"English and Welsh" is
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''.
From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawlinson ...
's inaugural O'Donnell Memorial Lecture of 21 October 1955. The lecture sheds light on Tolkien's conceptions of the connections of
race,
ethnicity
An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they Collective consciousness, collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, ...
, and
language
Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...
.
Publication
It was first published in ''Angles and Britons'' in 1963 and was republished in ''
The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays'' in 1983.
Contents
Tolkien begins with an overview of the terms "
British", "
Celtic", "
Germanic", "
Saxon", "
English" and "
Welsh", explaining the last term's etymology in ''
walha''.
Tolkien also addresses the historical
language contact
Language contact occurs when speakers of two or more languages or varieties interact with and influence each other. The study of language contact is called contact linguistics. Language contact can occur at language borders, between adstratum ...
between
English and
Welsh since the
Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain, including
Welsh loanwords and
substrate influence found in English, and conversely
English loanwords in Welsh. Comparing the Germanic
''i''-mutation and the Celtic
affection, Tolkien says:
In the final part of the lecture Tolkien explores the concept of
phonaesthetics, citing "cellar door" as a phrase recognised as sounding beautiful in English and adding that, to his own taste, in Welsh "''cellar doors'' are extraordinarily frequent". Tolkien describes the working of phonaesthetics inherent in the moment of association of
sound and meaning:
Tolkien alludes to his view that such tastes are inherited, "an aspect in linguistic terms of our individual natures. And since these are largely historical products, the predilections must be so too." To refer to such an inherited taste of language, Tolkien introduces the term "native tongue" as opposed to "cradle tongue".
Influence
Tolkien notes in his lecture that "Most English-speaking people … will admit that 'cellar door' is beautiful, especially if dissociated from its sense and from its spelling. More beautiful than, say, 'sky', and far more beautiful than 'beautiful' … Well then, in Welsh, for me cellar doors are extraordinarily frequent." This interest in and appreciation of Welsh influenced his own invented languages, notably the Elvish language
Sindarin.
This lecture is considered Tolkien's "last major learned work". There are several important aspects to it. First, it "includes a valuable contribution to the study of the place of Britons in Anglo-Saxon England". Secondly, it offers a warning against racial theories. Third, it presents Tolkien's hypothesis of "inborn" linguistic tastes, which then leads into a discussion of his own views of aesthetics in language. Finally, it provides a (correct) hypothesis on the origins of the word "w(e)alh", which in turn provides an explanation of what happened to Celtic when the Anglo-Saxons invaded.
References
*Tolkien, J. R. R., "English and Welsh" in ''
The Monsters and the Critics'', 1983 ()
{{Authority control
Essays by J. R. R. Tolkien
History of the English language
Language contact
Phonaesthetics
1955 essays
Welsh language
Language comparison
Essays about language