Entiska

Large Trees, originally uploaded by resnow777.

I och med det här inlägget känns det som att jag når en toppnotering (eller bottennotering, beroende på läsaren) i nördighet, men jag fastnade verkligen för den här texten om entiska, språket som de levande träden talar i Tolkiens böcker:

The Ents loved Quenya, but they also developed their own tongue, probably the most peculiar of all the languages of Arda. Tolkien describes it as "slow, sonorous, agglomerated, repetitive, indeed long-winded; formed of a multiplicity of vowel-shades and distinctions of tone and quantity which even the loremasters of the Eldar had not attempted to represent in writing" (Appendix F). The Ents were apparently able to distinguish between minute variations of quality and quantity and used such distinctions phonemically. Many distinct Entish phonemes would sound like a single sound to a human or even Elvish ear. It seems that Entish also employed different tones, perhaps somewhat like Chinese, in which language a simple word like ma may have one of four meanings (ranging from "mother" to "horse") - and to the Chinese they all sound different, because the vowel a is pronounced with a distinct tone in each case. Entish may have employed many more tones than just four.

/.../

A speech in Entish, if it could be understood by human ears, would perhaps be like a very verbose and involved kind of poetry. There would be repetitions upon repetitions upon repetitions, with slight variations. If there was anything that we might call a sentence, it might proceed in a sort of spiral fashion, winding in to the main point, and then winding out again, touching all along the way on what has already been said and what will be said" (An Introduction to Elvish p. 176).

/.../

Treebeard said of his own Entish name that it was "growing all the time, and I've lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story. Real names tell you the story of the things they belong to in my language, in the Old Entish as you might say" (LotR2/III ch. 4).

/.../

But it appears that the Ents did not always communicate in "dialogues" with one speaking at a time. During the Entmoot, "the Ents began to murmur slowly: first one joined and then another, until they were all chanting together in a long rising and falling rhythm, now louder on one side of the ring, now dying away there and rising to a great boom on the other side". Evidently the debate was a long, pulsating symphony of many opinions being voiced simultaneously, slowly merging into a conclusion. This may explain why it did not take forever before the Entmoot decided upon a course of action.

Själva idékomplexet ent slår an i princip varenda ton som finns till buds i det här hjärtat: det vårdande, det vegeterande, det oändligt långsamma, det organiska, det dunkla, det lyriska, det neutrala, det stilla sipprandet av rent liv... What's not to love?