calling all teachers

[frodosampippinmerry]

Are there any english teachers on this site who have studied Tolkien and his philology... or better yet any philologists. I see a lot of opinions. These opinions seem to be worlds apart from the opinions of teachers who have studied Tolkien in terms of his philological expertise. According to a teacher I've had in class, Tolkien was trying to resurrect the lost mythology of England. King Arthur, he felt had been destroyed, just like the anglo-saxon mythology, by French influences. He was trying to recover the lost mythology through philology. By studying word origins, you can actiually date how old a language is. For example, the word hammer in almost every language of Indo European descent comes from root words that mean "stone" According to my teacher, this indicates that Indo-european is so old that it was spoken at a time when people used stone tools. Extrapolating on that point, Tolkien also found that there are indications a huge and much feared forest once dominated parts of central Europe, much like the Fictional Mirkwood of Tolkien's stories. Don't get me wrong, the teacher was not implying thatr Mirkwood really existed, but only that Tolkien's concept of Mirkwood seems to be based on distant memories of a place like that that once existed, now ony recoverable through a pile of word origins. This is what philology can do-recover lost history and mythology through word origins. Are there any philologists here? Last I heard they were an endangered species. Is there no one left who studies languages the way Tolkien did?

[Sister Golden Hair]

You might want to cantact Forkbeard. He seems to know more than most and could be helpful.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

I don't ever recall hearing anything from Tolkien indicating that he got his mythos from languages; I believe he just borrowed elements from various existing tales.

[Sister Golden Hair]

Originally Posted by Gwaimir Windgem

I don't ever recall hearing anything from Tolkien indicating that he got his mythos from languages; I believe he just borrowed elements from various existing tales.

I disagree with this. Wasn't that Tolkien's field of expertise? I think that is how he was able to create so many different languages in the world of Middle-earth.

[Forkbeard]

Originally Posted by frodosampippinmerry

Are there any english teachers on this site who have studied Tolkien and his philology... or better yet any philologists. I see a lot of opinions. These opinions seem to be worlds apart from the opinions of teachers who have studied Tolkien in terms of his philological expertise. According to a teacher I've had in class, Tolkien was trying to resurrect the lost mythology of England. King Arthur, he felt had been destroyed, just like the anglo-saxon mythology, by French influences. He was trying to recover the lost mythology through philology. By studying word origins, you can actiually date how old a language is. For example, the word hammer in almost every language of Indo European descent comes from root words that mean "stone" According to my teacher, this indicates that Indo-european is so old that it was spoken at a time when people used stone tools. Extrapolating on that point, Tolkien also found that there are indications a huge and much feared forest once dominated parts of central Europe, much like the Fictional Mirkwood of Tolkien's stories. Don't get me wrong, the teacher was not implying thatr Mirkwood really existed, but only that Tolkien's concept of Mirkwood seems to be based on distant memories of a place like that that once existed, now ony recoverable through a pile of word origins. This is what philology can do-recover lost history and mythology through word origins. Are there any philologists here? Last I heard they were an endangered species. Is there no one left who studies languages the way Tolkien did?

There are a few yet kicking about, but sad to say, or good to say depending on how you look at it I suppose, philology has taken on different directions these days. But there are those of us who yet toil away at language roots. I'm still a student in that regard, but maybe I can help.

It sounds, first off, that your teacher is heavily influenced by Tom Shippey's Road to Middle Earth, so I would encourage you to quickly go out, get that book and read it. I'm not sure what to address for you though: are you curious about philology and what it does or are you more curious about how Tolkien's study of philology affected LoTR, Hobbit, Silmarillion, etc?

[Forkbeard]

Originally Posted by Gwaimir Windgem

I don't ever recall hearing anything from Tolkien indicating that he got his mythos from languages; I believe he just borrowed elements from various existing tales.

With the emenent and wise SGH, I'd have to say that I too disagree. Tolkien started first with languages, and then invented people who spoke those languages, and then those people told tales. One of the things that make Tolkien's works work so well is that tie to language.

[frodosampippinmerry]

I seem to remember him mentioning that book. I myself am a fledgeling writer and want to try and do the same thing Tolkien did-dig up ancient myths out of a pile of word origins, but I'm not sure what the relationship is between Tolkien's stories and reality. e.g. Problably you won't find by digging up words that Mirkwood was a real place. There is a story element to tolkien's research into word origins that is clearly made up, but the fact that you can grasp hints of the existence of an ancient and much feared forest almost begs the question-what was the reality of the real forest on the edge of the recollection of word roots, the forest that inspired the fictitious Mirkwood. To put it another way, What do the word origins tell us about the reality that inspired the myth, because the boundary between myth and reality is the boundary between creative license and plagarism.

Originally Posted by Forkbeard

There are a few yet kicking about, but sad to say, or good to say depending on how you look at it I suppose, philology has taken on different directions these days. But there are those of us who yet toil away at language roots. I'm still a student in that regard, but maybe I can help.

It sounds, first off, that your teacher is heavily influenced by Tom Shippey's Road to Middle Earth, so I would encourage you to quickly go out, get that book and read it. I'm not sure what to address for you though: are you curious about philology and what it does or are you more curious about how Tolkien's study of philology affected LoTR, Hobbit, Silmarillion, etc?

[Landroval]

Concerning the relation between myth and language, Tolkien stated the following in letter #180:

It was just as the 1914 War burst on me that I made the discovery that 'legends' depend on the language to which they belong; but a living language depends equally on the 'legends' which it conveys by tradition. (For example, that the Greek mythology depends far more on the marvellous aesthetic of its language and so of its nomenclature of persons and places and less on its content than people realize, though of course it depends on both. And vice versa. Volapük, Esperanto, Ido, Novial, &c &c are dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends.) So though being a philologist by nature and trade (yet one always primarily interested in the aesthetic rather than the functional aspects of language) I began with language, I found myself involved in inventing 'legends' of the same 'taste'.

More interestingly, he notes in letter #165:

The invention of languages is the foundation. The 'stones' were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows.

[Forkbeard]

Originally Posted by frodosampippinmerry

I seem to remember him mentioning that book. I myself am a fledgeling writer and want to try and do the same thing Tolkien did-dig up ancient myths out of a pile of word origins, but I'm not sure what the relationship is between Tolkien's stories and reality. e.g. Problably you won't find by digging up words that Mirkwood was a real place. There is a story element to tolkien's research into word origins that is clearly made up, but the fact that you can grasp hints of the existence of an ancient and much feared forest almost begs the question-what was the reality of the real forest on the edge of the recollection of word roots, the forest that inspired the fictitious Mirkwood. To put it another way, What do the word origins tell us about the reality that inspired the myth, because the boundary between myth and reality is the boundary between creative license and plagarism.

Hmm, the best way to do this would be to become a philologist yourself. That begins with attitude: you must start thinking about language and yor words, how they're used, what they mean, how they come to mean what they do.

To give you an all too brief example, in a recent paper on Beowulf I considered how what has become the modern word steeple is related to staple and step and how in Old English the word covers anything from standing posts in a hall, to what is holding the poles in place, to boundary posts, to seats where a lord receives his underlings, to a defensive wall, to a column for lists of memorials to dead sailors in Old English, Latin, Old NOrse, Old Frisian, Spanish and Portugese. Great stuff! Or you might consider why we have sing, sang, sung, song but no seng; or why gravity is named as it is.....once you begin asking yourself those sorts of questions, you're well on your way.

I would, were I you, get Shippey's books oN Tolkien, C. S. Lewis' On Words and Barfield's "History in English Words" (the latter has some ideas about language that I don't agree with). Make the dictionary your constant companion, particularly the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary. Read the dictionary. Pay attention particularly to etymology. Develop an ear for what people are saying--where do their slang words come from. Read about language, start with general works and work your way up: for example take a course or read a book on teh History of the English language. Above all not only study your own language deeply, but learn other languages! It won't come quickly and it won't come overnight--its a lot of hard work, but oh, such great fun!!!

More specifically, the great forest and its fear is in part philological. It is known from the surviving languages and the texts they leave us that most of Europe before 600 was forested, with human habitation and roads being small clearings in the great woods. But we also compile all the roots of all the words in the languages we have for forest, wood, woods etc and all their compounds and not only uncover what the words are, but in some cases the nuances they held for the language users based on the coloring they gave the compound or the context.

Much of Tolkien's creative fiction takes us into the "might be": i. e. he takes what is known and postulates a new form or a what if type of idea. His invention of "dwarves" for example, or the names he used: Frodo is obviously related to Old English frod, to be wise, (from a Germanic root) and there are historical Froda's; (hobbit names tend to end in -o, so he changed the a to an o) or Theoden which means chieftain, king, or Gandalf-elf wand.

Anyway, I've babbled enough, not sure if I've succeeded in whetting your appetite or helped answer your question any. But what it comes down to is that all good stories and myths begin with good language, and language after all is but the attempt to convey in words higher concepts and in myth, to convey that which can not be conveyed, the divine, and so we tell stories that try and capture the divine as best we can.

[Gwaimir Windgem]

Originally Posted by Sister Golden Hair

I disagree with this. Wasn't that Tolkien's field of expertise? I think that is how he was able to create so many different languages in the world of Middle-earth.

Yes, that's how he was able to create languages, but there's a great difference between creating languages and worlds.

Originally Posted by Forkbeard

With the emenent and wise SGH, I'd have to say that I too disagree. Tolkien started first with languages, and then invented people who spoke those languages, and then those people told tales. One of the things that make Tolkien's works work so well is that tie to language.

Certainly, there was a connection with language, and language was a very important element in Tolkien's cosmology. But as I understand it, the theory was that the cosmology itself came from Tolkien's extrapolation on bits and pieces found in philological study, which seems very different from simply saying that he made languages, and the tales followed from them.

[frodosampippinmerry]

Oh, yes, you certainly have whetted my appetite, and as far as I'm concerned you can go on rambling. Even in Tolkien's day Dictionaries were a problem. He felt that people took too many liberties in misrepresenting the true meaning of words. The problem is even worse now. Take the word man for example. The word, I believe, is derived from the word human, which I believe is derived from the latin hominus and is related to the word ??humus?? or ground, serving the same function in Latin as the relationship between the word Adam=human, or man and Adamah=ground in hebrew. However, people who want to gender neuter our language artificially doctor the language. Quite franlky we're lucky we have gender-neuter words, a lot of languages don't have the word "parent" for example, and the people that speak those languages think it's ridiculous to talk of "parent" when it is either un Madre or un Padre. All languages change, but Toklien apparently felt even in his own time that people liked to artificially doctor languages to suit their personal tastes, rather than let them develop naturally over time on their own, and from what I understand from my teacher, if I indeed heard correctly, it drove Tolkien nuts because it was destroying the historical foundation and roots of the language. People form a faulty premise about why an undesirable word exists, and without understanding how it evolved, they come up with these wild conspiracy theories that prompt them to make unnatural changes to the language. So I have to ask, what do you not agree with in "History in English words? "Is there too much artificially induced doctoring going on? By the Way, speaking of Beowulf, I was suprised to find that Tolkien equated Grendel with a son of Cain, inspiring the character Gollum.

Originally Posted by Forkbeard

Barfield's "History in English Words" (the latter has some ideas about language that I don't agree with). Make the dictionary your constant companion, particularly the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary. Read the dictionary.

Anyway, I've babbled enough, not sure if I've succeeded in whetting your appetite or helped answer your question any. But what it comes down to is that all good stories and myths begin with good language, and language after all is but the attempt to convey in words higher concepts and in myth, to convey that which can not be conveyed, the divine, and so we tell stories that try and capture the divine as best we can.

[Forkbeard]

Originally Posted by Gwaimir Windgem

Yes, that's how he was able to create languages, but there's a great difference between creating languages and worlds.



Certainly, there was a connection with language, and language was a very important element in Tolkien's cosmology. But as I understand it, the theory was that the cosmology itself came from Tolkien's extrapolation on bits and pieces found in philological study, which seems very different from simply saying that he made languages, and the tales followed from them.

Well, now you seem to be saying something different than you did before unless I'm misunderstanding you. Before you said that Tolkien made it up out of other tales, now it seems to be making it up out of languages? Not sure what you mean, so hard to respond or discuss.

[Forkbeard]

Originally Posted by frodosampippinmerry

Oh, yes, you certainly have whetted my appetite, and as far as I'm concerned you can go on rambling. Even in Tolkien's day Dictionaries were a problem. He felt that people took too many liberties in misrepresenting the true meaning of words. The problem is even worse now. Take the word man for example. The word, I believe, is derived from the word human, which I believe is derived from the latin hominus and is related to the word ??humus?? or ground, serving the same function in Latin as the relationship between the word Adam=human, or man and Adamah=ground in hebrew. However, people who want to gender neuter our language artificially doctor the language. Quite franlky we're lucky we have gender-neuter words, a lot of languages don't have the word "parent" for example, and the people that speak those languages think it's ridiculous to talk of "parent" when it is either un Madre or un Padre. All languages change, but Toklien apparently felt even in his own time that people liked to artificially doctor languages to suit their personal tastes, rather than let them develop naturally over time on their own, and from what I understand from my teacher, if I indeed heard correctly, it drove Tolkien nuts because it was destroying the historical foundation and roots of the language. People form a faulty premise about why an undesirable word exists, and without understanding how it evolved, they come up with these wild conspiracy theories that prompt them to make unnatural changes to the language. So I have to ask, what do you not agree with in "History in English words? "Is there too much artificially induced doctoring going on? By the Way, speaking of Beowulf, I was suprised to find that Tolkien equated Grendel with a son of Cain, inspiring the character Gollum.

Re: Dictionaries. One of the changes in the field that occurred over the course of Tolkien's career, and that he hated, was a profound change in how the meaning of a word is determined. For Tolkien and his generation of lexicographers the chief tool for determining the word's meaning is its roots, its etymology and then to trace how it changes over time. Now, a word's meaning is how it is USED, and most "modern" dictionaries want to DESCRIBE meanings rather than "determine" what it means. Certainly modern dictionaries continue to give a nod toward etymology, but etymology is seldom consulted when they write the definitions, common usage is. Thus, Tolkien could say that dictionarists were doing it wrong.

Nothing is certain about "man." There have been differing theories about its pre-Germanic origins. one of them being that it is related to the family of words that produced humus, homo, humanus etc in Latin. The older theory, and the one I favor in this case, is that Germanic "man" and Sanskr. manu are related to I-E for "mind". A newer theory is that "man" is related to homo etc but lost the initial obstruent sound (in Latin the "h" was once closer to a modern German 'ch", but lost it by classical times: so Latin homo< humus, related to Greek chton (earth), Old English goma etc, a set of words originating in earth, as you said, similar to Hebrew Adam.

So, man does NOT come from human, but MAY come from the same Proto-Indo-European root. Latin homo and humanus do indeed come from Latin humus, earth.

Originally homo and man both were "gender neutral" in that they meant human, person, but by Late Classical Latin homo had begun to take on the gender specific overtones and so did "man" in Germanic languages. In most Germanic languages there is yet a way to differentiate, as in mod. German, man-mean a person "one" as a pronoun, and Mann-a male person; but this did not happen in English. Anyway, its late at the moment so I'll avoid the inclusive language debate: it is both a good and a bad thing in terms of language but more on that another time and another place than the TOlkien forum.

On to quick things: Grendel is called the descendent of Cain in Beowulf, and particularly in the Hobbit he is rather Grendel like with the pale gleams coming from his eyes, his uncanny strength, his decision to eat sentient flesh (whether orc or hobbit)....a lot of parallels there.

I'll tackle Barfield tomorrow.

[frodosampippinmerry]

Originally Posted by Forkbeard

Re: Dictionaries. One of the changes in the field that occurred over the course of Tolkien's career, and that he hated, was a profound change in how the meaning of a word is determined. For Tolkien and his generation of lexicographers the chief tool for determining the word's meaning is its roots, its etymology and then to trace how it changes over time. Now, a word's meaning is how it is USED, and most "modern" dictionaries want to DESCRIBE meanings rather than "determine" what it means. Certainly modern dictionaries continue to give a nod toward etymology, but etymology is seldom consulted when they write the definitions, common usage is. Thus, Tolkien could say that dictionarists were doing it wrong.

Nothing is certain about "man." There have been differing theories about its pre-Germanic origins. one of them being that it is related to the family of words that produced humus, homo, humanus etc in Latin. The older theory, and the one I favor in this case, is that Germanic "man" and Sanskr. manu are related to I-E for "mind". A newer theory is that "man" is related to homo etc but lost the initial obstruent sound (in Latin the "h" was once closer to a modern German 'ch", but lost it by classical times: so Latin homo< humus, related to Greek chton (earth), Old English goma etc, a set of words originating in earth, as you said, similar to Hebrew Adam.

So, man does NOT come from human, but MAY come from the same Proto-Indo-European root. Latin homo and humanus do indeed come from Latin humus, earth.

Originally homo and man both were "gender neutral" in that they meant human, person, but by Late Classical Latin homo had begun to take on the gender specific overtones and so did "man" in Germanic languages. In most Germanic languages there is yet a way to differentiate, as in mod. German, man-mean a person "one" as a pronoun, and Mann-a male person; but this did not happen in English. Anyway, its late at the moment so I'll avoid the inclusive language debate: it is both a good and a bad thing in terms of language but more on that another time and another place than the TOlkien forum.

On to quick things: Grendel is called the descendent of Cain in Beowulf, and particularly in the Hobbit he is rather Grendel like with the pale gleams coming from his eyes, his uncanny strength, his decision to eat sentient flesh (whether orc or hobbit)....a lot of parallels there.

I'll tackle Barfield tomorrow.

I never said anything about Inclusive Language until you brought it up. Is Inclusive language a forbidden topic on this board?

If so, where else can we disciss it? If you have msn my handle is in a private message I'm sending you. Please e-mail me with your handle if you have one so I know who is trying to add me to their conntact list

[Forkbeard]

Originally Posted by frodosampippinmerry

I never said anything about Inclusive Language until you brought it up. Is Inclusive language a forbidden topic on this board?

If so, where else can we disciss it? If you have msn my handle is in a private message I'm sending you. Please e-mail me with your handle if you have one so I know who is trying to add me to their conntact list

I think we can discuss it in the context of Tolkien, sure. Otherwise we'd have to move it to somewhere in the General Forum. But that was the issue of language that I thought of in the late hour I was typing last night. There are certainly other strategies to change language: Political Correctness was another such movement as is a good deal of the language manipulation that has come out of modern politics (British or American, and I assume to different degrees Australian and Canadian and other English speaking countries). But certainly Tolkien and these "linguistic manipulators" have all realized one thing: words shape the way we think. MOre later!