The Colors of Elvish: A Linguistic Exploration by Fiondil

Fanwork Information

Summary:

Color is a basic category of language.  Every culture has terminology denoting color, but they do not all 'see' the same colors. This is a look at the color terms that Tolkien translated into Quenya and Sindarin and what might be the sociolinguistic implications for these.

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Artwork Type: No artwork type listed

Genre: Nonfiction/Meta

Challenges: Color of ...

Rating: General

Warnings:

Chapters: 1 Word Count: 3, 709
Posted on 3 July 2010 Updated on 3 July 2010

This fanwork is complete.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Comments

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This is so interesting - I just read 'Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages' by Guy Deutscher, but I hadn't thought to apply the parts about colour to Tolkien's languages.  He was certainly on the side of language as a reflection of colour, and I don't think we're reading too much into the text to make some interpretations about the Elves based on the words they used.  I will definitely have to mark this for reference.