Invited talk for "A Tolkien event" organized bu ACE of Etcetera at the Public Library of Amsterdam, Singel 425.

1. A journey into Tolkien’s fascination for words and languages
Federico Gobbo
Amsterdam / Milano-Bicocca / Torino
F.Gobbo@uva.nl
18 jun 2015 – A Tolkien event by ACE of Etcetera
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2. Let’s start our journey. . .

3. Tolkien’s life in a glance
1892: born in Bloemenfontein, South Africa, of English parents.
1896: his father dies. Mother converted to Roman Catholicism;
1916: served in infantry on the Somme, then invalidated.
1918-20: works for the Oxford English Dictionary;
1925: Anglo-Saxon Chair at the University of Oxford;
1925: edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight;
1936: British Academy lecture on Beowulf;
1937: first edition of The Hobbit;
1945: Merton Chair of English Language at the U. of Oxford;
1954-5: three volumes of The Lord of the Rings;
1959: Valedictory Address at the University of Oxford;
1973: Tolkien dies.
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4. Outline
Our question: how words and languages influenced Tolkien literary and
scholarly work?
1. we will see natural languages, both modern and ancient;
2. then, we will delve with languages invented by him and Esperanto.
The main difference between natural and invented languages lies in
their genesis:
while natural languages come to life from orality, i.e. on an existing
speech community,
invented languages are planned in a written form, generally by a
single man for a specific purpose – for communication or art.
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5. Tolkien and the fascination of
natural languages

6. Tolkien’s repertoire
Modern English – first story attempt in 1899.
Latin and Greek – school education in classics.
Old and Middle English – at the University of Oxford.
Old Norse – at the University of Oxford.
English dialects – comparative philological studies, at the University
of Oxford.
Welsh and Finnish – being ‘beautiful’, with their full-developed
myths.
Germanic languages (Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Old High Germanic,
and especially Gothic, which was especially evocative for him).
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7. The first attempt to write a story
Tolkien’s language for literature writing has always been English, since
the start.
one could not say “a green great dragon”, but had to say “a
great green dragon”. I wondered why, and still do.
Letters, p. 163 – about seven year old.
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8. A student poem
From the many-willow’d margin of the immemorial Thames
Standing in a vale outcarven in a world-forgotten day
1913 – quoted in Gilliver & Marshall & Weiner (2006)
In his literary production, verse will make sense only as part of songs
(poetry-in-music), and hence he will revive there obsolete words from
almost forgotten medieval English writers, and Chaucer.
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9. The need of the mythical foundation for the people
Kalevala is the Finnish national epic, compiled in the 1830s by Elias
Lönnrot, who put together songs and lays from many traditional
singers. Kalevala gave a mythical foundation to the Finns.
In the same period Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm built the linguistic
(grammar, dictionary) and mythological foundation (legends and fairy
tales) of the Germans.
Other people, like the Welsh or the Greek, had already their
foundation thanks to their rich tradition.
And the English?
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10. J. R. R. Tolkien, writer and philologist
linguistic and literary studies, [. . . ] can never be enemies except
by misunderstanding or without the loss of both; and to continue
in a wider and more fertile field the encouragement of
philological enthusiasm among the young.
Letters, p. 13 – 1925, application for the Oxford Chair
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11. An literary approach to philology
Words should not be used merely because they are ‘old’ or
obsolete. The words chosen, however remote they may be from
colloquial speech or ephemeral suggestions, must be words that
remain in literary use, especially in the use of verse, among
educated people. [. . . ] They must need no gloss. [. . . ] The
difficulties of translators are not, however, ended with the choice
of a general style of diction. They have still to find word for
word [. . . ] more than just indicating the general scope of their
sense: for instance, contenting oneself with ‘shield’ alone to
render Old English bord, lind, rand and scyld. The variation,
the sound of different words, is a feature of the style that should
to some degree be represented.
On translating Beowulf
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12. A philological erudite, but literary oriented
Tolkien was fascinated by the history of words through the centuries.
After all, philology literally means ‘love of words’. If the ‘etymological
fallacy’ (the mistaken belief that the word’s true meaning lies in its
oldest recorded meaning) is anathema for a linguist, the aesthetic
pleasure of etymology is a driving force in Tolkien’s work.
[The edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight] includes an
analysis of the 14th-century dialect in which the poem is written,
the verse technique, the characteristics of characterization and
narrative, the historical, fictional and mythological sources, and
the ideology and customs of the text’s contemporary audience.
Gilliver & Marshall & Weiner (2006)
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13. Tolkien English lexicographer
By 1918, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) had already 60 years.
The purpose is to collect all English words with a illustrative
quotations – a philological work. Tolkien’s started in 1919 because of
his strength in Old and Middle English. He started from {w}: warm,
wash, wasp, water, wick (lamp), winter.
Almost all OED work was done on small pieces of paper,
approximately 6 inches by 4 inches—the so-called ‘Dictionary
slip’.
Gilliver & Marshall & Weiner (2006)
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14. c Tolkien’s dictionary slip of warm (Gilliver et al. 2006)
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15. From Modern to Middle English
His first book, published in 1922, is A Middle English Vocabulary. The
influence of the work at the OED is evident. 43,000 words in Middle
English were checked: the glossary contains about 4,740 entries and
nearly 6,800 definitions, with 1,900 cross-references and 236 proper
names.
It is difficult to imagine how it could have taken less than the
equivalent of nine months’ full-time work.
Gilliver & Marshall & Weiner (2006)
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16. Old Norse as source for comparative analysis
Old English (often called ‘Anglo-Saxon’) represents the root where to
found the myth that is missing for English people. The only Old
English epic, Beowulf, deals with monsters, elves and orcs. The
Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, dealing with
elves and ettins, was almost unnoticed before the critical edition by
Tolkien and E.V. Gordon in 1925.
In this perspective he also got interested in Old Norse, which can
guide the analysis of Old English and even Northern dialects of
modern English.
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17. An example: ‘shieldmaiden’
Morris used shield-may (OED: MAY3)
in Old Norse the word is skjadmñr
Tolkien prefers shieldmaiden, more transparent for the modern
reader.
[the philological technique is] not simply lifting ancient words
out of their context, but adapting them to the forms that thwy
would have had in modern English had they been in continued
use till now.
Gilliver & Marshall & Weiner (2006)
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18. The aesthetic pleasure of philology
Being a philologist, getting a large part of any aesthetic pleasure
that I am capable of from the form of words (and especially
from the fresh association of word-form with word-sense), I have
always best enjoyed things in a foreign language, or one so
remote as to feel like it (such as Anglo-Saxon).
Letters, p. 142 – 2 December 1953
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19. First the languages, the story follows
The invention of languages is the foundation. The ‘stories’ were
made rather to provide a world for the languages than the
reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows.
Letters, p. 219 – 1955, to his American publisher
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20. New English words by Tolkien
As a novelist, Tolkien was inclined to create new words according to
his needs, using all his academic knowledge. For instance, Bilbo is
called a ‘burglar’, a word formed by ‘burgulator’, someone who breaks
into mansions (OED) and ‘bourgeois’, someone who lives in one. This
oxymoron is the synthesis of the inner character of Bilbo.
In The Lord of the Rings, Ringwraith are the shadows who once
possessed the Ring; but what is a ‘wraith’? OED says ‘of obscure
origin’. From the Old English ‘wríðan’, to writhe, you derive ‘wreath’
and (something twisted) and ‘wroth’ (old word for ‘angry’) which
described perfectly the nature of Ringwraiths (Shippey 2000).
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21. How the hobbits came to life
[a candidate] had mercifully left one of the pages with no writing
on it (which is the best thing that can possibly happen to an
examiner) and I wrote on it: ‘In a hole in the ground there lived
a hobbit.’ Names always generate a story in my mind.
Eventually I thought I’d better found out what hobbits were like.
But that’s only the beginning.
Letters, p. 215 – in the 1920s, Oxford.
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22. The beginning of the hobbits
Shippey (2000) traces the word ‘hobbit’ in The Denham Tracts, a
publication about folklore written by Denham, a Workshire tradesman,
in the years 1840-50.
They are one entry in a list of 197 supernatural creatures, as ‘a class
of spirits’. It is evident that Tolkien perhaps had read these tracts, but
in any case it was not influenced – Tolkien’s hobbits are not spirits!
Tolkien reconstructed (without sources) a plausible Old English word,
holbytl, from hol (hole) and bytlian (to live in), so ‘hole-liver’.
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23. A composite use of English: the clash of style
In The Hobbit, the use of English depends on the character and the
situation. In the Shire, Bilbo shrieks ‘like the whistle of an engine
coming out of a tunnel’ (steam railway tunnels are dated in English in
1830), they have a postal service, eat potatoes (‘pickles’) and smoke
tobacco (‘pipeweed’), speaking in plain English, while the dragon
Smaug speaks old as in the Old Testament:
I have eaten his people like a wolf among sheep, and where are
his sons’ sons that dare approach me [. . . ] My armour is like
tenfold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock
of my tail a thunderbolt.
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24. The two final speeches of Balin and Bilbo
At the end of The Hobbit, the contrast between old and new in the
English use cannot be clearer (see Shippey 2000).
[Balin said:] ‘If ever you visit us again, when our halls
are made fair once more, then the feast shall indeed be splendid!’
‘If ever you are passing my way,’ said Bilbo, ‘don’t wait to
knock! Tea is at four; but any of you are welcome at any time!’
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25. The importance of compounds
Tolkien uses a lot of OED compounds such as night-speech,
riding-pony and invented a lot in his literary works: beggar-beard,
herb-master, dragon-guarded, elf-friend, spell-enslaved, lore-master,
quiet-footed, elven-kin, elven-wise – see Gilliver et al. (2006).
All the while the forest-gloom got heavier and the
forest-silence deeper. There was no wind that evening to bring
even a sea-sighing into the branches of the trees.
The Hobbit, ch. 6
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26. The name gives the character
Tolkien took many names from Snorri Sturluson’s 13th century guide
to Norse mythology Skaldskaparmál (lit. skald-ship-treat, the Art of
Poetry). For example: Gandálfr, Fíli, Kíli, Nóri, Bömbur. The main
characteristic often comes from the very name:
Gandalf is ‘an old man with a staff’, while the name is ‘staff-elf’,
and therefore a wizard;
Beorn is a were-bear (man by day, bear by night), while in Old
English ‘Bjarni’ means ‘man’ but is connected to ‘bear’.
He extensively use ‘dwarves’ as the plural of ‘dwarf’ being the most
antique (and hence authentic) form.
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27. Not so many dragons in the literature. . .
Until Tolkien, there were only few dragons in the Western literature
known to him:
1. Miðgarðsorm, ‘Worm of Middle-earth’, who will fight the god Thor
at Ragnarök, the Norse Doomsday;
2. Fafnir, killed by the Norse here Sigurd;
3. the dragon killed by Beowulf.
The name ‘Smaug’ comes from the Old English smeag ‘sagacious’,
used to describe a ‘worm’ (i.e., a reptile). In Old Norse the equivalent
is smeg, while smaug is the past tense of smjúga ‘to creep through an
opening’ (Letters – 20 February 1938).
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28. c Tolkien’s original drawing of Smaug

29. Tolkien and the fascination of
invented languages

30. Tolkien’s invented languages
Animalic – an jargon for encrypting English, a play-language.
Nevbosh – nonsense language with peers, as a child.
Qenya lexicon – since 1915, the nucleus of the Elvish languages
Quenya and Sindarin, worked out through all his life, never finished.
Black Speech – the anti-Elvish, amade for enslaving all creatures
starting from Orcs (who speak a pidgin), will be elaborated mainly
for Peter Jackson’s movies by David Salo.
Khudzul – secret language of Dwarves, with Semitic influences,
approx 50 words and expressions.
Iglishmêk – Dwarvish sign languages, unfortunately with very few
notes to be actually used.
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31. The influence of Esperanto on Tolkien’s languages
Esperanto was launched in 1887. The British Esperantist Association
(BEA) was found in 1904. In Oxford the local club was found in 1930,
where the 22nd Word Congress was organized (1211 participants from
29 different countries).
Personally I am a believer in an ‘artificial’ language, at any rate
for Europe a believer, that is, in its desirability, as the one thing
antecedently necessary for uniting Europe, before it is swallowed
by non-Europe; [. . . ] also I particularly like Esperanto. . . which is
good a description of the ideal artificial language [but] my
concern is not with that kind of artificial language at all.
from A Secret Vice
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32. The pleasure of inventing languages
[During the war, ] I shall never forget a little man. . . revealing
himself by accident as a devotee [of Esperanto], in a moment of
extreme ennui. . . crowded with (mostly) depressed and wet
creatures. We were listening to somebody lecturing on
map-reading, or camp-hygiene. . . rather we were trying to avoid
listening. . . [He] said suddenly in a dreamy ovice: ‘Yes, I think I
shall express the accusative case by a prefix!’ A memorable
remark! [. . . ] Just consider the splendour of the words! ‘I shall
express the accusative case.’ Magnificent!
from A Secret Vice
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33. The aftermath of the Second World War
Esperanto was a model in what not to do in inventing languages –
practical purpose and structural regularity were not the point. Then,
Tolkien changed his mind on Esperanto.
[Esperanto and other International Auxiliary Languages] are
dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their
authors never invented any Esperanto legends.
Letters – draft to Mr. Thompson, 14 Jan 1956
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34. Tolkien’s languages are not for humans!
Tolkien had no interest for extra-diegetic use of Middle-Earth
languages.
In other words, he envisaged no fans talking in Sindarin in Tolkenian
conventions or similar, as in the case of Star Trek’s Klingon or
Dothraki from Games of Thrones.
For him, inventing languages was a personal, private art form. That is
why he published no grammar of any language invented by him.
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35. Animalic, a secret jargon that asks for better work
I knew two people once – two is a rare phenomenon – who
constructed a language called Animalic almost entirely out of
English animal, bird, and fish names; and they conversed in it
fluently to the dismay of bystanders. I was never fully instructed
in it nor a proper Animalic-speaker; but I remember out of the
rag-bag of memory that dog nightingale woodpecker forty
meant ‘you are an ass’. Crude (in some ways) in the extreme.
from A Secret Vice
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36. After Animalic: the fragment of Nevbosh
Dar fys ma vel gom co palt ‘hoc
Pys go iskili far maino woc?
Pro si go fys do roc de
Do cat ym maino bocte
De volt fac soc ma taimful gyróc!’
from A Secret Vice
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37. The fragment of Nevbosh (with the translation)
Dar fys ma vel gom co palt ‘hoc
(There was an old man who said ‘how)
Pys go iskili far maino woc?
(can I possibly carry my cow?)
Pro si go fys do roc de
(For if I was to ask it)
Do cat ym maino bocte
(to get in my pocket)
De volt fac soc ma taimful gyróc!’
(it would make such a fearful row!’)
from A Secret Vice
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38. Nevbosh, the further stage of invention. . .
[An Animalic speaker] developed an idiom called Nevbosh, or
the ‘New Nonsense’. It still made, as these play-languages will,
some pretence at being a means of limited communication.
. . . That is where I came in. I was a member of the
Nevbosh-speaking world. [. . . ] In traditional languages invention
is more often seen undeveloped, severely limited by the weight of
tradition. . . In Nevbosh we see, of course, no real breaking away
from ‘English’. . . : alteration is mainly limited to shifting within
a defined series of consonants, say for example the dentals: d, t,
ð, þ &c. Dar/there; do/to; cat/get; volt/would.
from A Secret Vice
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39. . . . becomes a contact language!
The intricate blending of the native with the laterlearnt is, for
one thing, curious. The foreign, too, shows the same arbitrary
alteration within phonetic limitis as the native. So roc/‘rogo’
[Latin for] ask; go/‘ego’ [Latin for] I; vel/‘vieil, vieux’ [French
for] old [. . . ] Blending is seen in: volt/‘volo [Latin], vouloir
[French]’ + ‘will, would’; fys/‘fui’ [Latin] + ‘was’, was, were.
from A Secret Vice
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40. Freedom and pleasure in inventing languages
In these invented languages the pleasure is more keen than it can
be even in learning a new language. . . because more personal and
fresh, more open to experiment of trial and error. And it is
capable of developing into an art, with refinement of the
construction of the symbol, and with greater nicety in the choice
of the notional-range.
from A Secret Vice
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41. The importance of sound in invented languages
[Nevbosh] remained unfreed from the purely communicative
aspect of language—the one that seems usually supposed to be
the real germ and original impulse of language [. . . ] but the
more individual and personal factor—pleasure in articulate
sound, and in the symbolic use of it, independent of
communication though constantly in fact entangled with
it—must not be forgotten for a moment.
A Secret Vice
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42. The Old English word Earendel drives for Elvish
I felt a curious thrill [. . . ] as if something had stirred in me, half
wakened from sleep. There was soemthing very remote and
strange and beautiful behind those words, if I could grasp it, far
beyond ancient English.
quoted in Carpenter’s Biography
Earendel can denote a star and a mariner in cognate Germanic
languages, so in 1914 Tolkien wrote a poem where the ship of
Earendel went to heaven – then it will become the Elvish Eärendil.
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43. Philology as reconstruction of worlds
The reconstruction of word-forms goes hand in hand with the
imaginative recreation of the lost world in which they are
supposed to have been used [. . . ] He took the opportunity to
applying [philology] to his private languages, the most
substantial result being the immensely detailed ‘Etymologies’ of
the Elvish tongues [. . . ] Though everything in them is invented,
they use exactly the same apparatus.
Gilliver & Marshall & Weiner (2006)
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44. Exercise: the fragment of Black Speech
Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk
agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
One ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to
bring them all and in the Darkness bind them.
We know that nazg is ‘ring’from nazgûl, ‘Ringwraiths’.
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45. Solution of the exercise
ash one
gimb find
thrak bring
krimp bind
-at- infinitive marker
-ul- them
ûk all
burz dark
-um nominalizer (like ‘-ness’)
-ishi locative posposition
agh and
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46. Thanks for your attention!
Questions? Comments?
If not now, send afterwards to:
F.Gobbo@uva.nl
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Federico Gobbo 2015
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