I took a general linguistics class from Dr Vajda in 1996 or 1997 during my last year at WWU. It seemed like he knew everything about every language ever, and every sound humans could make. I think he learned Navajo on a whim, which seems crazy _and_ awesome. I was so inspired that I wished I could change my major, but it was too late by then. Watching this video today (2024) reminds me how amazing Dr Vajda was and is!
I'm 13 and i just sat through an hour lecture glued to the screen ment for uni students, that shows how good this guy is at his job please tell him this
He really is an amazing professor. I took a linguistics class he taught about a year ago, I've never taken so many notes in my life. Everything was just so interesting...!
Very good lecturer, and very interesting lecture. This man really knows what he's doing, and he incorporates humor in a clever way to keep his audience from getting bored halfway through. I really liked what he did when he spoke in the Black Speech of Mordor.
Another thing is that, besides the fact that there are parallelisms with the real world I also think that it's so realistic because of how much work he put into it. He made the entire history of an entire world, and he just made a couple books about certain moments of it. The amount of attention to detail is extraordinary, that's what makes it very realistic too. However, what he proposed was great, I had never seen it that way. And I somehow always loved that about it without knowing.
I'm even more excited to attend WWU and have him as my adviser now! Great presentation and completely entertaining. Looks like I won't be doodling in my notebook during lectures now!
The threat coming from the East was also influenced by the Ottoman Empire, which for centuries had been the real threat to Europe, and the idea remained into the early 20th Century, during Tolkien's childhood, before Germany or Russia were dangers, and brief dangers by comparison.
Could we possibly get the summer course as a video? Maybe for Christmas? Please? Or could he perhaps take a term off to teach in Austria? I loved every minute of it!
41:12 - Natively pronounced Dwarvish /kh, *ph, th/ were actually NOT Semitic-type fricatives (raspings). Tolkien's view of them can be found in the LotR book, Appendix E > I > "Note".
Great Video. I rather skip video over 15mn even on subject I like but this one is completely catching. It was really interesting and I wish most teachers would be as appealing as Mr Vajda.
well even though he may be appear to be enthusiastic throughout the entire lecture, i still do appreciate the time and energy out of his day to present this to us.
Interesting lecture, and a very concise overview in such a limited time. I can see this man has a keen passion for his work. Minor criticism - the incorrect values given to the Elvish alphabet on the slide shown several times during the lecture. Whilst I can understand this was perhaps fabricated for aesthetic qualities, given the keen audience, it would have benefited from an accurate representation. Thanks for sharing to the world Western Washington, with grateful thanks from the UK!
one of the things that interests me as a anthropology drop out is folklore around politics. the way people reify and reassure themselves that their society is the best and truest expressions of innate human nature. I haven't had the structured and critical university setting in a while, so most of my education since then has been self motivated, but nonetheless this are some thoughts I had during the lecture saying that things got worse after the 1917 revolution is spurious, but serves as a reflection, almost a political way of knocking on wood to ward off evil, namely the evil of admitting that an ideological rival to what's supposed to be the end of history could be beneficial, even in small ways. for example I would say that free education in the former USSR probably created more thought and art for more people than under the Czar. additionally, there is very heavy censorship of art in the West, but we don't see the business decisions of publishers as political (but as we know, everything is political. choosing to publish what's profitable, as opposed to what's beautiful or true, is a decision made to enrich and empower some over others. it's useful to see the State not just as a formally, legally organized body, but the people who have power over others. privately owned business becomes a para-state, with rules that often trump what are supposed to be inaliable right). similarly, let's look at the example of the portrayal of the USSR as an aggressor that naturally peaceful bourgeois society is threatened by. this is an argument not very well supported, as the first military action between the revolutionary councils and Western powers was that those Western powers invaded and aided the proto-fascist, racial supremacist White army. similarly, the Cuban missile crisis happened after the US put missiles in Turkey. history has proven the North Koreans right in one very key area of great importance to the third world. Libya cooperated with the West on disarmament, and was still violently overthrown by, again, proto-fascist rebels. NK doesn't, and manages to prevent the continuation of the genocide against their people that the US started. the Soviets state was far from angelic, obviously. the reflex people have to make these sorts of comparisons black and white is part of the behavior I'm interested in, not just for the cold war, but because I see it in arguments between progressive and reactionary liberals, and between progressive liberals and Leftists. any attempt to suss out prejudicial thinking is met with "well you must love Stalin and famines then!" it's really politics as performance and aesthetics, probably because common people have so little actual control and input into the system. ultimately, 20th century socialism is no more guilty of any crime against humanity than liberal democracies are, even today. yet this is simply not reflected in how we talk about our own societies, or 20th century socialism, or modern Islamic theocracy, or resurgent communist movements in India and Nepal. it's still perfectly acceptable to use Orientalist racism against the Koreans, for example, who are under constant threat of invasion by a country that killed millions of Koreans and installed a dictator in the South who killed yet more. it's a free out--you can get away with prejudicial thinking in the grander service to a society ostensibly beyond it. it's all incredibly fascinating (and equally depressing). we're still the same species that sat around campfires making myths about how much greater our people than strangers, and not tolerating any dissent on that point
I just recently moved to Washington from California, but now it doesn't seem like that bad of an idea. This was a great lecture and it inspired me, even greater than I've been before, to study linguistics, other than just English.
Thanks for posting this. A powerful illustration of why no fantasy writer before or since has ever approached the DEPTH of Tolkein's world-building. Sure, some cover more breadth, some have more diversity of culture, and some have bigger maps and more detailed magic systems, but none of them can match his combination of verisimilitude, history, complexity, elegiacality, antiquity, linguistic mastery, original characters, and compelling story. I can only hope that Amazon is taking notes...
Great lecture! To be fair, the notion that Tolkien was not writing about the real world is taking his own claims about his works being applicable to stuff rather than allegories of stuff for a fact. While I grant him that he did not mean Sauron to be a symbol of Hitler or Saruman of Stalin, that he did not write about WWII in such a simple allegorical manner, he obviously _did_ write about WWII, too. (So much that people who see the movies think about the Ents only joining the fight after seeing the attack on Fangorn as Tolkien's jab at the US not entering the war before Pearl Harbor, until they find out it was not like that in the books, at all.) He wrote about helping your neighbouring countries, he wrote about rising to the challenge of a threat to everybody, even when you're not immediately in danger or you put your own neck out for other people, he wrote about PTSD of returning veterans (or maybe more generally the impossible return to innocence.) And I would argue it's highly unlikely that he just put those things in there to make the story feel real, but without any intent to reflect on the issues. I'm quite positive that a decent part of the Lord of the Rings actually _is_ Tolkien making sense of his own experiences and sorting out his own moral coordinate system after some of the things he's witnessed. He doesn't just make Gandalf argue against the death penalty, because it's something a wizard would say. Tolkien actually means it! But yes, Tolkien didn't write simple allegories that can only be applied a single series of historical events. He actually did, what every great and relevant story has ever done, since the Greek epics or even before: He's dealt with the big human interest topics (or topoi) that have forever been relevant to humans: Love, hate, ambition, jealousy, treason, friendship, loyalty, fear, grief, doubt, etc. etc. These are the bold strokes of Tolkien's art and I would think they are as old as the first stories people have told each other and will always resonate with an audience, because everybody can relate. (And actually he did exactly that, on purpose, because he _wanted_ to create something like the Greek epics for the English.) And also wrt. Tolkien and his topics being modern, I'm a little hesitant. You can interpret Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in a psychoanalytical manner. Does that mean Freud stole his ideas from her? Of course not. It just means, Shelley had a deep, fundamental understanding of the human condition that holds true to later scientific discoveries. Likewise, I don't personally believe Tolkien really wrote about PTSD or schizophrenia. He wrote about the things that we from our current perspective of labelling everything in terms of some medical diagnosis might interpret as that (that's the reader rewriting the story). But he wrote about people and what happens to them in certain situations, and he knew about returning from a horrible war and trying to find a way back to normality but being unable to unsee all the things you saw. (And the return to innocence or to Eden is not a new topic, at all.) Or about being torn in two so much as to drive one to the brink of madness (or beyond.) His love for nature might seem modern, but it can just as well be interpreted as a conservative view on the second industrial revolution. If such concerns had been totally unfounded and that second industrial revolution had turned out just great, maybe we would not have environmentalists, today, and that part of the Lord of the Rings would feel embarrassingly dated.
Loved the presentation, loved his enthusiasm, but i sure wish they had miked him directly for the recording instead of an ambient mike picking up all the echoing.
29:42 - As a Tolkien linguist : the sound changes are not b > m or m > b, but mb > m, mb > b. And mb- at the start of words, does that remind you of some real life languagages? Bloemfontein is not too far from Lesotho!
As someone with Welsh family, I watched the extended editions of The Lord of the Rings and, especially when Arwen is speaking, it sounds very much like Welsh. My grandmother's name was Olwen and my mum's boyfriend actually called her Arwen when he met her 😂
A nitpick: "Certh" and "Cirth" are Sindarin words, as the script was originally used to write Sindarin. Sindarin forms plurals by changing vowels e.g. "aran" = king -> "erain" -> kings.
As a middle schooler I painted a little painting for my own wall in my own room, a painting that framed my calligraphy writing out the hymn to Elbereth and another framing my "rosetta stone" of the poem about the rings. I'm an old fogey now and haven't read those books in decades, but the things we memorize prior to puberty are with us forever: A Elbereth Gilthoniel, Silveren penna miriel, O menal algar elanth, Githoniel a Elbereth! A Elbereth Gilthoniel, O menal palan diriel, la nalon sil di Ngurothos, a tiro nin Fanuilos, A Elbereth Gilthoniel, Silveren penna miriel, O menal algar ennorath, Na chaled palan dirlel, O galadhremin Ennorath, Fanuilos le Linathon, Nef aer sil nef aeron. We still remember, we who dwell in this far land beneath the trees, the starlight on the Western Seas.....
and it's way better than Samuel Pepys' writing for a teenager who wants to protect her diary from her parents' snooping into it.....though in retrospect, these adolecent secrets read exactly like a Nora Ephron essay poking fun at adolescents...
This man really knows what he is talking of. Very inspiring speech, and as a russian speaaker, I can say that he speaks russian better than some native russian people;)
Hmmm Correction: Certh and Cirth are pronounced Kerth and Kirth. They are Sindarin words, not Dwarvish. One form of Sindarin plurals are made by fronting and raising the vowels, and in-fixing an I behind the vowel of the final syllable. Otherwise, good presentation! Very entertaining. It's awesome to see linguistics applauded so loudly!
The writing system was adopted by the dwarves, but it's also used by elves occasionally. The words "Certh" and "Cirth" are Sindarin words, and Cirth is DEFINITELY a Sindarin plural, not a Dwarvish one. You can tell that it's an Elvish word because Tolkien used the letter C for the /k/ sound in his elven languages, and K for the non-elven languages. As a Tolkien-language scholar, I can tell you without a doubt that Certh and Cirth are Sindarin words.
Dear Professor Vajda, have you actually heard or read Noam Chomsky recently? ;4) He seems to me to say that language is primarily internal... Thanks for a fantastic lecture, though.
Anyone heard of Virtual Verduria? It's a conworld on zompist.com with several families of languages much like the Middle-Earth languages published years before this presentation and I've known about it well before I've known of Tolkien's invented language families :P
44:47 - It has been almost twenty years since I read LOTR, so correct me if I'm wrong but in the novel Sauron and Saruman were never allies ? Other than that it was very interesting lecture - fun and informative!
Just because the maps are "backwards" doesn't mean the civilizations in Middle Earth aren't symbolic of real world historic civilizations. Even it's unconsciously the struggle of Gondor,Rhohan,the Shire & the Men of the West against the Haradrim & Easternlings represents the constant threat Western civilization has felt from Mongols, Moors,Huns,Arabs & such. It wouldn't be as interesting or clever if Tolkien flat out made these symbols clear but the fact anyone who reads Tolkien sees these symbols & easily get that underlying message. Tolkien was conveying his thoughts & feelings towards these groups
Incredible. He's a linguist, and that is how he pronounces "allegory?" Is that an accepted pronunciation? I have never heard anyone accent the second syllable in that way.
Great lecture but the literary criticism on the non-Tolkien works, especially Gogol's The Nose, does not hold water. Sure many writers no doubt wrote allegorically, but to group ALL writers before Tolkien into that group, especially Gogol who was much more mysterious than the lecturer gave him credit for, is a mistake and an oversimplification
But Tolkien's works is absolutely about the real world. It's not a commentary on a particular historical period or particular historical events. But as all mythology, it has what Tolkien himself called "applicability". It deals with the human conditions. Which is very real but universal and trans-historical.
For instance, Tolkien lived through two world wars -- he fought in the first and his son fought in the second. LOTR is absolutely about those wars -- and about all wars. In fact, about "war" as a part of human existence. As such it will have much applicability to WWI and WWII. And very much to the Russian Rape of Ukraine.
@@taffyducks544 Brae is related to Old English "bréaw/bræw", meaning "brow" (of a hill). However, there is a Welsh word "bre" which means "hill or mountain" (it can be found in placenames like "Pen-bre") and is of purely Celtic origin, cognate with Old Irish "brí" and Cornish "brea".
![Daniel Everett, How Language Began: The History of Humanity’s Greatest Invention [reupload]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1ALWRbmAwzY/mqdefault.jpg)
What an infectious speaker, I'm not a linguist in the form of education, but I watched this whole talk... I love his enthusiasm !
I took a general linguistics class from Dr Vajda in 1996 or 1997 during my last year at WWU. It seemed like he knew everything about every language ever, and every sound humans could make. I think he learned Navajo on a whim, which seems crazy _and_ awesome.
I was so inspired that I wished I could change my major, but it was too late by then. Watching this video today (2024) reminds me how amazing Dr Vajda was and is!
I'm 13 and i just sat through an hour lecture glued to the screen ment for uni students, that shows how good this guy is at his job please tell him this
He really is an amazing professor. I took a linguistics class he taught about a year ago, I've never taken so many notes in my life. Everything was just so interesting...!
He nailed linguistics 😉
Only 11 minutes in, and already I’m impressed at the speaker’s reaffirmation that Tolkien’s work isn’t allegory :)
he's like this in person. even in private office hours. none of this is fake. dr vajda is a giant child with a phd.
I think I would like to hire this guy to narrate different aspects of my day to me...
One does not simply dislike an Ed Vajda video.
A minor thing, but actually in Finnish, "in wind" would be "tuulessa", not "tuulissa". "Tuulissa" would mean "in winds".
Very good lecturer, and very interesting lecture. This man really knows what he's doing, and he incorporates humor in a clever way to keep his audience from getting bored halfway through. I really liked what he did when he spoke in the Black Speech of Mordor.
really cool lecture, really great professor, and such a fantastic mentor and example to be learning about. really fantastic.
Another thing is that, besides the fact that there are parallelisms with the real world I also think that it's so realistic because of how much work he put into it. He made the entire history of an entire world, and he just made a couple books about certain moments of it. The amount of attention to detail is extraordinary, that's what makes it very realistic too.
However, what he proposed was great, I had never seen it that way. And I somehow always loved that about it without knowing.
The enthusiasm of those students was absolutely beautiful.
I'm even more excited to attend WWU and have him as my adviser now! Great presentation and completely entertaining. Looks like I won't be doodling in my notebook during lectures now!
Hi, I just saw this comment 7 years later! How was it? Where are you now?
Best video about Tolkien language I have ever seen
The threat coming from the East was also influenced by the Ottoman Empire, which for centuries had been the real threat to Europe, and the idea remained into the early 20th Century, during Tolkien's childhood, before Germany or Russia were dangers, and brief dangers by comparison.
I’ve been a huge Tolkien fan for most of my life, and this lecture was one of the most fascinating I’ve ever listened to.
Could we possibly get the summer course as a video? Maybe for Christmas? Please? Or could he perhaps take a term off to teach in Austria? I loved every minute of it!
41:12 - Natively pronounced Dwarvish /kh, *ph, th/ were actually NOT Semitic-type fricatives (raspings). Tolkien's view of them can be found in the LotR book, Appendix E > I > "Note".
Great Video.
I rather skip video over 15mn even on subject I like but this one is completely catching.
It was really interesting and I wish most teachers would be as appealing as Mr Vajda.
what an incredible lecture! I am not a linguist, not in the least - but I just drowned in this stuff. Fascinating. Thank you!
well even though he may be appear to be enthusiastic throughout the entire lecture, i still do appreciate the time and energy out of his day to present this to us.
Great lecture, really offers a fantastic perspective on narrative and linguistics in Tolkien's work.
Interesting lecture, and a very concise overview in such a limited time. I can see this man has a keen passion for his work.
Minor criticism - the incorrect values given to the Elvish alphabet on the slide shown several times during the lecture. Whilst I can understand this was perhaps fabricated for aesthetic qualities, given the keen audience, it would have benefited from an accurate representation.
Thanks for sharing to the world Western Washington, with grateful thanks from the UK!
one of the things that interests me as a anthropology drop out is folklore around politics. the way people reify and reassure themselves that their society is the best and truest expressions of innate human nature. I haven't had the structured and critical university setting in a while, so most of my education since then has been self motivated, but nonetheless this are some thoughts I had during the lecture
saying that things got worse after the 1917 revolution is spurious, but serves as a reflection, almost a political way of knocking on wood to ward off evil, namely the evil of admitting that an ideological rival to what's supposed to be the end of history could be beneficial, even in small ways. for example I would say that free education in the former USSR probably created more thought and art for more people than under the Czar. additionally, there is very heavy censorship of art in the West, but we don't see the business decisions of publishers as political (but as we know, everything is political. choosing to publish what's profitable, as opposed to what's beautiful or true, is a decision made to enrich and empower some over others. it's useful to see the State not just as a formally, legally organized body, but the people who have power over others. privately owned business becomes a para-state, with rules that often trump what are supposed to be inaliable right).
similarly, let's look at the example of the portrayal of the USSR as an aggressor that naturally peaceful bourgeois society is threatened by. this is an argument not very well supported, as the first military action between the revolutionary councils and Western powers was that those Western powers invaded and aided the proto-fascist, racial supremacist White army. similarly, the Cuban missile crisis happened after the US put missiles in Turkey. history has proven the North Koreans right in one very key area of great importance to the third world. Libya cooperated with the West on disarmament, and was still violently overthrown by, again, proto-fascist rebels. NK doesn't, and manages to prevent the continuation of the genocide against their people that the US started.
the Soviets state was far from angelic, obviously. the reflex people have to make these sorts of comparisons black and white is part of the behavior I'm interested in, not just for the cold war, but because I see it in arguments between progressive and reactionary liberals, and between progressive liberals and Leftists. any attempt to suss out prejudicial thinking is met with "well you must love Stalin and famines then!"
it's really politics as performance and aesthetics, probably because common people have so little actual control and input into the system.
ultimately, 20th century socialism is no more guilty of any crime against humanity than liberal democracies are, even today.
yet this is simply not reflected in how we talk about our own societies, or 20th century socialism, or modern Islamic theocracy, or resurgent communist movements in India and Nepal. it's still perfectly acceptable to use Orientalist racism against the Koreans, for example, who are under constant threat of invasion by a country that killed millions of Koreans and installed a dictator in the South who killed yet more. it's a free out--you can get away with prejudicial thinking in the grander service to a society ostensibly beyond it.
it's all incredibly fascinating (and equally depressing). we're still the same species that sat around campfires making myths about how much greater our people than strangers, and not tolerating any dissent on that point
I just recently moved to Washington from California, but now it doesn't seem like that bad of an idea. This was a great lecture and it inspired me, even greater than I've been before, to study linguistics, other than just English.
Thanks for posting this. A powerful illustration of why no fantasy writer before or since has ever approached the DEPTH of Tolkein's world-building. Sure, some cover more breadth, some have more diversity of culture, and some have bigger maps and more detailed magic systems, but none of them can match his combination of verisimilitude, history, complexity, elegiacality, antiquity, linguistic mastery, original characters, and compelling story. I can only hope that Amazon is taking notes...
Enjoyable and intresting lecture. Finnish language has double konsonants, though.
I want more of this kind of content!
UA-cam: let's recommend this after 8 hell of years
I'm glad it did. This was wicked good.
And I really hope his summer course gets on youtube!
This is a great lecture! Thanks for sharing!
Thank you so much for sharing this fascinating lecture!
Brilliant lecture. That´s how to do it folks :-)
This was so great to hear
Reconstructing Proto-Elvish sounds like a fun summer project.
nice lecture and cool lecturer i'd say
I was at this lecture! Thanks Alex Kitelinger for inviting me :D
Who was that really cute girl with the fun and bright smile in the front row?
Willie Gross Well I hope you signed up for Historical Linguistics :-)
Great lecture!
To be fair, the notion that Tolkien was not writing about the real world is taking his own claims about his works being applicable to stuff rather than allegories of stuff for a fact. While I grant him that he did not mean Sauron to be a symbol of Hitler or Saruman of Stalin, that he did not write about WWII in such a simple allegorical manner, he obviously _did_ write about WWII, too. (So much that people who see the movies think about the Ents only joining the fight after seeing the attack on Fangorn as Tolkien's jab at the US not entering the war before Pearl Harbor, until they find out it was not like that in the books, at all.) He wrote about helping your neighbouring countries, he wrote about rising to the challenge of a threat to everybody, even when you're not immediately in danger or you put your own neck out for other people, he wrote about PTSD of returning veterans (or maybe more generally the impossible return to innocence.) And I would argue it's highly unlikely that he just put those things in there to make the story feel real, but without any intent to reflect on the issues. I'm quite positive that a decent part of the Lord of the Rings actually _is_ Tolkien making sense of his own experiences and sorting out his own moral coordinate system after some of the things he's witnessed. He doesn't just make Gandalf argue against the death penalty, because it's something a wizard would say. Tolkien actually means it! But yes, Tolkien didn't write simple allegories that can only be applied a single series of historical events. He actually did, what every great and relevant story has ever done, since the Greek epics or even before: He's dealt with the big human interest topics (or topoi) that have forever been relevant to humans: Love, hate, ambition, jealousy, treason, friendship, loyalty, fear, grief, doubt, etc. etc. These are the bold strokes of Tolkien's art and I would think they are as old as the first stories people have told each other and will always resonate with an audience, because everybody can relate. (And actually he did exactly that, on purpose, because he _wanted_ to create something like the Greek epics for the English.)
And also wrt. Tolkien and his topics being modern, I'm a little hesitant. You can interpret Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in a psychoanalytical manner. Does that mean Freud stole his ideas from her? Of course not. It just means, Shelley had a deep, fundamental understanding of the human condition that holds true to later scientific discoveries. Likewise, I don't personally believe Tolkien really wrote about PTSD or schizophrenia. He wrote about the things that we from our current perspective of labelling everything in terms of some medical diagnosis might interpret as that (that's the reader rewriting the story). But he wrote about people and what happens to them in certain situations, and he knew about returning from a horrible war and trying to find a way back to normality but being unable to unsee all the things you saw. (And the return to innocence or to Eden is not a new topic, at all.) Or about being torn in two so much as to drive one to the brink of madness (or beyond.) His love for nature might seem modern, but it can just as well be interpreted as a conservative view on the second industrial revolution. If such concerns had been totally unfounded and that second industrial revolution had turned out just great, maybe we would not have environmentalists, today, and that part of the Lord of the Rings would feel embarrassingly dated.
Loved the presentation, loved his enthusiasm, but i sure wish they had miked him directly for the recording instead of an ambient mike picking up all the echoing.
Just fantastic! He's so outstanding. Thanks a lot!
"There is always, at the very least, that subconscious allegory in works of fantasy"
Excelent, excelent. Loved it.
29:42 - As a Tolkien linguist : the sound changes are not b > m or m > b, but mb > m, mb > b.
And mb- at the start of words, does that remind you of some real life languagages?
Bloemfontein is not too far from Lesotho!
"Who can talk about literature without talking about Russian literature?" It's practically impossible in modern times.
really great lecture, awesome guy!
As someone with Welsh family, I watched the extended editions of The Lord of the Rings and, especially when Arwen is speaking, it sounds very much like Welsh. My grandmother's name was Olwen and my mum's boyfriend actually called her Arwen when he met her 😂
A nitpick: "Certh" and "Cirth" are Sindarin words, as the script was originally used to write Sindarin. Sindarin forms plurals by changing vowels e.g. "aran" = king -> "erain" -> kings.
Excellent lecture, concise and on the spot, very good russian :)
We're glad you enjoyed it!
If you've seen him in person, he's just a very enthusiastic guy, truth be told!
As a middle schooler I painted a little painting for my own wall in my own room, a painting that framed my calligraphy writing out the hymn to Elbereth and another framing my "rosetta stone" of the poem about the rings.
I'm an old fogey now and haven't read those books in decades, but the things we memorize prior to puberty are with us forever: A Elbereth Gilthoniel, Silveren penna miriel, O menal algar elanth, Githoniel a Elbereth! A Elbereth Gilthoniel, O menal palan diriel, la nalon sil di Ngurothos, a tiro nin Fanuilos, A Elbereth Gilthoniel, Silveren penna miriel, O menal algar ennorath, Na chaled palan dirlel, O galadhremin Ennorath, Fanuilos le Linathon, Nef aer sil nef aeron. We still remember, we who dwell in this far land beneath the trees, the starlight on the Western Seas.....
my little friends and I used to pass notes in these languages, back in elementary school.
and it's way better than Samuel Pepys' writing for a teenager who wants to protect her diary from her parents' snooping into it.....though in retrospect, these adolecent secrets read exactly like a Nora Ephron essay poking fun at adolescents...
I'm an engineer... After this I would like to be a linguistic!!!
I think I'm in love.
oh my god, this was so amazing!
My not-so-inner Tolkien geek is screaming.
This man really knows what he is talking of. Very inspiring speech, and as a russian speaaker, I can say that he speaks russian better than some native russian people;)
The S-L-M is interesting. If "peace" and "submission" are conceptually close, that will influence your ideas about how you achieve peace.
Hmmm Correction: Certh and Cirth are pronounced Kerth and Kirth. They are Sindarin words, not Dwarvish. One form of Sindarin plurals are made by fronting and raising the vowels, and in-fixing an I behind the vowel of the final syllable. Otherwise, good presentation! Very entertaining. It's awesome to see linguistics applauded so loudly!
dreamingfifi Wasn't the point that 'Certh' had been taken into Dwarvish and given a plural formed along 'semitic' lines?
The writing system was adopted by the dwarves, but it's also used by elves occasionally. The words "Certh" and "Cirth" are Sindarin words, and Cirth is DEFINITELY a Sindarin plural, not a Dwarvish one. You can tell that it's an Elvish word because Tolkien used the letter C for the /k/ sound in his elven languages, and K for the non-elven languages. As a Tolkien-language scholar, I can tell you without a doubt that Certh and Cirth are Sindarin words.
Awesome lecturer wow
Lots of false information though. Finns are not from Central Asia.
It's funny, way before I ever heard of JRR Tolkien, I thought Finnish sounded like Elvish and Hungarian sounded like Orcish...
and welsh for sindarin
Dear Professor Vajda, have you actually heard or read Noam Chomsky recently? ;4) He seems to me to say that language is primarily internal... Thanks for a fantastic lecture, though.
Anyone heard of Virtual Verduria? It's a conworld on zompist.com with several families of languages much like the Middle-Earth languages published years before this presentation and I've known about it well before I've known of Tolkien's invented language families :P
The hungarian Word "vajda" is a loan from Slavic 'vojevoda', which literally means "warriors' guide". ;)
He knows everything!!
44:47 - It has been almost twenty years since I read LOTR, so correct me if I'm wrong but in the novel Sauron and Saruman were never allies ? Other than that it was very interesting lecture - fun and informative!
Yeah they were
I'd really like to hear from anyone who was in this room, or had this man as a their lecturer. What became of you?
Also, how cool would it be to read Taras Bulba in the black speach?
Just because the maps are "backwards" doesn't mean the civilizations in Middle Earth aren't symbolic of real world historic civilizations. Even it's unconsciously the struggle of Gondor,Rhohan,the Shire & the Men of the West against the Haradrim & Easternlings represents the constant threat Western civilization has felt from Mongols, Moors,Huns,Arabs & such. It wouldn't be as interesting or clever if Tolkien flat out made these symbols clear but the fact anyone who reads Tolkien sees these symbols & easily get that underlying message. Tolkien was conveying his thoughts & feelings towards these groups
Terrific!
Incredible. He's a linguist, and that is how he pronounces "allegory?" Is that an accepted pronunciation? I have never heard anyone accent the second syllable in that way.
Thank you!
17:24 Not sure if I wrote it there already, but wouldn't you agree, Tolkien is Dostoyevsky plus readability?
35:16 gimbatuluk ??? probably he was a little nervous xD
What an awesome professor xD
32:30 Galadriel sings in Quenya, idk what she speaks though..
Actually, it's "Kirth", and it's Sindarin.
The gibberish tengwali are a bit annoying. Looks like someone has downloaded the Dan Smith fonts and don't know how to use them
Good video.
The LOTRO map is my favorite :)
but certh and cirth are sindarin, not khuzdûl
I wonder if you were about old entish, how IT would sound you think?
I want to take his summer class! Instead I am taking: Ancient Mediterranean Magic.
now I really want to take Linguistics!
Is it a happy or an angry scream?
Amazing!
^^
For response, do google:
Φιλολόγικα/Philologica Was Tolkien Only Writing About Symbols, Divorced From Meaning?
Give us the Hobbit in Anglo-Saxon, please!
I would love to be a part of an official linguistics program; that is the direction of my printed biblical studies: SFL.
Syniadau diddorol iawn. Roedd gan Tolkien diddordeb mawr yn y Gymraeg.
notice that there is no dislike on this video :)
35:14 the entire lecture summarized in 10sec
Yay!
Oh no, the "so long" joke...
I came for language(s) now give me languages!
Great lecture but the literary criticism on the non-Tolkien works, especially Gogol's The Nose, does not hold water. Sure many writers no doubt wrote allegorically, but to group ALL writers before Tolkien into that group, especially Gogol who was much more mysterious than the lecturer gave him credit for, is a mistake and an oversimplification
So TLOTR is NOT about lingistics. 2:50
That man looks like a Vulcan. Lecture is amazing when you pretend it's being given by a Vulcan.
Just a puny stupid Vulcan. Real intellectuals follow the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition.
He looks more Romulan to me but let's be honest here,...
we all know he's more of a Jean-Luc Picard under that rug!
This is logical, captain.
Too much emotion for a Vulcan
But Tolkien's works is absolutely about the real world. It's not a commentary on a particular historical period or particular historical events. But as all mythology, it has what Tolkien himself called "applicability". It deals with the human conditions. Which is very real but universal and trans-historical.
For instance, Tolkien lived through two world wars -- he fought in the first and his son fought in the second. LOTR is absolutely about those wars -- and about all wars. In fact, about "war" as a part of human existence. As such it will have much applicability to WWI and WWII. And very much to the Russian Rape of Ukraine.
"Bree" is not Welsh for 'hill'. The Welsh for hill is "bryn".
Brae is still common in Britain for Hill.
@@rogerhull4338 Yes. Brae probably had the same root. As many places in Scotland was founded by those in the Hen Ogledd. Look it up.
@@taffyducks544 Brae is related to Old English "bréaw/bræw", meaning "brow" (of a hill). However, there is a Welsh word "bre" which means "hill or mountain" (it can be found in placenames like "Pen-bre") and is of purely Celtic origin, cognate with Old Irish "brí" and Cornish "brea".
"Bryn" is one Welsh word for hill, but there are others. For example twyn, rhiw, allt and bre (with one "e").
W. Owen Pughe says "bre" is a hill, mount, or peak and derives from "bar" (continued next below)
This is so new criticism
as i always said, all stories are the mirrors of the real world...