Kevin's Watch

Posted: **Wed Oct 29, 2003 12:58 pm**

Landwaster wrote:How about using a PC to voice synthesise it?

Sounds like Microsoft Sam is in big trouble.

Posted: **Tue Oct 07, 2014 5:14 am**

The Noms get my nomination as the best part of this thread.

Posted: **Tue Oct 07, 2014 8:09 am**

Responding to the OP, I think that in the First Chronicles SRD fairly cheekily borrowed sounds and syllables from Tolkien in order to tell a different story.

Exhibit A: In The First Chronicles melenkurion is one of the Seven Words and is also part of the name of a mountain. In Tolkien's Elvish tongues it translates as "son of cunning love" (or perhaps something else, depending on our understanding of Quenya/Sindarin grammatical rules).

Posted: **Tue Oct 07, 2014 8:41 am**

Exhibit B: Some of Tolkien's filchings from Finnish

Ilúvatar >> Ilmatar (air goddess, actually created by Lönnrot to fill gaps in the Kalevala)
Ilmarin ("mansion of the high airs") >> Ilmarinen (air and smith god)
Quenya >> Quens, Kvens, an ancient Finnish tribe
Calacirya aka Kalakirya sounds suspiciously like a homage to the Kalevala itself, the target of Tolkien's fanboyish adoration. Kirya reads akin to "kirja", "book". Kalakirja in itself translates as "fish book", but when one glances at the root word cálë = light in Quenya, it becomes obvious. Furthermore he was uncannily fond of the word vala... Now, what does "light of the Valar" sound like in Elvish?

Posted: **Thu Oct 09, 2014 12:39 am**

J.R.R. Tolkien did indeed have reverence for the Finnish language, Frostheart! When he was searching for an invented language template, Finnish was certainly the "calavala" he followed to inspiration.

In part III, chapter one of [i]Tolkien: A Biography[/i], author Humphrey Carpenter wrote:Tolkien had sketched a number of invented languages when he was an adolescent, and had developed several of them to a degree of some complexity. But ultimately only one of these early experiments had pleased him, and had come to express his personal linguistic taste. This was the invented language that had been heavily influenced by Finnish. He called it 'Quenya', and by 1917 it was very sophisticated, possessing a vocabulary of many hundreds of words (based albeit on a fairly limited number of word-stems). Quenya was derived, as any 'real' language would have been, from a more primitive language spoken in an earlier age; and from this 'Primitive Eldarin' Tolkien created a second elvish language, contemporary with Quenya but spoken by different peoples of the elves. This language he eventually called 'Sindarin', and he modelled its phonology on Welsh, the language that after Finnish was closest to his personal linguistic taste.

Posted: **Fri Oct 10, 2014 1:16 pm**

It also seems Tolkien's names were inspired in no small way by the Icelandic Eddas, written in the thirteenth century by Snorri Sturluson, that old skald.

Council of Elrond wrote:[...] Tolkien used motives from the Edda to develop his world. One striking aspect is the resemblance of certain names. When I first read the Edda, I was very surprised to hear of Dwarves that were called Dvalinn, Bifur, Bafur, Bombur, Óri, Nori, Þrór, Þróinn or Glóinn and many other names we know from ‘The Hobbit’ and ‘The Lord of the Rings’. Even the name Gandálfr appears – as a dwarf. Another name which appears in the Edda is Alföður, the Norse god who created the world out of Ginnungagap, the “absolute nothing”. His name means “all-father”, just like Ilúvatar in Tolkien’s world. Like Ilúvatar, Alföður is the highest of the gods who created the earth and everything that dwells on it. Another resemblance is of course the name Middle-earth which is the translation of the word “Midgard”, the world of Men and Elves. [...] [link]

Kevin's Watch

Haruchai and Uruk-hai