Re: May you all...

Dear Christophe,
I don't have Ardalambion, so there you have an advantage! Yes, this was one
of the earliest sounds JRRT was drawn to for his languages, wasn't it?
However, in the context of "phonetic fitness" which was always very
important to him, we can surely trace a basic lin- form which could have
easily developed into both "sing" and "swift" (Q.linta). He makes no secret
of his admiration for Finnish - and the word for "bird" in F. is lintu. (In
fact, one of his early Quenya-like poems contains the line ...Ai lintulinda
lasselanta... where lintulinda can easily be seen as meaning "birdsong").
Birds, after all, sing... and they are light, swift, etc., so it can be
easily seen how he decided (maybe) the lin- stem could diverge into lind-
and lint-.

> No, those come from the root LIND- (he he, I'm currently reading
> Ardalambion :)) ) which seems to have the general meaning "tune". It's a
> different root from LINT-, which means "swift, quick".
{discussion of colour terms}...
While I was at Uni, I wrote a mini-thesis on Indo-European colour terms.
It's fairly relevant to this general topic (honest!), so when I find it,
I'll do an HTML version.
> He he, French "blanc" nearly fits the paradigm :)) . Strangely enough, I
don't
> feel I have any sound symbolism in my conlangs. >
> Christophe.
>
> http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr
>
> Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.
>

Replies