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I've just started reading Lord of the Rings again, the first time I've read it in about 8 years. I've just finished the chapter The Shadow of the Past, where Gandalf fills Frodo in on Gollum/Smeagol, and I've come to what's always been a problem for me: What is the correct pronunciation of Smeagol (and Deagol for that matter)? I'm not convinced they had it right in the movies, where it was pronounced 'Smeegol' and 'Deegol'. That little accent above the 'e' (can't reproduce it here, but it's the same accent as indicates in French that the 'e' should be pronounced as a long 'a') seems to me to mean more than just pronouncing it like you would 'seat'. My tendency is to pronounce the name something like 'Sme-agol', but I'm not sure. Anybody really clued up enough to help?
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The movies had it dead on. They had a lot of help with those aspects of it, and even the Elvish there is pronounced correctly.
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Thanks Kwea, I assumed they would have had linguistic advisors for the movies, but still wasn't sure. Can you give me a reference or something that would confirm the pronunciation?
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I've read the appendices as many times as I've read the books, (probably 10 or 12) but as far as I remember Tolkien only gives detailed pronouncing guides for Quenya and Sindarin. He does say that the values given for Elvish are the same as for other languages, except Dwarvish. He says that 'e' with the accent I described in my first post is pronounced as in 'say'. He also says the pairing of 'ea' is disyllabic, meaning to me they should be pronounced "ay-a", which is why i didn't think the movie version was accurate. All this is on pp 362 - 364 of my 30 year old edition. So I'm still not sure.
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The leading linguistic advisor for the movies was David Salo, a leading Tolkien scholar and liguist. He did the translations and I believe helped coach the actors on pronunciation.
Try looking him up and see if you can find any more there.
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After exhaustive (for me, at least)searching, I've discovered two things: I'm not the only one confused, and I need to find out how to read phonetic symbols This from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gollum Pronunciation In the 1981 BBC radio adaptation, Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated film and in the Peter Jackson movies, Sméagol is pronounced as /ˈsmiː.gɒl/, although the placement of the acute accent suggests that the correct pronunciation is /ˈsmeɪ.ʊg.ɒl/. On the other hand, in Tolkien's recordings of The Lord of the Rings he also pronounced it /ˈsmiː.gɒl/ or /ˈsmiː.ægɒl/, suggesting that éa should either be pronounced as /iː/ or as a diphthong /ɪæ/, and not as two distinct vowels /i/ and /æ/. Tolkien had a habit in his writing to put diacritics in varying places, as can also be seen in the name Eärendil, which also occurs spelt Ëarendil. "Sméagol" bears strong resemblance to Old English smēaġan, a verb meaning "to ponder". If this was Tolkien's intention, then the acute may have been meant to substitute for the macron. In any case, when trying to pronounce Sméagol, it should be kept in mind that the pronunciation rules given in the Appendices for The Lord of the Rings are for the Elvish languages, and not for (old) English representing Westron and related languages.
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Well, the definitive answer is that there isn't a definitive answer. Even Tolkien pronounced it both ways (movie way and my way). So, I'll probably stick with my version, just to distance the book from the movie as I read. Thanks for the help everyone.
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This has nothing to do with your thread (even though I find the topic of interest), but I love your screen name and I'm jealous it's not mine.
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quote:If this was Tolkien's intention, then the acute may have been meant to substitute for the macron. In any case, when trying to pronounce Sméagol, it should be kept in mind that the pronunciation rules given in the Appendices for The Lord of the Rings are for the Elvish languages, and not for (old) English representing Westron and related languages.
I wonder what the language roots of Smeagol's people would even be. Originally his people, like all the three Hobbit "races" were from Eriador, but they moved to the Gladden Fields, just east of Moria, a long, long time ago, and then died out. Frodo and his Hobbit friends all learned Westron as their first language, and Smeagol certainly knew it when he was in the cave in the Misty Mountains. I don't know if it was his first language, if those river Hobbits brought it with them from Eriador, or if they adapted to something else later. There was never any extensive writing done on how Hobbits came to be in Eriador and how they moved about.
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Posted by Lyrhawn - "There was never any extensive writing done on how Hobbits came to be in Eriador and how they moved about."
Isn't that such a shame he didn't write more about that? There's a really tantalising line in the Shadow of the Past, where Gandalf says he knows more about the Hobbits' history than they do themselves...
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Well I wish he would have spoken up about it!
If only Tolkien had lived another 100 years or so. Maybe by then he would have written enough about Middle Earth to satisfy me Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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He's 83 later this year, and I think The Children of Hurin is the last story we're going to get out of him.
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There was a thread on it here awhile back. I'm not sure how much of the material is going to be new. Between the Silmarillion, the Narn in the Unfinished Tales and the Histories, I've probably already read the majority of what he's going to publish, but I admit being very curious about what details were left out.
I'm hoping, even though it's not the Children of Hurin and Huor, we still get some more details on Tuor. It'll be great to read the story in a more organized form for the first time.
Spoilers in the off chance anyone will actually read the book in question:
Checking out the link you provided, I clicked on one of the "sources" for the article. This was obviously written by someone who has never read anything other than the LOTR, if that. First of all, neither Hurin nor his children are elves, they are men. Turin is considered to be a harbinger of doom long before he sleeps with Nienor, and he isn't even maneuvered into doing it. Glaurung certainly screwed with Nienor's mind, but he didn't know ahead of time what would happen, he just capitalized on it after the fact. She dies by throwing herself into a waterfall as I remember, but it might have been a ravine. And he didn't have a "talking sword" per se. Other than that one moment, I don't think it spoke more than maybe one other time. It was a special, powerful sword to be sure, but it wasn't chattin up a storm all the time.
At least read the thing you're reviewing, or get someone who knows what they are talking about, geez!
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I haven't ready much (or any?) or Chris Tokien's work. Does he measure up to his dad's standards? Sons of famous artists tend not to...
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Like 99.9% of it is less Chris' own writing, and more him organizing notes and snippets that his father wrote, and then gently filling in the cracks. JRR was a prolific writer, and hundreds, maybe even thousands of pages of his works have never seen the light of day. Chris does his best to take the mountain of papers his father left, and turn them into a readable story. Reading what he has from the Histories of Middle Earth, which is all his father's writing, just with his comments, boggles my mind. His father would write a story 10 different ways, and Chris would have to try and figure out which one fit in with the other material best, and he cataloged the differences and referenced them in the footnotes. I can't imagine how daunting the task must seem.
It's JRR Tolkien, Chris is just a really, really dedicated editor.
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I know I've got the Histories of Middle Earth somewhere. Better give it a read, and the Silmarillion another look as promised. Posts: 1762 | Registered: Apr 2006
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If I remember correctly (and it's been years since I've read the Silmarillion) the sword talked three times and it was a ravine she threw herself into. I could be wrong though. I'm just sort of going with my gut. That was always one of my favorite stories though. I remember reading it and thinking "Someone please be bright enough to take some of these stories and make decent movies out of them".
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I am glad the question was cleared up. In every case that I differed from the movies in my pronunciations, I looked it up in the materials I have, and the movies were right. So I have faith that they got it right.
The thing I love most about the movies is that attention to detail, and evident love of Middle Earth. I think almost everyone who worked on the movies was an avid Tolkien fan. Many people said they had always dreamed of working on these movies, and from looking at all the sets and props I believe it. There's so much love there!
I loved the story about the guy who did the calligraphy for the movie. He was a true blue Tolkien geek who had learned how to write in elvish scripts long ago just from pure love. Somehow when the movie was made they found him and put him to work.
I miss the Tolkien fervor that the movies generated. When is the Hobbit going to be made?
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The LOTR Calligrapher for the movies was Daniel Reeve I believe.
The Hobbit, if I had to guess will be in theaters by 2009. New Line still swears they are going to be making and releasing it, but last I checked, they don't have a script or a director, two rather key elements to making a movie. And if my knowledge is correct, they have to start production soon or they lose the rights.
Saul Zeantz, who will gain the rights when New Line loses them, plans to make the movie with Peter Jackson, and would either release it in late 2009 or early 2010 depending on a few factors.
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I used to write in elvish. That is, I'd use Tengscribe to transcribe an English paragraph into elvish, then look up a calligrapher's website as a reference for technique, and looking back and forth between the two I'd write very slowly using calligraphy pens I bought just for the purpose. It didn't look too bad either.
I also had rough sketches of an architectural model of the Rivendell set (complete with water pump for flowing water), but the friend I tried to conscript for help in the task wasn't as enthusiastic, and the project didn't pan out.
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I would so have been you, Euripides, if I had any skill with my hands.
Many times have I envisioned how exactly to replicate Rivendell when I become a billionaire. No models for me ... I'm buyin a chunk of New Zealand, hiring you to design it, and living in it. You can stick around if you want. Maybe throw in an Orthanc, and a Black Gate for some privacy.
And I had a spurt where I thought of myself as a linguist and learned a bit of elvish. I've forgotten most of it now, but it was fun for a while. And then I realized I'm not a linguist. Oh well.
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You have to figure out how to make it out with impenetrable Numenorean masonry skills too. Those things were built to last.
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