they are not evil by nature. And few ever serve the enemy of free will, whatever the tales of men may have alleged. For men of old lusted after their wealth and the work of their hands. And there has been enmity between the races. But in the Third Age, close friendship still was found in many places between men and dwarves. And it was according to the nature of the dwarves that traveling and laboring and trading about the lands as they did after the destruction of their ancient mansions, they should use the languages of men among whom they dwelt yet in secret. A secret which, unlike the elves, they did not willingly unlock even to their friends. They used their own strange tongue, changed little by the year years, for it had become a tongue of lore rather than a cradle speech. And they tended it and guarded it as a treasure of the past. Few of other race have succeeded in learning it in this history. It appears only in such place names as Gimli revealed to his companions and in the battle cry which he uttered in the siege of the Hornburg. That at least was not secret and had been heard on many a field since the world was young. Baruch. Khazad. Khazad. Ay. Menu. Axes of the dwarves. The dwarves are upon you. Gimli's own name, however. And the names of all his kin are of Northern Mannish origin. Their own secret and inner names. Their true names the dwarves have never revealed to anyone of alien race. Not even on their tombs do they inscribe them.

[James Tauber]

How can they?

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, okay then.

[James Tauber]

Okay, so let's start with another of the. Yeah, evil races, the trolls. Here we're told the word is a translation of Torog, a Sindarin term. And it's interesting that while we don't learn more about their origins, we do learn that the trolls that were around in the first age used no language and were no more able to do so than beasts.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, but they did have just enough intelligence for Sauron to teach them. And now I'm picturing them as like giant parrots learning how to. How to emulate human speech. No, they did take language from the Oryx. And it resulted in the debased form of the Common Speech that we see the trolls speak in the Hobbit. And this is once again another very interesting retcon. Like why do the trolls that we encounter in the Lord of the Rings, the big vicious trolls, not speak? Why do they not speak common speech? But why do the trolls that we meet in the Hobbit talk like, you know, these thugs that are. What's the deal? Have they. Have they devolved? No, we have two totally different groups. This group was just smart enough to borrow language from the orcs and then we get a different story with these new ones, don't we?

[James Tauber]

Yeah, exactly. The. The Third Age trolls, the Olog High, they are a different story. And we even get insight into their creation, even if we don't get clarity. We learn that Sauron bred them. The First Age trolls were created by Morgoth. Well, not created, but corrupted.

[Alan Sisto]

Right.

[James Tauber]

Treebeard says they were made in mockery events.

[Alan Sisto]

That's right.

[James Tauber]

But Sauron bred these, these Third Age ones.

[Alan Sisto]

But how he bred them, we don't know. Right? It's very unlikely that they were giant orcs. Simply, they far surpassed orcs in size and power. And in fact, the text tells us they were ordinary trolls, but filled with the evil will of Sauron. And that's pretty significant. Once again, Sauron pouring himself into his creation just like he does with the Ring. And it's only because he animates them that they can do the things that they do. That little bit about the will of Sauron, we see that in action when Barad Dur is destroyed and the will of Sauron no longer functions and these creatures are like, I'm out.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, I mean, they're an elite force, right? But they're only able to speak the Black Speed.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, absolutely. This whole section, though, is interesting because the second half of it, that part, especially about the Olog High, is once again like that bit about Galadriel and the sea longing, has nothing to do with language. It's about the origin and nature of trolls. And it's like you're running out of space, but you're using it to tell us this stuff. I mean, I'm thankful, right, because it gives us some more background. But why even include a section on the language of trolls other than just say, like the orcs the trolls borrowed from Common Speech? They were smart enough to develop their own language. Move it on. Yeah, this is interesting.

[James Tauber]

Interestingly, in F2 we only get the part about the earlier trolls. Which suggests again that the idea of the Olog Hai hadn't been fully developed by Tolkien at the time.

[Alan Sisto]

That's quite possible. 1950. Yeah. The idea of these sort of much stronger, even more boss like trolls had not come about. Now then we move on to the Dwarves. And though Sara and I talked about Dwarves at length for five straight weeks, we didn't talk too much about their language. And it's mostly because we don't know a lot about their language.

[James Tauber]

And it's the same here. There's not much about their tongue, it's more about their nature and how they protected the secrecy of Kuzdor. Yeah. And we get the fact that they're a race apart and we're told to. I find this fascinating to look at the Silmarillion for their strange beginning.

[Alan Sisto]

Is this a remnant of when Tolkien thought he might get the Silmarillion published alongside it?

[James Tauber]

Yes, it's fascinating. I have to go back and check actually for the first edition says that's.

[Alan Sisto]

What I was wondering. That very thought popped into my head like I wonder.

[James Tauber]

I will look that up. Another description of the race of Dwarves in general. Tough, ill tempered, holding grudges, lovers of gems and other crafted things.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah. But we do get this very interesting tidbit. Not only are they not evil by nature, few ever serve the enemy of free will. And it's men whose stories might suggest otherwise. Wise. That brings us back to the line in Is it of the Rings of Power in the Third Age, I can't remember now where we learned that some of every race fought against, fought on both sides in the last alliance. Who wrote that? Is that a Mannish history? Because if that's a mannish history, you have to call that into question now and say. Yes. The plain reading the text suggests that that means that Dwarves, though not of Durin's house, fought for Sauron. But this line suggests that's really unlikely and that men, if they wrote the story, have an ulterior motive that there's been enmity between men and dwarves.

[James Tauber]

That's a good point.

[Alan Sisto]

And that's interesting because this is also the first time and maybe the only time that we see a very clear point that there has been enmity between these two races. We know there's enmity between Elves and Dwarves.

[James Tauber]

Right.

[Alan Sisto]

I mean Yavon is like your, your people and my people, we're not going to get along. Or I mean you're, you know, she's of course talking about the trees. But then it's illuvatar who says there's going to be strife between the children of my adoption and the children of my choice.

[James Tauber]

Yep.

[Alan Sisto]

And we're going to have trouble.

[James Tauber]

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting that it's the men's language that Dwarves pick up in their work.

[Alan Sisto]

And travel and trade, especially if there's enmity. But yeah, I guess there's less enmity than there is.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, necessity for. For trade. I mean, you see this all the time, even now, right? Two groups of people that have enmity between them if there's still need to exchange money.

[Alan Sisto]

Exactly.

[James Tauber]

Their own language, which we talked about, was not a speech taught to their children as infants, but was a tongue of law, was kept very tightly secret. We're told that the place names mentioned by Gimli, the names of the mountains and so on, and the Dwarven battle cry are the only words we get in the Dwarven tongue, like the one.

[Alan Sisto]

That I've been mispronouncing all the time, the name of the mountain Bundushatur. Bundushatur. Not Bundushafur.

[James Tauber]

Yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

So we're reminded of what we talked about recently on a couple of occasions, the retcon, that Dwarves don't tell anybody their Dwarvish or inner names.

[James Tauber]

And in F2, the purpose for this retcon is clear, and I quote. So it was that the Northern Dwarves, the people of Thorin and Dain, had names drawn from the northern language of the men of Dale. And their secret names are not known to us. Thank you, Poetic Edda.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, it just reminds me that all the way back In December of 1937, only two months after the Hobbit was published, Tolkien himself wrote, I don't much approve of the Hobbit myself, preferring my own mythology, which is just touched on with its consistent nomenclature and organized history, to this rabble of idioc named Dwarves out of spot.

[James Tauber]

Exactly.

[Alan Sisto]

I love that. Like, I really, really wish I hadn't done that.

[James Tauber]

Yeah, yeah. And. And Christopher removes all doubt that this forced his hand, his father's hand in this regard, because he says, but now this inescapable Norse element had to be accounted for. Yep. And from that quote, rabble of idy named dwarves out of the Volispa, the conception emerged that the dwarves had outen them names derived from the tongues of men with whom they had dealings concealing their true names, which they kept altogether secret.

[Alan Sisto]

I love that. Absolutely. Tolkien thinking all the time about how to fit this in. Because, of course, when he wrote the Hobbit in 1937, like he says in that letter he was just touching on his own mythology. He didn't picture it as being part of that mythology. It was a separate story. He had no idea who the Necromancer was. Was. I mean, yeah, you can see the connections. Right. Anybody who's.

[James Tauber]

He throws in a bunch of stuff about the. Of the elves. I mean, you get the elves fall of goin. And.

[Alan Sisto]

Yeah, certainly. I was going to say Thingol, but I mean, I mean, Legolas's dad is basically Thingal.

[James Tauber]

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Alan Sisto]

And, and I think that's also one of the reasons why we get the question of is the Arkenstone a Silmaril? No.

[James Tauber]

Yes, but. Yes, but he was draw.

[Alan Sisto]

He was very much drawing on that. Yeah. As I've talked on that before, because Arkenstone comes from Eorknan Stan, which is, you know, like a sacred stone, which is very much what the Silmarils are.

[James Tauber]

Absolutely.

[Alan Sisto]

But yeah, anyway, so he was drawing on it the whole time, but never intended to be part of. So when he has to go back and connect him, he's like, right. I mean, it ends up that the one ring ends up being the thing, which is why he rewrites all chapter five. But now it's like, oh, I've got to fix this name problem because I've got this rabble of a diagonal dwarfs. How. Why? Anyway, Bartiman's own name, however, and the names of Bob and Nob are of Bree or Manish origin. His own secret name. Well, it was actually Barnabas until very late revisions. Actually, it really was. But that won't be on his tomb either. James, what does Barnabas or Barlaman have for us tonight?

[James Tauber]

Okay, Tom from Maryland writes, I know that Tolkien did a lot more work on the Elvish languages than we get in the Lord of the Rings, but what about the other languages? Did he develop things like Khuzdul or Adonaic? Much more. Which is a really interesting question. So I have some stuff to say about Adonaic, but before I get to that, I wanted to just look at the wonderful resource Eldamo and look to see how many words they have in different languages, just to get a sense of.

[Alan Sisto]

Of.

[James Tauber]

Of how developed the different languages were. And of course there's this problem of what time period we talk about, because if you look at the early stuff like the Gnomish lexicon and stuff like that, El Damo lists like 3,299 gnomish words or 3,893 early Quenya words. Which reminds me of that wonderful Monty Python interview with a Shakespearean actor, Sir Edwin, after rattling off how many words he has to say in Hamlet and Othello, then gets asked how many words he has to say in King Lear, to which he responds, I don't want you to get the impression it's just a question of the number of words. I mean, getting him in the right order is just as important. But looking at the number of words. So in the sort of Lord of the Rings period of time and Afterwards, Eldamo lists 2,676 Quenya words, 1392 Sindarin words, interestingly, 228 Telluran words. So Teller. And we get actually a decent amount. But then you get things like Nandorin, 13 words. Vanyaren, 8 words. Avaran, 6 words. So these are clearly not developed at all. Khuzdul, 39 words. Right. So it's not big at all. No, the actual number of Rohanese words we get. And by the way, when I'm counting words here, I'm not meaning names, I'm meaning just common words. Common words. The number of Rohanese words or Hiric words that we get other than names is only 11.

[Alan Sisto]

Oh, wow.

[James Tauber]

But we do get 108 names.

[Alan Sisto]

Names.

[James Tauber]

So Valaren. At one point in time, he conceived of the Valar speaking a different language, not just the earliest form of Elvish. 16. Talisker, one of the two words. Two published so far. There's possibly other material, but I just want to westeron 55 words. The Dunlendings. We talked about it. Foregoil one word. Right. But I do want to briefly say the Adenaic language, where el Dharmo has 191 words of Adonaic that they give. But really interestingly, we have in the Notion Club paper papers this wonderful in. In volume nine of of History, Middle Earth, we get this wonderful little segment called Loudon's Report on the Adonaic Language. Yeah. And it gives actually some phonology, some morphological processes. It starts to discuss nouns. It doesn't get into verbs or other parts of speech, but it starts to give this detailed grammatical description of the Adenaic language, arguably clearer than anything he wrote about how the Elvish languages work. What's unique about it, though, is this is the only time that I can think of where Tolkien invented a language once and didn't continue to revise it. So we actually get this beautifully clean one snapshot of this Adonaic language and how it worked that never got changed. It's in pristine condition. Incomplete, but incomplete. Yeah, so yes, Tolkien did. To answer Tom's original question, Tolkien did develop various language, not nearly to the extent of Quinya and Sindarin, but certainly Adonai. He'd done a bunch of stuff with many of the others. Not much, just a handful of words.

[Alan Sisto]

Huh. Well folks, that wraps it up for another episode of the Prancing Pony Podcast. Be sure to join us again next week as we conclude our two part exploration of Appendix F as we look at the details behind Tolkien's translation of all of these languages and get into that whole, you know, Rohan representative and we learned Frodo's real name and all that fun stuff.

[James Tauber]

Exactly, Alan and I want to thank the members of Team PPP Editor Jordan Renels Barleyman, Becca Davis, Social Media Manager Casey Hilsey, Event and Patreon community coordinator Katie McKenna, graphic artist Negan Collins, and website guru Phil Dean.

[Alan Sisto]

Now please take a minute to check out the prancingponypodcast.com that's where you'll find show notes, outtakes, Prancing Pony ponderings, and our online storefront where you can get PPP merch featuring all the great episode artwork that Megan's been doing for the PPP since the start of season seven.

[James Tauber]

You'll also want to visit our library page. The Prancing Pony Podcast is, after all, a podcast about the books. So if you're interested in a book we've mentioned on the show, you'll find a link for it in our library. We do get a small amount of compensation when you make your purchase, and we thank you for that indeed.

[Alan Sisto]

And we also want to thank our patrons at the Curedance Contribution tier. I'll start with Demay in Alaska, Chad in Texas, Lance in New Jersey, Joseph in Michigan, Kathy from North Carolina, Carlos in California, Brian in the uk, Jerry from Washington, Joe in Washington, Irwin from the Netherlands, Ben in Minnesota, Anthony in Texas, Zaksu in Illinois, Sarah in New Jersey, Joshua in Massachusetts, Lucy in Texas, Keith in Alabama, Erica in Texas, Vivian in California, and James in Massachusetts.

[James Tauber]

There's also Anne in Kentucky, Sean in New Jersey, Mason in California, Maureen from Massachusetts, Olivia in London, Robert in Arizona, Nick in Wisconsin, Lewis in South Carolina, Thomas in Germany, Craig in California, Bailey in Texas, Kevin in Massachusetts, Julie in Washington, Bruce in California, Joe in Maryland, Nathan in Arizona, Kevin in Pennsylvania, Tom in Pennsylvania, and Jeff in Michigan. Thank you all so very much for your support.

[Alan Sisto]

Indeed. Thank you.

[James Tauber]

Make sure you don't miss any episodes of the Prancing Pony Podcast. Subscribe now through Spotify Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or your favorite podcast app.

[Alan Sisto]

And one last thing. As always, don't forget to send your thoughts, comments, and most of all, your inner names, the ones you won't even have on your tombs to barlam@the prancingponypodcast.com.

[James Tauber]

And if you want your voice literally heard, well, just send us audio of your question. Visit podinbox.com prancingponypod and record your question for us. Be sure to still email the question to Barleyman.

[Alan Sisto]

Please do. Now, even though Barliman's been a lot more reliable lately, there is still a lot of mail to sort through. We'll try to get to you just as soon as we're able. As always, this has been far too short a time to spend among such excellent and admirable listeners. But until next time, may you rekindle.

[James Tauber]

Hearts in a world that grows chill.