Home » Reading & Literature » J.R.R. Tolkien » The Other Way 'Round - Page 6

The Other Way 'Round - Page 6

© Michael Martinez

Tolkien's introduction to Greek language and literature began while he was still quite young, in Sixth Class at King Edward's School (First Class was the senior-most level in the school). In time, Tolkien studied the New Testament in Greek as well, and Humphrey Carpenter quotes Tolkien as saying: "The fluidity of Greek, punctuated by hardness, and with its surface glitter captivated me. But part of the attraction was antiquity and alien remoteness (from me): it did not touch home." Yet though Greek played an important role in Tolkien's education, and ultimately assumed a permanent place in his imagination, his love of philology (the study of linguistic change) was sparked by a teacher at King Edward's who introduced Tolkien and his classmates to Chaucer and Middle English. Carpenter observes that the teacher's recitation of Chaucer in the original Middle English "was a revelation, and [Tolkien] determined to learn more about the history of the [English] language." King Edward's curriculum focused on the study of Latin and Greek, and therefore it prepared Tolkien for a lifetime of study in other languages. He never forgot the Classics, though he is seldom associated with them any more. Tolkien's transition from the study of Greek and Latin Classics to the study of Gothic, Anglo-Saxon, Finnish, and other languages really began when he attended Oxford University. There he was introduced to new influences and he committed himself to the Philological field. But Tolkien credited the nearly two years he spent working on the Oxford English Dictionary in 1919 and 1920 with honing his linguistic skills more than any other phase in his life. The OED is famous for taking English words back as far as they can go. Modern English, like all European languages, extends back several thousand years through many periods of change. The earliest language common to all the European peoples is Indo-European (and it's also common to non-European peoples, including Iranians, Indians, and a few other groups). Many of the OED entries include (postulated) Indo-European and intermediate (ex.: proto-Germanic) roots. While "The Fall of Gondolin" proved to be the first of Tolkien's Greek-inspired myths, Carpenter tells us that at the time Tolkien was working on the Oxford English Dictionary, he "began (on New Year's Day 1919) to keep a diary in which he recorded principal events and his thoughts on them. After starting it in ordinary handwriting he began instead to use a remarkable alphabet that he had just invented, which looked like a mixture of Hebrew, Greek, and Pitman's shorthand. He soon decided to involve it with his mythology, and he named it 'The Alphabet of Rumil' after an elvish sage in his stories."

The copyright of the article The Other Way 'Round - Page 6 in J.R.R. Tolkien is owned by Michael Martinez. Permission to republish The Other Way 'Round - Page 6 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.