Heart of the City by Steenz for April 18, 2010

I didn’t know the Mirkwood Elves had their own language .

Try finding that w/Bing Translator.

@bergamot The Mirkwood Elves spoke a language called Silvan. Although it is not the only Elvish language Tolkien wrote (yes he wrote multiple languages even before he wrote the books of the Lord of the Rings, he actually wanted to write the entire book in his language but the publishers wouldn’t allow it haha), it is also not limited only to the elves of Mirkwood, it was also spoken in Lorien (which is why Legolas had no trouble communicating with those in Lothlorien :p)

And now in my defense I’m only a partial LOTR geek… I may know a TON… but there are people who actually study the languages in university and can SPEAK Elvish :p

Ah who am I kidding? If I had the time and money I’d take it on too :p

10 bucks the book report was on the Silmarillion.

You have to work with your audience, Deano.

Yep, I’m guessing Mark thought more readers would get a reference to “Mirkwood Elves” than to “Silvan” :) Yes, I’m a LOTR geek too … though like Teresa I don’t speak the Elvish languages either ;)

TeresaDawn…. I went to New Zealand just to see some of the settings for LOTR. you are not alone

:)

yesterday i wrote up an elvish language of my own.

In high school, I used to keep all my class notes in the Tengwar orthography. There was one guy who was a real jerk - never paid attention and kept trying to sponge off other people’s noted. One day he asked me. He took one look at the notes and said, “I can’t read this.” My reply: “That’s your problem”.

P.S.: I thought the language the Mirkwood elves spoke was Sindarin, not Sylvan. (Tolkien posited an original proto-Elvish language, then derived Quenya (“high” Elvish) according to Finnish phonology and grammar and Sindarin (“low” Elvish) along Welsh lines). Not so much a LotR geek, but a linguist by training and trade.

My daughter and her friends actually learned Klingon. Weird, yet fascinating they are Trekies. .

Bad teacher! If she recognizes that it IS in fact written in the language of the Mirkwood Elves, give Dean an extra day to translate it back into English, grade that, and then raise the grade a point for his creative initiative. It might still be a very good report.

Only true Trekkies use the word “Trekkers”. The surest sign that someone’s a Trekkie is if he (or she) corrects you on the term. :-)

I understand that Dr. Who fans call themselves “Whats”, but to me they’re a bunch of Whoies…

I’ve never known of an equivalent pejorative term for superhero-comic fanboy geeks besides “fanboy geeks”, but if one exists, I’ll cop to having been one in my younger days.

Your understanding is wrong, Fritzoid. Although not a particular fan of the Doctor, I do know that those who are call themselves “Whovians.”

I think the hardcore Doctor Who fans call themselves “Whovians”.

I could be misremembering, or it could be that the terminology has changed since my exposure to them. This was about 30 years ago, at or near the end of the Tom Baker incarnation.

I went to a ComicCon in Chicago, which ran concurrently with a Dr. Who minicon. My friends and I were tripping over their dam’ scarves wherever we turned, and their panels always seemed to run overtime, delaying more important discussions about the Death of Jean Grey and such. I’d enjoyed the Who episodes I’d seen before that fateful weekend, but I’ve never watched another…

joefish25 – Ooh, I envy you! The New Zealand trip is on my bucket list. I’m sure my LOTR daughter will get there before I do, at the rate I’m going.

I never watched Doctor Who much in the Baker days, but I do catch a number of the post-2005 episodes and like them somewhat more. I think the reason I didn’t care much for the older episodes is that they were all four or more part mini-epics and the local PBS affiliate didn’t always show them on a regular schedule.

Does Microsoft have spell-check for Sindarin?

Oh, man. I would just love to go to New Zealand to visit the sites used in the making of all three “Lord Of The Rings” movies. I would also love to get my hands on a book that would allow to learn how to read and speak Sindarin, the language of the Mirkwood Elves.

He didn’t even get to wrote his report in English ? I’m disappointed.

rerun