Tolkien in General

she says Dune like... doon, i say it like...dewn accents eh ?

I dont like hypothesize about why Tolkien disliked Dune, Id rather keep to what I know. When you start to hypothesize you are guessing things about a person and that leads you away from that person. You might end up in a grey area and that doesnt sit comfortably with me. What I dont know about Tolkien Id rather just keep to what Ive found out, ( as long as its true )

azriel wrote:she says Dune like... doon, i say it like...dewn  accents eh ?

I'd have to hear it to know what you are talking about. I'd pronounce both of those the same way!

Bah, who cares if Tolkien disliked Dune. It's certainly not a contest between it and LotR!

I'd have to hear it to know what you are talking about. I'd pronounce both of those the same way!- Halfy

{{ I read Azriel's post as - Dune pronounced as in Moon but with a d. And Dew (as in 'morning dew')-ne for the second one.
I say the second one, as the first one would be confusing in Scots as its same sound and spelling as Scots for down, doon, as in "oh shite! Ma buckie hus takun a heider doon the brae an hud the arse smashed oot o' it, an aw ma buckie is pishin' awa'!". ("Oh shit! My bottle of buckfast wine has taken a tumble down the hill and the bottom of the bottle has broken, and all its contents are pouring away."}}

Sorry, in America both are pronounced the same way. D(m)oon and Dew-n are one and the same to our ears.

{{ OK then the second one to your ears would not sound like Dew-ne rather Jew-ne }}

All the same sound. Dew-ne rhymes exactly with Jew-ne and June and moon.

Linguists may hear some regional variation in the words, but if you told any of the general riff-raff that they were pronounced differently you'd get a blank stare. Even if we say it differently we can't hear it.

It's sort of the inverse of telling Brits they pronounce "pass" and "parse" the same way. You lot are convinced you are sticking an "r" in the second one, but you ain't. It's pure head fake.

{{ Americans! Not only have you killed your palette off, food and alcohol, apparently you're also tone deaf!
And of course parse has an r in it it rhymes with arse, whereas pass rhymes with ass. Totally different sounds!
And how can Doon sound like Jew-ne?! There isn't a 'j' sound in doon, its d as in do!! Its madness. }}

Doon rhymes with Jewne.

I'd like to here a recording of a Brit saying Ass and Arse. My guess is they are the same. Americans say them different, not the Brits.

{{ Certainly in west of Scotland they are totally different sounding, we wouldn't use ass for arse anyway so the only time it's likely to be heard is in reference to a donkey. But if you mean arse you use arse with a notable, long rolled Scots r in it, 'arrrse' which ass, not having an r in it, simply has no hint of at all.

edit add 'arse' incoming at 1.13, v strong language throughout however you watch the whole clip-

}}

Oooo, I love it started something here Im with Petty on Dewn or Doon, we say dewn, Ass and Arse are different. We sometimes say "my arse" if we dont believe something, Ass is a donkey like creature. Its like vase ( vayze) or vase ( varse ) I say it with a R included but, Northerners often say Wuz while I say woz, ( was and, was )
reading this down its like a tongue twister in a way, which reminds me of the fabulous Danny Kaye and his great rendition of....

Danny Kaye: The pellet with the poison is in the vessel with the pestle, the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true, right?
Mildred Natwick: Right, but there's been a change. They ... broke the chalice from the palace.
Danny Kaye: They ... broke the chalice from the palace?
Mildred Natwick: ... and replaced it with a flagon.
Danny Kaye: A flagon?
Mildred Natwick: ... with a figure of a dragon.
Danny Kaye: A flagon with a dragon.
Mildred Natwick: RIGHT.
Danny Kaye: But, did you put the pellet with the poison in the vessel with the pestle?
Mildred Natwick: Noooo, the pellet with the poison is in the flagon with the dragon, the vessel with the pestle has the brew that is true.
Danny Kaye: The pellet with the poison's in the flagon with the dragon, the vessel with the pestle has the brew that is true.
Mildred Natwick: Just remember that.

The fun they must have had rehearsing that ! It must have been laughs all the way

He only said one, and I don't know whether it was ass or arse, because with you Brits we can't tell if you're saying an R or dreaming you said it, and half the time you say it when you shouldn't be! "I have an idear".

This is the only thing I've seen that gets to the heart of why Tolkien did not like democracy.

{{ I was at work the other night, had to stand in the kitchen for about 2 hours making up sandwiches for pack lunches for the guests trip the next day, a tedious job as well as time consuming, so I tend to take an audiobook or such with me and stick it on while I work. This week I happened to pick something I have not read in years, Farmer Giles of Ham. It was not an audiobook but the BBC radio dramatisation with Brian Blessed as Farmer Giles.
It's been so long since I read it I couldn't actually tell how accurate it was an adaptation, but fairly close I think and includes a narrator (Sir William Hordern who is eminently suited to narration - he sounds like Tolkien if Tolkien had had elocution lessons and didn't mumble - and was also the voice of Gandalf in the BBC radio dramatisation and my personal favourite Gandalf) and what really stood out were two things - Tolkien would have made an absolutely appalling historian, and dog cruelty.

That poor dog gets it rough, not only is he constantly verbally abused and maligned he even occasionally gets a bottle or such chucked after him.
As to Tolkien's history, well he says the tale is set in the days before Arthur- so pre iron age, but it has Norman style castles, a king and towns and hamlets, all medieval, and then there is Farmer Giles Blunderpuss which is 17th Century. Maybe he skipped history lessons at school! }}

The whole book was tongue in cheek, so I don't think he meant "it was set before Arthur" to mean anything except it was historically unplaceable. He uses a blunderbuss because it's a fun word, not because it has anything to do with the purported period in which it was set.

{{ I dunno, he has umbrellas and clocks in the Shire among other out-of-place devices. I suspect he might just have been terrible at knowing when things were invented! }}

Nah, he was too careful about astronomy to be inaccurate in other things simply  through carelessness.  If he is careless with facts, it's deliberate.  Add to that how closely variations in language is related to history and I can't accept him not knowing history.