Ben Domenech

As with so many things Tolkien did, it's amazing that one person did that.

this entire mythology or these, you know, these whole languages.

And I know they're not, they're not whole languages.

They're, you know, there's, there's holes in them.

There's gaps in them.

But the fact that he did so much of this and he lived a life where he was able to create these languages and you, you can track the development of a language from its origin to the later versions that we see in Lord of the Rings.

That's super exciting to me.

And so that's what I've really been interested in from a philological perspective is going back and tracing those roots.

That is good stuff.

I know I've been enjoying doing the Word Nerd Wednesdays and having to do this every week, diving into resources like Vineyard Tangoir or like Elvish Data Model.

Eldamo.org has been a lifesaver for me in that regard.

And it is so interesting to see Tolkien's

internal development of the language, like how Quenya then morphs and things like that, but then also how he himself from the outside changed it and made substantive changes to the way the sounds would develop.

I think for me, as fascinating as that is, I think the area that I'm most drawn to

is maybe a little slightly less philological and more just flat out linguistics.

I would really like to learn a little bit more about Old English.

I'd like to learn how to read it out loud.

I'd like to, I've been, the Rohirric stuff, you know, and this goes back, Sean, to like my love of alliterative verse and the way that those words sound.

And I guess it's really comes down to Tolkien's choice to use Old English as being representative of Rohirric.

has drawn me to that language.