Tolkien on Gaelic

**Bugbear** · 11th January 12, 04:01 PM

I've been looking over, The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien,
edited by Humphrey Carpenter, and Christopher Tolkien (Houghton Mifflin 1st pb ed., 2000).
He does bring up Scotland here and there and discusses a newspaper called "The Scotsman."

However, this caught my attention because of the discussion we were having in the elf thread about Tolkien's theory (really conjecture) of the aesthetics of language in relation to culture. In the letter, "Drafts for a letter to 'Mr. Rang'" year 1967 (297 ), when Discussing Elvish language says of the Gaelic language:

* Edit: quote removed to end discussion in thread.*

Not too friendly toward Gaelic...

I tried to get all the italicized words done correctly.

**Nick the DSM** · 11th January 12, 04:08 PM

Doesn't surprise me at all. He's used alot of old English as well.

Great find, Ted. Love to read articles from the Masters.

**Bugbear** · 12th January 12, 10:52 AM

I would have to look it up, but I recall him saying in one of the letters that he didn't have a lot of knowledge about Scottish history. Anyway, I just thought it was interesting. I know very little about Gaelic, but I see you all writing it aloght here on the forum, and I guess some of the Highland attire names are Gaelic.

**castledangerous** · 12th January 12, 11:03 AM

FYI Bugbear,

An Comunn Gàidhealch Ameireaganach (ACGA for short) is holding their annual Scottish Gaelic Immersion Weekend in Flagstaff, AZ this year April 19-22. There will be three levels of classes: beg/int/adv and the teachers will include Scott Morrison, Michael MacKay, and Muriel Fisher.

Saw this on Facebook at the Slighe nan Gaidheal group page

**Bugbear** · 12th January 12, 07:00 PM

I don't do so well with languages, but thanks.

**The Thing** · 12th January 12, 07:27 PM

I remember reading that Tolkein had visited the West coast of Ireland a number of times. Perhaps he studied some of the Irish legends. The Elves in the Lord of the Rings to me have a strong resembelence to the People of Tir Na Nog and the all seeing eye Balor the one eyed.

Just my thoughts, cheers The Thing.

**Meggers** · 12th January 12, 07:34 PM

Tolkien covered the LOTR in Celtic mythology. Dont even get me started on the crazy amount of Celtic pagan symbolism in that entire series.

**Bugbear** · 12th January 12, 11:10 PM

There was also a lot of mythology of that sort being created or imagined by academicians and projected on history around the turn and early half of the twentieth century. It was later overturned, but to put it in vaguely Hegelian terms, it was a bit like a spirit trying to come into being and took on a life of it's own... I'm not an expert in anything, so...

I guess he had a fondness for Anglo-Saxon and Teutonic languages going by the letters in the book; Beowulf, for example. His dislike of the Gaelic language was a little bit of a surprise to me, though.

**Morris at Heathfield** · 13th January 12, 08:20 AM

As they say, "there's no accounting for taste". I see eye to eye with Tolkien on a lot of things, but I was attracted to the sound of Scottish Gaelic when I first became aware of its existence. On the other hand, while I share Tolkien's familiarity with the Spanish language, and readily acknowledge it as an important modern language, I'm not terribly fond of it otherwise, while Tolkien seems to have been quite interested in it. (I won't say that I'm not interested in it, but my interest in it is primarily "historical and philological", due to its descent from Latin, and not aesthetic.) And again, I believe it's a quite common opinion in some places that German is a harsh, ugly, "guttural" language, but I am rather fond of it, as I suppose Tolkien was as well.

I think it's important to note that Tolkien's aesthetic appreciation for various languages was not entirely based on genetic relations. Of course, his focus was the Indo-European languages, and particularly the Germanic languages. But he chose to base his two great Elven languages on a non-Indo-European language, namely Finnish, and a Celtic language, namely Welsh, of which he happened to be quite fond.

**Meggers** · 13th January 12, 08:58 AM

Like I said in another thread, Tolkien wrote the LOTR as a linguistic experiment, not to write the greatest epic of all time (which is just became anyway). He set out to prove that language defines culture. If your language is harsh, your culture is harsh. If your language is soft, flowey, romantic, your culture is the same way. Take a look at German and Russian. They are tough languages, very strong and "rough". German and Russian culture and history is essentially the same way. Then take a look at French language and look at French culture. They pride themselves on romance and the sound of their language to someone who doesnt speak french clearly represents that.

Elvish is a romantic language, soft and light because elves themselves are like that. The language of Mordor is gutteral and rough because Mordor is like that. Tolkien spent his whole life on the study of language and communication. It's no wonder he put such work in the languages of the LOTR. It's also no wonder that we would see resemblences of Gaelic or other real languages too, considering he grew up in Britain.