If Tolkien was such a master linguist, why does Gollum speak

Because Middle-Earth is on a longer time scale than Earth was. The time between 1600 Third Age and 2063 Third Age is a lot less development than 1500 AD and 1963 AD.

Because not every language is fucking english, that reinvents itself every hundred years?

>>48320898
Some real life languages, like Icelandic and Finnish, are extremely conservative and have not changed much during the past half a millenium.

>>48320898
elves conserve language

>>48321123
english was a mistake

>>48320898
Because The Hobbit (where Gollum first appeared) was originally meant to be a kid's adventure story, and unconnected from Tolkien's Middle Earth setting. It was only later that he decided to link the two, at which point Gollum's ability to speak Common (or whatever the language everyone speaks is called) was too well-established to be changed.

That's actually a really good point, but as anons said, not all language changed in 500 years.

How about you try to live for more then 500 years all by yourself while overdozing on the ring of power like a crack addict, and keep your linguistics top notch ?
He forgot his own name !

>>48320898
Well there were the orcs and shit that lived in his caves with him that inexplicably spoke the same language.

So he learned it from them ya dingus.

>>48321317
t. William Shakespeare

>>48321317
English was not a mistake

English are relaxed, harmless creatures that observe their environment. They rarely interfere anything, but just keep observing. They rarely talk, just look around and smile. This makes them very different from other creatures such as French, German, Chinese, Chinese without "L"s, etc.

English is the silent walker. Having no hands he embodies the Taoist principle of wu-wei (non-action) while his smiling facial expression shows his utter and complete acceptance of the world as it is.

>>48320898
Because The lord of the rings is not a modern descriptive novel. It's a translation of a fictional manuscript compiled from other fictional manuscripts over thousands of years.

>>48323534
What

>>48323534
Gondola pls.

>>48323534
This.

>>48320898
ROTK, Appendix D, IIRC; Tolkien notes that many different people in LOTR are speaking different languages, and unless it's poetry or an invocation, he translates it all into English; and tries to indicate such by differing speaking patterns.

One of the reasons the people of Mina's Tirith think Zpippin is a prince is because the Gondorian language has a formal/familiar divide that the hobbits don't, and Pippin calls everyone, even Denethor, in familiar terms (which Denethor thinks is funny)

So yea, Gollum does speak a different language, and Gandalf notes his ancestry to Hobbits by the fact that Bilbo can understand him at all.

>>48320898
You have a decent point OP.
Unfortunately, your overthinking something with an almost absurdly self evident and simple to answer is basically further proof of why the type of nerd you are will never be accepted as normal or even tolerable in normal conversations.
You KNOW the answer to this but choose to ignore it because the answer doesn't fit your obsessive need for "accuracy" or "organization". You might not actually be autistic (probably not in all honestly), but ultimately in your situation the difference is irrelevant; you will be treated as an outcast and never fit in.

Mostly I just feel sorry for you, because most probably on some level you had a choice to be like this and this is what you decided.

>>48324064
/thread.

>>48323534
>tfw gondola and wojack have made memes from something that we used for shitposting into a medium of transmitting feelings and thoughts
we are close to singularity. This is it lads. This is it.

>>48324064
>>48324381
>linguists use language to help link migrations of people from different places
>gandalf does the same with smeagol the stoor and the hobbits.
fuck.

>>48323534
So you've clearly not seen an Scottish English then.

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>>48323534

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>>48326364
>an Scottish English

>>48320898
Modern greeks can read Classical greek almost effortlessly

Homeric greek is where shit gets weird

>>48320898
Gollum is, however.

It's just the affect of the One Ring poisoning his mind. It just sounds like contemporary language because it is so degraded.

>Maximum overbait.webm

>>48320898
magic rings and shit
ain't gotta to explain dem

>>48320898

Reminder that gollum was unfamiliar with Sam's vernacular usage of 'taters' for 'potatoes'.

Reminder that gollum used 'precious' as a familiar term of address in a manner quite unlike the other Hobbits.

Reminder that gollum in fact has a generally idiosyncratic way of speaking, and how much of this is down to individual personality/insanity is hard to say.

>>48321123
But the vernacular reinvents itself all the time by definition.

>>48328215
But that's just not true.

>>48327817
Mostly in the sense that they, like their cousins the English, inhabit the Anglosphere.

Well, peripherally, anyway.

The reason Icelandic hasn't changed TOO much (it has changed still) is that it is a very isolated language that had little contact with foreign elements, it covers a really small area and is spoken by a small population, giving little room for dialects/variations, and it's also a culture of literalism, they liked their Sagas and wanted the language to keep that way.

This is not something that happens that easily, it's more of an exception than anything.

>>48328226
Thing is, Gollum DOESN'T sound like contemporary english speakers, I can't say I've ever met someone who refers to themselves in the third person, calls other people his "precious" and a million other things that make up Gollum's unique and mildly unnerving speaking style.

>>48328215
Modern Greek was purged of certain elements and altered to be more like Ancient Greek for political reasons, hardly a spontaneous evolution. Also phonology is VERY different from ancient times to the point they wouldn't understand shit.

>>48331454
His unique dialogue quirkd seem to be more of a consequence of his derangement than anything.

Because nobody 500 years ago sounded like a Shakespearean actor except for Shakespearean actors.

>>48320898
Haven't the people of england spoke the same way for longer than 500 years....

>>48331315
You have no idea what you're talking about. At all. Using the word Scottish and British to describe the same thing would be much more accurate than English, unless for some reason the Scots have completely reversed their heritage and become Germanicized as well. That's culturally.

England only refers to the area occupied by the exact country of England, not Great Britain, and certainly not the UK as a whole. That's geography.

In short you're a bumblefuck

>>48327662
>Englishman
>Celt

Nah, m8, Saxons are Germanic.

>>48321123
Every language does. It's a natural process that happens all the time everywhere.

Every generation speaks slightly differently from the one before, with word meanings, pronounciations, and syntax changing. The change is slow of course, because otherwise you wouldn't be able to communicate with your grandparents, for example. But if you were to speak to their grandparents, or their grandparent's grandparents then you would likely notice that they speak in a, to you, very peculiar way.

But because the change is slow to happen, and because schools (wrongly) teach people that there's a correct way to speak, many tend to think of languages as something static, and that the way they have learnt to speak is the correct way. These are the same people who get hung up on word definitions and point to the dictionary, not realising that languages can't be defined, only explained, and that the dictionary only attempts to explain, not control.

>>48331589
The Scots won't admit it, but they're practically all anglo-saxon. The Britons died out hundreds of years ago. There are still a hundred thousand or so in the Highlands and some proportion of the Welsh population can still be called "British" in the literal sense, but those guys are outnumbered by blacks and pakistanis let alone Anglos.

>>48327662
Jesus this is stupid as fucl, Englishmen and even the word English are derived from Angles, the Germanic tribe. The Celtic people known as the Britains are essentially no more, or the same as the English if you define it that way.

King Arthur isn't the savior of the English, the legend holds he would come and drive the Angles (or some other such people) off to restore the British once more.

I know this is confusing but please learn some history for once

>>48331626
Of course languages evolve. But if you shit on the lawn and call it innovation, I'm going to call you a retard.

>>48331663
It's impossibe to be English and not be a descendant of every single person who lived in western Europe 1000 years ago. Even if we assume that every marriage ever in human history was between second cousins we would still run out of people on Earth to be your ancestors after 28 generations.

>>48331814
What are you trying to convey?

>>48324169
Stupid person detected.

>>48321337
The book is also supposedly a translation of a translation of a translation etc etc of a book written by Bilbo and Frodo mixed in with chronicles of the war from other sources.

Supposedly Gollums dialect was lost somewhere along the way.

>>48331850
That's some bullshit. Could you spell out your analysis? Because if it rests on the assumption that anybody thinks about inbreeding more than 2 or 3 generations past, or that each breeder is about equally successful, or that geography is no barrier, it's flawed. A more accurate statement is that most people who lived in Western Europe 1000 years ago have living descendants diffused across an area centered on their own location, while some unlucky sods left no family at all or a family that died after one or two generations before having time to get thoroughly embedded in the gene pool.

>>48332363
Yes, that was a clumsy formulation on my part. A better way to say it would be that any person living in Western Europe 1000 years ago that has living descendants today is an ancestor to all Western Europeans alive today.

>>48323534
I want to know more

>>48331454
I agree with>>48331491, in that I think his dialogue reflects madness more than ancient-ness. That would be a very fun and interesting take on the character, but I think it's a little too clear that he's just a nutzo junkie rather thank speaking ancient hobbitese.

>>48332907
>>48331491
It could be both.

>>48320898
>I don't know what linguistics is

>>48333004
From a linguistic standpoint, OP actually has a point. However, as has already been noted, LotR isn't meant to be read as an exact account of what went down, but as a collection of stories relating to the same event and characters that have changed and mutated over a long period of time as it was passed down among several authors and translators.

>yfw we are now in an age of linguistics where profound emotions can be expressed and understood with simple and singular declarations thanks to pervasive memes
JUST

>>48333806
>we are now in an age of linguistics
What is this even supposed to mean?

>where profound emotions can be expressed and understood with simple and singular declarations
That's languages for you.

>>48333845
>What is this even supposed to mean?
That conversation has changed over time to a surprisingly refined point
It's not complex

>>48333906
So why not say that instead? "Age of linguistics" reads as "age of the science of languages" to those who uses the word.

>>48334019
It's not unlike saying we have "entered an age of mathematics where fermat's last theorem was proven". It's perfectly valid to say as sciences have ages.

>>48334519
Yes, but the sentence that followed concerned English specifically, not linguistics.

>>48334534
Memes are not localized to the english language.

>>48334540
Languages have had that feature built into them from, I can only assume, the very beginning. To claim that we have just now entered an age where it's possible to express profound emotions with single words is absurd.

>>48334567
"Possible"? I mean, technically. But it is a phenomenon that is facilitated and accelerated without limit by the internet.

>>48334606
Again, in English specifically, perhaps.

>>48320898
AYYY
>*smacks lips*
HOL UP
>*steals powerful magical artifacts*
SO PRECIOUS BE SAYING
>*gets arms tortured by ringwaiths*
AYY, HOLD UP PRECIOUS
>*follows the fellowship*
AYY SO PRECIOUS BE SAYING
>*splits personality*
YESS PRECIOUS SO YOUSE BE SAYING
>*lisps 'Hobbitses'*
AYY NOW HOL UP YOUSE BE SAYING PRECIOUS
>*betrays Frodo*
THAT PRECIOUS BE'S
>*thrown into a fucking volcano*
HOBBITSES AND SHIT?

>>48331872
Not that guy; but he's probably saying that change for change's sake is not a good thing in and of itself; change must be directed towards constructive and useful purposes, not left in the hands of, for want of a better word "Idiots".

>>48333806
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra

>>48336004
>change must be directed towards constructive and useful purposes
That's not how languages work. The way you speak right now is the result of an incredibly long process where the language of your ancestors have, for a lack of a better term, changed simply to change with no particular goal in mind, and definetly not with practicality an an end goal. If it had been, you wouldn't be pronouncing <knight> and <night> the same way now when your ancestors didn't, for example.

>>48323888
>>48324744
What have I missed? What has that post to do with gondola?

>>48335648
sheeit

>>48336368
the guy just replaced the word gondola with english, and other memes with other groups of people.

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>>48336818
Hm I don't seem to know the original copy pasta then.
Thanks.
Here have a felt gondola at the holocaust memorial in Berlin

>>48331509
Actually, no they haven't

>>48331663
They're all British you assbrush, the word you're looking for is Briton.

>>48336849
this meme and wojack legitimately feel happy sometimes.

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>>48323534

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>>48327662
Holy shit

>>48321123
Oh wow, we'v got a lingust scholar on /tv/ I'm sure.

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>>48323534
> Chinese, Chinese without "L"s
My fucking sides.

>>48331403
... pretty much like the Shire, you mean.

If Tolkien was such a master linguist, why do hobbits speak of "Second breakfast" when you can surely only "breakfast" once?

>>48339689
Well, obviously you've been fasting since first breakfast to work up an appetite for second breakfast.

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>>48339689
Do you know who also break fast twice?
The French.

First of all, >>48324064
Second, his grammar mistakes (hobbitses and such) were supposed to represent him speaking a outdated version of Common

The part about Pippin is actually mentioned very clearly in the book itself, not even the apendices.

>>48320898
If X is Y, why Z?

This thread looks familiar... Are you using the bait recipe book from back in 2009?

>>48331626
Don't state this as fact, you're speaking on what kinda-sorta seems right to you. Icelandic speakers can understand ancient, antiquated writing without issue, because not all languages change as english has. They inevitably change a little but english changes a lot more.

>>48323534
>>48323888
what the fuck is a gondola?

>>48343958
Gondola was not a mistake

Gondolas are relaxed, harmless creatures that observe their environment. They rarely interfere anything, but just keep observing. They rarely talk, just look around and smile. This makes them very different from other creatures such as spurdo, that feel, pepe, yoba, etc.

Gondola is the silent walker. Having no hands he embodies the Taoist principle of wu-wei (non-action) while his smiling facial expression shows his utter and complete acceptance of the world as it is.

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>>48344092

>>48321123
You should see swedish. Middle English is perfectly understandable at least.

>>48344120
GODDAMMIT

>>48335648
thank you