Nerding Out

I think we've already established that I love my British Lit to 1500 class. And today, it was even better than usual, thanks to our discussion on ancient forms of writing in Britain. 

First, there's this old lithic (yes, both meanings of the word, for those of you in the know) form of writing called Ogham, which is basically a series of lines carved along a ridge. It's more of a code than an alphabet, and looks a bit like this:

 Now, since it's just lines, it's not always easy to tell where one "letter" stops and the next one begins. Nor is entirely simple to determine if they're slanted lines or straight lines. All of this is compounded by the fact that the vertical line running down each letter was usually just the ridge of a rock. And since not all ridges are precisely vertical, you may begin to see how utterly ridiculous this language is for us to decipher. Oh, and on top of that, it's really more of a code than an alphabet, so not all the letters are strictly letters; sometimes they're a cross between hieroglyphs and letters. Add that to the weathering that a given stone will endure over, say, a thousand years, and you get this:

It is one of the oldest forms of writing found on the British Isles, even predating the better-known Futhorc runes:

These are most likely familiar to you: Tolkien borrowed quite liberally from them to create the languages of Middle Earth. This was also a topic we discussed in class, since Dr. Petersen pointed out the Futhorc-Elvish similarities, but didn't remember which script they were for. Thus ensued the following discussion:

"Tolkien used these runes for his Elvish languages"

"Actually, he used a more curly, softer alphabet for the Quenya Elves. The runes that look like the Futhorc were used by the..."

"Sindarin"

"Yes! Sindarin Elves."

"And there's a separate variety that the Dwarves use that looks kind of like the Futhorc too."

"OH MY GOSH! I can't believe we're having this conversation right now! This is awesome!"

I didn't contribute to the discussion myself, since my knowledge of Middle-Earth linguistics is a little rusty, but I did follow the entire conversation from start to finish without getting lost. And I did remember enough to know that Quenya wasn't a race: it was the language. The Noldor, or High-Elves, were the race who spoke Quenya. (*ahem* nerding finished now)

In short, we lost all semblance of order for several minutes as we all paused to gape at the utterly high nerd level in the room at that moment. What flabbergasted me was the fact that ALL of us in that room were part of this. I never thought I'd find such a high concentration of Tolkien nerds in one place (well, outside of those weird fanatical conventions, which, I might point out, I have never been to). Oh, the joys of being a literature and linguistic nerd, especially in a class with other literature and linguistic nerds.