As a kid, I was fascinated by artificial languages. (Also called "constructed languages" or conlangs.) I studied Esperanto with its hyper-logical grammar: nouns end in -o, adjectives in -a, plurals in -j, accusatives in -n, and so on ( Read more... )

I've been taking advantage of the peace and quiet to get back into the habit of reading. As in, actual reading and actual books ( Read more... )

I haven't seen the movie yet. I probably will end up seeing it, but there's this important caveat for JRRT fans ( Read more... )

Via starshipcat, more fun with stylometry:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/04/tolkien-was-right-scholars-conclude-beowulf-likely-the-work-of-single-author/

The epic poem Beowulf is the most famous surviving ( Read more... )

Oregon native Rachel Kambury:
It was in between his duties as officer that Tolkien began to lay the narrative foundations of what would become Middle-earth. They were “fairy-stories,” so-called: little vignettes, concerning gnomes and sprites and elf-like creatures, the kinds of stories with which Tolkien had been loosely enamored “since I learned ( Read more... )

Apropos of my last post, I'm reading Tolkien and the Great War.

Great War geeks and Tolkien nerds and interested others, your thoughts on these new films?

They Shall Not Grow Old

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Tolkien

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I don't go out to the movies very often these days, and to tell you the truth there's not much that looks worth watching. But I'm thinking I might want to catch these two.

... is now on my reading list again, thanks to sartorias and whswhs.

How far? A handy reference map.

Don't give me your attitude about my latitude. North America and Western Europe compared.

Sun Force: Yezidi women in the Peshmerga. Unspeakable horror and unimaginable courage.

The Western Front and Middle Earth: the Somme and Tolkien. 'The heroism of Tolkien’s characters depends on their capacity to resist ( Read more... )