Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by J.R. (A) on January 11, 2004 at 08:35:44

In Reply to: Whoa, the British Wagner? No man is without prejudice, politics, and opinion. posted by albee33 on January 08, 2004 at 18:44:35:

Well, English is a Germanic language. Tolkien was a highly respected
philologist and held the Rawlinsonian chair of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford
until his death. The ancient Germanic languages are very similar: if
you can read Anglo-Saxon, you can get by in Old High German, Old
Saxon, Old Frisian, Old Norse, etc. He used the literature and glosses
of the old Germanic for many proper names in LOTR; for example, the
dwarf names are mostly from the Old Norse poetic Edda; "warg" is Old
Norse for "wolf, "wetwang" is Old Norse for "swamp". This hardly makes
him Wagnerian. He scoffed at the notion that the ring of Sauron was
the same as the Nibelungen ring, except that they were both "round".
The racism slur is preposterous and offensive and tedious worst kind
of PC thinking. Tolkien was a original and creative writer: he was
influenced by many ancient Germanic sources, but not ruled by them.
Regards,

J.R.

BTW, the elven names and language are Uralic (Finnish in this case)
in form.