I'm curious

[serai]

Why do so many hobbit fic writers insist on using the Scottish word bairn, when Tolkien himself said that hobbit babies and children are called fauntlings or faunts? I can see digging up a word if he had never addressed the issue. (Though I'd try to find an English word, or at least one derived from the same sources, rather than something Scots. From what I understand, Tolkien didn't like Scots or Gaelic, just like he didn't like French, and took great care not even to use words that English had appropriated from them.) But in this case, he actually had a word, told us what it was, and people still don't use it.

Can someone explain this? Because it makes no sense to me at all.

Comments

[elanorgardner.livejournal.com]

Actually, faunt and fauntling never appear in LotR itself, while bairn does, as elycia points out, show up in both Fellowship of the Ring and the Appendices in reference to Elanor the Fair and the "Fairbairns of the Towers", so, if Tolkien did dislike Scots, he sorta slipped up there. I know faunt is in Letter #214. I don't know if fauntling shows up elsewhere in the Letters. I have seen them used and discussed and it sounded like they were in the same Letter used in the whole age discussion around hobbits. I use both, although I started out using bairn when hobbits referred to human or other babes besides hobbit, then I just used them somewhat interchangeably, mostly because, as in English, I thought hobbits likely to use words somewhat sloppily -- as we can use baby, babe, toddler, child to mean a human of the same age. Same thing with mathom. I believe Tolkien even talks about this in the Letters. The fact that those of lower class often gave gifts that belonged to them or they created or grew and that they referred to them differently than a formal "present". Again, I felt, and I even discussed this with someone at the time, that the language, like English, would be fluid and not rigid. Hobbits would misuse and find new uses for words, just as we do, and mathom could be used to refer to a present that someone might be trying to indicate is "less worthy" than a new gift. Trust me, etymology is SUCH a touchy subject I am reluctant to get into discussions about it because people get so very passionate about issues. I guess that is a good thing for the language, eh? I remember getting into a long discussion with a professor about "because" versus "due to" and about usage and when usage drives etymology to change. Eck!! He really got bent about it. But obviously I am a liberal in many things, not just politics, and I play far too fast and loose with the "rules". And I am sure I do come off as either lazy or unintelligent at times, but I love playing with the language and sometimes that means dancing on the edge (and sometimes it means falling right off!!! LOL)

[serai1.livejournal.com]

Well, no, you don't come off lazy or unintelligent, since you don't go around butchering grammar and using netspeak when you post. Those are the people I was talking about. (If you look at my comment again, you'll see what I mean.)

And the whole subject of language changing over time - well, sure it does. But the scope of the stories we're talking about usually span over the same 50-year period, more or less. Seeing that hobbits are members of a rural culture that moves at a MUCH slower pace than ours, there's precious little change the language is going to go through in that amount of time. And hobbits are especially not given to change, and suspicious of anything they haven't already known about for a couple of centuries, so I don't see changes occurring in their language that quickly.

The use of the word "bairn" in ROTK struck me as a slipup as well, since it goes against the thrust of Tolkien's writing. That's why I don't use it, and find it irksome when I see it. Guess I thought other writers would see it the same way, especially those that have read tons of Tolkien. If you've only read the novel, then I could see it. (Though why go out of one's way to use a Scots word when there's a perfectly good English word - baby - and no reason not to use it, I don't know.) But if you've read the Letters, where Tolkien actually specified it?