The Third Garrideb

Starkid, Sherlockian, Whovian, Cheesehead. (side blog: klaine-rants)

[thethirdgarrideb]

100 years ago today JRR Tolkien met CS Lewis for the first time.

Lewis was vital in getting The Lord of the Rings finished and eventually published, so who knows what would have happened without that fateful meeting and the ensuing friendship.

I also love what Tolkien wrote about CS Lewis' death (Letter 251):

So far I have felt the normal feelings of a man of my age – like an old tree that is losing all its leaves one by one: this feels like an axe-blow near the roots.

So let's raise a glass to a wonderful friendship that shaped literature.

[rylandsgrace]

I feel seen

[thethirdgarrideb]

Don’t speak to me about ‘Income Tax’ or I shall boil over.

~ J.R.R. Tolkien (Letter 250)

[sillylotrpolls]

Every now and then I get asked about ships, and I usually avoid the question both because I think it's obvious what will win and because "ship wars" just aren't fun. But, fine. Just this once, in honor of Valentine's Day, ~let the ship wars rage~. Hopefully no one sails too far west and triggers the sinking of Númenor.

What's your favorite Tolkien ship?

Buckleberry Ferry

A small boat from Lothlórien

A Black Ship of the Corsairs of Umbar

The White Ship

The Last Ship

Eärendil's Vingilot

A swan-ship of the Teleri

Alcarondas, the Castle of the Sea

Hirilondë, aka Turuphanto, the "Wooden Whale"

A barrel

Whatever monstrosity Legolas cobbled together to sail to Valinor with Gimli

Gandalf/Balrog

Voting ended onFeb 21, 2024

[holisticdetectives]

I don’t know if that makes me believe in coincidence, or fate, or sheer blind luck, but it definitely makes me believe in something. - unknown (insp.)

[penny-anna]

Legolas pretty quickly gets in the habit of venting about his travelling companions in Elvish, so long as Gandalf & Aragorn aren’t in earshot they’ll never know right?

Then about a week into their journey like

Legolas: *in Elvish, for approximately the 20th time* ugh fucking hobbits, so annoying

Frodo: *also in Elvish, deadpan* yeah we’re the worst

Legolas:

[penny-anna]

~*~earlier~*~

Legolas: ugh fucking hobbits

Merry: Frodo what’d he say

Frodo: I’m not sure he speaks a weird dialect but I think he’s insulting us. I should tell him I can understand Elvish

Merry: I mean you could do that but consider

Merry: you can only tell him ONCE

Frodo: Merry. You’re absolutely right. I’ll wait.

[penny-anna]

#legolas’ hick accent vs #frodo’s ‘i learned it out of a book’ accent #FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT

Legolas: umm well your accent is horrible

Aragorn: *hollering from a distance* HIS ACCENT IS BETTER THAN YOURS LEGOLAS YOU SILVAN HICK

Frodo: :)

[storywonker]

Frodo: Hello. My name is Frodo. I am a Hobbit. How are you?

Legolas: y’alld’ve’ff’ve

Frodo, crying: please I can’t understand what you’r saying

[ramshacklefey]

Ok, but Frodo didn’t just learn out of a book. He learned like… Chaucerian Elvish. So actually:

Frodo: Good morrow to thee, frend. I hope we twain shalle bee moste excellente companions.

Legolas: Wots that mate? ‘Ere, you avin’ a giggle? Fookin’ ‘obbits, I sware.

Aragorn: *laughing too hard to walk*

[reformedkingsmanagent]

@ghostriderofthearagon

[cryptidscrypticcrosswordclub]

dYinGggGggg…

[whetstonefires]

i mean, honestly it’s amazing the Elves had as many languages and dialects as they did, considering Galadriel (for example) is over seven thousand years old.

english would probably have changed less since Chaucer’s time, if a lot of our cultural leaders from the thirteenth century were still alive and running things.

they’ve had like. seven generations since the sun happened, max. frodo’s books are old to him, but outside any very old poetry copied down exactly, the dialect represented in them isn’t likely to be older than the Second Age, wherein Aragorn’s foster-father Elrond started out as a very young adult and grew into himself, and Legolas’ father was born.

so like, three to six thousand years old, maybe, which is probably a drop in the bucket of Elvish history judging by all the ethnic differentiation that had time to develop before Ungoliant came along, even if we can’t really tell because there weren’t years to count, before the Trees were destroyed.

plus a lot of Bilbo’s materials were probably directly from Elrond, whose library dates largely from the Third Age, probably, because he didn’t establish Imladris until after the Last Alliance. and Elrond isn’t the type to intentionally help Bilbo learn the wrong dialect and sound sillier than can be helped, even if everyone was humoring him more than a little.

so Frodo might sound hilariously formal for conversational use (though considering how most Elves use Westron he’s probably safe there) and kind of old-fashioned, but he’s not in any danger of being incomprehensible, because elves live on such a ridiculous timescale.

[whetstonefires]

to over-analyse this awesome and hilarious post even more, legolas’ grandfather was from linguistically stubborn Doriath and their family is actually from a somewhat different, higher-status ethnic background than their subjects.

so depending on how much of a role Thranduil took in his upbringing (and Oropher in his), Legolas may have some weird stilted old-fashioned speaking tics in his Sindarin that reflect a more purely Doriathrin dialect rather than the Doriathrin-influenced Western Sindarin that became the most widely spoken Sindarin long before he was born, or he might have a School Voice from having been taught how to Speak Proper and then lapse into really obscure colloquial Avari dialect when he’s being casual. or both!

considering legolas’ moderately complicated political position, i expect he can code-switch.

…it’s also fairly likely considering the linguistic politics involved that Legolas is reasonably articulate in Sindarin, though with some level of accent, but knows approximately zero Quenya outside of loanwords into Sindarin, and even those he mostly didn’t learn as a kid.

which would be extra hilarious when he and gimli fetch up in Valinor in his little homemade skiff, if the first elves he meets have never been to Middle Earth and they’re just standing there on the beach reduced to miming about what is the short beard person, and who are you, and why.

this is elvish dialects and tolkien, okay. there’s a lot of canon material! he actually initially developed the history of middle-earth specifically to ground the linguistic development of the various Elvish languages!

[bowditch]

Legolas: Alas, verily would I have dispatched thine enemy posthaste, but y’all’d’ve pitched a feckin’ fit.

Aragorn: *eyelid twitching*

[linguisticparadox]

Frodo: *frantically scribbling* Hang on which language are you even speaking right now

Pippin, confused: Is he not speaking Elvish?

Frodo, sarcastically: I dunno, are you speaking Hobbit?

Boromir, who has been lowkey pissed-off at the Hobbits’ weird dialect this whole time: That’s what it sounds like to me.

Merry, who actually knows some shit about Hobbit background: We are actually speaking multiple variants of the Shire dialect of Westron, you ignorant fuck.

Sam, a mere working-class country boy: Honestly y'all could be talkin Dwarvish half the time for all I know.

[sainamoonshine]

Pippin, entering Gondor and speaking to the castle steward: hey yo my man

Boromir, from beyond the grave: j e s u s

[esser-z]

Tolkien would be SO PROUD of this post

[runiaimperii]

It got better

[peaceheather]

there may come a day when i do not reblog this post, but it is NOT THIS DAY

[carsonsweebabyturtles]

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there was never enough Radek Zelenka or Evan Lorne. Especially together. We deserved more.

[autie-j]

I’ve always thought that a Lorne centric episode would have been pretty cool (Zelenka too), kind of like the way SG1 sometimes had an episode focused on a side character

[carsonsweebabyturtles]

That would have been so good. Perhaps if there had been a Season 6 we would have seen more of these two. Or perhaps we should be grateful that they didn’t get around to killing them off unlike a certain poor Scottish Doctor. Yeah, I’m never going to get over that.

[movie-gifs]

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) dir. Peter Jackson

[dirkly]

(insp)

[itsboundtobetragic]

fact: Dirk Gently has no idea what’s going on.

[itsboundtobetragic]

[itsboundtobetragic]

#LONG DAY

[itsboundtobetragic]

You don’t know what happened yesterday. You’re not a historian!

[takadasaiko]

Siblings Appreciation Post for @kamikazebirdwithabrokenwing

[friedkins]

[mariamegale]

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, 1x05: Very Erectus

[julielilac]