A Sense of History: Straight Road
The next in a series of articles about ships passing to and from the West, Simon uses "The Fall of Númenor" to attempt to arrive at Tolkien's reading of the exordium to "Beowulf."
Learning the Language
Prompt: Speech
Brodda speaks fluent Sindarin with a heavy accent, Broddun, his sister, only a few words of Adunaic. Aerin learns the speech of the Easterlings from Broddun. It involves a lot of pointing and dramatic gestures. Easterling speech has strange and difficult sounds; Aerin almost chokes trying to distinguish two of its consonants. Broddun bursts out giggling, looks remorseful and quickly hides her grin behind uplifted hands. Never mind—it is still a far kinder sound than the drunken jeers of Brodda’s warriors in the hall. Months later, Aerin remembers and understands what it was she said.
She begins laughing, too.