# What has the Lord of the Rings done to your spelling?



## HLGStrider (Jun 18, 2003)

I used to always spell gray, grey. . .now this isn't going to be a problem for you who live in England, but we Americans had to be original on words like that. . .

I also always spell habit habbit thinking hobbit. . .I DON'T KNOW WHY!

So, do you ever use Elvish spelling or pronounciation?
Spell things the Brittish way when you are American (Colour?)?

Anything like that?

How's your Tolkien spelling?


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## BlackCaptain (Jun 18, 2003)

I must admit I have... I did it towards the begining of my TTF career. Then I realised it was reserved for Brittish people so I just stopped! Haha. I also always use grey as opposed to gray.


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## Celebthôl (Jun 18, 2003)

Oh crap, can a mod change that i voted for i havent, but i have....

I spell Elf as Elve 

and

Dwarf as Dwarve


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## CelebrianTiwele (Jun 18, 2003)

...tolkien didn't...

Elf-elves
Dwarf-Dwarves


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## HLGStrider (Jun 18, 2003)

Oh, let him have his misspelling, CT. . . Elves and Dwarves are technically misspellings, however. . .I use them both.


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## Rangerdave (Jun 19, 2003)

> _Originally posted by HLGStrider _
> *Oh, let him have his misspelling, CT. . . Elves and Dwarves are technically misspellings, however. . .I use them both. *



Technically, they are not.
Both variants (Elfs and Elves/Dwarfs and Dwarves) can be found in the Oxford English Dictionary, and are therefore considered correct. 

If in doubt, follow the OED.



RD

Trust me on this one, won many a argument in college by checking the OED


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## CelebrianTiwele (Jun 19, 2003)

does it have ain't in there? ::grins at evil teachers:: or sumthing about being able to use contractions in an essay so that the grade that i really deserved can be higher than the grade i got therefore causing me to make a B and have to take the final...I'm bettter now....


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## HLGStrider (Jun 19, 2003)

My dang spellchecker never acknowledges Dwarves, which was what I was going on. . .

Evil spell checker. . .

Did you know that snuck isn't a word, as in "He snuck around the corner?" It's sneaked. . .what kind of a word is sneaked?


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## Ledreanne313 (Jun 19, 2003)

Speaking of that 'Snuck-Sneaked' thing...I always thought the plural of Fish was...fish. But my science book said Fishes! I got so confused...

And yes, Tolkien hs changed my spelling/grammer. I am much more formal (though I don't show it...everyone would thinkI have gone mad...). I always say Hobbit instead of habit...and everytime I see Lego or Leg (as a prefix *legacy(sp)*) I think Legolas and when I see common words used in names (Deep=Helm's Deep, Horse=Shadowfax, Ring=self-explainitory) I think of them. Get annoying sometimes...

Anne


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## HLGStrider (Jun 19, 2003)

Fishessssssssss think Gollum. . .Then add extra s's.


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## MacAddict (Jun 21, 2003)

I occasionally have misspelled "Tolkien" by switching the "i" and the "e" so it looks like this "Tolkein", and I usally don't spell anything right so I just make it up 



~MacAddict


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## Rangerdave (Jun 21, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Ledreanne313 _
> *I always thought the plural of Fish was...fish. But my science book said Fishes! I got so confused...*



Your science book is half right.

The plural of a single species of fish is fish. For example: I have a pet goldfish *or* I have several goldfish.

If you are speaking of different types of fish, the plural is fishes. 
ie: I have a fish in a bowl *or* There are many different fishes in the sea.


get it?

RD


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## Ledreanne313 (Jun 25, 2003)

Oh- Thanks...I get it...I actually learned something today. SOmeone should make a ramdom fact thread so when people ask you 'What have you learned today?' You can always answer...

Anne


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## Niniel (Jun 26, 2003)

I always spell words out completely like JRRT did; like 'did not' instead of 'didn't' and 'can not' instead of 'can't'. I'm not sure if this is actually incorrect, but it's not like most English-writing people write it.


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## HLGStrider (Jun 26, 2003)

It's not incorrect; it's just not colloquiel. . .Coloqueal?. . .colo. . .BLAH!. . .common. 

My sister speaks that way as well sometimes because she reads a lot of Jane Austin and they do that as well. . .


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## Evenstar373 (Jun 28, 2003)

I never could spell


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## Confusticated (Jul 18, 2004)

Sometimes I start to read non-elvish words with elvish pronunciation if they look elvish in spelling. 

I use British spelling for a few words sometimes, depends. I usually stop myself.


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## Garwen (Jul 27, 2004)

I have always misspelled anyway.
But people like to point that out to me.
And thats ok because I already knew thatI couldnr spell well.


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## Garwen (Jul 27, 2004)

I really wasn't trying to be cute
I hit the wrong keys
I do that alot too.


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## 33Peregrin (Jul 30, 2004)

I actually got marked off in an essay last year about Romeo and Juliet for writing 'Phial' instead of 'Vial'. I refused to change it...
I always spelt grey 'grey'. Never gray.... Sometimes when I am just starting a book, I decide whether I will like it or not just by how grey is spelt.
Also... I got talked to by my English teacher a lot because my writing 'style' didn't really seem to be my 'voice.' But I am better now...

And this doesn't have anything to do with Tolkien really, but I was so obsessed with Elijah Wood a couple of years ago, that I would spell 'would' as 'wood'. It was funny when the teachers didn't notice. But I DO NOT do that now, so don't worry.


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## Niirewen (Aug 5, 2004)

Sometimes when I'm reading a British novel (such as LOTR) I slip up and spell a word using the British spelling.


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## Rangerdave (Aug 5, 2004)

33Peregrin said:


> I actually got marked off in an essay last year about Romeo and Juliet for writing 'Phial' instead of 'Vial'. I refused to change it...


 Your teacher was quite right to complain.
Phial is middle English whereas Vial is modern English.

Shakespeare wrote in modern English. Always if possible refer to a text using the same language as the original text.


RD


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## elf_queen (Aug 21, 2004)

LOTR has made it absoultly impossible for me to spell grey like a normal American. I always hated spelling it with an a, and now I just can't bring myself to do it!


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## joxy (Aug 22, 2004)

Rangerdave said:


> Shakespeare wrote in modern English.


Did he? Discuss!


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## Elemmire (Dec 20, 2004)

I'm American.

But I've been using British spelling for... about 5 years now.

I don't consider it misspelling...

My teachers haven't always liked it, but I don't care.  

eek: what happened to the smilies!  )

I don't know if it's because of Tolkien... quite the possibility...


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## e.Blackstar (Dec 25, 2004)

Yeah, I always spelled grey with an e...I remember on a third grade spelling test, I spelt it with an e instead of an a and I got it marked wrong and I was sooooo mad. Hehe...

I often add a u to words...like colour or whatever.


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## Morgul Agent (Dec 27, 2004)

In response to Ranger Dave, regarding "Dwarvish and Elvish", you were in fact BOTH right...

It IS technically a misspelling.

And, it IS in the Oxford Dictionary.

It's because Tolkien PUT it in the Oxford Dictionary. He invented that spelling, and since he was one of the 4 or 5 publishers of the OED, it was added in there!

(In case anyone is lost, we're talking about Dwarves/Elves vs. Dwarfs/Elfs).


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## Thráin II (Dec 30, 2004)

It has improved my spelling greatly, and it has given me a huge word-base as well.

I'm not a native English speaker so I freely use both American and British spelling and as such things like gray and grey don't really affect me. (not that I've used gray or grey in the past months).


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## Barliman Butterbur (Dec 30, 2004)

HLGStrider said:


> ...do you ever use Elvish spelling or pronounciation?
> Spell things the Brittish way when you are American (Colour?)?



Spelling's never been a problem for me; I prefer "grey;" use Tolkien's spelling when discussing things Tolkien. The important thing that Tolkien did for me was to increase my functional vocabulary: when I first began reading it in the 60s, I read it with a good dictionary at hand! Thanks for that, Professor!

Barley


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## Barliman Butterbur (Dec 30, 2004)

33Peregrin said:


> I actually got marked off in an essay last year about Romeo and Juliet for writing 'Phial' instead of 'Vial'. I refused to change it...



Good for you! Stick to your guns when your teachers show themselves to be idiots! "Phial" appears in the Random House Unabridged Dictionary (and others), has its roots in Greek and has been in use since at least 1350.

I had a similar experience with an idiot music teacher when I was in junior high school back in the late 40s:

Not only was I active in the music department, but also in the print shop. Our music teacher, Miss Bonnie Jean Beale, submitted a music program to be produced in our school print shop. I noticed that she misspelled the word _saxophone_ as "saxaphone." I brought this to the attention of my print shop teacher, who said he'd ask Beale about it. She was incensed over this questioning of her expertise and insisted she was right. I showed the teacher the dictionary spelling to prove that she was wrong. I was more than pleased to see her eventually put in her place (and she was made to give me a grudging apology), and to see the correct spelling go into the program.

She was quite a teacher. She would curse at the students, chase them around the auditorium, throw batons and brass mouthpieces us, tried to break violins over the students' heads, and gave one girl a permanent spinal injury by pulling a piano bench out from under her. She used to bite her nails down to the point where they'd bleed. She was anorexically thin, with a big frizzy perm, and resembled nothing so much as a carrot-nosed buck-toothed lollipop.

She was eventually thrown out of the school system on _twenty-four_ counts of child brutality. I know this because it was in the Los Angeles Mirror newspaper.

Barley


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## Confusticated (Dec 30, 2004)

elf_queen said:


> LOTR has made it absoultly impossible for me to spell grey like a normal American. I always hated spelling it with an a, and now I just can't bring myself to do it!



Even before reading LotR I had the idea that _grey_ was the correct way to spell it! Don't know how that happened.

I still use an e, but I haven't been a student who actually turns in written work in four years, so this isn't a problem. If there comes a time when I do write something that needs to be correct I'll be careful.


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## Eledhwen (Jan 3, 2005)

My spelling has remained unaltered, being British to start with. Vocabulary-wise, I was brought up with a broad vocabulary without realising it; until I moved schools and was teased for having "swallowed a dictionary". I was amused the first time I read a Tolkien related site with a list of archaic words in it, as I knew over half of them from my own usage. I think some words have survived in Yorkshire, Lancashire and the counties now called Cumbria for much longer than elsewhere.

On the 'phial' issue, the word is still in use. We used glass phials in chemistry lessons at school, and a quick check in my Oxford English Dictionary (OED) confirms that the word is not archaic in England. 

Also, grey is the standard spelling of the colour, but surnames are usually Gray (My local MP is James Gray). To me, 'gray' just doesn't sound 'grey' enough - too much like gravy (which is brown)


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## Hobbit-GalRosie (Jan 8, 2005)

It hasn't actually changed my spelling in particular, but I do prefer British spellings without actually using them...except grey. I always thought that both ways were correct, I mean, I knew the a was a little more usual but I didn't think it was exclusive. EVIL that teachers should try to make pore chilluns spell it a STUPID way! It looks _so_ much better with an e.

As for the phial/vial debate...I don't know, I suppose it's probably best to spell it the same way as Shakespeare in that particular case, assuming he did spell it the way Rangerdave said, as he usually seems to know what he's talking about, but I didn't think that one was more archaic...but I may just be showing my ignorance there, I'm only starting to study that deeply into older English spellings as a result of Tolkien, and my knowledge is...somewhat irregular. Stronger in some areas than others.

Blah, blah, blah, I just babbled on like a pedantic lunatic and no one even cares what I said! Oh well!!


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## Eledhwen (Jan 9, 2005)

It's interesting to hear Americans preferring 'grey' to 'gray'. It should be a question on the national census, and if enough people want to change, then change all the dictionaries. The publishing industry will be happy, the 'grey' fans will be happy, and the tabloids will have a field day.


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## Hobbit-GalRosie (Jan 9, 2005)

Lol, that's a great idea!  Why hasn't anyone thought of this before? Too bad it's not likely to happen, no one can ever push anything through the governmental bureaucracy anymore, and I suppose Bush isn't the type who would _care_, so no help there, lol.


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## Eledhwen (Jan 10, 2005)

Pity  The Greeks managed to revise their entire grammatical system a few years back; but that was modernised, not ancientised.

Anyone using 'thence' and 'whence' who weren't before? Whence was badly used in the film, where it was prefixed with 'from'. Unnecessary, because 'whence' means 'from where', and 'thence' means 'from there'.


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## HLGStrider (Jan 11, 2005)

Hobbit-GalRosie said:


> Lol, that's a great idea!  Why hasn't anyone thought of this before? Too bad it's not likely to happen, no one can ever push anything through the governmental bureaucracy anymore, and I suppose Bush isn't the type who would _care_, so no help there, lol.


 
Bush shouldn't care. Langauge is a cultural, not a governmental, issue. The only way government effects language is through legal contract standards. Legal contracts have to be in very specific language, phrased just right. The language used in such documents will change much slower, and very few people talk like a legal contract. 

Personally, if the government tried to enforce the use of one spelling or another, I would be tempted to use the opposite spelling just to show them that they have no right inforcing spelling. 

Language changes come when the use of one word wrongly happens so often that it is accepted. Same with puncuation.

Have you read _Eats, Shoots, and Leaves _yet? There is interesting stuff on there about how puncuation uses have fluctuated.

Language either evolves slowly due to popular use or is changed by the publishing industry. The government shouldn't have anything to do with it.


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## Hobbit-GalRosie (Jan 11, 2005)

I totally agree with you Elgee, the government has no place in my pencil or anyone else's, I was just joking about that. I realize now I didn't make that clear enough. Sorry if I confused anyone.

I haven't read that book, but I saw it at a library and thought it was a neat idea, and a funny title, though I'd heard that joke too often for it to really work at this point. I'll see if it's there the next time I return to my beloved place of the bibliophiles.


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## Eledhwen (Jan 11, 2005)

I expect the book wouldn't have the same impact here in England. I went to school in a part of the country where older words were still in use, and it was a bit of a surprise to me to find out that what I thought was common usage was archaic. I expect cultural exposure is levelling out English all over the world, but I remember well the old boys saying things like 'sistha' which is a contraction of 'see-est thou' (ie: 'look'); and my favourite; when, on a school camp, one of the boys came out of his tent one sunny morning and said "Ee! It's a gurt li'l dabber of a day." Sam Gamgee's 'etten' for eaten was also common; but then again, a lot of the people I knew were sons and daughters of Lancashire Fusiliers, my Dad and my Grandad's regiment, and also where it is believed Tolkien got much inspiration for 'Hobbit talk'. I noticed these things because my Mum always tried to get us to talk properly. That has turned out to be useful, but more useful still is the way it made me aware of the language being used around me.


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## Helcaraxë (Jan 22, 2005)

As an American, I often misspell "labor" as "labour."


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## Eledhwen (Jan 22, 2005)

I've noticed that where there's a spelling difference, British English often has more letters. Harbour, labour, night, etc.

One I find interesting is lieutenant, which is spelt the same in GB, but Tolkien would have pronounced 'leftenant', as would any Englishman who had heard the word outside of American 'movies'.


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## Elfarmari (Jan 30, 2005)

I have noticed I occasionally use the British spelling of words (adding 'u' to color, etc.), but the thing I've been noticing lately is 'dwarves'. I am currently studying astronomy, and I've been reading and writing about white dwarf stars. The 'proper' plural is white dwarfs, but I constantly want to write dwarves, and think it is wrong whenever I see 'dwarfs'.


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## Confusticated (Jan 31, 2005)

Eledhwen said:


> I've noticed that where there's a spelling difference, British English often has more letters. Harbour, labour, night, etc.



Night? I don't know of any other way to spell it.


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## Eledhwen (Jan 31, 2005)

Elfarmari said:


> I have noticed I occasionally use the British spelling of words (adding 'u' to color, etc.), but the thing I've been noticing lately is 'dwarves'. I am currently studying astronomy, and I've been reading and writing about white dwarf stars. The 'proper' plural is white dwarfs, but I constantly want to write dwarves, and think it is wrong whenever I see 'dwarfs'.


If they are going to get pedantic, Tolkien says the correct plural for dwarf is dwarrow  



Nóm said:


> Night? I don't know of any other way to spell it.


My ignorance. It's based on what comes across the pond, probably as advertising and logo spellings. I need an American equivalent to www.effingpot.com.


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## HLGStrider (Feb 2, 2005)

Advertising spelling. . .great stuff.  It's the Netspeak of the adult world.

Lite, Nite, Kwik, etc, etc, etc.


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## Morohtar (Feb 2, 2005)

Gah! Confounded advertising spelling. PSA for all the advertising people out there: "Your products don't get more extreme if you take the "e" off the front of "extreme." Nor does a larger "x" insure that your product will be more extreme than someone whose "x" is the same size as every other letter in their horribly misspelled product's name.

Anyways, I haven't noticed that my spelling is different. I do believe that most Canadian spelling rules are the same as British spelling. What I have noticed is that I can spell properly, unlike so many of my peers. Now, this is not so much due to the fact that I have read The Lord of the Rings, but simply that I have read something, and continue to do so on a regular basis. Trying to have grade 12 students read through a book, or some Shakespeare, takes a considerable amount of time. Even when they finish reading, they hardly understand what they just read. They should be in a grade 5 class, for all their reading and comprehension skills.


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## Elorendil (Feb 9, 2005)

I haven't actually misspelled anything (yet ) but I have mispronounced a few things. Like the title of the movie Spirit, Stallion of the Cimmeron. I was pronouncing it "Kimmeron" until a friend pointed it out I've done that with a few other things, too. I've also accidently started speaking Elvish on more than one occasion.


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## Eledhwen (Feb 10, 2005)

Elorendil said:


> I have mispronounced Stallion of the Cimmeron. I was pronouncing it "Kimmeron" until a friend pointed it out.


They should have the decency to provide a pronunciation guide, like JRRT did in the Appendices. I might have easily made that same mistake as, geologically, I live on the only belt of Oxford Kimmeridge clay on the planet.

As I've said before; I am English, and was brought up in the North West, specifically the Lakes, where older words have survived in general use. I am sometimes surprised that a word I use is regarded as archaic.


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## Hiril Elfwraith (Mar 9, 2010)

As far as gray/grey is concerned, I tend to use grey for beautiful greyish colors (like a grey dress) and gray for ugly gray (like a dull gray sky.) I also have started spelling practice, practise. I'm not sure if that's the British spelling or just pointlessness, but...


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## Eledhwen (Mar 15, 2010)

I have always had old fashioned English spelling. My family are from the North, where especially in Yorkshire an older version of English survived well into the 20th century (Yorkshire saying: "All the world is qüeer save thee and me, and even thou art a bit qüeer.


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## Confusticated (Oct 11, 2010)

Morohtar said:


> Gah! Confounded advertising spelling. PSA for all the advertising people out there: "Your products don't get more extreme if you take the "e" off the front of "extreme." Nor does a larger "x" insure that your product will be more extreme than someone whose "x" is the same size as every other letter in their horribly misspelled product's name.


:*D

The advertising, expecially on product logos have gotten so hectic and colorful trying to jump out at ya that it is a more plain oldish-fashioned looking labels with a more elagant design which is coming back into appeal I think. 

Yeah the British spellings, I have done it a lot here... even the actual grammar too, or sentence structure. Wording things certain ways that aren't common in the USA, which comes from talking to English people. Though I don't like to do it in front of British people outside of TTF because it might look like I'm trying to be British.:*D Which would be pathetic since you can't become British can you... and its not that much better than being an American is it. Aren't both of our cultures pretty much shot to hell and our societies degrading in the exact same way for the exact same reasons?:*confused:

favourite, centre, Baggins... 'quotations "within" quotes'... I'm so British now.;*)


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## Starflower (Oct 11, 2010)

English is not my first language, but it is the first language I read LOTR in. Thus it has not affected my spelling as such, but my English in general. Take the dwarf-dwarves and elf-elves thing, I did not know there was any other way of spelling these words, as I had never encountered them before! 
On another tangent, growing up in a non-English speaking country, I never had any opportunity to hear an English speaker reading the books, thus I completely made up the pronunciation of the names/places. The biggest thing for me when the films came out was simply to hear them talking!!!


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## HLGStrider (Oct 11, 2010)

If you don't mind, I'm just curious what your first language is. Seeing your location as London I had always just assumed you were "from there" as well, plus you have incredibly good English, so I never doubted it was your first language, but now you have me curious.


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## Starflower (Oct 12, 2010)

@Elgee my first language is Finnish, I grew up in Finland (wayyyy up north of everything . I have lived abroad for over a decade now so I speak English more than my own language these days.


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## Bonsai Huorn (Feb 19, 2011)

My spelling has always been very good, but Tolkien's florid and archaic diction has added much to my working vocabulary. As an American, I resent the arbitrary changes made to the English language in this country. The sundering of American spelling is due entirely to one Noah Webster, whose philosophical and political views corresponded to total cultural independence from England. Over two hundred years ago, he began systematically altering and "simplifying" the spelling of English words in his dictionaries over the course of several editions. In the end, it only made English spelling more difficult, since the French-derived "colour" and "favour" are phonetic for English, whilst "color" and "flavor" are not. At least we don't speak with our "tung," as Webster did. As far as I'm concerned, the OED is the supreme arbiter of the English language, not Merriam-Webster.


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## TyrLegend (Apr 17, 2011)

So thats why I've been writing "grey" instead of "gray" all of a sudden. I just kept thinking "where the heck is this e coming from?!" lol


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## Ithirahad (Apr 24, 2015)

LotR may be why I tend to use British spellings half the time, actually. And why my vocabulary and syntax tend at times toward the cryptic or archaic.

EDIT: Wow, self-demonstrating.


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## Eledhwen (Apr 27, 2015)

Thanks for reviving this thread, Ithirahad. I have just checked both the Oxford and Cambridge English Dictionaries and both now have the two alternative plurals, dwarfs and dwarves, as accepted alternatives; so Tolkien may have been in error at the time of writing, but not any longer!


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## CirdanLinweilin (Nov 13, 2017)

I tend to use "Grey" over "Gray" in my original Fantasy series. I also use "Thou", "Art", you know, that old stuff. 

What I'm curious about is: "Thoust". It sounds like a contracted version of "Thou Hast". It sounds both right and wrong, although I do want to use it more.

I haven't begun adding a 'u' to everything yet, I might though.

CL

_P.S. If anyone can help me out with 'Thoust', that'd be great!_


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## Azrubêl (Nov 15, 2017)

CirdanLinweilin said:


> I tend to use "Grey" over "Gray" in my original Fantasy series. I also use "Thou", "Art", you know, that old stuff.
> 
> What I'm curious about is: "Thoust". It sounds like a contracted version of "Thou Hast". It sounds both right and wrong, although I do want to use it more.
> 
> ...



I find that this is true, that these old english phrases often have to be in a sentence with the right syntax and tense, compared to modern terms that are more inter-changeable.


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