You know, I've been in a Tolkien mood recently. I was browsing The History of the Middle-Earth and wanted to learn more about the Shibboleth of Fëanor (the way the Quenya lenition of þ to /s/ spread improbably because the conservative þ became associated with Fëanor’s faction, of which most elves wanted no part—notoriously, Galadriel’s long-standing enmity with him explains why she used the innovative /s/ phoneme in something as classical as the Lament of Galadriel in the LotR plot). I liked this part so much that I wanted to see some technical stuff that wasn’t printed in THoME, so I ordered my first few volumes of the Vinyar Tengwar journal. I also started dabbling in Tengwar calligraphy; with my goal being a) get a good quality edition of the Silmarillion from Folio Books, and b) annotate the margins with etymologies for personal names, place names and other words from Tolkien’s languages, all in Tengwar natürlich.
It feels such a shock to return to the world of common fantasy where “runes” are just random, artless squiggles signifying nothing. As if you were still dazed by a really immersive artificial world, and then were thrown in a knockoff where you can see the zippers in the monster suits.
Tolkien’s languages are really the fundamental matrix of the entire thing. It seems such a shame to me that so many people try to engage in worldbuilding without understanding the central importance of language, because stories are told in words in the first place. It strikes me how D&D began as this unabashed Tolkien mimicry (with the æthereal-type elves and the hairy-footed halflings and whatnot), but even after all these years & commercial success the publishers never bothered to add any depth to the various scenarios with a few proper languages. Meanwhile the game that did engage in this careful work of sub-creation, Empire of the Petal Throne (1974), went basically unnoticed.
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It feels such a shock to return to the world of common fantasy where “runes” are just random, artless squiggles signifying nothing. As if you were still dazed by a really immersive artificial world, and then were thrown in a knockoff where you can see the zippers in the monster suits.
Tolkien’s languages are really the fundamental matrix of the entire thing. It seems such a shame to me that so many people try to engage in worldbuilding without understanding the central importance of language, because stories are told in words in the first place. It strikes me how D&D began as this unabashed Tolkien mimicry (with the æthereal-type elves and the hairy-footed halflings and whatnot), but even after all these years & commercial success the publishers never bothered to add any depth to the various scenarios with a few proper languages. Meanwhile the game that did engage in this careful work of sub-creation, Empire of the Petal Throne (1974), went basically unnoticed.