BY MARTINA JURICKOVA

1. Tolkien’s linguistic inspiration

“I think a primary ‘fact’ about my work [is], that it is all of a piece, and fundamentally linguistic in inspiration.”

These are words J.R.R. Tolkien addressed in one of his letters (2006, p. 219) to his American publisher. It is only natural that he listed linguistics as one of his two major story-telling prompts, along with his faith, because these were a part of his life from childhood and essential features of his personality—so essential that they must have become apparent before long to anyone who engaged with him.

As Shippey (2018) notes, if Tolkien was to describe himself in a single term, it would be “a philologist,” or extendedly, yet more precisely, “a comparative philologist.” Tolkien was always keen on languages and fascinated by their structure and development. Indeed, his earliest memory of an attempt at writing a story was linked to a linguistic remark made by his mother, that one cannot say “a green great dragon,” but “a great green dragon.” This observation was so impactful that for a long time it suppressed all Tolkien’s aspiration for story-making and incited his interest in language-making (Tolkien, 2006, p. 214). At school, he studied Latin and Greek, later discovering also the beauty of Welsh, Finnish, Icelandic, Gothic, and Old English. It was only thanks to a perceptive teacher, who recognized Tolkien’s aptitude for languages and advised him to switch his major from Classics to English, that he was able to fully devote to his love and develop his scholarly potential. Also, as a child, he and his cousins made up a number of their own secret childish languages, but unlike other children, Tolkien never grew up from this habit. On the contrary, he polished it and developed it more the older he grew.

Using his knowledge of real-world languages—their similarities, relations, etymology, and use—and the process of reconstructing proto- and asterisk-languages, he created two new ones (Sindarin and Quenya) with a complex grammar and an elaborate explanation of their differences based on their fictional historical development, and a couple of others that were not so extensively worked out. And since he believed that languages, to stay alive, required a suitable habitation and a history, it was followed by a need to create people to speak them and a world for them to be spoken in. He wished to create a place in which a common greeting would be elen síla lúmenn’ omentielvo (Tolkien, 2006, p. 265). Thus Middle-earth was born.

Often the inspiration of his stories was a name—either some obscure ancient word (like Eärendil) or some that just popped into his mind out of the blue (like hobbit). Building on their etymology and semantics, he invented tales to explain how the people acquired their names. But once his tales progressed into something more than just descriptive accounts of events, he employed his knowledge of dialectology to add depth and credibility. He used dialectical and archaic variations of English to mark racial and hierarchical belonging of the characters as well as their unique personality.

In his sub-creation, Tolkien even went so far (his harshest critics may say that he got so entangled in his own fancies) as to regard himself just as a translator of a work that was supposedly originally written in one of his invented languages, Westron. This certainly is an aspect of his work in which his attempt to make fantasy realistic got overdone to such an extent that at times he seemed to have started to confuse fantasy with reality. In Appendix F of The Lord of the Rings, he provided a fabled account of the translation process: that the (hi)story was first written down by Frodo in the lingua franca of Middle-earth in the famous Red Book of Westmarch, of which Tolkien’s is a translation, in which he rendered Westron into current English, representing the racial and individual variations with regional and archaic variations of English.

It is especially the use of archaic words and the not-so-rigidly-subject-verb-object-dominated grammar of Old English that has proven to be a major deterrent for many potential readers, as some comment threads on various fandom pages sometimes show. However, that is not only a problem of the modern era and young generation or not so keen readers, embodied by the film fans who discovered Tolkien first through the visual media and would now like to explore the vastness of his fantastical world in writing but who have troubles following what he has to say due to the impact of modern (not-only-Internet) English with its tendency to simplify. As one Tolkien scholar, whose name (or the name of the work where I came across his opinion) I do not recall now, remarked, this problem has been there since the first publication of The Lord of the Rings. It is because people are no longer used to, nor exposed enough to, the kind of grammar that was common in the era (Medieval and earlier) that inspired Tolkien’s story setting. For those the most troublesome chapter in the whole novel happens to be the second chapter of the second book, The Council of Elrond, in which, on the span of 32 pages, we get to hear the speeches of 21 characters (or 22 if we count the Ring’s inscription as Sauron’s words) of varied ancientness and nobility reflected in the manner and archaism of their talk. Oddly enough, advanced non-native English speakers whose native tongue has freer word order rules, like Slovak, may eventually have less trouble reading it than native English speakers because they do not find the archaic word order unusual but rather similar to their mother tongue. At least, such was my personal experience.

In fact, until it was brought to my attention by Appendix F, I had not been aware of these Tolkien’s linguistic plays upon my first reading of The Lord of the Rings in English, maybe with the exception of his frequent use of the archaic verb forms and pronouns containing the -th element, such as thy, thee, hath, etc. But I only got to read the appendices after I finished the main story (naturally!). So upon my next reading, I paid closer attention to this aspect of his writing and it fascinated me how even the subtle differences in the manner of speaking can complement the character building and their racial and social identity. Therefore, I decided to explore it in this paper. In the following pages, I will provide an overview of the linguistic peculiarities typical for the various races or social ranks in Middle-earth. Further, I will explain how these linguistic features help to create some of the characters’ unique personalities and what effects they have on the character’s perception by other characters and the readers. I will base my analysis mainly on Tolkien’s own elaborate explanations of the nature and use of different Middle-earth languages as provided in the abovementioned Appendix F and in his letters and the research of Tom Shippey—a philologist who held the Chair of English Language and Medieval Literature at Leeds University, being thus one of Tolkien’s later successors in this place—published in two books, J.R.R. Tolkien, Author of the Century (2000) and The Road to Middle-earth (2003). Besides that, I will use some other minor works that are listed in the resources at the end of this paper.

2. Races of Middle-earth

2.1 Men

2.1.1. Westron

Since the race of Men represents humans as we are in reality, one would expect that they would be the most linguistically relatable characters. But that is only partially true. In the book, we find three main “Mannish” languages: Westron, Adûnaic, and Rohhiric. 

The fictional history says that the Fathers of Men, the first three tribes to ally with Elves in the First Age, spoke the same language but with dialectical differences. From this, each of the three later developed. Adûnaic developed as the language of the nobility, descendants of the house of Hador, whose faithfulness in the war with Morgoth was rewarded by being given the island Númenor to dwell in. This was much influenced by Elvish, thus it is more beautiful and polished while the language of the lesser people who remained on the mainland declined.

Later, the common language of all Middle-earth peoples became Westron, the language of the western lands. In comparison with the other two, it is relatively recent. It originated as a Creole language in the Second Age in Númenorian coastal colonies by mixing with local languages and was hence used as the main communication medium between all the races and tribes with whom the Númenoreans had any business. So by the end of the Third Age, Westron had acquired pretty much the same position as English in the real world, and this is the reasoning behind why Tolkien equated it with modern English. 

On the other hand, since Adûnaic became associated with the moral downfall of Númenorean kings and their turn to evil, the faithful survivors of the island’s destruction abandoned it and adopted an ennobled form of Westron. This has been since spoken in their new kingdoms of Gondor and Arnor. In English, the nobility of the language used there is marked by the use of inverted sentence constructions, for example: Yet a Halfling still (Tolkien, 2011b, p. 755) and “bookish,” obsoleting words, such as verily, kine, and loth, as Shippey (2000, p. 72) observes. This language is spoken by Denethor and his sons and overall is quite formal and hints at their feeling of supremacy and disdain for other nations. Though this may be rather the effect of individuals’ opinions—Denethor and Boromir’s—than a characteristic feature of their race, since the younger son Faramir is more open-minded and friendly and his speech not so uptight. Another reason why the speech of the other two feels like this can issue from their position of the country’s actual and future leaders, on account of which a certain level of formality is expected or even demanded. This is complemented by the fact that they are both warriors in heart concerned with battle art, so tend to use short words, speak briefly, on point, and authoritatively, while Faramir is a pacifist preferring studying old lore to fighting.

2.1.2 Rohirric

Rohirric, spoken in Rohan, is a language which is closest to the Mannish proto-language. It developed from a common root as Adûnaic and almost has not changed throughout the centuries. So Tolkien equated it to Old English, more specifically to Mercian, a dialect from the Midlands where Tolkien’s ancestors came from. Rohirric uses a lot of Mercian and Anglo-Saxon word elements on a daily basis in personal and place names, mostly such as are related to horse-keeping, for example, emnet or éored. Since the Rohirrim are modelled after Anglo-Saxons, Tolkien made them use mostly words of Anglo-Saxon origin. Because of this, it feels more ancient than Westron, but in comparison with the language of Gondor, it is more rustic.

A curiosity is that neither of the Mannish languages is sampled in their actual form in any of Tolkien’s three major Middle-earth novels. They only appear rendered into variations of English. Appendix F just lists about a dozen personal names in Westron in a manifestation of the translation process behind them. But it does not record any longer speech chunks. All knowledge there is about these languages was obtained via the research of some philologists on Tolkien’s yet unpublished materials.

2.1.3. Drúadan

Nor do we encounter any of the minor Mannish languages spoken by the sub-races of Men, though we do get to meet a representative of one of them. Ghân-buri-Ghân of the Drúedain, or in other words Wood Woses. The race itself was invented as an explanation for an obscure Old English word wuduwasa. They are wild people from the woods who keep themselves hidden from the rest of the civilization. Only their leader can speak a little Westron. But his voice is described as deep and guttural (Tolkien, 2011b, p. 832) which, together with his physical appearance (stone-like, gnarled, with mossy hair), emphasizes his savageness and creates the impression that this race are not Men at all, but some strange semi-link between human and beasts. They are not even animal-like, but an element of nature itself—rock and earth, as if born of the dust of the ground, statues enlivened. Partially, they resemble trolls, but they are way more intelligent.

Ghân’s speech is slow, halting, and mingled with uncouth words, indicating his lower language-learning capability. For that reason, other human sub-races think them inferior. But what I find strange is that despite obvious problems with vocabulary and syntax—e.g. Ghân does not always pronounce the sentence subject (we fight not. Hunt only. Kill gorgûn in woods)—his knowledge of English tenses is unexpectedly good. I doubt that a “primitive” nation like them would be able to grasp the full range of English tenses, since a lot of more-developed nations do not recognize that many tenses. Tolkien seems to have been indecisive on this matter, because Ghân’s tenses knowledge is inconsistent. While at first, he seems to have no knowledge of past simple or present perfect tense: “Wild Men live here before Stone-houses; before Tall Men come up out of Water,” a few lines later he uses them perfectly well: “Many paths were made when Stonehouse-folk were stronger” (ibid.).

As for their own language, only four words are known. Besides the elements making up Ghân’s name, it is the name of their race, drughu, and their name for orcs, gorgûn. That is too little to make any conclusion about the language. Tolkien did not develop this language any further, only in The Unfinished Tales (Tolkien, 1998, p. 487) he stated that it was wholly alien to all Westron-based languages or its ancestor.

2.2 Hobbits

2.2.1 Hobbits

Hobbits never had any language of their own, they always adopted the language of the people inhabiting the area they lived in. Originally, they spoke the same language as the ancestors of the Rohirrim and still retain some of the words, mainly as name elements. Rendered in English, these are of Old English origin, such as mathom, smial or their month names. When they moved west, they started speaking Westron, rendered in modern English. 

Their manner of speech is the most contemporary since Tolkien designed the hobbits as an embodiment of Englishness, particularly the ordinary Englishmen of the Victorian era, though idealised and slightly caricatured. Because of that, they are the race with which the reader identifies the best. Both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are told from their perspective, so they serve as mediators between the modern and the ancient world. According to Shippey (2003, p. 85), the best example of the ancient/modern world juxtaposition is the exchange between Bilbo and Bard the Bowman.

Hobbits are rustic people and so is their language. The language of the hobbits of lesser social rank is very colloquial, as exemplified by Gaffer Gamgee and Sam and their use of words such as ain’t or nowt. On the other hand, the well-to-do and letters-educated hobbits, such as Bilbo and Frodo, tend to use a more dignified language and imitate the speaking style of those they talk to. But a general characteristic feature of hobbit talk is formal politeness (which can sometimes acquire ironical meaning, like in the scene when Bilbo meets Gandalf for the first time in The Hobbit), joviality, and cheerfulness. They tend to turn even grave situations into jokes, like Merry and Pippin when captured by the orcs, and they always have some proverb or a piece of folk wisdom at hand. And while this is also true of Sam, he has got also another distinctive speech figure—giving himself shaming names such as ninnyhammers and numbskulls, which to a modern reader may sound fancy and add to his humorousness.

2.2.2 Gollum

A special, and a noteworthy, case of speech manner is Gollum’s. His speech is markedly distinct from any other character. By nature, he is a hobbit, but the age-long influence of the Ring disrupted his self-perception, which is reflected in his use of the pronoun we to refer to his own person instead of I. He identifies himself as a unity with the Ring, hence the plural. This is also an indication of the prevalence of his evil side. In The Hobbit, he never addresses himself with the singular pronoun. In The Lord of the Rings, this changes a little after he promises loyalty to Frodo. Frodo’s mercy and kindness start to soften his heart and recall his old, better self. This is reflected in his use of the singular pronoun I, which indicates the prevalence of his good side.

Besides that, other characteristic features of Gollum’s speech are making gurgling and hissing sounds and incorrect formation of plural nouns and present tense. He repeatedly uses the interjection gollum—hence the name—which reminds one of a vomiting sound and makes him all the more disgusting and repulsive. His excessive hissing is, in writing represented, by doubling or tripling the letter S in most words, for example: “We musstn’t rissk our neck, musst we, precious? No, precious – gollum!” (Tolkien, 2011b, p. 613).

The improper plural endings, such as: hobbitses, orcses, grasses, mices, wormses, and the confusion in the use of the third person present tense -s ending only seem to serve the purpose of expanding this hissing effect. As for the usage of present tense -s ending, Gollum seems to use it randomly. Sometimes he uses it with plural subjects, sometimes with singular, and sometimes he uses the correct forms. One time he says “We hates them,” while a few lines later he uses the correct “We hate it.”  And again: “They jumps on us.” His manner of speech reminds one of a snake, and considering the influence of Tolkien’s Catholicism, it might be rooted in the Genesis story, when the devil in the form of a serpent successfully tempted Eve to disobey God’s law. The snake-like sound imagery of Gollum’s speech can thus be viewed as yet another sign of his evil. 

2.3 Tom Bombadil

Like Gollum, Tom is a character with an unequivocally distinct manner of speech, only he stands on the opposite side of the morality spectrum. Tom has his own category because he does not belong to any race. He is one of a kind, an enigma Tolkien preferred to leave unresolved (partially because he himself was unsure about where in his legendarium he should belong). 

Personally, I think he might be a Maia, the third highest spiritual/angelic being after Eru the creator-god and the Valar. There are several signs that suggest so, his manner of speech being one of them. First of all, he is said to be the oldest being in Middle-earth, and Valar and Maiar were the first to inhabit it. Second, he is an absolute master of everything, even nature, in the piece of the world that he claimed for his, the Old Forrest and Barrow Downs, in which he resembles another known Maia, Melian of Doriath. Like Tom, she only kept to her little hidden kingdom where she had immense magical power, and she did not really care about the happenings outside her country. When this was destroyed, she did not seek to help the rest of the world in their fight against evil, but returned to the paradisal Valinor where she came from. Third, he is said to be an old friend of Gandalf, also Maia, so maybe they have known each other from the time before they entered Middle-earth. Fourth, the Ring has no power over him and does not make him invisible, which suggests that Tom may have greater power than Sauron, who is Maia as well. And lastly, the sing-song manner of his speech recalls the Music of the Ainur.

How does the last point evidence his Maia nature? According to Tolkien, the Ainur (Valar and Maiar) pre-created the world in a lengthy song henceforth called the Music of Ainur, the echo of which is still heard in water. Tom sings a lot, fancy songs interwoven with many nonsensical word and interjections, such as: Hey! Come derry doll! Merry doll! Ring a ding a dillo. And when he does not sing, he almost always speaks in a metrical language and even rhymes, as if this was the easiest and most natural way of speaking. Maybe it is since the world was created in a song. The pattern of his speech is “a seven beat line with regular caesura and masculine cadence after the fourth beat concluding in a heavily stressed feminine cadence,” while his singing is based on a “trochaic hexameter […] varied by the frequent addition and deletion of unstressed syllables,” (Trautman, 1980, p. 54). His songs are full of joy and laughter, revealing his enjoyment of life. Moreover, he married the River-daughter, Goldberry, who then may also be a Maiar, one of those affiliated to the water-ruling Vala, Ulmo. The speech and song of both Tom and Goldbery have such an effect on other characters that it creates visual images of what they are singing/talking about even without them understanding the words or having any knowledge of the events they describe.

2.4 Elves

Elves are the only race whose actual language appears in the books to a greater extent than just a few words or lines. There are several poems in The Lord of the Rings written in Elvish, some of them even without immediate translation. In fact, there are two kinds of Elvish, Sindarin and Quenya, and they are the only fictional languages Tolkien fully developed, including a complex grammar and etymology. Tolkien treated them as real languages and tried to manifest in them the process of language evolution. At the beginning, all Elves spoke the same language, but then one branch of them travelled to Valinor where their language was influenced by Valarin and ennobled (this was Quenya), while the language of those who stayed in Middle-earth remained close to the original one (the Elves who stayed were called Silvan and their language Sindarin). Thus for millennia the languages of the two branches developed separately and when, then a part of the Valinor Elves named Noldor, came back to Middle-earth, they did not understand each other, so different were their languages, even though they retained some common elements. When most of the Noldor perished in wars, Sindarin became most common among the Elves, while Quenya, being the language of the ennobled, more learned former Valinor residents (thus considered a kind of Elvish aristocracy), became a bookish language of lore, learned and cherished as a valuable heirloom rather than daily communication tool, analogous to Latin after the Middle Ages.

A reader unacquainted with Elvish linguistics may, like the characters in the book, not recognize the difference because for them they are both alien. It is only the most fanatical Tolkien enthusiast who teach themselves fictional languages who can tell them apart. Or eventually, people who can speak any of the real-world languages that inspired Tolkien in creating the elvish ones. They were the languages which fascinated him from childhood as the most pleasingly sounding. Quenya was inspired by Finnish, Gothic, and Latin, and Sindarin by Welsh and Old Norse. Both have complex grammar influenced by Latin and are agglutinative. Here is an excerpt of each from different pieces of poetry:

Quenya: Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen,

Yéni únótimë ve rámar aldaron!

Yéni ve lintë yuldar avánier

mi oromardi lisse-miruvóreva

Andúnë pella, Vardo tellumar

nu luini yassen tintilar i eleni

ómaryo airetári-lírinen.

(Tolkien, 2011b, p. 377)

Sindarin: A Elbereth Gilthoniel,

silivren penna míriel

o menel aglar elenath!

Na-chaered palan-díriel

o galadhremmin ennorath,

Fanuilos, le linnathon

nef aear, sí nef aearon!

(ibid. p. 238)

Indeed, it is impossible to tell them apart unless one knows the formation rules, because both sound equally beautiful and enchanting. The only observable difference here is that Quenya uses more vowels with diaeresis. The pronunciation, as well as the etymological changes between the two Elvish languages, Tolkien explained in Appendix E of The Lord of the Rings.

Of other races, only the descendants of Númenorean royalty learned Elvish languages, that is the Dúnedain and the stewards and knights of Gondor and Arnor. So with others the Elves communicate in the Common language, Westron, rendered in English. Since Elves are immortal and already hundreds of years old, their ancientness is also reflected in the manner of their speech. They use archaic words and grammar even more so than the Gondorian stewards who spoke so probably only from the dignity of their position. Unlike them, Elves’ speech is archaic from their essence. Thus in their case, it sounds more natural than coming from Boromir or Denethor.

2.5 Dwarves

Dwarvish language is named Khuzdul, but it is kept secret. Dwarves speak it only among themselves and never even use their real Khuzdul names in public. Otherwise, they use Westron. Only a couple of Khuzdul place names and battle cries are generally known—their ancient dwelling Khazad-dûm (Moria in Elvish); the mountains above it: Barazinbar, Zirak-zigil, and Bundushathûr; the lake and river below it: Kheled-zâram and Kibil-nâla; the cries: Baruk Khazâd! Khazâd ai-mênu! The roots of the words consist of a combination of three consonants kh-z-d, b-n-d, and z-g-l, so it sounds harsh and to an unaware reader may resemble the speech of Mordor. It is also quite a “jaw-cracker,” as Sam noted (Tolkien, 2011b, p. 285). Khuzdul was inspired by Semitic languages.

As for the manner of their speech in Westron (English), a typical feature is that they are overtly polite, even more so than the Hobbits. They are fond of using such archaic greeting phrases as to your service and the service of your family even when they do not really mean it, and sometimes the formal politeness indicates the exact opposite regarding the meaning of their speech, depending on who they talk to. This is best illustrated in the scene at Elrond’s council when Glóin recounts Dáin’s meeting with the messenger of Mordor. Shippey (2000, p. 71-2) points out that Dáin, knowing how deceitful and dangerous Sauron’s servants are, does not accuse him of falsehood directly but hides it in the polite words: “I must consider this message and what it means under its fair cloak,” (Tolkien, 2011b, p. 241, my emphasis).

Curious are also the names of the races in itself, Dwarves. The standard plural of dwarf was dwarfs and also the plural of elf was often elfs. This Tolkien deemed incorrect, for he believed that if the terms had been still commonly used on a daily basis, they would have undergone the same development in plural form as loaf or knife. For that reason and also to distinguish his fictional races from those of folk-tales, he insisted on the fully-developed forms. It was not a big deal with Elves as that form had already been widely used and preferred to elfs. But he had to fight his proof-readers not to change all of his dwarves to dwarfs. In effect, the developed form has since been generally accepted by linguists, and nowadays it has almost entirely suppressed the use of the simplified form in all kinds of media.

2.6 Ents

Ents, the tree-shepherds, are completely Tolkien’s invention. They are tree-like beings whose desire to speak was originally incited by Elves, from whom they adopted many word elements, so their language seems to be a combination of their own words with Elvish under the influence of which it is almost as pretty sounding. Tolkien described it as “slow, sonorous, agglomerated, repetitive, indeed longwinded; formed of a multiplicity of vowel shades and distinctions of tone and quantity,” (Tolkien, 2011b, p. 1130) so it was impossible to learn by others, hence they did not need to keep it secret. Their talk at times resembled the squeaking of tree boughs or rustle of leaves in wind. It takes a very long time to say something in Entish because the names they give to things and concepts basically tell all their history. Grammatically, Entish words are strings of repeating compound adjectives and they have a tendency to employ this structure also when speaking other languages, like Elvish or Westron. Their speech is also full of humming and mumbling sounds, such as hoom, hm, hrum, hoo, which usually indicate either thinking or surprise. 

Pure Entish is a heavily phonaesthetic language, and its words are impossible to replicate in writing. For example, the word for orcs, burárum, is actually described as being only a sound, “a deep rumbling noise like a discord on a great organ,” (ibid.). The best example of pure Entish (or rather just an attempt to capture it) is a-lalla-lalla-rumba-kamandalind-or-burúmë, a part of their name for hill. Another word Taurelilómëa-tumbalemorna Tumbaletaurëa Lómëanor is evidently a combination of Elvish words with the literal meaning Forestmanyshadowed-deepvalleyblack Deepvalleyforested Gloomyland (Tolkien, 2011b, p. 1131). 

2.7 Orcs

The most numerous of Sauron’s slave-servants are orcs. Since they were created by torturing and perverting Elves, they do not have a language of their own, but they adopted bits of many Mannish languages with which they came into contact in the beginnings of their existence. They do not have any unified language; they use innumerable variations, or rather various deviations of the language of Men, already wholly alienated from it, so they do not understand each other among their tribes. Thus, to be able to communicate together, they use Westron, but even their knowledge of its vocabulary is limited to brutal jargons, curses, and words of abuse. It is then no surprise that they do not use correct grammar either. For example, they do not always express the subject: “Doesn’t know what’s good for him,” (Tolkien, 2011b, p. 448).

Besides the defaced Westron, Mordor orcs also use the Black Speech among themselves, a language that Sauron devised. When orcs speak Westron, they intermingle some Black Speech words into it, such as snaga or ghâsh. But the longest chunk of Black Speech is found on the Ring:

Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul,

ash nazg thrakatulûk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.

Black Speech, too, is quite a tongue twister with its overflow of voiced, so-called hard (in Slovak) consonants, similar to Khuzdul. It sounds harsh and menacing. Its inspiration is unknown, but Alexander Nemirovski, quoted in Fauskanger’s article (2013), suggested that it shares many similarities with the ancient Mesopotamian language Hurrian, as far as shape of words, agglutination, and grammar is concerned.

  1. Conclusion

Tolkien’s Middle-earth is an enchanted world in which words have great power. They can be used as incantations or incur curses. But on a different level, they, in the form of the various fictional languages and manner of speech, help to define and differentiate the unique identity of the races or individuals. The fictional languages give the stories an exotic feeling and show Tolkien’s philological skills. But the Common Speech rendered in English is no less fascinating, once the readers become aware of the intentional differences. The language spoken indicates not only the racial belonging but also the age and nobility of the characters. The longer-living and more noble races use a more polished yet archaic language and speak with greater dignity, while the shorter-lived and lesser races use a more contemporary and colloquial language.

Each nation has some typical speech features that securely distinguish it from others. Hobbits’ speech is the most modern and colloquial as they are the mediators of the story with whom the readers are supposed to identify, and so is the Common Speech, Westron rendered into English. Dwarves’ is also modern but a bit more dignified and overtly polite. The language of Rohirrim is based on Old English and is a little rustic, similar to that of Hobbits as they are historically related. The language of Gondor aristocracy is more archaic and noble, in both aspects surpassed only by the manner of speech Elves use. The wild people, Woses, use a simple language to indicate their socio-cultural “primitiveness,” and Ents use a lot of “treeish” sounds. The ugliest and least dignified of all is the speech of orcs, which is very harsh and vulgar.

This all helps to add authenticity to the story and immerse the reader in it. As a follow-up, it might be interesting to do a closer analysis of the individuals’ unique speech features. Or on a different level, one could do a syntactical analysis of the distinct racial speeches to see whether there is any further difference between them on the level of sentence structure or prevailing word classes, or do an etymological analysis to determine the vocabulary ratio according to the origin of words to complexly map the various nations’ speech manners.

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Tolkien, J.R.R.., The History of Middle-earth, [online] 2017, London: HarperCollins, 1983-1996. 5392 pp. ISBN 978-0-008-25984-6, Online available at: https://www.pdf-archive.com/2016/09/29/history-of-middle-earth-all-12-vols/

Tolkien, J.R.R., The Lord of the Rings, 2011b, London: HarperCollins, 1954. pp.  ISBN 978-0-261-10357-X

Tolkien, J.R.R., The Silmarillion, 1992, London: HarperCollins, 1992. 480 pp. ISBN 978-0-261-10273-6

Tolkien, J.R.R., The Unfinished Tales, 1998, London: HarperCollins, 1998. 624 pp. ISBN 978-0-261-10362-8

Tolkien, J.R.R., Tree and Leaf, 2001, London: HarperCollins, 2001. 176 pp. ISBN 978-0-007-10504-5

Tolkien, J.R.R.; Carpenter, H. (ed.), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 2006, London: HarperCollins, 1981. 502 pp. ISBN 978-0-261-10265-1

Tolkien’s turning point: Tolkien and the history of tongues. Video lecture. Tom Shippey, University of Oxford, September 19, 2018

Trautman, D., 1980, The function of verse in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings: master thesis, 1980, Leigh University, 85 pp.