Talk:Sound and language in Middle-earth

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Sound and language in Middle-earth/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Artem.G (talk · contribs) 14:57, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Hi Chiswick Chap! I'll be reviewing this article, expect comments in the next few days. Artem.G (talk) 14:57, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Many thanks, I'll respond promptly. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:15, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Article is really nice, I never thought about this aspect of LotR despite the fact that Tolkien was a philologist.

Thank you.

First comments:

• "As well as writing high fantasy, J. R. R. Tolkien was a professional philologist, a scholar of... " - maybe "As well as being an author of high fantasy, Tolkien was ..."? Seems that a noun is more suitable here.
  • It's the same, but wordier.
• "He was especially familiar with Old English" - why not "He was an expert in Old English"? He was a known philologist, so "expert" should be right.
  • Done.
• "He remarked to the poet and The New York Times book reviewer Harvey Breit that "I am a philologist and all my work is philological" - is this quote from "Carpenter 1981, letter 165 to Houghton Mifflin, 30 June 1955"?
  • Cited to the New York Times.
• Caption "Untranslated, but still appreciated" - is it a quote? If so, it probably should be in quotation marks.
  • No, it's a paraphrase.
• "the Sindarin poem A Elbereth Gilthoniel" - maybe "A Elbereth Gilthoniel, a poem written in Sindarin, Elfish language invented by Tolkien" or smth like this?
  • Good idea, done that.
• "where Hobbits and Men lived together" - link Man (Middle-earth)
  • Linked.
• ""a style that we should perhaps vaguely feel to be 'Celtic'""- link Celtic languages?
  • Linked.
• "More recently, sound symbolism has been demonstrated to be widespread in natural language.[10][11][12] The bouba/kiki effect, for example, describes the cross-cultural association of sounds like "bouba" with roundness and "kiki" with sharpness.[13][14]" - I can see how it is related, though it seems a liitle bit OR as the quotes didn't show bouba/kiki are somehow related to Tolkien/Middle-earth. (I don't say it should be deleted though, but maybe some Tolkien scholar wrote about this?)
  • This is probably not a reliable source [1], but this can be better [2]
  • I was going to say about your first comment on this that the existing article text is just describing the field; no synthesis is possible, not least because the events are after Tolkien's death. On your sources, the second one is a scholarly paper: while it goes deeper into the technical effects, it comes no closer to Middle-earth as such, so I'm not sure we can use it in this article.
    • I mostly agree with you, though this quote can be used "Other researchers have discussed instances of sound symbolism in the naming of characters in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. For instance, Smith (2006) notes how well the sound of the name Tom Bombadil fits its “jolly, rumbustious owner” (p. 5). Given associations between round-sounding names and traits such as easygoing and friendly (Sidhu & Pexman, 2015), one might speculate that this appropriateness stems from the sonorants and voiced stops in the name."
      • Well on the jolly and rumbustious, you're certainly right, I've added tthat bit of Smith 2006 to the article now. On the speculation, we'd best not go there, obviously, however much we like the explanation.

• Maybe Chapter X from The Two Towers: The Voice of Saruman can be added?

The window closed. They waited. Suddenly another voice spoke, low and melodious, its very sound an enchantment. Those who listened unwarily to that voice could seldom report the words that they heard; and if they did, they wondered, for little power remained in them. Mostly they remembered only that it was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire awoke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves. When others spoke they seemed harsh and uncouth by contrast; and if they gainsaid the voice, anger was kindled in the hearts of those under the spell. For some the spell lasted only while the voice spoke to them, and when it spoke to another they smiled, as men do who see through a juggler’s trick while others gape at it. For many the sound of the voice alone was enough to hold them enthralled; but for those whom it conquered the spell endured when they were far away, and ever they heard that soft voice whispering and urging them. But none were unmoved; none rejected its pleas and its commands without an effort of mind and will, so long as its master had control of it.

• • Perhaps, but that'd be an editorial choice without a scholarly comment on it. Further, it's about Saruman's power through his voice, rather than the sound of specific words.
    • About this chapter: I found at least this one publication, f.e. "As Shippey asserts, Saruman uses the most modern-sounding language...", so it seems that it's not only about power of his voice, but also his 'modern-sounding language'.
      • Yes, I've read Shippey on this. The "modern-sounding language" is in his view about how political (aka, modern, smooth, deceitful, full of empty but fine-sounding words, like quite a few politicians I can think of) Saruman is, unlike all other Middle-earth characters. That is a mile away from the sort of language that Tolkien actually approved of, which enthrals by its sheer beauty and truth, its mystic equivalence to the thing denoted, or anything of that sort.
        • Ok, I agree, seems to be the case not really related to 'sound' discussed here.

• Just a suggestion: I looked through some publications and some seems to be about the sound and language and Tolkien's views on it, f.e. this thesis, pages 15-16 [3], discusses Tolkien's views on it from Monsters and the Critics and A Secret Vice; this Voice and the Essential Self in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Legendarium is also an interesting read; page 19 of this also seems relevant.

• • Lindsay Farrugia 2014 is a Master's thesis, generally not considered a reliable source, a pity as she's interesting and relevant. We could certainly mention the "pleasure in articulate sound, and in the symbolic use of it, independent of communication though constantly in fact entangled with it" from Monsters and the Critics (p. 208). Tolkien's mention of "fitting of notion to oral symbol" when creating artificial languages, indeed that for him "the contemplation of the relation between sound and notion which is the main source of pleasure", and that he is in his own words "personally more interested perhaps in word-form in itself, and in word-form in relation to meaning (so-called phonetic fitness) than in any other department" in A Secret Vice (pp. 206, 211) is also useful; I've added it.
  • Hannah Dziezanowski 2021 is again a Master's thesis. She too is interesting but I'm not sure we can use anything from the piece (maybe you have a specific suggestion there?).
  • Svetlana Popova 2021 goes over the same ground as the article, and she cites Susan Robbins 2013 who interestingly echoes Shippey's analysis cited in the article. I'll cite her too, for good luck.
    • Agree, thesis are not the best source.

Would review the 'Analysis' part a bit later. Artem.G (talk) 08:10, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

• Many thanks! Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:24, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Final comments:

• "When the Dwarf Gimli sings of the Dwarf-King Durin," - maybe link to Dwarf (Middle-earth) and Gimli (Middle-earth)
  • Done.

• "Phonetic fitness of Tolkien's constructed languages" is good, but maybe comparison to original languages (I mean those that Tolkien cited as sources) can be added? In the same article by Podhorodecka there is this (page 104):

"Tolkien described it as “the archaic language of lore meant to be a kind of ‘Elven-latin’, (…) composed on a Latin basis with two other (main) ingredients that happen to give me ‘phonaesthetic’ pleasure: Finnish and Greek. It is however less consonantal than any of the three” (Letters: 176)"

• Added (some of it). Our focus here is not on the construction of the languages (that's for the articles on the languages themselves) but on what Tolkien intended for their sound.

Sindarin, on the other hand, borrows from Welsh noun plurals based on vowel mutations and its characteristic phonology with frequent nasals and voiced fricatives. While Quenya is a language of lore and ritual, Sindarin is the living Elvish vernacular, the lingua franca of Middle-earth. It was derived from an origin common to it and Quenya, but the changes have been deliberately devised, in Tolkien’s own words, “to give it a linguistic character very like (though not identical with) British-Welsh: because that character is one I find, in some linguistic moods, very attractive; and because it seems to fit the rather ‘Celtic’ type of legends and stories told of its speakers”. (1997:197).

• Added (some of it).

• "She analyses them in terms of Ivan Fonágy's theory of symbolic vocal gestures that convey emotions." - I think I don't understand it, the paper tells about this in a greter length "A “linguistic heresy” similar to Tolkien’s was propagated by Ivan Fonágy, a Hungarian linguist, who suggested that speech acts result from double encoding procedure. They consist of two levels: a primary speech act based on an arbitrary linguistic code and a secondary speech act founded on the universal paralinguistic code and conveying attitudinal message, whose content is subconscious and preconceptual (Fonágy 1999:3). "
  • Well I'm not sure I understand that either, though it may mean no more than Tolkien's own remark that I quote further up the article, that language is firstly about communication and secondly about the other things, pleasure and symbolic use. Maybe we wait for a linguist to cover that properly, if it indeed adds anything.
    • ok, so be it, though this Fonágy's theory is a bit cryptic.

• I also suggest to provide here samples of all three languages discussed (again, as in the paper, page 107), that's highly illustrative.
  • I actually think that's wandering off-topic for this article; it would also be getting close to copying the structure of the paper so we'd need to be very careful there.
    • Ok, I agree with your reasoning, though I still think that it can be helpful to see actual examples of discussed languages.

• All images are ok, old or CC.
  • Noted.
• No copyvio detected.
  • Noted.
• All sources are fine, most to known Tolkien scholars. Everything is cited.
  • Indeed.

That's all, I think that this article is really good. Once the comments above are addressed, I'll promote it to GA. Thanks for a nice read! Artem.G (talk) 16:48, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

• Thank you very much for the review. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:20, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
  • All comments addressed, article history is stable. Congrats on one more GA! Artem.G (talk) 18:00, 3 June 2022 (UTC)