Tolkien & front rounded vowels (was: RE: [CONLANG] Fave Conlangs WAS: Silindion
From: | And Rosta <a.rosta@...> |
Date: | Wednesday, March 27, 2002, 3:21 |
Elliott Lash:
> Christian Thalmann <cinga@...> writes:
> <SNIP>
>
> > > Neither does he seem to've liked /G/, which swiftly disappears
> > > everytime it turns up in the Elvish languages, but persists in Black
> > > Speech.
> >
> > This, on the other hand, is a clear case.
> >
> > Also, I do think he disliked /2/, since it would have occurred in
> > Sindarin's umlauting system, but got merged into /y/ and /e/.
>
> Or, he was just doing with Sindarin exactly what Old English did:
>
> fo:t "foot" > fo:t > fo:t > fo:t > fo:t > fUt
> fo:tiz "feet" > fo:ti > f2:ti > f2:t > fe:t > fi:t
I understtod Christian's point to be that Sindarin did what OE did
(as surely it did do) because Tolkien disliked [2].
It's striking too how Quenya has the consonants of Finnish but
the vowels of Latin, not Finnish. So I guess Christian is correct.
--And.
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