Advanced civilization on an island that sinks into the sea

Wow... I don't think anyone has ever noticed that before. Good work user!

Funnily enough, Tolkien says that the fact that Numenor's Quenya name sounds like "Atlantis" was simply a happy coincidence, not intentional.

>Mordor is located in Romania
No it's not, Mount Doom is Mt. Etna, on Sicily.

You'll notice a lot of that in his books.

Théoden is an Old English word for king, and the famous mead hall Meduseld means "mead hall".

...

In this case I believe him because he literally invented languages, so it's likely that's just what the words sounded like. Tolkien was nothing if not a language autist. It's why they put him to work on codes in Ww2

Well, it's not as if these were unrealistic, it's very likely that back then someone would name their Mead hall, "Mead hall"

Oh yeah, not saying it's a bad thing. Hell, my go-to method of naming things in a setting is "pick the oldest language I can reliably translate" and go from there.

No, Mordor is located in Warsaw in corporate part of the town. This is mainly because being corporat is like being murdered (murder in polish is "mord"). Plus the commute and traffic jams.

He wasn't doing codes. I think he was only a watchmen and wasn't really part of the war effort other than that. Christopher was in the RAF and iirc was drawing the maps for ME in his spare time.

I wonder if it was a subconscious slip on his part?

I've a friend who writes for a living. He actually earns a living doing it and not the $5000 per year the average "professional" writer earns. When he was working on his MFA, he wrote a short story set in a small town after Lincoln's funeral train passed through as part of an assignment to write a "mood" and 'period" piece. In the piece the narrator casually mentions lilacs along a fence. My friend didn't mean anything by it, it was just a bit of scenery.

His MFA advisor read the piece and commended him for subtly referencing Whitman's pastoral elegy to Lincoln entitled "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd"! My friend was shocked. The link was obvious but he hadn't even been aware of it while writing his piece. It just "happened".

I wonder if the Akallabeth - Atalante - Atlantis link just "happened" for Tolkien too.

...

I think it was 100% intentional. Tolkien put in a number of such in-jokes. Remember that one of the elvish cities on Tol Eressea was called Avallone. Tol Eressea literally was Avalon in the early drafts of Silmarillion.

>I think it was 100% intentional.

That's most likely the truth. Tolkien probably denied the link because he was tired of people asking him all the time.

But what was Aragorn's tax policy?

..So, Elves are rednecks?

Good thing no one asked him about Teleporno.

Hell, he even did puns.

Look where Bilbo and Frodo lived.

He called it something similar to a happy coincidence. He hadn't planned for the names to be so similar but was delighted that they were.

I mean, the Rohirrim are literally speaking Old English in the book because Tolkien "translated" their language into it because it sounded like a more archaic form of the language spoken by the Hobbits. Théoden wasn't the characters actual name but merely the translation of his name into Old English.

Even still, I can easily picture Tolkien formulating some kind of code language to fuck with the germans after hearing about the Navajo code talkers, not that he would have.

I'm pretty sure Tolkien cracked codes for the military. He didn't make any as far as I'm aware, however.

>I think he was only a watchmen and wasn't really part of the war effort other than that.

Yeah, from what I understand whatever he was doing didn't even rate inclusion in the Home Guard, aka Dad's Army. Still, he was doing something.

>I'm pretty sure Tolkien cracked codes for the military.

No he didn't. As a linguist, he was invited to apply. He then went through the initial training only to be told he wasn't needed.

Wrong.
Tolkien laid out a full chronology of the shifting of the continents of Arda , at the end of the fourth age it had begun to resemble contemporary earth.

His goal was to create a unified mythology for northern Europe based on various folkloric elements, and as such it is wilfully mythical ,but the end goal of tolkiens mythos was to explain the origins of reality.

I like to imagine that tolkiens middle earth shifted into the hyborean earth of conan as an inbetween stage.
The last blood of numenor in the north passed into the cimmerians.
The kingdoms of numenor and gondor are the same remnants of atlantian culture present in the hyborean age.

Théoden's real name in Rohirric was Tûrac. All Rohirric and Westron names were translated into English; Bilbo Baggins sounds much better to English speakers than Bilba Labingi.

>When a 18 INT 9 WIS fag enters the thread

What part of "it is our world in another place in imagination" do you not understand?

>>When a 18 INT 9 WIS fag enters the thread

9 WIS? I was thinking more like 2.

>I could have fitted things in with greater versimilitude, if the story had not become too far developed, before the question ever occurred to me. I doubt if there would have been much gain; and I hope the, evidently long but undefined, gap* in time between the Fall of Barad-dûr and our Days is sufficient for 'literary credibility', even for readers acquainted with what is known or surmised of 'pre-history'.
>* I imagine the gap to be about 6000 years: that is we are now at the end of the Fifth Age, if the Ages were of about the same length as S.A. and T.A. But they have, I think, quickened; and I imagine we are actually at the end of the Sixth Age, or in the Seventh.
- JRRT, 1958

read and hang your head in shame casualfag.

Are you guys serious?

So Shadowrun?

You know that even during war a lot of people lived pretty normal lives? He was a Professor of Medieval Linguistics; not exactly the most war-useful profession, though I do believe he was on the reserve list if it came to an invasion, being a former officer.

Royal observers corps most likely.

actually quite useful, they trained a bunch of civilians in aircraft recognition, map reading and a few other things and had them acting as spotters during the BoB and after.

it was part of the defense network, but didnt require much physically from the members, just sharp eyes, a little intelligence and access to a phone.

but it was genuinely useful as radar was in its early stages, the ROC would send reports into the local coordinating stations 'sighted 40 bombers, heading north northeast over grid square e46' etc

That'd be cool but Howard also set out a whole fictional chronology since pre-history I think.

>Tolkien laid out a full chronology of the shifting of the continents of Arda , at the end of the fourth age it had begun to resemble contemporary earth.

Got a cite? Because this sounds like epic level bullshit.

The problem here is that while most of the pre-war fantasy writers that did this trick just said "sure, this is supposed to be our world" but really didnt' put out a direct link (the hyborian age is before the ice age, with a dry Mediterrenean but aside form that you got that he meant "well, these peoples kinda are the eternal gaul/roman for Aquilonia, the Shemites are Semites, quite obviously... but the geography is just an sketch, gone through a cataclism or two in any case"), JRRT tried to have an acutal pre-deluge Europe but didn't really.
So we have some pinpoint locations (Perlargir=Venice, Tol Fuin=quite clearly Iceland at least in spirit) but the whole map is quite bizzare, considered that ME on the whole is been geographically stable execpt of course for Beleriand.

He said he was inspired by Stromboli. Funnily enough, Mount Doom is relatively low compared to a 3000+ m monster like the Etna. I guess Sauron couldn't really outdo Morgoth.

Odd as it sounds, the country most "tolkienian" in landscapes is probably Italy, as in you're bound to find him describing direct link between locations. Second might be Switzerland (the infamous Lautebrunnen vale that IS pretty clearly Rivendell)

>You know that even during war a lot of people lived pretty normal lives?

Gee and here I thought everyone squatted in bomb shelters playing the accordion for the entire six fucking years. Of course life went on pretty much the same, Captain Obvious. Pretty much the same if you don't count the rationing, parts of which last until in the mid-50s.

The point is that Tolkien, as a linguist, was invited early on to apply to GC&CS. He attended some preliminary training and was then told he wasn't needed. For the rest of the war first at Pembroke and than at Merton, he both taught and participated in the usual civil defense chores old ex-officers were usually tapped for; fire watches, black out monitors, maybe some plane spotting, a bit of drill for the Home Guard, and stuff like that.

That's nonsense, he got a shit tonne of fan mail and he answered it.

Why would he lie? I believe him, if he followed linguistic conventions it's more likely than you realize

>Why would he lie?

You tell us. Why is it link there and why did he deny doing it intentionally?

He owned up to dozens of in-jokes in the text. He even put his kids' doll in the books as Bombadil in a kind of fan service. So why did he deny any intention behind the very obvious Akallabeth - Atalante - Atlantis link?

>mfw Tolkien was actually a Shirriff all along

>Quenya
>Kenya
Hold up

WE

>>mfw Tolkien was actually a Shirriff all along

Beautifully put and sadly beyond the comprehension of some posters here.

T-thanks. I guess maybe a Bounder would be more correct, but whatever. He did style himself a taller Hobbit, anyway.

So would you guys rather play a game with the Inklings, or the Lovecraft Letter Group?

Which group? HPL had too many to count.

If said group has REH, there is no question.

Lets say these are the base teams, and you can replace one with another from their group.
Inklings: Tolkien, Lewis, Barfield, and Williams.
HPLG: Lovecraft, RE Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and Dereleth.

>Which group? HPL had too many to count.

It's estimated HPL wrote 100,000 letters in his lifetime. That's by hand or with a manual typewriter too. They weren't thank you notes or "please send money" missives either. They ran for pages.

Yeah some of the ones between Lovecraft and Howard go on for over twenty pages.

Hmmm... tough decisions to be made.

I'd definitely take HPLG and dump Derleth, but which Inkling to take? What I've read about the Inklings leads me to believe their meetings were rather "precious" (no pun intended). Sort of like the Algonquin Round Table whose conversations were all about the witty things they may or may not have said rather than what they were actually doing.

While the inklings did publish their works, it was really just a side hustle to them. For HPL & Co. publishing your work paid the bills - or didn't pay them in the case of HPL. I'd rather sit with the working joes. Snobbish of me, true, but it's still what I'd choose to do.

Dude.

Seriously.

If there is Howard, there is no fucking choice to ask about.

Literary, maybe, but for RPGs?

I'd probably try to swap Derleth for Tolkien (I like Lewis but I dunno, the man doesn't sound like he could invent stories on the fly) but I'd fear the shitstorm ensuing when religion comes around.

>but in this case I'd probably go cemetery walking at night with Lovecraft, which would be almost as good

Yeah, literally the only question here is whether to switch Tolkien or Lewis for Derleth.

Maybe Lewis, just because he wrote Out of the Silent Planet, which I think the others would appreciate if Lovecraft could get over its blatant catholic metaphysics.

>>but in this case I'd probably go cemetery walking at night with Lovecraft, which would be almost as good

Oh hell yes. That possibility of that and the presence of Howard should convince everyone to choose the HPLG.

Like says, it really isn't a choice between the Inklings and the HPLG. It's a choice of which Inkling should replace Derleth. Tolkien or Lewis. Lewis or Tolkien. Flip a coin.

Man I'd be into the HPLG just for CAS. Sadly underrated.

And actually, I'd just have Fritz Leiber, young though he may have been, replace Derleth. Leiber is the shit. He's like the old perverted uncle who lets you into his whisky and porn stash.

Obama was an elf?

shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/Wakyambi

>So why did he deny any intention behind the very obvious Akallabeth - Atalante - Atlantis link?
Because there was no intention behind it. Occam's razor and all that.

See, there's this piece of trivia about a British linguist travelling in Australia to study Aboriginal languages. He sits down with an old Aborgine man and asks him questions about his language: "How do you say this? How do you make it clear that you don't mean that?" Etc etc, until the following dialogue happens:
"So what's your word for dog?"
>Dog
The linguist, thinking that there'd been a misunderstanding somehwere, tried to clear this up. Did the man not know his native language's word for a dog? Did they now have one? Had it been replaced by an English loan? No. Turns out that the word for a dog in that man's language was "dog," pronounced almost identically to how it is in English, and had been for generations. Turns out, this happens all the fucking time. Even two languages aren't related at all chances are that there's gonna be a couple of words that look and sound very similar with nearly identical meanings.

>the infamous Lautebrunnen vale that IS pretty clearly Rivendell

>Lauterbrunnen
>"Brunnen" means spring or fountain
>The river flowing through Rivendell is called Bruinen.

Fucking found another one. Why is it infamous though?

>it's another "Derleth was the literal anti-Christ" episode

...

Because it wasn't intentional, I mean you said it yourself he admitted jokes where he intentionally made them. Add to that he said he disliked analogies in his work and it seems the easiest answer was a happy coincidence

He disliked allegory. Analogies were plentiful in his work, and Numenor was an obvious and intentional one for Atlantis.

Sorry, yeah I meant allegory, ooops

Sure it's pretty similar but the name seems like a coincidence, he said as much, and there's no reason to believe he's lying except that if you believe it's too impossible a coincidence in one of the several completely invented languages that he made a word for one island is similar to Atlantis because they both begin with A's

>>it's another "Derleth was the literal anti-Christ" episode

It's not that. It's just that Derleth is always going to lose out in a "Lovecraft, Howard, Smith, Derleth, pick three" contest.

It's like the Stooges. If you list Moe, Larry, Curly, Shemp, and Joe then tell people to pick three, you'll get Moe-Larry-Curly most of the time and Moe-Larry-Shemp a few times, but you'll never Joe on anyone's list.

>His goal was to create a unified mythology for northern Europe

For England, user, not for Northern Europe as a whole.

>if you believe it's too impossible a coincidence in one of the several completely invented languages that he made a word for one island is similar to Atlantis because they both begin with A's

It's a bit more than that. He has a translation chain across those invented languages eventually producing "Atalante" as the name of an island which was ruled by superhumans with advanced technology and which was sunk by the gods for it's peoples' sin.

That's just a bit much more than two cultures sharing the same word for dog.

Much like my writer friend subconsciously putting lilacs in a piece about Lincoln's funeral train, I think Tolkien subconsciously manipulated the Numenore-Anadune-Akallabeth-Atalante translation chain. It wasn't consciously intentional on his part but it was intentional.

...

Never saw him deliver mail desu

>one scene that perfectly describes seeing the greatness of ones ancestors for the first time

>Atalante
Is also a Greek noun, except in this case it's the Greek name for Atalanta, one of the Argonauts. (She and her lover are also famous for being turned into lions because the Greeks supposedly didn't believe that they fucked. Yeah, I dunno.)

Etymologically it's very distinct from Atlantis, and Tolkien would have been aware of this:
>in Greek mythology the daughter of king Schoeneus, famous for her swiftness, Latin, from Greek Atalante, fem. of atalantos "having the same value (as a man)," from a- "one, together" (see a- (3)) + talanton "balance, weight, value"

>mythical island-nation, from Greek Atlantis, literally "daughter of Atlas." All references trace to Plato's dialogues "Timaeus" and "Critias," both written c.360 B.C.E.

Does Tolkien ever say elves have pointy ears?

I can't recall any such mention in Silmarillion, LotR or even Bilbo.

And if they don't, how can you tell something is an elf?

Use a geiger-counter?

Nope. Not at the time of the published works.

Kinda, apparently.

middle-earth.xenite.org/do-tolkiens-elves-have-pointy-ears/

But probably a little bit less than PJ's ones.

I think it's the same root, actually. Will delve into the matter.

...

>Etymologically it's very distinct from Atlantis, and Tolkien would have been aware of this

He would, his readers wouldn't. Like my friend's MFA advisor making the link between an aside mentioning lilacs and Whitman's elegy, they'll make the connection whether it's etymologically "correct" or not.

...

Not enough egyptian.

WUZ

ELENDIlLI AND SHIT

Apparently there are two possibilites.

Some think Atlanta is a+talantov (the balance, the weight) and Atlas (from wich Atlantis, of couse) a+etelen (to endure), basically, others think the endure thing is for Atlanta (Atalante) as well.

So... nah, honestly it's bullshit, even if we buy that he didn't think of Atlantis (and I don't) I don't really see where the "balancing" part would've come from for Numenor.

...

The book literally has Frodo singing a prehistoric version of an English nursery rhyme:
lotr.wikia.com/wiki/The_Man_in_the_Moon_Stayed_Up_Too_Late

LotR is full of in-jokes and references.

>TEARS UNNUMBERED YE SHALL SHED; AND THE VALAR WILL FENCE VALINOR AGAINST YOU, AND SHUT YOU OUT, SO THAT NOT EVEN THE ECHO OF YOUR LAMENTATION SHALL PASS OVER THE MOUNTAINS. ON THE HOUSE OF FËANOR THE WRATH OF THE VALAR LIETH FROM THE WEST UNTO THE UTTERMOST EAST, AND UPON ALL THAT WILL FOLLOW THEM IT SHALL BE LAID ALSO. THEIR OATH SHALL DRIVE THEM, AND YET BETRAY THEM, AND EVER SNATCH AWAY THE VERY TREASURES THAT THEY HAVE SWORN TO PURSUE. TO EVIL END SHALL ALL THINGS TURN THAT THEY BEGIN WELL; AND BY TREASON OF KIN UNTO KIN, AND THE FEAR OF TREASON, SHALL THIS COME TO PASS. THE DISPOSSESSED SHALL THEY BE FOR EVER.

>"YE HAVE SPILLED THE BLOOD OF YOUR KINDRED UNRIGHTEOUSLY AND HAVE STAINED THE LAND OF AMAN. FOR BLOOD YE SHALL RENDER BLOOD, AND BEYOND AMAN YE SHALL DWELL IN DEATH'S SHADOW. FOR THOUGH ERU APPOINTED TO YOU TO DIE NOT IN EÄ, AND NO SICKNESS MAY ASSAIL YOU, YET SLAIN YE MAY BE, AND SLAIN YE SHALL BE: BY WEAPON AND BY TORMENT AND BY GRIEF; AND YOUR HOUSELESS SPIRITS SHALL COME THEN TO MANDOS. THERE LONG SHALL YE ABIDE AND YEARN FOR YOUR BODIES, AND FIND LITTLE PITY THOUGH ALL WHOM YE HAVE SLAIN SHOULD ENTREAT FOR YOU. AND THOSE THAT ENDURE IN MIDDLE-EARTH AND COME NOT TO MANDOS SHALL GROW WEARY OF THE WORLD AS WITH A GREAT BURDEN, AND SHALL WANE, AND BECOME AS SHADOWS OF REGRET BEFORE THE YOUNGER RACE THAT COMETH AFTER. THE VALAR HAVE SPOKEN.

find a more badass quote from Tolkien's works

...

Choose one.

Finarfin. The only sane one.

>Last of all the eastern force to stand firm were the Dwarves of Belegost, and thus they won renown. For the Naugrim withstood fire more hardily than either Elves or Men, and it was their custom moreover to wear great masks in battle hideous to look upon; and those stood them in good stead against the dragons. And but for them Glaurung and his brood would have withered all that was left of the Noldor. But the Naugrim made a circle about him when he assailed them, and even his mighty armour was not full proof against the blows of their great axes; and when in his rage Glaurung turned and struck down Azaghâl, Lord of Belegost, and crawled over him, with his last stroke Azaghâl drove a knife into his belly, and so wounded him that he fled the field, and the beasts of Angband in dismay followed after him. Then the Dwarves raised up the body of Azaghâl and bore it away; and with slow steps they walked behind singing a dirge in deep voices, as it were a funeral pomp in their country, and gave no heed more to their foes; and none dared to stay them.

If people asked him about it they were likely unaware that he had answered the question regardless of how he answered it it's not like one answer would dissuade them more than another.

>the Carpathian Basin is Mordor

Yeah, map doesn't make sense. It's still cute in its own way.

Valars were such fucking faggots.