# Thranduil Meets His Match



## Squint-eyed Southerner (Aug 16, 2019)

Well, sort of:


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## Miguel (Aug 16, 2019)




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## Ithilethiel (Aug 19, 2019)

I liked him better as a blonde...


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## Elthir (Sep 11, 2019)

Pace pronounces *síla *more correctly than Stephen.

Just sayin'.


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Sep 11, 2019)

I do wish someone would teach Stephen how to pronounce "Aule".

(Sorry about the missing umlaut -- too much trouble on my phone).


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## Ithilethiel (Sep 18, 2019)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> I do wish someone would teach Stephen how to pronounce "Aule".
> 
> (Sorry about the missing umlaut -- too much trouble on my phone).



The old, "old phone umlaut" excuse.


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## Olorgando (Sep 18, 2019)

As a German native speaker, let me make one thing perfectly clear (ouch! I'm channeling Richard Nixon!):
ä, ö and ü are regular umlauts. The Scandinavian languages do other strange things with their vowels (Turkish has quite a few umlauts, too).
But (MS character map to the rescue) "ë" looks like an extraterrestrial in any German sentence.


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## Elthir (Sep 19, 2019)

_Aule_ does not need a diaeresis. SeS probably wanted one here to indicate that the final e isn't silent, considering the topic was about pronunciation.

(it's not really an umlaut in the sense of changing the sound of the vowel)


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Sep 19, 2019)

Correct. I thought Tolkien used one, but I appear to be mistaken.


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## Olorgando (Sep 19, 2019)

Galin said:


> _Aule_ does not need a diaeresis. SeS probably wanted one here to indicate that the final e isn't silent, considering the topic was about pronunciation.
> 
> (it's not really an umlaut in the sense of changing the sound of the vowel)





Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> Correct. I thought Tolkien used one, but I appear to be mistaken.


Quick check in my copy of the Sil: clearly Aulë, and even in capitals AULË in the chapter title of chapter 2 of the Quenta Silmarillion.

I don't recall having ever seen ë or Ë anywhere except in JRRT's writings. In which language is this special letter used?
Is ë analog to é or è or ê in French?


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Sep 19, 2019)

IIRC he said he used it to indicate that the letter was to be pronounced. Final E is usually silent in modern English. He also used it to show where two vowels were to be pronounced separately, rather than as as a diphthong.

Hmm. So it appears I was right after all.


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## Elthir (Sep 19, 2019)

Squint-eyed Southerner said:


> Correct. I thought Tolkien used one, but I appear to be mistaken.



What I mean is that the diaeresis is not needed 'cause *Aule* sounds the same as *Aulë*. And there is no "diaeresis" in the Elvish writing systems.
With a word like *síla* however, it is proper to include the acute accent to mark the long vowel.

Of course, the pronunciation is "altered" if one doesn't pronounce final -e, so that's why I thought you wanted it above. Tolkien used the diaeresis often enough, as we know (*Eärendil, Aulë*), but not wholly consistently.

In any case I think it helps some readers, and confuses others.


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## Elthir (Sep 19, 2019)

Olorgando said:


> I don't recall having ever seen ë or Ë anywhere except in JRRT's writings. In which language is this special letter used? Is ë analog to é or è or ê in French



In Tolkien's orthography the diaeresis marks a vowel "unsilent" (like final e in Aule), or marks vowels in "hiatus", like in the word coöperate.

So you don't say cooperate . . . unless talking to chickens while trying to cut out a syllable


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Sep 19, 2019)

When they escape, do you have to "recooperate"?


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## Elthir (Sep 19, 2019)

Mmm. Escaped chicken.


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## Squint-eyed Southerner (Sep 19, 2019)

Just slap some bacon on it.

Not in the snow, though.


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