Board Thread:Lore Texts/@comment-33763020-20180130195747/@comment-33763020-20180131171817

High King Ithilion wrote: Barangolo wrote: High King Ithilion wrote: Dwarves aren't Scottish--if anything, they're rather Jewish in style, according to Tolkien. I recommend changing the various Scots spellings and expressions--though please don't change them to Jewish ones.

If you want to get really deep, in the English "transcriptions" of the Cirth Erebor, when the writer was not a professional certain spellings in English were not reflected and turned into the actual sound of the word--like how "Houses" is pronounced "Hauzez". Though it wasn't this drastic in Dwarvish writing, if you want I can try to reflect the spelling "mistakes" they often had when they were untrained in the Common Speech.

Ithilion, Discussions Moderator (Auta i lómë)

I agree that using any cultural/racial analogy to our world in writing lore texts is not proper, though I think that’s not the same as languages. I quite liked Peter Jackson’s interpretation of Gimli with a Scottish accent and tried to build on it with my submission, in the hope that most of the mod players can accept this as a possible interpretation for Dwarves. Of course the books are leading and any movie just an interpretation, since written text does not allow for dialects or culturally-tinted interpretation, but once spoken, a stance needs to be taken on what it sounds like. Imagine Elves speaking a Scottish dialect and Orcs in a BBC broadcaster style, that would be hilarious :D. We don’t have much room to play with, since English only has that many dialects to choose from (Scottish and Irish being the two major ones) and it’s the leading language of this mod. I disagree with your statement on Jewish (Yiddish), since that’s not a dialect of English, but simply the accent that Jews talk with due to their language background (Hebrew). It is the same as Italian, Chinese or Nigerian accent for that matter, all being a different pronounciation of English, none being a dialect of it. In this perspective Scottish is different, which I think most of us consider to be an English dialect and not an alltogether different language like Dutch for example.

Having said that and assuming we don’t need to take cultural analogies into this process, I agree with you that plain English would be most suitable and authentic to the books. That makes it difficult however to portray difference in races: having Orcs make the same statements as Elves without alliterations or dialect would be detrimental to immersion, so beside the obvious tricks (lamenting Elves with eloquent use of words vs Orcs being blunt and simple), more is needed to facilitate this process. Since I am not a writer unfortunately, neither a native English speaker, I am more challenged in this aspect than a Professor of Literature in Oxford. Having not many of those submitting lore texts for this mod however from what I’ve seen in the game ;), I think the threshold needs to be lowered a bit or you guys need to put more effort in editing the submissions with your expertise, while still being authentic enough in your skills to reflect the original races sufficiently. This means that you cannot expect me to submit something at better quality by giving contestable guidelines that are open for interpretation as well. Obviously none of us come even close to Tolkien’s skills in writing and as lore texts should be original, his style of writing should be adhered to as much as possible. Let’s be frank though: given the age of players of the mod and assuming literature skills are mostly less developed at this age, the submissions wil never reach the desired threshold, so compromises from your side are needed.

So feel free to omit my submission if you consider it not to be canonical. Though I would of course appreciate it more if you amend it in a way you think should be interpreted: it makes no sense for me to amend it further based on guidelines, since I have a different interpretation that you judge to be unworthy of the mod, which would make editing an endless process that I’m all too familiar with in real life. There has to be a leading decision maker on the final product and that’s the mod team and I‘m fully at ease with that. I respect that you guys have a job to do here and I'm just an enthousiast with his own interpretation and that's the way it has to be. Your changes may change my immersion, but perhaps it would improve that of others. Either way, I understand that your task is quite challenging in the field of linguistics, as it is one of the most difficult parts of the game to portray in an authentic way.

We don't need an accent to be represented in writing (save with the Orcs, who have a very unique and facinating way of speaking, nar garn!)  I'm not suggesting they spoke with a Yiddish or Hebrew accent (in fact, they spoke with a Khuzdul accent). I'm just saying that they aren't Scots, but rather in character similar to Jewish peoples.

Orcs have their own unique accent, so there's no worry there. But Elves, Men, and Dwarves don't necessarily sound all that different (in writing). Why do we need to represent their pronunciation or have them write like Glaswegians, when Tolkien didn't have them do anything of the sort?

I feel like you're getting rather defensive in the latter section. Don't feel like I'm attacking you. I'm just offering criticism to improve what you've done. I hope that's fair.

Overall, I think it's silly to suggest that we should lower our standards to accomodate the young people who write poorer texts. For starters, age isn't exactly a measure of writing--I'm 15, and most of the admins and moderators are under 20. But more importantly, isn't quality better than quantity? We should make sure that the texts are excellent and fit in the world, rather than include low-quality texts for the sake of "immersion" or to have more bulk texts.

I'll add a possible revision of your text if you don't mind, to try to "Tolkienize" the text and make it fit better with the mod team's preferences.

Ithilion, Discussions Moderator (Auta i lómë)

Please do and no offense taken :). I get that you want a clear line in terms of plain text, at least I will know next time I submit something. Quality is in the eye of the beholder though, so I wouldn't say that better immersion means lower quality.. If you perceive plain text as better quality, then pursue that approach by all means, it still is a subjective opinion however.

In terms of the delicate matter of how we perceive cultures, I would still have a hard time imagining someone like Woody Allen for example digging ore in a mine, behind the anvil, with tankards of ale or a battle-cry leaving his mouth when he charges Orcs ;). Again, a subjective matter and luckily we don't have to make race analogies between a fictional and the real world as it serves no purpose for gameplay, so language is the only thing that requires due diligence.