Kalevala truly is something too that you must know the language very well to enjoy. You can of course learn the story through translation, but the book has been tailored with the finest potential of Finnish language. So much is simply lost through translation. Tolkien must've understood this well.
@@theofrustus3170 You'd have to get quite lucky to find a buyer for real fingers and toes. Sorry to say, but if you equate body parts to normal currency, fingers (and toes especially) are the nickels that pile up in your wallet for years until you physically can't fit anything else into your wallet, forcing you to go to a self-service machine to dump them into for a single bar of chocolate that you don't actually want enough to go through all this trouble for.
He did more than that. His works reshaped out understanding of fantasy. Everything that can be called fantasy made today is in some way influenced by his works. He gave us our current image of orcs and elves and halflings.
It looks quite lovely doesn't it? A mixture of Sanskrit or other Indian writing systems and Arabic scripture, with a twist. I don't think your quotation marks were meant to represent exact quotes, but just to clarify, the exact quote from the video is: "Oh god...I made a mistake, never mind." :) Cheers.
@@Berenhardt I made my own alphabet and I am not fluent in it at all. It's two things to invent something and to use it often enough that it becomes second nature. I'm better at writing in runes than my own alphabet.
@@christopherstein2024 Die elbischen Schriftzeichen sind keine Alphabete, sondern sie sind phonetisch strukturiert. Runen wurden ebenfalls phonetisch benutzt. Wozu entwickelt man ein eigenes Alphabet?
My father has a friend specialised in Tolkien's literature. He came to dinner once and because he gave Elvish names to his sons (not officially of course), I asked him to find another one for me. He wrote it in Common Language and in Quenya, then explained how it works.
I love how he could just make up any characters/letters on the spot, say they were elvish and we would have no choice but to believe him, but instead he gets frustrated at himself when he makes a mistake
One of the appendices in _The Return of the King_ lists the Elvish characters and their sounds. The line he's writing is from a scene in _The Fellowship of the Ring_ in which Frodo greets Gildor in his own language. It wouldn't be terribly difficult to check whether what Tolkien had written was consistent with his previous writings.
@@wizardsuth Funnily enough, he makes many mistake in this clip. He writes "Elem" instead of "Elen" and places the "E" tehta above the "N/M" instead of above the "L" tengwa as it should be in the Quenya mode. His brain must have been in Sindarin or English mode when he started writing the word and he seems not even to notice it. He also completely forgets to write the word "omentielvo" (which he spells "omentiilvo") and has to add it above the sentence! And if we really want to be nitpicky, he should have written "lùmen" with two "N"s as it's spelled "lumenn'" in the book, a contraction of "lumenna".
She took lord of the rings, she changed some name and call it a day. The plot is the same from start to the end. Harry -> Frodo Dumbledore -> Gandalf Order of the phenix -> fellowship of the ring Death eater -> Nazgul Horcruxe -> the one ring Voldemort -> sauron A guy living with his uncle, no parent has to go trought a journey to become stronger and kill the dark lord with the help of his friends.
@@WorldWar2freak94 honestly, that's his biggest flex imo. He created one of the most influential fictional worlds that redefined the concept of fantasy just to show off bunch of languages he made
Poofy... and what an amazing universe it is. His deep knowledge of history also really shines through, especially Anglo-Saxon-Norse history. For instance, his musings on Anglo-Saxon warriors if they'd have had access to destrier war-horses, rather than the tiny little ponies they used for getting from place to place. The result being his fictional horsemen, the Rohirrim. It would've been such a pleasure to have spoken with him, to have met him face to face.
@@phreak761 : Your comment screams of your pure ignorance of JRR Tolkien and the places and people he frequented. Further, personally knowing one of his family, I can assure you, you know nothing of the man.
A rare treasure this. After watching the films 20 times, here Tolkien sounds like a mix of Gandalf, Bilbo, and Gimli. His spirit is in those films and even somewhat in the animated ones from years before: 'Where there's a whip, there's a way.'
because it is just that just added some of the letters from greek and persian and changed them a bit to fit his language, and to add there isnt only 1 elvish language but there are 6 of the if im not mistaken + "old" ones that arent used now by the elves, something like old norse, and each of these languages has grammar and phonology influenced by different language from real world for example Quenya is influenced by Finnish while Sindarin by Welsh and because elvish language is somewhat based on arabic obviously khuzdul which is dwarf language is based on hebrew and of course the writing is based on runes(there was also sign language used by dwarfs. So yeah Tolkien pretty much made up his very own culture that could amount to whole continent or even more(because i only mentioned 2 races, while there were many more, and i only talked about some of the aspects of the languages)
I looked through all the comments hoping someone would mention the clear letters ha (ح), che (چ), za (ز), tha (ط), saad (ص) and nun (ن), as well as the horizontal Greek beta (β), and the diacritic marks (like the marks on the following word: ٱلْحَدِيث)! XD Although che is not from Arabic, but Persian
@@ayyylmao101 I found all those special characters on Microsoft word and wrote out the whole ring inscription with them and taped the whole thing to my bedroom door. This was two years after 9/11 and my dad was like "WHY ARE THERE MIDDLE EASTERN WORDS ON YOUR DOOR?" And I was like, "...oh, THAT'S what those are??" 😂😂😂 I legit thought it came preloaded with elvish!!!😂
My aunt was a children's librarian from 1950 to her retirement in 1994 (I doubt there are actual 'children's' librarians anymore.) She would attend book events and signings and she was able to get three books signed by Mr. Tolkein. The Hobbit was autographed in 1951 and her first edition Return of the King in 1955 and the final one was the first edition single-volume Lord of the Rings in 1968. I was very happy to inherit those books when she passed away in 2020.
It's similar to Arabic in another way too. The main letter forms (tengwar) are consonants only. Vowels are expressed as marks either above or below the letter. Depending on the mode, the marks (tehtar) may indicate a vowel either before or after the letter it's attached to. In the mode he's using here (I think it's for Quenya) it's after. Since the first word _elen_ ("a star") begins with a vowel, the first "letter" he writes is a "carrier" that merely serves to support the vowel, which looks like an elongated acute accent. The letter that resembles Arabic ح is an L, so the resemblance may not be deliberate.
He wrote neater in Elvish than he could in English too. His handwriting is infamously cursed, to the point where even his son misread his manuscripts and only realised years later.
Calligraphy and handwriting are two very different things. Look at how long it takes him to write this one sentence and how often he takes the pen off the paper and how careful he is to write neatly. When you look at his hand and not at what he's writing it's very apparent that this is closer to calligraphy. But there would have to be some cursive style of writing Elvish that's used in everyday life optimized for speed.
As someone who speaks arabic, it is clearly influenced in part by Arabic, some of the letters are almost exactly the same, like these for example ح خ ج
One of my favorite things about the recordings we have of Tolkien is how fluidly he switches between talking about our world and his. He says that the elves have better handwriting than he does like he might say he prefers one ale over another or comment on the weather.
I got back into lotr again, after not touching the books for a good five years and I'm glad I did because now gems like this get recommended to me! It's also always nice to come back to your childhood favourites a bit older, you get a whole new perspective on them
I agree, although sometimes too much nostalgia can be bad. It's an interesting experience to reintegrate childhood books back into your identity after becoming an adult.
I absolutely adore how he talks about Elvish as if it's a real language, not one he himself made up. He says "oh dear, I've made a mistake", like anyone would ever notice. Like, his own handwriting, in a language he made up, is inferior to the fictional beings he also invented who speak this language. Middle Earth to Tolkien, exists like a real place. For all intents and purposes, it was real to him. in his mind. I feel like that's why he put such effort into making the legendarium as full and detailed as possible.
i see that you don't know how languages work. there is the spoken language and written language, those are two different things-that code you made back in 3rd grade which is basically a 1:1 substitute from the english alphabet is not a language. also, it looks very different from arabic. sure, he might've took inspiration from it, but grammatically and phonologically, the language is very different from arabic and more similar to the celtic languages.
@@Daryavahush so in conclusion - he took arabic letters and instead of real arabic grammar, he basically made his own grammar. seems pretty cheap. before start pulling the "hes way above you" card, look hes a good writer and shit. but accept it, he wasn’t extraordinarily creative with that language. admit it and move on
@@lifeisbeautiful015 Point out which letter is an Arabic one. Also, explain how it is "cheap" if he even did directly take the Arabic alphabet but it's still an entire language on its own. You are aware that 150 languages use the latin alphabet, right genius?
@@lifeisbeautiful015 you *really* know nothing about language construction don't you? unless its a relex of existing world languages (such as skyrim's Dovahzul), its not "cheap". have you ever tried crafting an entire naturalistic language from the ground up? Its not just making up words for pre-existing english words.
@@lifeisbeautiful015 Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts all derive from the Phoenician alphabet, so anyone who has used those alphabets in the last four thousand years is, by your standards, 'pretty cheap'.
Man, I wish I had the patience, creativity and thirst for knowledge to do something like this. Create an entire world complete with peoples, hierarchies and, most importantly, conlangs.
His clear love for making languages is so infectious. It's like when you're talking to someone who's super passionate about a show or game that you're not to big on but they love it so much it makes you want to love it too.
This is how I got into Babylon 5. I was always going to watch it. I had every intention. But HBO removed it AS SOON AS I read an awesome article about it. This woman wrote about B5 like I'd write about my favorite sci-fi, so I was doubly ready. Then 6 months later, HBO brought it back in the wake of Mira Furlan's passing. Babylon 5 is THE GREATEST SHOW ON TELEVISION. This is coming from a lifelong TREKKIE. It was gaudy and cheesey and low budget in the way only an early 1990s sci-fi can be, but it's UNCOMFORTABLY AHEAD of its time, UNABASHEDLY RELEVANT IN THE 2020s. AND THERE ARE ENDLESS TOLKIEN REFERENCES!!!!! ❤❤❤❤❤❤
Tolkien's work has such deep melancholy for me. There is a constant theme of "waning", like things being destroyed or corrupted and never being able to be as great again or acquired again. The Lamps couldn't be made again so they had to make the trees, Arda became "Arda Marred" and could never be made perfect and symmetrical again... and then the trees also were destroyed and couldn't be remade, the silmarils were lost and couldn't be remade.... the elves are slowly fading in middle earth as they need to return to Valinor... the role of Morgoth waned in that Sauron took it over, and then he too had his power diminished.
No, it's actually the other way around if I'm not wrong. He created* the entire book series AROUND the language he created first, because he's a linguist first before a writer.
Wasn't Tolkien bored with marking homework when he wrote the opening line of "The Hobbit"? And here he is all those years later correcting himself in front of the camera 🤩😍 Thanks so much for sharing this clip 🤩👍
For everyone wondering: That strongly looks like a pen with a stenography tip. In many stenography systems, line thickness is important because it actually changes the characters you're writing. The two nibs of the tip are flexible, and the stroke gets thicker the more pressure you apply because you bend the nips outwards. You can see that by how Tolkien writes the thick parts slower than the fast parts. This is different to calligraphy pens whose line thickness varies by angle of the pen because the top is flat. Could honestly be both from that angle and video sharpness.
@@tacosmexicanstyle7846 yes, a type of fountain pen. Don't go and try to bend a regular fountain pen's nips - they stay bend, and it's the absolute pits. Sourve: we wrote with fountain pens in school, and I needed a new pen every few years.
It's not dual-nibbed. It is all one nib, the term used for the parts of the nib that have the cut through the middle is 'tines'. Indeed, I believe that this was some sort of either left-oblique or italic nib with some flexibility. Judging by the little that is shown in this video it would be very hard to tell what particular pen this is but certainly several companies knew how to produce gorgeous nibs back in the day.
Tolkein spent time in Western Ireland studying Irish. Although his views on the language and people were unpleasant, to put it mildly, it's clear the Gaelic Script had an impact on Elvish type. Look at the use of 'ꞇ', 'ꝺ' and the use of diacritics such as 'í', 'ṁ' for instance.
@@Jun-Kyard the visual similarities to Arabic are caused by the calligraphic flowing style of writing. Arabs since the Age of Islam wrote with ink on paper or papyrus. The Latin script and other European scripts such as Germanic runes were first carved into stone or clay, which is why they are all straight lines. The language Tolkien invented that is most similar to Arabic is Khuzdul, the language of the Dwarves. It is also based on three-consonant roots. But the Dwarves prefer the runic script, as they carved in stone (Balin's Tomb is one of the few Khuzdul examples of them writing Khuzdul in Cirth, the runes).
Translation: Elen = Star Sila = (to) shine Lúmenn = the shining ( of the Star) Omenthielwo = our meeting * Elen síla lúmenn' omentielvo = A Star shines upon Our Meeting
I could watch this for hours. It's a shame it's barely over a minute long. Still, I'm glad we get the chance to see this legend write in the language he created.
My friends and I learned ro write in elvish in high school (in the '70s) so we could pass notes in class. The teachers who were prone to reading passed notes aloud to the class were not amused. I used to sign my ceramics in elvish as well.
I’m not so sure there will ever be another author with a mind like his. So vast and knowledgeable, so creative and experiential.
I like Tolkien but he is not a match for Aldous Huxley!
Brandon Sanderson is getting closer to Tolkien
@@leancamo800 lol. Not even close.
i feel like every generation we lose and gain something new
Try reading One Piece
His Elvish handwriting is better than my English.
E del mio italiano LOL
elvish is easier than English to make look good
because hes writing slowly
To be fair, I doubt you invented English
@@cocoguardian6679 nah.
this dude had such a love for languages, he literary taught himself Finnish just to read the Kalevala, that's a gangsta tier linguist flex.
I hear Finnish one of the hardest languages to learn.
Kalevala truly is something too that you must know the language very well to enjoy. You can of course learn the story through translation, but the book has been tailored with the finest potential of Finnish language. So much is simply lost through translation. Tolkien must've understood this well.
*literary*
@@the-chillian read the original comment again
I hear he started it, but couldn’t Finnish…
:D
Man, what I wouldn't give for a book signed by Tolkien in elvish!
I'd give my right leg 😂😅
I was thinking the same xD
@@angel79nunn
Three fingers from my left hand and three toes is the best I can do.
@@theofrustus3170 Sold!
@@theofrustus3170 You'd have to get quite lucky to find a buyer for real fingers and toes.
Sorry to say, but if you equate body parts to normal currency, fingers (and toes especially) are the nickels that pile up in your wallet for years until you physically can't fit anything else into your wallet, forcing you to go to a self-service machine to dump them into for a single bar of chocolate that you don't actually want enough to go through all this trouble for.
Tolkien is so humble to admit that his writing is inferior to that of the Elves.
That’s like if God said to Moses «woah, nice calligraphy right there, I couldn’t do that!»
It’s pretty racist to assume all elves are good writers though I for one am very triggered by this
@@DeaconArael ikr. doesnt make sense when he said that
@@teabaganyone7830 🤣🤣🤣
@@diollinebranderson6553 They have much more time to work on their handwriting lol
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe”
I remember reading that, which book was it?
@@TheSinghisking4ever it's a quote from Carl Sagan
@@TheSinghisking4ever Carl Sagan said it during the Cosmos (a PBS astronomy program)TV series.
ruclips.net/video/p3hRWM1y5CQ/видео.html
@@DarkAvatar1313 boom! copyright strike!
I thought it was Douglas Adams
To think that hand wrote Middle-earth into a literary and cultural reality.
Colonel... indeed so, nicely put.
He did more than that. His works reshaped out understanding of fantasy. Everything that can be called fantasy made today is in some way influenced by his works. He gave us our current image of orcs and elves and halflings.
Can't wait for Amazon to fuck it all up
@@bynflew8552 Can wait for them to make Luthien male in the name of diversity. African American Varda? Totally. Latinx Galadriel? Of course.
@@CristiNeagu 😃
Tolkien: "...I've made a mistake, didn't I?"
Me: Watching on in fascination, "I wouldn't know."
It looks quite lovely doesn't it? A mixture of Sanskrit or other Indian writing systems and Arabic scripture, with a twist.
I don't think your quotation marks were meant to represent exact quotes, but just to clarify, the exact quote from the video is: "Oh god...I made a mistake, never mind." :) Cheers.
"El*me* s*i*la lúmen* ómenti*lvo", roughly four spelling mistakes.
Yes, so sad. Tolkien writes in this video "Elen síla lúmenn' omentielvo!" wrong.
@@Berenhardt I made my own alphabet and I am not fluent in it at all. It's two things to invent something and to use it often enough that it becomes second nature. I'm better at writing in runes than my own alphabet.
@@christopherstein2024 Die elbischen Schriftzeichen sind keine Alphabete, sondern sie sind phonetisch strukturiert. Runen wurden ebenfalls phonetisch benutzt. Wozu entwickelt man ein eigenes Alphabet?
My father has a friend specialised in Tolkien's literature. He came to dinner once and because he gave Elvish names to his sons (not officially of course), I asked him to find another one for me. He wrote it in Common Language and in Quenya, then explained how it works.
Is it “Singer / Maker of Music” in the Common Tongue?
@@williamwebb580 More "She who likes music/Friend of music".
@@lindildeev5721 Ah, I see.
@@lindildeev5721 Beautiful
Damn, if I had a Quenyan name I’d use it online too
I love how he could just make up any characters/letters on the spot, say they were elvish and we would have no choice but to believe him, but instead he gets frustrated at himself when he makes a mistake
One of the appendices in _The Return of the King_ lists the Elvish characters and their sounds. The line he's writing is from a scene in _The Fellowship of the Ring_ in which Frodo greets Gildor in his own language. It wouldn't be terribly difficult to check whether what Tolkien had written was consistent with his previous writings.
...no he couldn't because it was already established and we know what it was, this isn't soemthign that is not documented
@@wizardsuth Funnily enough, he makes many mistake in this clip. He writes "Elem" instead of "Elen" and places the "E" tehta above the "N/M" instead of above the "L" tengwa as it should be in the Quenya mode. His brain must have been in Sindarin or English mode when he started writing the word and he seems not even to notice it. He also completely forgets to write the word "omentielvo" (which he spells "omentiilvo") and has to add it above the sentence! And if we really want to be nitpicky, he should have written "lùmen" with two "N"s as it's spelled "lumenn'" in the book, a contraction of "lumenna".
@@fredericbennett1672 wow, you really do know about this subject, don't you? It always fascinates me how youtube can bring people's experiences forth
@@fredericbennett1672 what a flex!
This mans a legend
the twilight saga was far superior to anything he wrote as well as 50 shades of grey.
and i love him forever...Lord of the rings hit me like a truck when i read it as a sixteen year old.
He is.
The writer of Harry Potter too, that woman is a god
She took lord of the rings, she changed some name and call it a day. The plot is the same from start to the end.
Harry -> Frodo
Dumbledore -> Gandalf
Order of the phenix -> fellowship of the ring
Death eater -> Nazgul
Horcruxe -> the one ring Voldemort -> sauron
A guy living with his uncle, no parent has to go trought a journey to become stronger and kill the dark lord with the help of his friends.
thanks for sharing this clip! his penmanship is beautiful, not to mention that he invented a whole language!
multiple languages
@@jonasrmb01 tru
@@jonasrmb01 And whole stories. Originally the languages came first and over time he created more and more of the world that they were used in.
@@WorldWar2freak94 honestly, that's his biggest flex imo. He created one of the most influential fictional worlds that redefined the concept of fantasy just to show off bunch of languages he made
@@jonasrmb01 wrong. One whole language. Sindarin/Quenya are complete and their own language, with grammar etc. the rest are incomplete/bare
Tolkien was a linguist first. LotR was the universe he built for the languages he invented.
Poofy... and what an amazing universe it is.
His deep knowledge of history also really shines through, especially Anglo-Saxon-Norse history. For instance, his musings on Anglo-Saxon warriors if they'd have had access to destrier war-horses, rather than the tiny little ponies they used for getting from place to place. The result being his fictional horsemen, the Rohirrim.
It would've been such a pleasure to have spoken with him, to have met him face to face.
@@cuhurun Tolkien does not converse with peasants.
@@phreak761 : Your comment screams of your pure ignorance of JRR Tolkien and the places and people he frequented. Further, personally knowing one of his family, I can assure you, you know nothing of the man.
@@cuhurun Bitch, I am the man.
@@phreak761 : Lol... little boy.
"A new language is like a new wine or a new sweet meat" that really sounds like something an Elf would say XD
Ok Bastion Hallix
A rare treasure this. After watching the films 20 times, here Tolkien sounds like a mix of Gandalf, Bilbo, and Gimli. His spirit is in those films and even somewhat in the animated ones from years before: 'Where there's a whip, there's a way.'
Indeed.
an absolute banger of a tuine thanks for reminding me! 'but the lord of the whip says nay, nay , nay! we are going to march all day all day all day!'
He basically using Urdu alphabet with letters and numbers from that language wirtte backwards or turned 180 degrees. Just google "Urdu alphabet"
Read the books. The books are infinitely better.
@@JonathanMartin884 I and most here have genious. Read them again, the lesson of not making assumptions is in them multiple times.
I love how you can see the similarities of the script to that of arabic and numbers. Really shows the beauty of such fluid languages.
First 2 letters look like سح with the س upside down, he actually makes s sound when he writes it for the 3th time (س is kind of s in Arabic)
Yeah there are many Arabic letters.
numbers?
A language written in cursive : OoOoOh sO aRaBiC dOod
@VDViktor cope it is clearly inspired by arabic
Its like seeing left-to-right Arabic with a mix of Sanskrit
because it is just that just added some of the letters from greek and persian and changed them a bit to fit his language, and to add there isnt only 1 elvish language but there are 6 of the if im not mistaken + "old" ones that arent used now by the elves, something like old norse, and each of these languages has grammar and phonology influenced by different language from real world for example Quenya is influenced by Finnish while Sindarin by Welsh and because elvish language is somewhat based on arabic obviously khuzdul which is dwarf language is based on hebrew and of course the writing is based on runes(there was also sign language used by dwarfs. So yeah Tolkien pretty much made up his very own culture that could amount to whole continent or even more(because i only mentioned 2 races, while there were many more, and i only talked about some of the aspects of the languages)
I wonder what that book is worth now
Some people might feel a similar sentiment watching you turn mundane objects into enviable artifacts mr duke
Lol
Millions 💰💲
Yes.
More than all the money in the universe
I never realised before this moment how visually similar his Elvish script is to Arabic. Clearly he took some inspiration there!
I looked through all the comments hoping someone would mention the clear letters ha (ح), che (چ), za (ز), tha (ط), saad (ص) and nun (ن), as well as the horizontal Greek beta (β), and the diacritic marks (like the marks on the following word: ٱلْحَدِيث)! XD Although che is not from Arabic, but Persian
@@ayyylmao101
I found all those special characters on Microsoft word and wrote out the whole ring inscription with them and taped the whole thing to my bedroom door. This was two years after 9/11 and my dad was like "WHY ARE THERE MIDDLE EASTERN WORDS ON YOUR DOOR?"
And I was like, "...oh, THAT'S what those are??"
😂😂😂
I legit thought it came preloaded with elvish!!!😂
This man single handedly create one of the best, if not the best, books series ever.
One of my favorite series. Going through them right now. I don't read a lot of books but I have finished the hobbit 3 times.
I have read the lord of the rings trilogy a few times, but I admittedly found it a bit odd the third time I read it.
@@holliswilliams8426 why?
Probably best fiction.
My aunt was a children's librarian from 1950 to her retirement in 1994 (I doubt there are actual 'children's' librarians anymore.) She would attend book events and signings and she was able to get three books signed by Mr. Tolkein. The Hobbit was autographed in 1951 and her first edition Return of the King in 1955 and the final one was the first edition single-volume Lord of the Rings in 1968. I was very happy to inherit those books when she passed away in 2020.
That's so cool.
You are so incredibly lucky
Keep'em secret
Keep'em safe my man
What a continuous present. Living history. ❤
that first letter looks very similar to the arabic letter ح, this is amazing
I also noticed that
This is what I had noticed too
What about japanese て
It's similar to Arabic in another way too. The main letter forms (tengwar) are consonants only. Vowels are expressed as marks either above or below the letter. Depending on the mode, the marks (tehtar) may indicate a vowel either before or after the letter it's attached to. In the mode he's using here (I think it's for Quenya) it's after. Since the first word _elen_ ("a star") begins with a vowel, the first "letter" he writes is a "carrier" that merely serves to support the vowel, which looks like an elongated acute accent.
The letter that resembles Arabic ح is an L, so the resemblance may not be deliberate.
It's the Tengwar letter lambë. (There are four of them in the phrase)
He lived for this, I absolutely adore it :)
So not only he was an epic writer but also a skillful calligrapher. Much respect for Tolkien.
"I've made a mistake."
Don't you worry, professor. Most of us can't tell, we're just in awe.
This man is what "peak human" looks like. Wish there were more people like him around us.
stop wishing and be that person
不祝，成之为
Yeah, one of those humbling moments when you realise that Tolkien could write neater in a fictional language, than I can in my native actual language.
He wrote neater in Elvish than he could in English too. His handwriting is infamously cursed, to the point where even his son misread his manuscripts and only realised years later.
Calligraphy and handwriting are two very different things. Look at how long it takes him to write this one sentence and how often he takes the pen off the paper and how careful he is to write neatly. When you look at his hand and not at what he's writing it's very apparent that this is closer to calligraphy.
But there would have to be some cursive style of writing Elvish that's used in everyday life optimized for speed.
Truly a master of his craft
The language looks so elegant and smoothly written. Like Arabic or Hindi.
As someone who speaks arabic, it is clearly influenced in part by Arabic, some of the letters are almost exactly the same, like these for example ح خ ج
@@AjZ530 ^ Nearly everything in the sentence, bar the Greek letter beta, is an Arabic letter or diacritic mark, except for the standout letter che (چ)
One of my favorite things about the recordings we have of Tolkien is how fluidly he switches between talking about our world and his. He says that the elves have better handwriting than he does like he might say he prefers one ale over another or comment on the weather.
He truly was an incredible person
Script reminds me so much of the old Irish script. There are old roll books in the school where I teach written in it and it’s stunningly beautiful
This is the only time where someone could justifiably say they didn't make a mistake with their writing and everyone else is wrong lol
Imagine having a signed copy of one of the books with elvish written by his own hand 😱
I got back into lotr again, after not touching the books for a good five years and I'm glad I did because now gems like this get recommended to me!
It's also always nice to come back to your childhood favourites a bit older, you get a whole new perspective on them
I agree, although sometimes too much nostalgia can be bad. It's an interesting experience to reintegrate childhood books back into your identity after becoming an adult.
Every time I read Lord of the Rings I get more out of it. Once a year since 1972.
This is truly a treasure . Thank you
Tolkien was nearly as genius as Shakespeare, just in a different fashion. Love this video.
A true perfectionist, he made an entire new language just for his book!
"Oh god, I've made a mistake didn't I ?"
Don't worry Tolkien we wouldn't know
I absolutely adore how he talks about Elvish as if it's a real language, not one he himself made up. He says "oh dear, I've made a mistake", like anyone would ever notice. Like, his own handwriting, in a language he made up, is inferior to the fictional beings he also invented who speak this language. Middle Earth to Tolkien, exists like a real place. For all intents and purposes, it was real to him. in his mind. I feel like that's why he put such effort into making the legendarium as full and detailed as possible.
This man really took Arabic letters, wrote from left to right and called it Elvish😂
i see that you don't know how languages work. there is the spoken language and written language, those are two different things-that code you made back in 3rd grade which is basically a 1:1 substitute from the english alphabet is not a language.
also, it looks very different from arabic. sure, he might've took inspiration from it, but grammatically and phonologically, the language is very different from arabic and more similar to the celtic languages.
@@Daryavahush so in conclusion - he took arabic letters and instead of real arabic grammar, he basically made his own grammar. seems pretty cheap. before start pulling the "hes way above you" card, look hes a good writer and shit. but accept it, he wasn’t extraordinarily creative with that language. admit it and move on
@@lifeisbeautiful015 Point out which letter is an Arabic one.
Also, explain how it is "cheap" if he even did directly take the Arabic alphabet but it's still an entire language on its own. You are aware that 150 languages use the latin alphabet, right genius?
@@lifeisbeautiful015 you *really* know nothing about language construction don't you? unless its a relex of existing world languages (such as skyrim's Dovahzul), its not "cheap". have you ever tried crafting an entire naturalistic language from the ground up? Its not just making up words for pre-existing english words.
@@lifeisbeautiful015 Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts all derive from the Phoenician alphabet, so anyone who has used those alphabets in the last four thousand years is, by your standards, 'pretty cheap'.
jrr tolkien was one of the coolest people ever to live.
Looks like a mix between arabic and latin, beautiful.
Man, I wish I had the patience, creativity and thirst for knowledge to do something like this. Create an entire world complete with peoples, hierarchies and, most importantly, conlangs.
This is awesome!
This man is extremely gifted to create such a language!
The amount of creativity and imagination that JRR had was massive. He lived in two worlds or more at the same time.
His clear love for making languages is so infectious. It's like when you're talking to someone who's super passionate about a show or game that you're not to big on but they love it so much it makes you want to love it too.
This is how I got into Babylon 5.
I was always going to watch it. I had every intention.
But HBO removed it AS SOON AS I read an awesome article about it. This woman wrote about B5 like I'd write about my favorite sci-fi, so I was doubly ready. Then 6 months later, HBO brought it back in the wake of Mira Furlan's passing.
Babylon 5 is THE GREATEST SHOW ON TELEVISION. This is coming from a lifelong TREKKIE. It was gaudy and cheesey and low budget in the way only an early 1990s sci-fi can be, but it's UNCOMFORTABLY AHEAD of its time, UNABASHEDLY RELEVANT IN THE 2020s.
AND THERE ARE ENDLESS TOLKIEN REFERENCES!!!!!
❤❤❤❤❤❤
I've never heard his voice and he sounds nothing like I imagined but also so right for who he was
Tolkien's work has such deep melancholy for me.
There is a constant theme of "waning", like things being destroyed or corrupted and never being able to be as great again or acquired again. The Lamps couldn't be made again so they had to make the trees, Arda became "Arda Marred" and could never be made perfect and symmetrical again... and then the trees also were destroyed and couldn't be remade, the silmarils were lost and couldn't be remade.... the elves are slowly fading in middle earth as they need to return to Valinor... the role of Morgoth waned in that Sauron took it over, and then he too had his power diminished.
everyone will be back for dagor dagorath tho
@@noodboy4633 Thanks mate, I needed that :)
everyonll retutrn to Eru Lluvatar
Ecclesiastes
Even in elvish, his handwriting is beautiful
Oh so beautiful.
There shall never be one like him. I mean SERIOUSLY!
God bless the Tolkiens and thank
Sir J.R.R. Tolkien!
thats the hand of the master writing those words. the greatest worldbuilder of all time.
This moments forces you to think that Middle Earth is really exist somewhere.
Dude wrote a entire universe into existence so he had a place for his own original language.
I'm just smiling so big watching this, what an amazing clip.❤
Beautiful handwriting.
That's really soothing to watch I wish I could watch him write pages and pages like that
I love the elvish writing so beautiful
Showed this to my boyfriend: he said: "I feel like Sheldon with the Leonard Nimoy's napkin!!!"
Looks like a mix of arabic, hebrew and sanskrit. Beautiful
I just realized they had Gandalf recite this phrase in the movie, in front of the doors to Moria. Mind blowing attention to detail!
Seller: I got this Tolkien's autograph in Elvish language
Rick from Pawn Stars: *Best I can do is $20*
creating a language for a book. he really deserved all the credit he got throughout his years
No, it's actually the other way around if I'm not wrong. He created* the entire book series AROUND the language he created first, because he's a linguist first before a writer.
Wasn't Tolkien bored with marking homework when he wrote the opening line of "The Hobbit"?
And here he is all those years later correcting himself in front of the camera 🤩😍
Thanks so much for sharing this clip 🤩👍
Your welcome!
Happy Birthday JRR!! :D
In your honour I shall go wandering today.
For everyone wondering: That strongly looks like a pen with a stenography tip. In many stenography systems, line thickness is important because it actually changes the characters you're writing. The two nibs of the tip are flexible, and the stroke gets thicker the more pressure you apply because you bend the nips outwards. You can see that by how Tolkien writes the thick parts slower than the fast parts. This is different to calligraphy pens whose line thickness varies by angle of the pen because the top is flat. Could honestly be both from that angle and video sharpness.
Are those not the same as fountain pens? I do all my handwriting with one, and the dual nib tip is exactly as you describe on mine
@@tacosmexicanstyle7846 yes, a type of fountain pen. Don't go and try to bend a regular fountain pen's nips - they stay bend, and it's the absolute pits. Sourve: we wrote with fountain pens in school, and I needed a new pen every few years.
It's not dual-nibbed. It is all one nib, the term used for the parts of the nib that have the cut through the middle is 'tines'. Indeed, I believe that this was some sort of either left-oblique or italic nib with some flexibility. Judging by the little that is shown in this video it would be very hard to tell what particular pen this is but certainly several companies knew how to produce gorgeous nibs back in the day.
Thank you from a fountain pen addict.
its just a flex nib lol.. nothing special
Tolkein spent time in Western Ireland studying Irish. Although his views on the language and people were unpleasant, to put it mildly, it's clear the Gaelic Script had an impact on Elvish type. Look at the use of 'ꞇ', 'ꝺ' and the use of diacritics such as 'í', 'ṁ' for instance.
Backwards arabic?
@@Jun-Kyard the visual similarities to Arabic are caused by the calligraphic flowing style of writing. Arabs since the Age of Islam wrote with ink on paper or papyrus. The Latin script and other European scripts such as Germanic runes were first carved into stone or clay, which is why they are all straight lines.
The language Tolkien invented that is most similar to Arabic is Khuzdul, the language of the Dwarves. It is also based on three-consonant roots. But the Dwarves prefer the runic script, as they carved in stone (Balin's Tomb is one of the few Khuzdul examples of them writing Khuzdul in Cirth, the runes).
Whomever has THAT book with TOLKIEN'S elven writing I sure hope he or she owns a treasure
Damn nice pen he’s got too. Look at that marvelous ink flow.
Translation:
Elen = Star
Sila = (to) shine
Lúmenn = the shining ( of the Star)
Omenthielwo = our meeting
* Elen síla lúmenn' omentielvo
= A Star shines upon Our Meeting
That’s the single most beautiful piece of text I’ve ever seen.
Brilliance incarnate...
one of my favourite things on youtube!
his elven calligraphy is beautiful
As a amateur world and language maker, that "oh god, I made a mistake" as he was writing. I felt that deep in my soul 🥲
Tolkien: can i copy your homework?
Arabic: okay bro, but don’t make it too obvious
Tolkien:
Tolkien was simultaneously extremely articulate and remarkably inarticulate at the same time.
Tolkien's Elvish scripture is heavily inspired by arabic lettering. I even recognize a few characters in whatever he wrote.
I thought the same! Arabic and maybe the Georgian alphabet, too
I have a T-shirt with Elvish scripture on it. People always ask me why do I have Arabic words on my tee haha.
No that’s merely a coincidence. Tolkien’s invention is 100% original and owes nothing to Arabic.
@@reginaldforthright805 there's a literal arabic letter with no changes in what Tolkien wrote in the video
@@reginaldforthright805 He also invented the pen, and the process of turning wood pulp into canvas to write on. Quite the visionary man!
I could watch this for hours. It's a shame it's barely over a minute long. Still, I'm glad we get the chance to see this legend write in the language he created.
For some reason learning Elvish seems more dignified than learning Klingon to me
Because it 100% is.
😂❤❤that also is quite unique! Probablg easier than Vulcan🖖!
Didn’t know that Elvis had his own language
In the common tongue it is often referred to as 'rock and roll.' 😎
Thy language of Lothlorien
He invented Quenya, Sindarin, and also the Runic language of the dwarves. Amazing!
Indeed
This is so satisfying to watch
Plot twist hes actually an elf and is playing it cool
I love that he invented the language and still mucks it up
And no one would have probably ever noticed if he hadn't said. This is just wonderful 🤩
It looks very Arabic-Hebrew so much
Man I wish he was around today so he could make videos on how to speak and write elvish. This short clip was so captivating.
ayyyy elvish bhaiiiii
beautiful
Forget English, the whole world should just learn Elvish 😁
Or for real Arabic
he is my fav friction writer I love him, lotr, middle earth
My friends and I learned ro write in elvish in high school (in the '70s) so we could pass notes in class. The teachers who were prone to reading passed notes aloud to the class were not amused. I used to sign my ceramics in elvish as well.
Hearing Tolkien speak Quenya and seeing him write in Tengwar is just so wonderful. Such a beautiful language, such a beautiful mind.
please lord tell me that this book is still in good hands and is well kept
It looks heavily inspired by Arabic/Urdu. A lot of words and dots he made are exactly what's in Arabic and Urdu.
truly historic video
the man who made it all possible...
My best friend's uncle translated almost the entire Bible into Elvish.
Interesting.
This is gold
Any idea what fountain pen he used? Looks like a Waterman?
That's what I want to know but can't make out ...
Definitely a broad or at least stub nib though.