Okay, so, now that I’ve slept, I can now talk about the reason for my BURNING NEED TO FIGHT J.R.R. TOLKIEN PHYSICALLY AND IMMEDIATELY with considerably less drama than I would’ve otherwise expressed.

This all started just because I wanted to translate the word “net” (like a fishing net) into Elvish.  That’s all I wanted.  One small task.

Of course, I then immediately find out that, lo, there’s not just one Elvish.  There are multiple Elvish languages.  Ha ha ha, oh Tolkien, of course you’d do that.  You eccentric dead coot.  Thanks for making my task more difficult than necessary, but you know, whatever, that makes the world of middle earth more realistic and he seemed to really enjoy inventing languages, and why should I criticize a dead man for having fun with his world, yeah?

So while I’m attempting to navigate through this endless…WORDPILE of information on different Elvish languages and which one would be most appropriate for translating the word “net,” I of course discover there’s several other languages, which actually does not surprise me.  I mean, of course, it’s only natural that the different races would have different languages.  I can roll with that logic.

This is about where my willingness to go along with Tolkien’s antics starts to crumble.

Keep reading

But all your problems with Tolkien here are based on a religious issue. Didn’t you know? Creating an incredibly complex alternate universe, with lots of lovely complex languages (for he was a philologist, remember) is how Tolkien worshipped God. Sub-creation (as JRRT imagined it) was the way someone who made worlds in his head paid homage to – and partook of the nature of – the One who (again, as he conceived it) had made worlds, and in passing, him.

So in effect you’re proposing tangling with a dangerous religious fundamentalist, here. And if you really try to fight him, he won’t even have to pull a rocket launcher or an AK-47 on you. He’ll just walk right up to you before you’ve even got yourself centered and catch you right under the chin with a first-printing copy of the essay On Fairy-stories, and you’ll find yourself sitting down real hard with your eyes crossed and wishing somebody would get the number of that truck.

Seriously. A lot of us have tried it over time, and have walked away rubbing our bruises, sadder and (hopefully) wiser for our pains. Do not tangle with Johnny R. He will fuck your shit up.

Meanwhile, I take it you must have investigated the root in Remmirath, the name for the Pleiades? “The netted stars”? Apparently out of the Quenya “rem ‘mesh’, Q. rembe, + mîr ‘jewel’,” (Return of the King, Appendix E, 393 n. 1).*  Otherwise, can’t help you. Sorry about that. …But have fun with what you’re working on. :)

“…“Dear Sir,” I said—Although now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned:
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, ’twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed:
we make still by the law in which we’re made.”

                               (Mythopoiea, Tolkien)

*See this paper on Borgil for more details.