Presentations

Tolkien produced a unique theory of British-Welsh as representing the “native language” or the “native linguistic potential” of many of the English, including himself, who lived in Britain. Tolkien’s predilection for British-Welsh is therefore connected, if indirectly, to the Romantic Nationalism which he revealed in a famous letter addressed to Milton Waldman. In the letter, Tolkien confided his ambition to create “a body of more or less connected legend” which he could dedicate to “England: to my country.” Tolkien, who valued British-Welsh greatly on account of its historicity and “linguistic aesthetic,” not only modeled one of his invented languages, Sindarin, on British-Welsh so as to reflect his “linguistic aesthetic,” but also presented it as ancient, indigenous, and predominant, that is, as historically analogous to the British language before the arrival of English.　 Conversely, Tolkien employed words of British-Welsh origin to represent traces of Dunlendish, which survived in the language of the Stoors and the Bree-men. Tolkien thus invited comparison between Dunlendish and the historical Celtic language in Britain, elements of which survived in England in a similar manner. However, whereas Sindarin is depicted as a euphonic and noble language by Tolkien, he has Dunlendish, one of the languages of the wild men, sounding like “the scream of birds and the bellowing of beasts” to the ears of Éomer – possibly projecting onto his Secondary World the colonial attitude of the politically dominant English people towards the ancient but minor British language. Tolkien himself is known to have been opposed to the “misuse of British,” which deprived “the Welsh of their claim to be the chief inheritors of the title British,” while simultaneously rejecting romantic Celticism. This paper examines Tolkien’s intriguing use of British-Welsh for both Dunlendish and Sindarin, which seems to form a diptych mirroring his linguistic messages concerning British-Welsh.