Episode 12 of The Forge of Tolkien, A TASTE FOR TONGUES, is now live on #UATV.
What flavor is English? Is it the same as Welsh? What does it mean to love many different languages, and yet to have a “native” language that is different from one’s mother tongue? Can Elves tell the difference between Man and Hobbit? Can Hobbits understand Elvish even if they don’t know the words? In this episode, Professor Rachel Fulton Brown explores Tolkien’s theorizing about language as something we are born with and yet learn; something that has flavor as well as sense, that might come in dreams as well as with our blood, and yet is at once personal and inherited. We meet Alwin Arundel Lowdham and his linguistic “ghosts.” And we learn the difference between Avallonian and Adunaic—and how to say “gods” in both.
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