środa, 15 kwietnia 2020

New English Alphabet by Tolkien
– my reconstruction


The first page of the document prepared for my Patrons

During the pandemic we have more time. I try to spend this time in a good way; and to be useful and helpful. I am writing my book on the Tolkien ancestry, but I also try to do something in the field of the Tolkienian linguistics. Because some of you support me via PayPal or Patronite, I will send my document in pdf, which is in fact free, to you. If you want to join the Tolknięty Team, click  PayPal.me or Patronite for Galadhorn

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The last page of my essay

J. R. R. Tolkien took the floor in at least two social projects in England of his time. His literary answer to the question of the universal calendar, especially to the so called World Calendar („The World Calendar is a proposed reform of the Gregorian calendar created by Elisabeth Achelis of Brooklyn, New York in 1930” – see Wikipedia, „World Calendar”), was the Reckoning of the Shire described in Appendix D to The Lord of the Rings. Another question of his time was the new, simpler spelling of the English language. Tolkien did not like the project of Bernard Shaw, the so called Shavian alphabet ("‘the ridiculous alphabet propounded by persons competing for the money of that absurd man Shaw’"). And this is why he invented his New English Alphabet. Carpenter wrote (Biography, p. 243): 
"Soon after Lewis’s death, he began to keep a diary, which was something he had not done for many years. In part it was an excuse for using another alphabet that he had invented; he called it his ‘New English Alphabet’, and noted that it was intended as an improvement on what he called ‘the ridiculous alphabet propounded by persons competing for the money of that absurd man Shaw’. It used some conventional letters (though giving them different sound-values), some international phonetic signs, and some symbols from his own Feanorian alphabet. He employed it in his diary when he wanted to write about private matters. Like all his diaries, this was more often a record of sorrows than of joys, and it does not provide an entirely balanced picture of his life at Sandfield Road. It does however indicate the appalling depths of gloom to which he could sink, albeit only for short periods. ‘Life is grey and grim,’ he wrote at one such moment. ‘I can get nothing done, between stateness and boredom (confined to quarters), and anxiety and distraction. What am I going to do? Be sucked down into residence in a hotel or old people’s home or club, without books or contacts or talk with men? God help me!’"(...)
You will find more, including a table with the letters of New English Alphabet, in my document in PDF, which will soon be sent to my Patrons and Supporters (it consists of three pages).

http://paypal.me/galadhorn
 

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