ELVES: was: Elliott's peoples

This is getting off-topic.  I should never have brought up the secondary
question about Elves and Ears and Spellings. :) What I want to know from
those of you who use the term "Elvish" to describe your own languages or
peoples (that means you, Elliott, and you Joerg) is what you mean by this
term.  Are these a people like Tolkien's Elves?  I.e., preternaturally
beautiful, gifted, immortal, the original linguists and artists, the noble
ancestry of a world which they have left for an Undying Land, and of a
different race from that of ordinary humans?  Or do you mean something else?

If you mean something else, why have you co-opted this word, which is now so
deeply associated with Tolkieniana?
I.e., what is the popularity of this term?  Its Otherworldliness?  Its
association with Tolkien?  Magic?  Its association with High Fantasy?  (I
can relate... I was enamored of the Elves in graduate school when I was
rereading LotR).

And finally, are Elves associated, in some way, with "Celticity"?  Both
Elliott and Joerg in their public surveys write that they have taken their
inspiration for their "Elvish" from Celtic languages, as did Tolkien.

Sally Caves
scaves@frontiernet.net
Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
"My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."



----- Original Message -----
From: "Andreas Johansson" <andjo@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Monday, March 24, 2003 4:44 AM
Subject: Re: Elliott's peoples


> Quoting John Cowan <cowan@...>:
>
> > Sally Caves scripsit:
> >
> > > He even modified the spelling (i.e., not "dwarfish," not
> > > "elfish," which connote diminution and frivolity).
> >
> > For the record, I think the spelling "elvish" predates JRRT, though
> > "dwarvish" does seem to be his own (unconscious) invention.
>
> He wrote somewhere about some editors that wanted to change "elvish" and
> "dwarvish" to "elfish" and "dwarfish" that he was annoyed enough by the
latter
> change, but the first even worse since both spellings were current. I'm
under
> the impression that "elvish" is the original form, and that "elfish" is
reformed
> after the medial f>v of OE had ceased to operate.
>
>                                             Andreas
>

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