In swedish there are traditional ways of marking "rustic" or "rough"
speech in literature. Much of the time this simply entails
indicating, while inserting apostrophes contractions, clippings and
cliticalizations that occur in anyone's (from informal educated speech
"downwards") speech. In some cases these "literary nonstandard
markers" go back to what used to exist in rural and/or working class
speech -- eg the rural stereotypes' enclitic object pronouns are quite
obsolete in speech of younger people everywhere! Many of the forms
that late 19.cent./early 20.cent. authors used as "substandard
markers" now belong to the standard for informal prose, in each case
dropping the apostrophes those authors found necessary. On the flop
side modern authors' attempts at "casualness" usually means
Stockholmisms that feel anything but natural to people from other
places...
I guess Tolkien was playing similar games with his Trolls and Orcs.
IMHO the filmmakers owt to use modern sound editing technology to make
the Orcs' voices sound grizzly and hoarse, but accentless apart from
the stylistical register the bad guys always speak in films.
BTW: I hope they aren't making the Orcs green! Neither of course
should they be black the way Black people are. IMNSHO ashen grey
would probly be most suitable -- those who know Latin know what I
mean: ateri, non nigri.) I'm not going to see the film in any case, i
think (unless Andrew is visible in it!:)
/BP
---"Raymond A. Brown" <raybrown@...> wrote:
>
> At 10:58 am -0500 25/2/99, Brian Betty wrote:
> >On 2-24-99, Andrew Smith wrote: "It still sounds more like troll to
me;
> >"'Ere, 'oo are yoo?" as in the Hobbit."
> >
> >On 2-24-99, you wrote: "Trolls in "The Hobbit" - a very different
matter.
> >Until the finsal chapters, "The Hobbit" belongs to a rather
different genre
> >than TLOTR, IMHO."
> >
> >Hmm. But let's be fair: the Trolls long lost their ability to speak
the
> >Black Speech or its descendants; they quickly adopted the local
dialect. It
> >was my understanding that the hobbit trolls were talking in the local
> >speechpattern, which was for reasons of 'colour' chosen to sound like
> >non-BBC English. So that weren't the Black Speech, it were the
local colour
> >(of Bree, wasn't it? I admit I have forgotten!).
>
> Possibly. Yes, the Trolls appear in Chapter II of 'The Hobbit' and
they
> speek neither 'BBC English' nor "the Queen's English" :) But there is
> nothing there to make it Cockney rather than any of the many other
> 'sub-standard' (NOT my term) dialects of England.
>
> >
> >I think those are the only trolls which speak in any of the books -
we
> >never hear a conversation with another, do we? I know we have orks,
great
> >orks, and other nasties, but so far as I can tell no other trolls
speak ...
>
> I don't recall any others either.
>
> And re-reading Chapter II I find it wasn't wrong about the early
part of
> "The Hobbit" - it's a children's story. The language & tone are very
> different from the later TLOR; but I do admit that the tone & language
> change quite noticeably after Bilbo reaches Rivendell and before the
end we
> are not far off from TLOR.
>
> Certainly, the Trolls do _not_ speak the Black Speech and nothing
whatever
> IMHO can be inferred from Chapter II of "The Hobbit" about the Black
Speech
> or the way orcs spoke Westron (the Common Tongue). Indeed, I think
we are
> very much agreed on this.
>
> Ray.
>
>
>
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