![]() that would be /g/ > /k/ – only the voiced aspirate and the voiceless stop become fricatives under grimm’s law! Grimm’s law also can’t explain the relation between english and german, since both languages underwent grimm’s law. ‘kobold’ and ‘goblin’ may or may not be related, we don’t know ![]() – ‘hob’ and ‘kobold’ have nothing to do with each other. So when Theoden calls hobbits ‘holbytla’, Tolkien is portraying him as using tolkien’s word in tolkien’s language, ‘kud-dukan’, but as being translated by tolkien using tolkien’s word in old english, ‘holbytla’, which in turn is a fictional etymology for Tolkien’s word in modern english, ‘hobbit’, which tolkien would have us believe is a word made up by tolkien, but only to translate the he-tells-us non-made-up (but in reality actually made-up) word ‘kuduk’. – hobbits of course don’t call themselves hobbits – they call themselves kuduks, which has the same relation to the other made-up word kud-dukan as hobbit has to holbytla. – ‘holbytla’ is a word Tolkien made up as a fake etymology of ‘hobbit’ (and which appears in LOTR). – there’s no evidence, so far as I’ve heard, that he’d heard about the denham list… but as a philologist and fairy tale enthusiast, he would presumably have known at once that a ‘hobbit’ was a small hob, which is to say a sprite or elf or pixie of some kind His next thought was to try to work out what a ‘hobbit’ would be like ![]() – Tolkien did indeed by writing that line. In similar fashion, perhaps we can say that Tolkien both invented the word and didn’t invent it: that is, he independently came up with the word, unaware that it already existed in a similar sense (though certainly before him there appears to be no description of what ‘hobbits’ are supposed to look like). A similar thing probably occurred with Lewis Carroll and ‘slithy’: the word had been in use since the 1620s, as a variant of ‘sleathy’ (lazy and slovenly) but Carroll seems to have independently coined the word (as a portmanteau of ‘lithe’ and ‘slimy’) for his 1871 poem ‘Jabberwocky’. However, perhaps he did independently invent the word, and had no knowledge of the Denham Tracts or an earlier source which Denham was drawing on. (He was steeped in folklore, being a professor of medieval literature and philology – language study – at Oxford.) So, Beau Is Afraid may transcend storytelling boundaries to allow a comparison to be made to one of the greatest filmmaking feats of all time.It is possible that Tolkien came across the word in this list of ‘sprites’ and other creatures, and in that moment of clarity when he scribbled down his opening line on a sheet of paper, he was dredging up the word from his memory. But while the works may not be as similar and objective, they explore universal themes and draw on cultural and mythological elements to create their respective worlds. Ultimately, Beau Is Afraid, Jewish myths and The Lord of the Rings exist in vastly different cultural contexts and use different stylistic approaches. Therefore, Beau Is Afraid's storyline is full of curiosity, as audiences want to understand how Aster will put together these elements. However, the mere presence of supernatural beings and epic battles isn't enough to merge fundamentally different stories. It would definitely be interesting to watch Beau, who Aster calls a "loser," dealing with Jewish apocalyptic visions of the end of the world, just like in The Lord of the Rings. It's worth noting that Jewish lore, although centered in monotheism, also features a number of mythical creatures, including monsters, demons and witches.
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