This is tough without the International Phonetic Alphabet at my command, so
I’ll try to be representing sounds as best I can with the sounds they generally
make in English. If there’s a weird letter here and there it’s probably because
I had to use what I could find for a sound that couldn’t be represented except
by a letter that I’m using for something else.
Vowels are the hardest part of any language to get right. There are so many
different ways of pronouncing any one specific vowel sound, and these ways are
so ingrained that the native speaker of any language is not aware he is making
a distinction, even though he makes it every time. I, for example, say a
different vowel for the word “height” than I do for the word “hide,” although I
didn’t realize it until in class a few weeks ago the vowel in “sand” as opposed
to in “cat” is also distinctly different for most speakers of American English,
but few people realize the difference until they hear the nasal “cat” that is
sometimes found in New England. Other people might not make that distinction,
however, which brings us to the second difficult thing about vowels: everyone
says them differently. There are four people in my immediate family, and we
have three different ways of saying the o in “won’t.”
Just use your imagination; do you think there were regional dialects, and if
so, what might have made the variations?
Diphthongs (like the English sounds found in the word “say” or “I” or “cow” or
“mow” are formed by the merging of one pure vowel (eh or ah, for
example) with the sound of i in “machine,” or with a w tacked
onto the end. How they are technically formed is a very controversial subject
among phoneticists, and what is generally accepted as the notation for some
diphthongs actually represents a different sound that might not even be heard
in English (I’m thinking of aw in particular here, rather than ćw
(where ć represents the vowel in “cat” rather than the a in
“father”) for the vowel sound in “cow.”) Of course, Tolkien could
represent certain sounds however he wanted, so I won’t pick nits about his
orthography, but do take a look at how he chooses to represent the diphthongs.
Also, note that there are a great many more diphthongs in the Elvish languages
than pure vowels, which strike me as odd, because (in my opinion, at least)
it’s the diphthong that seems the less sophisticated vowel. I have absolutely
no evidence to back that up; it’s merely an aesthetic preference. Thoughts? Are
diphthongs really more noble than pure vowels?
The vowel sound in “fern,” “fir,” and “fur” is a schwa (technically an
r-colored schwa, because it’s more a case of a syllabic r than a case of
a vowel on its own, but the basic idea is the same). It’s a very, very common
vowel in English (the first vowel in “about,” the last in “veranda,”), sort of
the resting place for our vowels to hit when they don’t need to be particularly
distinct in order to tell one word from another. A schwa is always unstressed.
It’s a comfortable sound, and we like it and use it a vast percentage of
English words. Tolkien, although he went out of his way to tell us how
e, i and u are pronounced, tells us again that they do not
become schwa in those three words. He doesn’t trust us not to make them schwa,
which on the one hand tells us how common and ingrained that sound is in
English, and on the other hand tells us that Quenya and Sindarin don’t have
it. Why would he leave it out? Is it merely an unlovely sound? Languages do
evolve naturally (as shown by the schism between Quenya and Sindarin, which
once were the same), so why didn’t they evolve this sound? How much of it is
due to the nature of the speakers, the nature of the languages, or the nature
of the creator? Do you think the schwa is an ugly
sound?
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But you are welcome to let your pen run as it will (it is horrible writing letters to people with whom you have to be 'careful'), since you give me such close attention, and sensitive perception.
Letters #179
