Tuesday, March 09, 2004

TOLKIEN AGAIN, but this time not entirely irrelevant to PaleoJudaica. It seems that Aramaic isn't the only language benefitting from movie publicity:
Elvish is hobbitforming (Business Standard, India)

Nilanjana S Roy
Published : March 9, 2004

Lle quena i�lambe tel� Eldalie? The answer to that question �Do you speak Elvish? � is �yes� more often than you might realise.

Lord of the Rings fans trade phrases in Sindarin and Quenya in their online film discussions; linguists, particularly those with a puckish sense of humour, have confessed to occasionally speaking the language Tolkien invented; RPG (role-playing games) addicts often keep a downloadable phrase book handy.

But the Elven languages just took the mainstream world by surprise when a school in the UK announced that it planned to put Sindarin and Quenya on the syllabus.

It sounds like a load of Nevbosh, just another instance of hobbitmania run amok. (Nevbosh, an early language that Tolkien helped invent, stands for �New Nonsense�.)

But the educators who suggested incorporating Elvish into the syllabus suggested that a language, invented or not, that their students might actually be interested in learning, scored far higher in teaching terms than a worthier but dead language.

Every second kid in the playground wants to orate like Aragorn, give commands like Theoden and swear like an Orc; no one wants to go through the veni, vidi, vici routine any more, Gladiator notwithstanding. (It�s always possible that Mel Gibson�s Passion will spark off an Aramaic revival, but then again, we�re unlikely to see it happening in the classrooms at present. LOTR just has more reach.)

[...]

Unfortunately the article doesn't say which school in the U.K. is doing this.

UPDATE: Here's the information. The classes are being offered after hours. (Via Mirabilis.)

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