Abby Epplett, Historian

In my first essay after my winter holiday hiatus, I begin a new chapter to Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical where I describe the process of research and producing a hypothetical adaptation of the bestselling book series by British linguist J.R.R. Tolkien. At last, I will begin presenting selections of dialogue and music to accommodate the concept art that I began creating in 2024. Composers commonly make demo recordings of their work using themselves or their friends as the performing artists, from “I’m in the Middle of a Muddle” for the 1950 Disney animation Cinderella sung by middle-aged male songwriters Mack David , Al Hoffman , and Jerry Livingston instead of a peppy young woman like the title character, or an early version of “How Far I’ll Go” for the 2016 Disney animation Moana sung by Broadway star Phillipa Soo , a close friend of its songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda , since her voice perfectly matched the protagonist. But before I reveal my own demo reel, I ne...

At last, I have arrived at the final appendix! Appendix F is divided into two parts with the first covering the languages spoken by the many peoples of Middle-earth during the Third Age, and the second covering Tolkien’s method of “translation” for those languages. Even to the end, Tolkien maintained his character as a typical early to mid-20 th century translator. Elvish and Mannish languages in Arda evolved along similar paths as real-world Indo-European languages with the development of a common speech, pidgins and creoles from the merger of two or more languages, categorization of languages as high or low based on the social status of the speakers, codeswitching and reappropriation of slurs, and languages falling out of use to become lost.

The first part of “Appendix E: Writing and Spelling”, focused on pronunciation. I am notoriously bad at pronouncing words that I only know by sight, some of my favorites being liaison, epitome, Yosemite, and mischievous. Because I learned most of my vocabulary from reading, I rarely heard more difficult words pronounced aloud until high school or college, when I learned the hard way that what I heard in my head was not the generally accepted way to say the word. I tended to think my linguistic snafus were pretty funny.

J.R.R. Tolkien was a professional philologist, an Ancient Greek word meaning “lover of words”. This branch of linguistics focuses on etymologies, the historical meaning behind words and how they evolve over time. Because of his interest, an unusually high number of characters within The Lord of the Rings are writers, translators, and linguists.