Christmas Riddle 2009

mmmh, I think people haven´t understand this, yet.
For me I can say that I feel very sorrowful about this fact. Isn´t there a possibility to “switch” a bit? Aren´t there riddles in the back of your mind left, Master Thobald?!
LAst year the riddles were such beatiful. The chariot, the icons drawn by master Tolkien himself, . . .
Is it the right decision to “give up” at this point of time?! Maybe somebody can give Master Theobald a helping hand . . . ?!
Somebody you will leave the fine prizes in order to give this years´riddle a chance – myself- for example :rolleyes: . . .

What you need is to quoff some….erm water. Pop over th the Pony and I’ll fill your bowl!

Absolutely, Master Tree.

Master Regalrick are right indeed.

It could be assumed that Old Entish is sung rather than spoken; each vowel or consonant had many tones, which altered meaning. It is also likely that, to conserve time, more than one Ent talked at a time, observed by the Hobbits during the Entmoot: “The Ents began to murmur slowly, first one joined and then another, until they were all chanting together in a long rising and falling rhythm, now louder on one side of the ring, now dying away there and rising into a great boom on the other side.” [Treebeard]

“A-lalla-lalla-rumba-kamanda-lind-or-burúmë“

This is pure entish – although only a section of the entire word.

Of it Treebeard says:” I do not know what the word is in outside languages, you know, the thing we are on, where I stand and look out on fine mornings, and think about the sun, and the grass beyond the wood, and the horses, and the clouds, and the unfolding of the world.”

This description attaches emotional connotations to the word ‘hill’, and explains (in detail that may get repetitive to the non-Entish speaker) exactly what a hill is.

So finally after all that (though you could hardly expect a description of Old Entish to be hasty now could you?!) we can surmise that the Ents try to honor things through their language, so they use a long, winding description to describe exactly how they felt about the object, and its place in the world.

Which is why when Treebeard learns the Westron name for hill, he is rather displeased, for ‘it is a hasty word for a thing that has stood here since this part of the world was shaped!’.

I’ll leave you with the description Tolkien himself gives of Entish in Appendix F:

“The language that they had made was unlike all others: slow, sonorous, agglomerated, repetitive, indeed long-winded; formed of a multiplicity of vowel-shades and distinctions of tone and quantity which even the lore masters of the Eldar had not attempted to represent in writing. They used it only among themselves; but had no need to keep it secret, for no others could learn it.”

Therefore not surprising to us that you, Master Theobald, constantly ask the Pony large bowl of clean water. Your mouth should dry easily when you talking ….:lol:

I am only a man in a dark corner . . . so let me be blunt: Yes, another riddle please!!

1st illustration is a picture made by JRR Tolkien himself, it represents Tumble Hill, near Lyme Regis done in 1928