PRONUNCIATIONS?

[greatseamonster]

I am rereading the Elric Saga, hopefully by the time I finish I'll have figured out how to pronounce Melnibone!!! (~ aside)

Nevermind, I'll just hope I can find Mr. Moorcock reading some of his own work and figure it out from there.

I've always pronounced it in a rather exotic way ...Mel-nib-onae

I think some pronunciations would be usefull in the moorcockopedia

[Whiskers]

[broken link]

[DiGiMac]

I remember posting to some RPG forum years ago about the pronunciation of various place and character names from Elric-world and got some very mixed responses - a lot of people had very fixed ideas about it and refused to accept I could think of saying Yrkoon differently from them. :?
I also wrote to John Davay at the time and got the encouraging answer that basically he'd given up trying because he'd heard MM himself pronounce the same names in several different ways. :)

[Michael Moorcock]

Yep. How do you prefer to pronounce Chichester, for instance ? Or, shall we say, Leghorn ? Or Peking ?
While I have certain preferred pronunciations of my own, however you chose to pronounce the names is fine by me. Accents are usually there to function in ways normal to French or German, for instance, and that's about it. If you want to produce Yyrkoon Eerkoon or Yerkoon of Yrrrrkn or however is up to you and your ears. In a world where half the people pronounce Iran Eye Ran and the others pronounce it Ear Ran and the Iranians pronounce it slightly differently depending what part of their country they live in, it seems natural to me that you should pronounce a name according to your own taste. I am, after all, not describing reality here and there are not likely to be any Melniboneans turning up to complain you've hurt their feelings by not producing Hishgegrowinaaz right... :)

[Jerico]

So was Mumpoobumpoo ever used in any of your stories? If not, I will use it at some point and give you credit for the inspiration of course.

[TheEighthSon]

Ahh, but when the film is released there'll be a definitive definition defined for the pronunciations! After all, it's a film, so it has to be gospel! And everyone not pronouncing Melnibonأ© correctly will be rounded up and shot, as Heretics to the Holy Word of Moorcock!!! :twisted:

That's a point though, in a serious sense... Would the actors be told how to pronounce these names, or would they be free to use their own pronunciations?

[Michael Moorcock]

You[re right about the movie, of course. At such time I will quietly withdraw and let the buggers get on with it. Against my nature to get pinned down like that. Movies do have a habit of setting some things in stone. A sign of how thoroughly they impact the public consciousness and all that. Ho hum. Maybe as an old man I'll be able to give lessons in Conversational Melnibonean...

[RCraigRobinson]

A conversation in Melnibonean? Sounds like a title to an auteur biography.
Perhaps in case of a rainy day, you could publish a Melnibonean dictionary. Like the star trek klingon deal...
Funny things, I always really liked Tolkien's elvish language in the books until I realized that is was, in fact an, actual language of his manufacture.
Quite a difference between the creative and the fetish.

[HawkLord]

Tolkien was a philologist so he understood languages and how they worked very well. It would be a natural step for him to invent his own language and incorporate it in his books.
To tell the truth LOTR is not exactly my favorite fantasy but its decent. And you have to give Tolkien credit for his creativity in creating his own language!

[Michael Moorcock]

It's the sort of thing an academic with plenty of time can do. A perfectly reasonable and harmless pastime. As I've said about other phenomena associated with Tolkien, my guess is that he would have been horrified at the literal-mindedness of his barmier fans. People were already using 'Elvish' amongst themselves in Oxford by the end of the 1950s.
On a par with translating Winnie the Pooh into Latin. Not exactly a literary activity, but an academic one. I've nothing against people doing it. I just wouldn't want to spend too much time in a common room with them. As I've said elsewhere, I've nothing against harmless escapism, though don't much like it if it substitutes for real action against that from which one wishes to escape. My main problem with Lord of the Rings is that its author supported escapism but didn't support political action. And what about the Dwarves ? Tolkien said they were Semitic. Should their language be represented by some version of Hebrew ?

[Anonymous]

I would have to agree with you. Personaly, I have a problem with people speaking Elvish or dressing to go watch The Lord of the Rings in the theater. It is kind of disturbing. It should not be shocking that Tolkien invented languages since he loved languages. However, in his letters he says there is no set way to pronounce the names ect. Apparently he was not realy obessed with how names and places were pronounced.

[HawkLord]

Tolkien was a good friend of CS Lewis and I read in the foreword to one of CS Lewis' books about Tolkien being a philologist. I think the character Ransom in CS Lewis' sci-fi books is partially based on Tolkien.

As for Lord of the Rings it is a decent fantasy but way overrated. I would say that Elric, Corum or Hawkmoon beats it any day! But it is a good introduction into the world of fantasy. I think it was one of the first serious fantasy books I read(back in primary 5). It is a very different style of fantasy from The Eternal Champion series though.
It shows how commited he was to his story that he created a whole language for it, although it could have been quite fun for him if he enjoyed languages.

And speaking of languages, I have my German prelim exam in about 20 minutes :?

[Anonymous]

But when pronouncing should we do it phonetically eg. Y= Y as in Yeah or by the common (and disgustingly inconsistent) rules of english, I don't want to do it MY way I want to do it the RIGHT way!

Q. is Tolkien an Authour first ot a linguist first?

[DukexArioch]

I have a habit of not reading or just skipping over unpronouncable names/places in books. I can see what the word is but I don;t have to sound it in my head to understand. If you get what I mean?
Does anyone else do this?

[xidrep]

I pronounce 'Chichester' like this:

'Zzzschiizchessstaa'

But that's because I'm pretending to be one of the [/i]Fungi from Yuggoth (which is near Swansea).

Seriously, folks, pronunciation is as malleable as Elizabethan spelling. My fave is the Mongolian Capital;

We say 'Ulan Bator'.

They say: 'H'claaan B'Taa'

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