ext_6866: (I'm still picking.)
ext_6866 ([identity profile] sistermagpie.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] sistermagpie 2004-12-12 08:56 am (UTC)

I think it's pretty far-out to suggest that they "sound alike".

It may have been that she just happened to use a phrase that did so we all jumped on it. It's like certain German phrases that sound almost like English for whatever reason. I know nothing of Hindi at all so I couldn't begin to say what it had in common with anything, but S may have been trying to just say there were some structural similarities and I over-simplified what she was saying. I don't know if she speaks any other languages, so she might have been comparing it something else as well.

I know nothing about LotR, but the switching you described would have seemed very clever and realistic to me.

It did very much seem realistic to me at the time. I assume the scriptwriters went with their instinct about when to use it--and Viggo Mortenson loved speaking Elvish so they could be pretty free with it. Iirc, I think they used the Elvish either when a character was trying to show a connection to elves (like when faced with angry elf sentries Aragorn would speak to them in Elvish to seem more like a friend) or to express more intimate feelings. Like in the scene in question, Elrond outlines the tragic consequences of his daughter marrying a mortal in Englsh, but the switches to Elvish to basically say, "And I really love you and want you to be happy." The Elvish was more intimate and was probably connected to her childhood.

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