And Monty v. Patton.
Ah, yes. “Oversexed, overpaid and over here” vs. “Undersexed, underpaid and under Eisenhower.”
I definitely noticed it. The work has a sort of timeless (meaning back in time somewhere) feel to it because of the language.
You haven’t really read Tolkien until you’ve read it in the original Klingon.
I don’t know much about Tolkien and his motivations, but I do know that he had a great interest in the sound and feel of writing (just from reading the appendix to LOTR about his word choices in his putative translation). So it’s quite plausible that if there’s a lower frequency of Romance words in LOTR, it’s just because he (perhaps without even noticing the bias in his word choices) felt the Germanic words sounded more mythic-- more fundamental, solemn, and unadorned. You don’t need to bring in political considerations about long ago conquests, when easier explanations are at hand.
I tried it once for a Staff Report on Viking horned helmets. Er, I gave it a shot once for a Staff Rundown on Viking horned hard hats. Before abandoning the project as a lost cause, I must have wasted very many hours trying to eliminate every non-native word. Er, Before giving up the bid as a worthless struggle, I must have lost truly much time giving it a shot to get rid of every un-homegrown word. Just like I’m doing now.
You don’t have to invoke a subconscious choice. Tolkien had a conscious (and well known and documented) preference for northern European languages. His own interests included the Norse eddas and Old English works (stuff like Beowulf), even if he was familiar/fluent with Greek and the Romance languages.
Beyond that, he was a professionally a philologist (mainly of Old Germanic languages) and familiar with at least a dozen langauges. It would be surprising if he let subconscious choice dictate his language choice. It seems like he stuck with familiarity and what he did professionally.
This is reminding me of a passage in Heinlein’s Double Star, in which the protagonist is an actor hired to be a “double” for John Joseph Bonforte, an incapacitated statesman. He is handed a speech to read, and realizes it doesn’t sound at all like Bonforte, so he rewrites it… among other things, taking out all the Latin-derived words and replacing them with Germanic-derived ones. Heinlein may have mentioned in passing that Churchill also avoided Latin-derived words in his speeches. So I don’t think this is unusual at all, if you’re trying for a certain effect.
Tolkien was a prof alongside C. S. Lewis and Joseph Lewis. They were good friends. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for some of their bull sessions.
Just wanted to mention that The Lord of the Rings is actually divided into six books – The Ring Sets Out, The Ring Goes South, The Treason of Isengard, The Ring Goes East, The War of the Ring, and The End of the Third Age. It was the publisher’s decision to print it in three volumes (two books per volume), and IIRC, Tolkien was not pleased with that.
Re-read the Chapter The Council of Elrond and look closely at each character’s dialogue. Tolkien gives each a unique style to fit their culture and era. Every word was carefully chosen. Also see the dialogue for Saruman in The Voice of Saruman.
I thought I remembered that at least one of Frederick Buechner’s novels, Godric or Brendan, was written that way; but I can’t find a cite that says that specifically.
The first sentence of The Fellowship of the Rings:
“When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.”
Words with French or Latin derivation in the first sentence:
announced, celebrating, party, special, magnificence, excitement.
So, he didn’t avoid them completely.
Also “Mr” (ultimately from Latin “magister”).
Heretic! Heretic!
From the Latin “haereticus”, “member of a sect”, from Greek, “hairetikos”, “able to choose”.
No, but that wasn’t the original claim, either.
Couldn’t have Celeborn without celebrating now, could we? 
You could be quoting George Orwell
[QUOTE=George Orwell]
Pretentious diction. Words like phenomenon, element, individual (as noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate, are used to dress up a simple statement and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgements. Adjectives like* epoch-making, epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable, inexorable, veritable*, are used to dignify the sordid process of international politics, while writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on an archaic color, its characteristic words being: realm, throne, chariot, mailed fist, trident, sword, shield, buckler, banner, jackboot, clarion. Foreign words and expressions such as cul de sac, ancien regime, deus ex machina, mutatis mutandis, status quo, gleichschaltung, weltanschauung, are used to give an air of culture and elegance. Except for the useful abbreviations* i.e., e.g.*, and etc., there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in the English language. Bad writers, and especially scientific, political, and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous, and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon numbers.
[/QUOTE]
I think that joke works better with the older form of his name.