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Let's Discuss Elven Linguistic Relativity! | Down the Hobbit Hole - Episode 9
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- čas přidán 17. 08. 2024
- Subscribe: / @girlnextgondor
This podcast episode was originally published on my Patreon page on 10/1/2023 and is a follow-up to my video: • Sauron and the One Rin...
This series contains extra details, discussion, and conjectures that could not be fit into published videos. If you would like access to the most recent episodes, including additional analysis not featured on CZcams, consider joining my Patreon to access these benefits! / girlnextgondor
Timestamps:
Intro - 0:00
Linguistic Determinism - 2:03
Language and Perception - 7:09
English v Elvish: amdir/estel - 13:14
'magic' and 'knowledge' - 15:29
'heart' v 'ore' - 20:14
Concluding remarks - 25:44
Link to the study on different categorizations of "blue" and effects on perceptual speed: www.pnas.org/d...)
Disclaimer: Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for fair use purposes such as criticism, commentary, parody, news, reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. All works used in this video (images, audio, etc.) belong to their respective authors and are used with permission or in accordance with the copyright holder's stated usage policy.
Thumbnail Art Credits:
"Erestor (© Fantasy Flight Games)" by Magali Villeneuve: magali-villene...
Thank you to those who have supported me on Patreon!
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#tolkien #silmarillion #lotr
My favourite Tolkien geek.
My favorite CZcams essayist on fiction.❤
Mine as well
Seconded
Oh definitely! Agreed! Real in-depth analysis here. Luv it.
Most people (fans?) just say references from books and even the wildest “fan stories” often just use the same characters (which is problematic of course, since people also might not care about “actual non-canon fan characters”).
I honestly wouldn't be too hard on Finwë for failing to realize he was setting his kids up to compete. The whole parenting thing was rather new at the time.
Now _estel_ is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see (Silmarillion, King James Translation)
Love this, haha
@@valleyscharping It's from the Letter to the Sons of Fëanor 11:1.
@@Valdagast 😂😂😂
As Tolkien was Catholic, he probably would have used the Douay-Rheims Bible.
@@LearnRunes He might have read from a Latin Bible. Have you come across his response to Vatican II's decision to let priests give the Mass in the native tongue of the congregation? According to Carpenter and at least one of Tolkien's published letters, Ronald left at the start of Mass on 2 occasions because Latin was worthier of being used. Something to do with being truer to that part of the service.
_Nature of Middle-earth_ p. 176 n.2: "CE *_khōn_ -, _khond_ - was only used of the physical heart, and that was not regarded as or supposed to be a centre of either emotion or thought. Thus when Treebeard uses the adjectives _morimaitë_ , _sincahonda_ ‘black-handed, flint-hearted’ of the Orks, these were both physical in reference - as indeed were all the other adjectives, whatever they may have implied with regard to Orkish minds and characters. _Sincahonda_ referred to their immense staying power in exertion, marching, running, or climbing, which gave rise to the jesting assertion that their hearts must have been made of some exceedingly hard substance; it did not mean pitiless."
I knew I didn't imagine it! 😆 thank you so much for the reference!
That's a better retcon than I could have imagined. Orcs in the 1937 Quenta Silmarillion are said to be "made of stone, but their hearts of hatred" (from The Flight of the Noldor, paragraph 62), from which I guess their physical heart could have been derived from literal stone, but their metaphorical heart infused with and founded on hatred. Is there any linguistic material from pre-1943/4 relating to this? I note that the material in your endnote in NoMe is from about 1968.
@GirlNextGondor The Etymologies in HoMe V has the Primitive Elvish root KHŌ-N- with the meaning "heart (physical)". This entry was one of the added ones, but Christopher doesn't date it specifically. A lot of them were put in in the early stages of writing LotR, though. I suspect this is a much older conception than the 1968-ish quote @cfhostetter gave in NoMe, but I guess he would know more, what with access to photopies of the original manuscripts and all.
I think the linguistic distinctions that Tolkien crafted likely had a lot to do with how Elves experience the world and life itself, which is awe-inspiring in the depth that he thought about language in his world building.
Elves don't die of natural causes and even if killed have the potential of being re-embodied with the same soul, so it makes sense that there are two very different forms of hope, as they are working on much larger time scales that humans.
Elves can also see into the realm of the Unseen and are bound to Arda, so it makes sense that they don't have a concept of magic, as they see the underlying mechanism associated with everything that is happening.
Human language also has some parallels based on different experience. The Inuit have more than 50 words to describe snow, as the evolution of their language was likely directly related to making those distinctions as a means of survival, whereas languages that evolved in the tropics have no word to describe snow, as it was outside of their experience and inconsequential to their survival.
I have started the book that Lexi referred to throughout this video.. It turns out that Elves' Spirit, over time, grew so much stronger than their corpus that it overtook the individual's body and an Elf - all Elves - became pure spirit. As the writing that make up "The Nature of Middle - earth" all post date LoTR's publication, I understand the above concept as an explanation for Galadriel's comment to Sam and Frodo. "We shall fade," she tells them.
Lol! The comment about Finwe and his sons' names! 😂😂😂
Regarding words for colors, some 19th century scholars made the bizarre logical leap that the lack of enough color terms in a language indicated that those people couldn't actually see those hues. British politician and Prime Minster William Gladstone pointed out that abstract color terminology was virtually absent from Homer’s work and claimed that the Greeks had no sense of color at all, having only the ability to distinguish light from dark. He believed ” … that the organ of color and its impressions were but partially developed among the Greeks of the heroic age” i.e. the Greeks were physiologically incapable of perceiving color. The German philologist Lazarus Geiger, based on the lack of a color terms in other ancient texts, claimed that European man’s color sense had developed only gradually and in fairly recent times. First people dimly realized that something was “colored,” then later people could distinguish black and red, then black and red plus yellow, then white, then green, and finally blue.
This theory was eventually debunked by anthropologists using a standardized test in different parts of the world who found that all test subjects even those whose language had a limited color vocabulary could distinguish colors every bit as well as persons from highly developed cultures, they just didn’t have names for all the colors.
It's kind of hilarious that it took them something that elaborate to debunk a theory that dumb -- like, just listen to people talk in your own language about different shades of literally any color, Herr Geiger.
Here's something else I found interesting from a 1969 study by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay (Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution) that suggests a remarkable consistency in the way different cultures assign color names. In a study of 98 languages from a variety of linguistic families, they found the following “rules” seem to apply:
1. All languages contain terms for white/light and black/dark.
2. If a language contains three terms, then it contains a term for red.
3. If a language contains four terms, then it contains a term for either green or yellow (but not both).
4. If a language contains five terms, then it contains terms for both green and yellow.
5. If a language contains six terms, then it contains a term for blue.
6. If a language contains seven terms, then it contains a term for brown.
7. If a language contains eight or more terms, then it contains a term for purple, pink, orange, gray, or some combination of these.
Firstly, this is the hight time for me to say this: Lexi, your sense of humour is amazing. You somehow found this sweet spot between seriousness and lightness, and that allows you to make fun of the subject without downplaying its complexity - and sometimes even emphasising it. Just wanted to say that it’s damn cool 😁
Secondly, this video is going to be my favourite of yours. So many things that got me thinking! I’ll have to rewatch it to catch all of my thoughts by the tail now.
Lastly, I’m a Russian, and we do have separate words for light blue and dark blue, but I never payed attention to the fact that this really contributed to my perception of the blue colour. We view them not only as different colours, but also as different concepts: for us they go with a distinct set of associations, metaphors, related mood states and atmosphere that they invoke - just like night and day. That was super interesting to think about.
Thanks a lot for this huge chunk of food for thought!
A close analog to Russian Dark Blue-Light Blue in English is Orange and Brown. Orange is light brown, and Brown is a dark Orange. Neurons wired to differentiate between Orange and Brown would be expected to give a quicker response than a language that didn't have well defined separate categories. One can think of it as bandwidth- a low bandwidth signal can differentiate between defined color categories A and B, but a higher bandwidth signal would be necessary to differentiate between 87% saturation color A and 52% saturation color A.
The thing where a language changes the words in order to contextualize the source of the speakers information is called evidentiality and it is really common in the Dravidian languages of southern India.
Some more interesting color differences is that English has pink, which is just red to most languages. We used to not have a term for orange either, which is why redheads are called redheads and not orangeheads. The celtic languages all used to (though probably don't anymore due to English and Latin influences) have only one word expressing all of green and blue, except maybe dark blue, which may have been considered it's own color. Old Norse used red to mean most warm colors, including the color of gold.
Nerdery that Tolkien himself would approve of 😅
First things first, thank you, this rules, I could have listened to three hours of it with nothing but delight!
An additional example lies in the the many names for the Elves themselves. English arguably has two, _Elf_ and _fairy,_ plus a handful of expressions ("the Fae," "the Fair Folk," etc.) that mostly amount to variations on _fairy;_ but really we have one, the first. Despite the use of the name _Faërie_ for Aman in _The Hobbit,_ I've never heard anybody say that Tolkien "wrote a history of the Fairies" or anything like that. Though he does not mention Tolkien's work, C. S. Lewis's remark in _The Discarded Image_ undoubtably expresses his view as well: "The alternative would have been to call them Fairies. But that word [is] tarnished by pantomime and bad children's books with worse illustrations". Most human languages seem to have at least one word equating to "Elf" or some analogous creature, the Irish _sidhe_ being somewhat familiar among English-speakers. (Taking the "history" at face value for a moment, it's amusing to reflect that Norse technically preserves not only a word for the species but exact translations for the terms Calaquendi and Moriquendi, namely _Ljósálfar_ and _Dökkálfar_ -- even if, by the time of the Norse, they had confused Moriquendi with Dwarves, which I'm sure both races would find immensely insulting!)
Conversely, most Elvish languages appear to have a minimum of two distinct words we would translate "Elf," one for the Elves as a race and at least one other denoting their own "in-group" as distinct from "outsiders" of some kind. The title of the essay _Quendi and Eldar_ uses the Quenya words for "Elves qua Elves" and "Elves of the Great Journey"; even though the word _Eldar_ technically refers to a subgroup, very nearly all of the Quendi we ever meet are part of that subgroup, and the word regularly does duty for the Elvish race, as in the phrase _Eldalië ar Atanatári._ (It's interesting to note that _Atan_ "Man" started out as referring to Men generally, and was only later restricted to the Houses of the Edain, a close parallel to the name of the Eldar).
We might suppose that all Elves follow basically this "Quendi and Eldar" or "race versus in-group" pattern. But, not so fast: a wild AVARIN appeared. We only have six Avarin words (maaaybe seven, if 1. Eöl is an Avar and 2. his name is given in an Avarin form: both are likely, but neither is known for certain, and anyway we can't be sure what it means). Those six words are _Cuind,_ _Hwenti,_ _Kinn-lai,_ _Kindi,_ _Penni,_ and _Windan._ All six are clan names, and all are cognate with _Quendi._ What's odd is that as far as I can tell, we have no idea whether any of the Avari used a cognate of the name _Eldar,_ even though _The Silmarillion_ strongly implies that Oromë gave them that name before the Sundering. It's not surprising that the Avari didn't refer to themselves as "the Naysayers," any more than the Nandor referred to themselves as "the Promise-Breakers" (though the Sindar did call themselves the _Eglath,_ "the Forsaken"); but it is strange that none of them held onto (some cognate of) the very poetic name "People of the Stars." Unless its association with Oromë was so strong, and his departure with the Eldar proper so resented, that they renounced the name deliberately.
The soup story was adorable and gave me a good laugh, thanks for that. Great video as always, thanks for all that you do!
There's a note in the 1568 Bishops' Bible on the Tower of Babel which says that diversity of language led to diversity in ways of thinking. Even if you think it's the other way around, that shows this idea has been around for a long time.
Bishops' Bible be like "came up with it four hundred years ago and y'all gave me no credit but that's okay, it's fine, Sapir-Whorf literally who"
The order - language leads to thinking - is from Christian theology's pov sound. "In the beginning was the Word...." It would be, in English, a great challenge to hold that, say, in the beginning was light which then lead to thought.
I have more _weltschmerz_ than _estel_ these days. But certainly no _schadenfreude._
All very useful words, only one of which I previously understood. Much obliged!
What’s interesting about magic Lotr is that lord of the rings is known as being a soft magic system but the practitioners see it is knowledge, so it must be an extremely hard system but due to the fact that we only see it through the hobbit eyes, it is soft
In universe, wouldn’t most magic systems be a hard system? I always think of that as being relative to the reader/pov character. I just can’t really think of anything where all the characters using magic have a very limited idea of how it works.
Other than like.. a wild magic Druid in DND but they’re basically just chaos machines
@@puxtbuck6731Not necessarily. You could conceivably write magic as some kind of ineffable, alien thing that some people can make work sometimes but that nobody fully understands.
@@SonofSethoitae I’m not saying it’s impossible to do it I just couldn’t really think of any
@@puxtbuck6731 Lovecraft's 'The Case of Charles Dexter Ward' would be a case. There are (IIRC) two people who use magic, and they're both dabbling at most.
I think the opposite of linguistic determination may be true. Language is determined by people's environment and what's important to them. We use a single word for "rice," and then use adjectives to specify the nature of the rice.
The Philippine language(s), however have words for cooked rice, uncooked rice, burned rice, etc, owing, I presume, to it's importance to their culture and life.
In Italian we have three distinct words for different types of blue^^ Blu, Azzuro and Celeste.
Words for colors are a fun part of linguistic research I found :)
Sapir-Whorf is a fun little conversation starter, but it's important to keep in mind, that taken to beyond just color differentiation and cardinal directions, can and has been used (consciously or unconsciously) as a tool to both exoticize and suppress different groups of people. "Look at the things their language has no grammar/vocabulary for, they must not be able to conceptualize or think like we do. That makes our language superior, and legitimizes our rule over them."
But as someone very linguistically interested myself, I really enjoyed your dive down this rabbit hole. You never disappoint when it comes to the nuance of it all. And I'm pretty sure I know which human language you were talking about with the deer example at the end ;)
Just found this channel around a week ago and it quickly became my favorite Tolkien-centric youtube channel. I've already watched every video. Very excited for the linguistics discussion in this new one!
Welcome to the "Squad." Glad you're here. 🙃
The colour naming thing in English I always find so weird is how brown is just dark orange but it feels so different. I remember as a kid messing with the colour picker in Paint and being fascinated how the colour seemed to magically change from orange to brown as I lowered the brightness.
As a kid I thought of sand and tan as being light brown.
This channel is straight 🔥
Thank you!
My favourite channel ❤❤
I grew up in the 60s.
I recall my parents confusion when I said, "Man, that's really hard!" which had a similar connotation to "fire."
8:40 same is with Italian having 2 words for blue
in italian there is also a distinction between light and dark blue: azzurro and blu
There was a similar test with the color green and English speakers vs. speakers of some language (a Polynesian language?) that has like six different words for green. It turned out speakers of that language could distinguish the six much more easily than English speakers, but of course I can't find the paper now
Oh hey it was the himba, and it was mentioned if I had just kept listening!
I remember looking at examples of six different types of green and saying 'these are literally one shade.' But I think Sapir-Whorf needs to be taken in a very shallow form. It's true that our neural circuits can be to some extent shaped by language, but that's just one of many factors. Nobody looks at purple and yellow and sees the same color, for example.
Amazing. Nothing more to say, other than your ability to explain is angelic🌟
Reminds me of Douglas Adams the best way to not be unhappy is not to have a word for it
"Here I am, brain the size of a planet." 😆
Yeonmi Park, who escaped from North Korea, said the North Korean language doesn't have a word for "love."
This is like a venn diagram for two of my biggest interests. Thank you. ❤
Well done, Elfling!
Your weekly lectures are a must listen, very enjoyable. thank you very much 😊
I was so invested in the subject matter that for a while I forgot that the video was about Tolkien
I joust found your channel, I immediately subscribed, and watched many of your videos, May God Bless you and your work young lady with deep respect from Croatia-Europe ❤❤❤
The orcs at the time of writing of the Treebeard chapter (before the discussion at Cirith Ungol put paid to the idea) were *absolutely* constructs of Melkor/Morgoth, with varying quantities of stone/slime/hatred as ingredients, as you noted. (edit: Orcs in the 1937 Quenta Silmarillion are said to be "made of stone, but their hearts of hatred" - from The Flight of the Noldor, paragraph 62, and CIrith Ungol is c1944, I believe)
I always loved the elven snippets in Tolkien's books. Thanks for another informative deep-dive!
First things first. the professor would have loved ths and almost certainly held a correspondence with you, about your ideas. It was fascinating stuff. i will just mention a coouple of subtle nuances i know about. the italian language also has two blues. Norwegian the language i speak everyday has only one word for skiing, but if it is slalom or downhill one stands on skis if it is uphill or more generally cross country one goes on skis.. thanks for this well thought out and thought provoking upload.
Thanks for the "ski lesson."😅
8:43 I think Italian does the same.
Azzurro and blu.
Great intro to these concepts. I would be overjoyed if you were willing to make a followup video discussing a whole bunch of the interesting Elvish linguistic distinctions you mention. There aren’t many (any?) other CZcamsrs who would be able to do it nearly as well.
Well I could go for a few hours of this! Thanks for another great video!
Thanks lexi
Read 1984 by Orwell. The new variant of English promoted by the Party is called Newspeak. Certain words and phrases are, by design, not present in Newspeak.
Ha, i just saw a science news last week i think about a study on an Amazonian tribe that didn't distinguish blue and green in their native tongue, but those who learned English then started differentiating blue from green all the time. More evidence for linguistics determinism. What a coincidence.
About relative positioning and compass positioning or whatchamacallit. The idea of only using compass directions might sound daunting for urban folks to adapt, but honestly you get over it very easily, in reality all you need to notice is where does the Sun shine from in the morning where you are, and it is very easy to keep track of that as you move around. Alternatively, in our modern times, you'd open up the city map once, memorize a relevant direction in your area (e.g downtown is south from my house), and same effect. Once you know this, using compass directions is trivial enough you don't need to convert to a more familiar scheme and, if you had to use compass directions regularly, this is the first thing you'd figure out.
I wouldn't be so sure. In the northern areas (like where I live) the points of sunset and sunrise may shift for a whole quarter depending on the season, so what is your midday sun point in summer becomes your sunset point in winter, and sun is a very confusing indicator of direction in this case. You can only really rely on the map unless you grow up having to memorize those shifts for some reason, so that they become your second nature.
This is an extreme example of course, but in central areas the sun also shifts a little depending on the season.
Also, I would struggle to imagine how one would indicate sides of a shelf, like in Lexi's example, if they aren't linked to the principal cardinal points: give me that book - over there, in the north northwest corner of the southwestern shelf?.. Or only principal cardinal points would be used with no specification?
@@neant2046 I'd absolutely sure as I live less than a hour walk from the Arctic Circle, and have lived way further North than this and had true polar night. That is not the point though.
I am talking in general, not even the different direction each of those languages have (just doing a "what if european languages were like that" thought experiment), so the fine details that only apply to the 5 of us who live this far north (6 if josh moved back with his ex) weren't productive, just a distraction. The point is that it is not as confusing to go from one to the other because you just need to learn one reference ponit, which you'd instantly try to do if you ever had the need to not use relative positions. How you'd learn it doesn't really matter, look outside, ask another human, look at a map, etc. there is always simple and trivial ways to do unless you're in rather exceptional circumstances.
It is a general verbal direction system, not mental gps, you don't need that level of precision you're implying. Even if you use 16 directions (i think one australian language does), context still matters so often you can use a simplifed set, and if you can't context will inform that too. Such as a book shelf. The rows are a line, wether you call that end north, north-northwest or northwest, it is pretty clear which of the two ends you're talking about
@@louisvictor3473 Interesting, I did not expect that! Nice to meet a fellow northman in the vastness of CZcams :) Do you use this system in practice though or you are theorizing? I'm curious because to me (a person who is regularly failing even at figuring out where right and left are) this idea seems challenging to the point that it becomes attractive.
@@neant2046 Not an original northman, was born in the tropics, but that was too hot for me.
I sorta use it semi-regularly, though calling it "in practice" might be a strech. Mostly it is just being aware of cardinal orientation due to some dorky interests related to them/the position of the sun. One of the dorky interests was exactly this one, and the same initial sort of curiosity as yours. Honestly I wouldn't trade as we arleady have both anyway, we just dont use one as often (anymore?), but I do appreciate being more generally consciously cognisant of my surrounding's compass directions.
@@louisvictor3473 Thanks for the answer! I think I'll challenge myself with this too, really curious to try, it will be fun if cardinal points will work better for me than body relative directions...
Nice work thanks
No problem thanks for talking the time
9:00 objective perception…. There’s a phrase I’ve genuinely never heard before but to get philosophical since linguistic determinism is a philosophy I dont know if anyone outside of specifically objectivists would say there is such a thing.
12:06 In some cases N~S could simply be around a longish landmark roughly speaking those directions.
In Klarelfdalen, at least the Northern parts, North = upstreams, South = downstreams.
Even if the river (elf meaning that!) turns east or west, it's still "south" if downstream.
Dito for roads parallel to the river.
My, oh my!!! ❤
Always enjoy your videos, heartfully so.
I am Australian and an English-only speaker however my contact with some of the Aboriginal (First Nations) languages reminds me that they have suffixes connoting northness, southness, westness, and eastness. I am unsure if they contain left/right-nesses.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" ~ Heinlein
Wonderful post. Thank you. As a writer, I once knew Latin and some koine Greek. Language changes how you think.
Not Heinlein. That's Clarke's 3rd law.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws
As Randall Garrett showed brilliantly in his "Lord D'Arcy" series, any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
You are completely correct. Tequila makes for mis-assertations on my part. Thank you.@@richardokeefe7410
I literally just watched a tom Scott video on linguistic determinism
Same; quite amusing how they posted them within days of each other!
This episode is straight 🔥🔥🔥
first i heard something mentioned like this, mind you it was a looong time ago, i read them, it was from anne rices vampire books, referring that the greek language was the vehicle to more complex thoughts, in case of philosofical discussion(again, loooong time ago!), vs egiptian. at the time i hit me as a novel, but plausible, idea -not knowing either egyptian nor greek- but understandable, and same as sometimes expressing something in spanish is much easier than english, and viceversa. thanks for vid
Re. young people and their lingo: I've been aiming to skip the midlife crises entirely and go straight into old age. People born in my year treat this behaviour as if I'm trying to leap off a cliff with them tied to me.
My first exposure to such things in language was the matter of some languages having a noticeably larger number of words for types of frozen water than others and that speakers of such languages would recognize the differences between the different types better than speakers of other languages whose were less familiar with these things. I had not heard the one about colors before but I had recently heard of the people who describe the location of things based on cardinal directions. I have a fair sense of direction but I think it would be fascinating to actually know all the time what direction I was facing.
I think if I were trying to explain to an Elf why I thought something I saw an Elf do was magic, I would tell them that it was something that is not uncommon for an Elf to be able to do but for Men would be rare, very seldom seen, and the method the Elf is using is mysterious or not apparent to Men. This is imprecise of course and quite frankly would differ among different branches of Men. A mid-2nd Age Númenorean would have a very different idea of what constitutes magic vs his distant cousins on the mainland.
The reference to woodland Elves calling something dark and sinister as being "Noldo level crap" is almost enough to make me wonder if they saw that much distinction between the forces of Morgoth and the Noldo.
P.S. What happened to the exhortation regarding the Like button?
Lexi couldn't figure out how to say "like button" in Quenyan or Sindarin, so she skipped it.🤪
Ah, "The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax" as Pullum put it in the essay of that title. "The fact is that the myth of the multiple words for snow is based on almost nothing at all. It is a kind of accidentally developed hoax perpetrated by the anthropological linguistics community on itself." English has an amazing number of words for different kinds of frozen water. Include skiers' slang terms and there are about 30. Heck, I was past 60 before I learned the word "graupel".
@@richardokeefe7410
Thanks for the new vocabulary. I had to look that one up myself.😅
Very enjoyable listen. Thank you, and looking forward to the next one.
"he noted the other's discomfort with glee" ... (4:50)
Straight fire
When you get down to it, your smartphone really works on the same basis as your eyes. It's all electromagnetism. Just different details - the phone uses "light your eyes can't see."
I'd liken palentiri to webcams more than smart phones, personally. Overall a good talk, thanks for having it.
On Fairy Story has info on the matter of Elvish dreams and human art. As I recall, in general terms, Tolkien considers human art (theater?) akin to Elvish dreams. But don't quote me on that.
Definitely have to disagree with you on one important point near the end: you definitely hadn't gone on long enough. ;) I'd love to hear your thoughts on the varying 'dream' roots and the -ndur/-ndil derivations.
Pink and red would be our English version of the 2 russian blues
Hard to imagine elven language changing much when everyone lives forever and only goes through that awkward teenage phase once.
I think as far as linguistic determinism goes, whether or not a single word defines a thing, if a combination of words does, I think that serves the same purpose.
I think insofar as being able to work through abstract concepts, language and that ability itself are certainly linked. Like, mathematics would exist without numbers, you'd still intuitively feel them and understand some math, without having numbers, but you wouldn't be able to manipulate complex numbers and understand math at any level of complexity without having some symbol to abstractly represent them
There are definitely complex thoughts that can be had, and transmitted, only with words. There's definitely a core of truth to that concept, the only point of contention I think would be, exactly where you draw the line, exactly how much words expand or limit our ability to grasp and even perceive, especially abstract concepts
My IQ goes up just by listening to you! 💙👏🏻
Biology calls it osmosis 😅
Algormancy!
It is an objective fact that language affects the culture of individuals and the society they form, and the way they perceive and understand the world. Tolkien, a linguist, would have been aware of this, as he gave the races he created in his mythology, with their unique languages, which differentiated them culturally from each other and differentiated their ways of understanding the world.
I'm convinced in the first 5 minutes. Strong linguist determinism can't be right. (Also, we're all decaying 😕)
I know you remember, and this is crucial if you are attempting to analyse it, Tolkien was aesthetically, not morally or theologically or ideologically or even technically driven. He was a genuine artist.
He loved truth and good, but mostly beauty
If he was going to choose a name, his first and last thought was aesthetic. Is it beautiful? That's what he liked about old tales. Homer thought, is this awesome?
In fact, English *does* have a single word for Schadenfreude: 'epicaricacy'. It's attested from 1721!
Don't sweat the aging thing - by the time you get to 60-ish it'll start to seem ok that it eventually comes to an end. Not that you're in a hurry for it, but the fact that it's out there doesn't ruin your day the way it does when you're younger.
Criminally underrated, do you have a discord? I’d love to join
I have long thought that tolkein made a mistake in the language of the elves... Given their musical nature, I feel their language would have been polytonal, like Chinese, rather than monotonal, like English. In elvish, depending on the way a word is spoken, it could mean an entirely different thing.
I'm reminded of Flintheart Glomgold, who is a major rival of Scrooge McDuck. :)
so presumably, if "Glom-" is an abbreviation of _gloom,_ his Quenya name would be _Sincahonda Culungwe_ (Quenya translation of the complete McDuck universe when)
I'm feeling so many things about this exchange 🥲
There is a reason that translating a document from one language to another, like all of the different translations of "The Lord's Prayer" from Aramaic to English.
Babe wake up! The philologists are getting all Mae govannen mellon namarië silumë sigelwara again!
Hey Lexi in what video was it where you expounded more on Estel and Amdir? Can't seem to recall it or find it readily.
I think it's in 'Denethor's Origins'.
Elvish languages are Uralic, that means they are agglutinative languages. Indo european languages, like English, do not work like this, at least mostly, the are flexionary langauges. German, although indoeuropean, has a tendency to some type of agglutination. There real life languages that work in similar way to Elvish lnguages, like Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, Karelian etc. Elvish languages, like Quenya, Sindarian, protoQuendian, the languages of the wood Elves, avari etc form a linguistic family inside the grand Uralic group, but the Elvish language family is considered fictional, and thhe rest of Uralic langauegs are real life relatives of Elvish. Perhaps, if Orcs came from Elves, it is posible for them, at least in the beginning, a certain Uralic language as well
Did elves wear black mascara?
You say Elves have no word for "magic" equating it to "craft" or "skill." You state that a word like "sorcery" is a word descriptive of knowledge. Even so, can't it be that sorcery or another word necromancy might suffice as elvish concepts describing "magic?" The use of magic being ( I would maintain) a harnessing or manipulation of elemental force(s) in Arda or Ea, such as sorcery or necromancy would be. The power to manipulate said force(s) coming from oneself innately or perhaps from an item imbued with power placed within it - like, say, a ring. All that to say that I do believe Elves have at least two words to describe what mortals think of as magic.
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis has been falsified by several linguists. John McWhorter, one of my favorites of that field, even wrote a book about it. Why are you wasting the time of your listeners with an invalid idea?
The mention of that hypothesis was just a part of the whole video and she also brings up its limitations. There are several other ideas discussed and, from the sound of it, more exploration to come from her. This was definitely not a waste of time for me.
TFW you know you have to watch some GNG back catalogue vids for a fifth time 🥳🥳🥳