Reading "The Hobbit"

The girls and I finished reading The Hobbit last night.  Reading it aloud was quite a different experience from reading it silently.  Certainly I found myself aware of the pronunciation of names, and how often I'd gotten them wrong, and still do.  I read so much as a child that I often pronounced words the way they looked; I still do this with "sword", for instance, including the "w".  It's hard, reading The Hobbit now, not to say "biffer, bohffer, and bom-ber" especially, partly because the habit is so ingrained after all these years, and partly just because it's funny.  This led to my thinking last night that I would write notes (in pencil, of course) at the bottom of a page where the name appeared, and so this morning I made a list, then started here at Tolkien Geek, and travelled to far corners of the Tolkien internet universe, especially to Wikipedia and The Encyclopedia of Arda. I did not actually find one single list of pronunciations, and so I post it here, willing and ready to accept discussion were someone with greater knowledge to comment.

I puzzled over "Dáin son of Náin" quite some time.  "Dane son of Nane"?  "Dine son of Nine?"  Alas, there is yet no consensus.  I found "An Analysis of Dwarvish" delightful in its very thoroughness, although, surprisingly, given that thoroughness, nowhere are the acute-o as in Thrór and acute-a as in Dáin mentioned.  Possibly this is because Dáin, Glóin, etc. are use-names in Westron and thus translations from the Dwarvish ....

Also rather surprisingly, no one seems to divide these names into syllables.  I have seen the occasional phonetic spelling that differed from the usual, and included them below.  (A deeper study of the root words would be useful here, but, well, I haven't got the time.)

"Bilbo" should, I suppose, strictly be pronounced "BEEL-boh".  I have never yet heard anyone say it like this.

The "r" should be a lovely rolling sound, which most Americans don't or can't do -- listen to a Swede saying them at Tolkien Pronunciation Recordings, or even better, to Tolkien himself reading some excerpts from The Lord of the Rings.  I've written this below as double-r.

Balin = BAH-leen

Beorn = BEH-orrn or even BAY-orrn, not BEE-orrn; compare Beowulf

Bifur = BEE-foor.

Bofur = BOH-foorr

Bombur = BOHM-boorr, with the “o” long as in “go” not short as in “bomb”, or possibly BOH-mbur

Carc = KARK

Dáin = DAYN; probably not “dine” as in “nine” and “line” as that would be the Elvish pronunciation

Dori = DOH-rree

Durin = DOORR-een, with the “u” long as in “boot”

Dwalin = DWAH-leen

Fíli = FEE-lee

Gandalf = GAHN-dahlf, with a short “a” sound as in “father”; or possibly GAH-ndalf; not "GAHN-dalv"or "GAN-dalf/v"

Girion = GEE-rree-ohn, with a hard “g” as in “go” and “get”

Glóin = GLOH-een

Golfimbul = GOHL-feem-bool

Gwaihir = GWY-heerr, with a hard “g”, and a long “i” in the first syllable as in “eye”

Kíli = KEE-lee

Nori = NOH-rree

Náin = NAYN; see above under Dáin

Ori = OH-rree

Roäc = RROH-ahk

Smaug = SMOWG.  There is quite a lot of discussion about as to whether this is pronounced "smowg" or "smog".  I started out with the American "smog", pleased by the association of dragons with nasty, smelly air pollution, then later evolved to a more RP "aw" sound.  Technically, the vowel should be "ow", as in "town" and "clown", and in the interjection you use when you bump your head, which, not coincidentally, is the same as the equivalent modern Norwegian interjection, "au".

Thorin = THORR-een

Thranduil = THRRAN-doo-eel

Thráin = THRRAYN; see above under Dáin

Thrór = probably THRRORR; it is unclear why the vowel has a diacritic, or how this affects pronunciation

Óin = OH-een; it is unclear whether the letter “ó” is merely an “o” with a diacritic, or if it is a separate letter and therefore should take a separate place in the alphabet as does the Norwegian “ø”

Comments

[--Deb]

Oh, it's been ages since I read the Hobbit, and I've never read it out loud! I can see why it would be challenging (though I think LOTR would be WORSE).

I don't know if Tolkein tried to stick to Scandinavian pronunciations for some of his more Scandinavian-sounding names (like Thorin), but if so, the "Th" is usually pronounced "T." I've always thought of that character's name as "Torin," just because!

[Jeanne]

Well, Deb, I didn't know it at the time I first read "The Hobbit", of course, but in Appendix E of "The Lord of the Rings" Tolkien explains that "TH represents the voiceless th of English in thin cloth", all the while maintaining his charming conceit of "translations from the ancient scripts" and "speakers of Westron" and such.

Many, perhaps most, of the Tolkien fansites continue the fiction that the languages are "real" and thus don't bother to explore Tolkien's inspirations, but there is an interesting article I just found here -- http://www.langmaker.com/ml0108.htm -- that talks more about the invention of the languages.

I just hope that Professor Tolkien would be pleased at how fascinating it is to discuss word origins and etymologies and all the nuances of pronunciation of the languages he took such delight in inventing!

[Cecilia]

And why not Thray-een?

[Jeanne]

Why not indeed, Cecilia?! Good point.

Tolkien is surprisingly silent on vowel combinations in Westron. The same appendix at the back of "The Return of the King" gives single-vowel pronunciation for Sindarin and Quenya, and dipthongs for Quenya, but nothing for Westron. My guess, though, is that if he meant Dáin, Thráin, etc. to be dissyllabic, he would have spelled it something like "aï" (with an umlaut over the "i"). Certainly if one wants to make an argument for consistency, Óin should then be one syllable!