walrus wrote:
> probably fair to say that I really learned to read
> English by going through the History of
> Middle-earth series. It was only later that I
> learned that reading Kalevala in the original
> Finnish version set Tolkien in the course of
> inventing his Legendarium!
He based Elvish on Finnish and Welsh, I think.
> As to Boyd who hasn't read the LotR, forget about
> the movies, they've got nothing on the
> original...
I liked the first in parts but the second was dire. I couldn't believe so much money had been spent on it: the scenes with horses seemed particularly unrealistic.
> Dr. Farmer's remark about Iceland actually being
> Isenland was very interesting. I thrive on
> learning etymological tidbits like this.
Be careful with etymology. It's not an exact science, but that's part of its charm. This is a good site:
[
www.etymonline.com]