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- From: blyon@wbst845e.xerox.com (Bruce Lyon)
- Newsgroups: alt.fan.tolkien
- Subject: Dwarves & Jews, Language origins
- Keywords: Dwarves, Jews, Languages
- Message-ID: <1993Jan21.225740.18982@spectrum.xerox.com>
- Date: 21 Jan 93 22:57:40 GMT
- Sender: news@spectrum.xerox.com
- Reply-To: blyon@wbst845e.xerox.com
- Organization: Xerox Corporation
- Lines: 29
-
-
-
- In "The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien" there are a
- couple of refernces to this isssue.
-
- In letter 176, Tolkien says:
-
- I do think of the 'Dwarves' like Jews: at once
- native and alien in their habitations, speaking the languages
- of their country, but with an accent due to thier own private tongue...
-
- In letter 297, discussing the word 'Moria' he says:
-
- As for the land of 'Moriah,' (note stress): that has
- no connexion (even 'externally') whatsoever. Internally there
- is no conceivable connexion between the mining of the Dwarves,
- and the story of Abraham. My mind does not work that way; and
- (in my view) you are led astray by a purely fortuitous similarity,
- more obvious in spelling than speech, which cannot be justified
- from the real intended significance of my story.
-
- In this same letter, Tolkien denies that various words
- in his invented languages are related to words in real ones. The
- only deliberate exception is Earendil, which is chosen to echo a
- name found in Anglo-Saxon and Eddic sources (see 'Aurvandil,' a
- minor character in the story of Thor's duel with Hrungnir, and also
- the Anglo-Saxon poem "Crist" (the most important source)).
-
- Bruce Lyon
-