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General Tabletop Discussion
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The Taxonomy of Species in D&D Next/7e
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<blockquote data-quote="JohnSnow" data-source="post: 5838576" data-attributes="member: 32164"><p>Oh?</p><p></p><p>So tell me, where's your degree in Anglo-Saxon languages and literature? How much work did you do as a translator of ancient Greek, Latin and Hebrew texts to help create the New Jerusalem Bible? Yeah, I didn't think so.</p><p></p><p>It's true that Tolkien used languages he invented, but he did so with the scholarly knowledge and linguistic background of a man who spoke and could read something like 12 of them. And most of the "made up words" in <em>The Lord of the Rings</em> are actually words that are related to English in the same way that one of Tolkien's made-up languages is related to the common speech the book was supposedly <em>translated from</em>. The proper (elvish-derived) names of Middle-Earth are the only situation where we witness the actual versions of the professor's made-up languages.</p><p></p><p>Notice, it's "Mirkwood" not "Filnafel forest" (or some other B.S.), and they're the "Misty Mountains," not the "Mortelnath range." I could also point to Rivendell, Hoarwell, Silverlode, Mount Doom, and so forth. In a similar vein, "Hobbit" may be a made-up English word, but it's a natural linguistic descendent from the Anglo-Saxon combination "holbytla" which means "hole-builder," so as to represent the distinction between the word the Hobbits used for themselves and the word the Rohirrim used (both supposedly in the invented language of Westron). And so forth.</p><p></p><p>There's plenty of gobbledygook in fantasy fiction, but unlike most authors, Tolkien wrote a dictionary and grammar rules for his made-up languages, and he stuck to them. Not only that, but he then decided to translate many of the made-up words into their equivalents of languages related to English, so that what was supposed to sound familiar sounds appropriately familiar, and what was supposed to sound alien sounds appropriately alien.</p><p></p><p>As I said, the Elvish words were left "untranslated" and are therefore rendered "as-is," rather than being switched into their equivalents in Latin and Greek (Elvish being the closest thing there is to a "Westron Latin"). Thus, the book is presented to us in such a way that what should be accessible to readers is accessible, and what should be remote remains remote.</p><p></p><p>You may not appreciate all the work Tolkien went through in order to accomplish this, but that hardly means it qualifies as "made-up gobbledygook."</p><p></p><p>Sorry, but I couldn't let that one slide by.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="JohnSnow, post: 5838576, member: 32164"] Oh? So tell me, where's your degree in Anglo-Saxon languages and literature? How much work did you do as a translator of ancient Greek, Latin and Hebrew texts to help create the New Jerusalem Bible? Yeah, I didn't think so. It's true that Tolkien used languages he invented, but he did so with the scholarly knowledge and linguistic background of a man who spoke and could read something like 12 of them. And most of the "made up words" in [I]The Lord of the Rings[/I] are actually words that are related to English in the same way that one of Tolkien's made-up languages is related to the common speech the book was supposedly [I]translated from[/I]. The proper (elvish-derived) names of Middle-Earth are the only situation where we witness the actual versions of the professor's made-up languages. Notice, it's "Mirkwood" not "Filnafel forest" (or some other B.S.), and they're the "Misty Mountains," not the "Mortelnath range." I could also point to Rivendell, Hoarwell, Silverlode, Mount Doom, and so forth. In a similar vein, "Hobbit" may be a made-up English word, but it's a natural linguistic descendent from the Anglo-Saxon combination "holbytla" which means "hole-builder," so as to represent the distinction between the word the Hobbits used for themselves and the word the Rohirrim used (both supposedly in the invented language of Westron). And so forth. There's plenty of gobbledygook in fantasy fiction, but unlike most authors, Tolkien wrote a dictionary and grammar rules for his made-up languages, and he stuck to them. Not only that, but he then decided to translate many of the made-up words into their equivalents of languages related to English, so that what was supposed to sound familiar sounds appropriately familiar, and what was supposed to sound alien sounds appropriately alien. As I said, the Elvish words were left "untranslated" and are therefore rendered "as-is," rather than being switched into their equivalents in Latin and Greek (Elvish being the closest thing there is to a "Westron Latin"). Thus, the book is presented to us in such a way that what should be accessible to readers is accessible, and what should be remote remains remote. You may not appreciate all the work Tolkien went through in order to accomplish this, but that hardly means it qualifies as "made-up gobbledygook." Sorry, but I couldn't let that one slide by. [/QUOTE]
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