11-07-2003, 09:32 PM
"And for that matter, is there anything that says that Westron is particularly different from English?"
It isn't that different from early middle-english or saxon dialects, IIRC, although I know very little about it beyond what Tolkein himself wrote in the appendixes, and even that I read over a year ago. Westron is, however, a language itself, and it is (theoretically) translated into the books we know as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. You wouldn't be able to understand someone speaking Westron, but a scholar of old english might be able to.
Jester
It isn't that different from early middle-english or saxon dialects, IIRC, although I know very little about it beyond what Tolkein himself wrote in the appendixes, and even that I read over a year ago. Westron is, however, a language itself, and it is (theoretically) translated into the books we know as The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. You wouldn't be able to understand someone speaking Westron, but a scholar of old english might be able to.
Jester