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Can anybody explain to me the difference between linguistics and philology?

The question arose when I was reading an article at salon.com about Tolkien's book "The Lord of the Rings."

(http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2001/06/04/tolkien/index.html)

It is rather interesting although I don't necessarily agree with everything in it. It is worth noting that for the upcoming film of the movie, the elvish characters will be speaking in Tolkien's invented elvish [or should I capitalize that--Elvish?] language and there will be subtitles. That's quite a task. For the voice of Gandalf the actor has been trained to mimic Tolkien's own voice, from recordings of the author.

Those books (including "The Hobbit") were pretty instrumental in awakening my own interest in literature and language. Gollum was the first character I guess that I ever encoutnered who had a distinctive way of speaking that set him off from the rest of the characters.( What has it gots in its pocketses?) I'm looking forward to the film. From the previews it looks to be pretty exciting -- the Ringwraiths on horseback looked especially scary.


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Yes, my preciouss...

I think liguistics is the study of the structure of language, whilst philology is the study of language variation over time. The latter term also has a more generalised sense of love of learning and the classics.

I'm with you in looking forward to the films, Alex.


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Speaking in Elvish, and subtitled? This sounds exaggerated. There's very little Elvish speech in the book, the odd greeting like elen síla lumenn' omentielvo, plus the two songs. I see no reason to subtitle the songs since most of the Fellowship who heard them didn't understand Elvish either.

Are they inventing new dialogue? This is quite possible. There might be scenes where Tolkien just described, say, Elrond and Gildor having a private talk away from the others, without writing down what they said. A screenwriter could invent the words and get them translated into Sindarin.

The Elves spoke the Common Speech in the presence of others, as did all people. Or are they thinking of inventing some background chatter in Lórien? I suspect that the only subtitling will be of one or two lines.


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I went to a movie Saturday night and spent quite a while just standing in the lobby staring at the beautiful, backlit poster for the first of the Ring movies. It shows a hobbit, presumably Frodo, holding a quietly shining golden ring in the palm of his hand, looking out of the poster with a look of wonder/dread in his eyes. OOOhhhh, I just can't wait.

Now I want to re-read (for the 6th or 7th time) the series, but I may wait so I'm finishing them up just as the first film comes out in December.

"Less haste, more speed, precioussss"


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In reply to:

Alive without breath,
As cold as death;
Never thirsty, ever drinking,
All in mail, never clinking.


Gollum's voice is so wonderful. I remember my mother reading me that book and adopting a scary voice for his weird, hissing speach. Wouldn't it be cool to get to play the part of Gollum? *sigh* back to work...



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I went to a movie Saturday night and spent quite a while just standing in the lobby staring at the beautiful, backlit poster for the first of the Ring movies.

I like that poster too, Hyla. If anyone else would like to see it, click here:

http://www.corona.bc.ca/films/details/pictures/fellowship_teaserposter.jpg


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Thank you for that link, Rapunzel! I hadn't seen the poster yet.

Ah... and for me, like mav said, philology = historical linguistics.


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Consider yourselves lucky! It won't be coming out in December here, but probably 3-6 months afterward...sigh. The drawbacks of living in Europe.


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Hyla hallucinates It shows a hobbit, presumably Frodo, holding a quietly shining golden ring in the palm of his hand

hmmm... I never pictured hobbits as being that... handsome (or wearing lipstick, for that matter).


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I never pictured hobbits as being that... handsome

Yeah, it didn't match with my image of the wee folk either, but it ain't perty enough to be an elf or ugly enough to be a dwarf. I hope the hobbits haven't been made too beautiful, but even more, I'm glad that they don't look like they've been made too cute. The last thing I'd want is for the ring to be carried to Barad-dűr by a couple of brave little Ewoks.


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