(no subject)
Jan. 2nd, 2003 01:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pearwaldorfMore evidence that 1. I am SO not intellectually stimulated at work and 2. I think I'm slipping back into my fandomish ways:
So there's this Visual Companion to The Two Towers, right? And Viggo(!!!111!!!!) did the introduction. At the end, he signs the intro "Namarie!" (imagine two dots over the e). In all the Quenya dictionaries I've consulted, "Namarie" means farewell, not just in the conventional sense but in the literal (fare well) sense. But it sounds too much like "Namaste," which can be used in greeting and farewell as well as... not really blessing, but something like good wishes (I believe the literal translation is "The spirit in me acknowledges the spirit in you."). "Namaste" is Sanskrit, which is probably the closest language to Proto Indo-European that is still spoken or read in the world today. As a philologist, Tolkien had to be aware of Proto Indo-European. So I wonder if the word means more than just what the Tolkienian linguists say it does, and if Middle Earth is indebted to more than just the Norse sagas and the Celtic mythology Tolkien most definitely drew from.
So there's this Visual Companion to The Two Towers, right? And Viggo(!!!111!!!!) did the introduction. At the end, he signs the intro "Namarie!" (imagine two dots over the e). In all the Quenya dictionaries I've consulted, "Namarie" means farewell, not just in the conventional sense but in the literal (fare well) sense. But it sounds too much like "Namaste," which can be used in greeting and farewell as well as... not really blessing, but something like good wishes (I believe the literal translation is "The spirit in me acknowledges the spirit in you."). "Namaste" is Sanskrit, which is probably the closest language to Proto Indo-European that is still spoken or read in the world today. As a philologist, Tolkien had to be aware of Proto Indo-European. So I wonder if the word means more than just what the Tolkienian linguists say it does, and if Middle Earth is indebted to more than just the Norse sagas and the Celtic mythology Tolkien most definitely drew from.
