Rohirric, Westron & Co. (was Re: Sindarin Stress?)

Andreas Johansson <and_yo@...> wrote:

> Too bad - it's /'faNgorn/ and /'orTaNk/.
A matter of taste.  I have no problem with the stress on the first
syllable.

> >Similarly, "Rohan" would sound cooler IMHO if it were /rO"han/ rather
> >than /"rohan/, though the language of the Rohirrim probably has its own
> >untold stressing rules.
>
> Only, "Rohan" isn't Rohirric. It's a Common Speech version of Sindarin
> _Rochann_ /'roxan(:)/. Rohirric (in LotR) is Old English, so the
> stress-rules shouldn't be impossible to find.
Rohirric is NOT Old English, it is *rendered* as Old English the same
way as Westron is rendered as Modern English.  But Westron is a language
altogether different from English, and Rohirric is related to that.
Tolkien did that to give his readers a feeling of the sense of
familiarity
which the hobbits had with Rohirric as a language that was visibly
related to their own languge (as opposed to Sindarin, which was
as strange in their ears as in ours).  He did the same with the other
Northern Mannish languages.  For example, there never was a King
Vidugavia of Rhovanion.  His real name was a name in yet another
language related to Westron and Rohirric, which Tolkien translated
into Gothic as "Vidugavia".

If one looks at the Ardalambion (http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/)
pages on Westron and its ancestor Adunaic, one quickly sees how
little these languages have in common with English.  Adunaic
(of which is more known than about Westron) looks pretty much like
an Afro-Asiatic language.  Quenya and Sindarin are more similar to
English than Westron and Rohirric are, it seems!

Jörg.