Well I fail miserably. I looked at the answer and still don't even know what it is.

Posted February 23, 2007 6:18 PM by Will Entrekin

Proving only that there's a kind of geek you're not.

I tried this one on Patrick (currently manning the Tor booth at the comics convention) and got back "Good grief. Try a hard one, why dontcha."

Posted February 23, 2007 6:21 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

No. But I'm guessing it's got something to do with Tlkn, nd lvsh. That's what it feels like.

Posted February 23, 2007 6:25 PM by Lizzy L

I'll have to go with "half yes." I'll explain later after the next day or so.

Posted February 23, 2007 6:27 PM by punkrockhockeymom

I went "here," and found that I was, well, close. I didn't know such a website existed. Those folks are way, way, way geekier than I am.

Posted February 23, 2007 6:28 PM by Lizzy L

My rusty memory is telling me that last line is something like 'nf r s nf rn' ... bt wldn't trst t wtht pllng th trlgy t f whchvr-th-hck bx t's lvng n.

Posted February 23, 2007 6:29 PM by P J Evans

I did fail to recognize, alas, but indeed the website showered me with the much and badly needed illumination.

Posted February 23, 2007 6:32 PM by Fiendish Writer

Way geekier, Lizzy; there are lots of sites like that. I regard them with admiration, but no impulse toward emulation.

Posted February 23, 2007 6:36 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Yes! I don't know the language it's translated into, but the original is obvious enough. Very useful in dark places, that one...

Posted February 23, 2007 6:38 PM by Nenya

Also, I second Teresa in the admiration-sans-emulation department.

Posted February 23, 2007 6:39 PM by Nenya

Oh wow! I've been disemvoweled!

(I can't remember more than that one bit, anyway.)

Posted February 23, 2007 6:41 PM by P J Evans

+1 smug for me. Plus another, I'm sure, for saying "Neo-...? I guess there'd have to be one, sure" upon following the link.

Posted February 23, 2007 6:44 PM by Andrew Plotkin

yes,oddly enough.

Posted February 23, 2007 6:45 PM by Nina Armstrong

Two people partially disemvowelled for what will probably be their first and last time.

Posted February 23, 2007 6:59 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

My college madrigal ensemble sang a lovely version of this text, to music written by one of our members; I think he regards it as juvenilia now, musically, but it engrained the feel and the rhythm of the words in my mind in a way that has apparently lasted. :-)

Posted February 23, 2007 6:59 PM by Rachel

No.

Well, sort of; I correctly intuited the author, but not the text.

Posted February 23, 2007 7:00 PM by JanetM

I believe that's the prayer to Elbereth from LotR. Yes?

Posted February 23, 2007 7:01 PM by harmonyfb

I recognize the meter & rhythm of the poem, plus a few of the words are half-familiar. Is it Proto-[Language]? ::wanders off to look at link::

Posted February 23, 2007 7:01 PM by Northland

To my extreme surprise, I guessed the original text correctly. (I did check, after I guessed, and I really didn't expect to be right.)

Posted February 23, 2007 7:04 PM by Rymenhild

Yes, I'm that kind of geek.

Posted February 23, 2007 7:04 PM by Clifton Royston

#1: You're not alone, will.

In my defense, I'm not running on all cylinders due to a head cold.

Posted February 23, 2007 7:06 PM by Stefan Jones

It reads like a translation of a poem in one fictional language into what would almost have to be another fictional language. And yes, the poem I'm thinking of would indeed be a help in dark places - !

Posted February 23, 2007 7:06 PM by gramina

Yes. Instantly. That's a bit surprising, really.

Posted February 23, 2007 7:06 PM by Comesleep

Yes. Doesn't everyone? Memorizied it as a kid. Forgot that I'd memorized it as a kid until reading this.

Posted February 23, 2007 7:11 PM by Tania

I couldn't tell exactly, but I guessed who wrote the original.

Posted February 23, 2007 7:11 PM by Niall McAuley

I couldn't tell exactly, but I guessed who wrote the original.

Posted February 23, 2007 7:13 PM by Niall McAuley

Somewhat to my own astonishment, I got it.

(I kept looking at it, and muttering to myself, "no, Doyle, it can't possibly be that; you're just being faked out by the meter." Lord knows, there wasn't any one specific thing I recognized, and while I'll cop to being a language geek, I've never been that particular variety of language geek.)

Posted February 23, 2007 7:22 PM by Debra Doyle

Alas, not my form of Geekery. Failed again.

Posted February 23, 2007 7:23 PM by Madeleine Robins

Y'all will be unsurprised to find that Chad & I are indeed geeks.

I personally couldn't tell you how I knew, I just did.

Posted February 23, 2007 7:24 PM by Kate Nepveu

I couldn't tell exactly, but I guessed who wrote the original.

The exclamation point at first line put you on the track?

Posted February 23, 2007 7:25 PM by yabonn

The vocabulary was suggestive, as it's obviously translated into that kind of a language, but it could have been some poem from the Centennial thread translated into you-know-what-ish.

Once that idea was in my head, it just felt like a piece by, well, you know, and my tired brain just couldn't come up with which particular piece.

Posted February 23, 2007 7:31 PM by Niall McAuley

Elbereth Gilthoniel. Don't know the language.

(Now to read the rest of the comments here ...)

Posted February 23, 2007 7:32 PM by Jon Meltzer

Like poster #1, I still didn't know what it was after I clicked the link. ^^;

Posted February 23, 2007 7:33 PM by lohengrin

palan-tīrala is a bit of a giveaway, surely? And the meter, and number of lines and whatall.

But I bow to those who are geekier than I, and have actually Gone That Far with the translation.

Posted February 23, 2007 7:34 PM by Vian

And, after reading comments 1-31, I guess I'm due for a disemvoweling ...

Posted February 23, 2007 7:36 PM by Jon Meltzer

I get a half point, I think, for the same reasons Lizzy and PJ do....and because I recognise the last word of line four. As for the source material....I'm not such a geek that I'm able to translate more than a little.

Posted February 23, 2007 7:37 PM by PixelFish

I was half right because I spotted a familiar eight-character (well, nine if you count the hyphen) sequence which turned out to indeed not be a coincidence (but also not be quite what I thought; I thought it was a translation into a real language I happen not to understand, in which that particular word had been left untouched).

I guess it says something for the powers of a person whom I shall not name that I could so easily confuse his work with a real language.

Posted February 23, 2007 7:37 PM by Chris

Does it still count if I know it largely because of the Lords of the Rhymes?

Posted February 23, 2007 7:39 PM by Skwid

I knew who wrote the original, and that it was translated from one flavor into another, but couldn't remember the dang verse!

Must be this +3 Hat of Forgettery or something.

Posted February 23, 2007 7:40 PM by elise

Yes.

Posted February 23, 2007 7:44 PM by MikeB

Instantly. Which rather frightens me.

Last year when we were helping my mom move out of the home she'd lived in for 45 years (and the home I grew up in),my husband was appalled to discover a small journal I kept,writing in Elvish of course. He was even more shocked by my cache of Paul Williams albums. Somehow we weathered the storm.

Posted February 23, 2007 7:44 PM by amysue

I got it. Sigh. My husband knew he was in trouble when we went to see a movie which shall remain nameless at this time; and I began, in his opinion, to speak in tongues.
V

Posted February 23, 2007 7:53 PM by vjstewart

I'm pretty sure I do. I can't identify the language, though.

Now I will go look at the answer and come back and say whether I was right.

Posted February 23, 2007 7:56 PM by Xopher

For me, too, it was instant. As others said, palan-tirala was an instant giveaway; I assumed it must be a borrow-word, and then I just had to look at the approximate meter and the repetition in the last line to be sure. I also guessed it must be translated into a conlang (I love that abbreviation!) though not the general class of language.

Skwid @ 38: Ah yes, that's the passage which means "lf bt gt sl! lf grls lk t rck'n'rll!" (Are we still disemvowelling after everyone's spilled the beans?)

punkrockhockeymom: Nice to see you posting here again!

Posted February 23, 2007 7:58 PM by Clifton Royston

I suspected the approximate locus of the original, but was not sure. Then again, I haven't read the source material since Jr. High, so hey.

Posted February 23, 2007 7:58 PM by Ulrika O'Brien

I was right. I know it by heart and to a tune in the original. And Teresa needs to disemvowel some more people.

Posted February 23, 2007 7:59 PM by Xopher

My two biggest clues were the rhythm of the translation, and who was doing the asking.

Posted February 23, 2007 7:59 PM by Ulrika O'Brien

Wow, I got it.

It's a thing of beauty in its way.

P.

Posted February 23, 2007 8:06 PM by Pamela Dean

The meter felt familiar, but it was that hyphenated term that made it click. I'm tempted to make a "through a glass, dimly" joke, but I'm too sick to manage it properly.

If I may ask, why disemvowelment rather than rot-13ing?

Posted February 23, 2007 8:07 PM by TexAnne

yes.

And if you give me a moment I can dig out the book that has the words in English.

Posted February 23, 2007 8:09 PM by linnen

Yes.

Also, wow.

Posted February 23, 2007 8:13 PM by Evelyn Browne

Yes, somewhat to my surprise, my first thoughts on seeing the thread being, "It's probably Anglo-Saxon" and "The first word looks like 'paradise'" which were of course both way, way off the mark.

I think I got it from the metre and the punctuation in the first line. I didn't spot the word at the end of line 4 until afterwards. Actually I wasn't quite right, because the closest thing I could remember was th smlr vrs nr th nd f th bk wth th lst thr lns n nglsh. t ls ddn't ccr t m tht t hd bn trnsltd nt nthr nvntd lngg, lthgh dd wndr wht ws th pnt f trnsltng t nt nthr rl-wrld n.

Posted February 23, 2007 8:22 PM by Eleanor

"Spanoioglossen" is rather a good word, I think. It ought to mean, "trying to mumble something that will appeal to Hispanic voters without making a commitment or even sense".

Posted February 23, 2007 8:22 PM by PhilPalmer

Nope, and like answer #1, the link didn't help.

Posted February 23, 2007 8:23 PM by Lis Riba

Nope, and like answer #1, the link didn't help.

Posted February 23, 2007 8:23 PM by Lis Riba

Yes, after skimming it once. But I'm such a geek that I'm attempting to translate "The New Colossus" into Q**ny*.

Posted February 23, 2007 8:28 PM by Jenny Islander

I was, like many, able to identify author and approximate language without actually nailing down WHAT it was.

Posted February 23, 2007 8:34 PM by Sandy B.

Nope. Definitely the wrong kind of geek. Purely on the basis of length, my first guess was William Carlos Williams's "this is just to say." Though, come to think of it, that would be a fine poem to translate into any of the relevant languages.

Posted February 23, 2007 8:39 PM by Sarah Avery

I thought, on reading it, "could it be ---------?" but wasn't sure enough for it to count as even a guess.

Then I checked the link, and wished that I had been more sure, because if it had been my guess it would have been correct.

Posted February 23, 2007 8:39 PM by Alan Bostick

Recognized it after a couple of readings.

Posted February 23, 2007 8:40 PM by cmk

No. I intuited where it came from, but that was more from context than anything else.

Not my brand of geekiness anymore, I guess. Twenty years ago, maybe.

Posted February 23, 2007 8:40 PM by Larry Brennan

I guessed the author, but couldn't come up with the original. Several of the words, as others have said, seemed familiar, and I was sure that if I could just come up with the last line, I could identify it exactly. (I was wrong.)

Posted February 23, 2007 8:41 PM by Steven desJardins

I didnt even recognize it in the original. But then, I'm not really into that stuff. Shoot me if you like.

Posted February 23, 2007 8:50 PM by Robert Legault

Well, it's obviously highly-inflected but I couldn't find an Indo-European root anywhere in there. That, and the seeming excess of liquids makes it likely to be a conlang belonging to a specific, rather famous author.

Could I nail down the exact language or remember the poem itself? Not a chance. But I'd put a bet on the species.

Posted February 23, 2007 8:51 PM by Dave F.

I had a gut feeling, assumed I was wrong, and found out I was right.

Posted February 23, 2007 8:56 PM by Melissa Mead

*grins* saying it did it for me. There's only one language family that sounds like that.

Posted February 23, 2007 8:57 PM by Sisuile

I got which verse it was wrong, but recognized the provinence.

Which scares me a little.

---L.

Posted February 23, 2007 9:00 PM by L.N. Hammer

I identified the author and work from that give-away phrase in the middle, but though I had a nagging sense of familiarity about the poem, I couldn't nail it down.

Posted February 23, 2007 9:11 PM by Joel Polowin

Teresa, I was tempted to put (bounce, bounce) in the post after the disemvowelling, because of the disemvowelling.

Also, I like that definition of 'Spanoioglossen'!

Posted February 23, 2007 9:14 PM by P J Evans

I didn't know, but was unsurprised when I clicked the link, just due to the fact that it's a geek test.

Posted February 23, 2007 9:17 PM by Jen Roth

Not my brand of geekiness anymore, I guess.

Not actually what I think of when I hear the word "geek"--which goes to show something, I expect.

Twenty years ago, maybe.

Mmm. Well, I've been assigning names to foals by a horse called "Gevybtl" the last few years, which may have served as a refresher course.

Posted February 23, 2007 9:22 PM by cmk

I got it, author and exact verse both.

Weirdly, this afternoon I was just thinking about the musical setting I wrote of the original text...

Posted February 23, 2007 9:41 PM by Lea

I am SO that geek. Well, not to the extent of trying to translate, but recognizing it straight off.

Come to think of it, it also counts as a sort of Hail Mary, doesn't it?

Posted February 23, 2007 9:45 PM by Connie H

OK, I'm geekier than I thought I was, but that one was easy. :)

Though it should have come as a warning that I'm a geek when I started translating Latin poetry into English. ;)

Posted February 23, 2007 9:47 PM by Gabriele Campbell

If I hadn't had to pack up and go home on the subway, I might have kept up with the disemvowelling. I'm not sure how much point there is in doing it now. Let me think about that for a bit.

For me, the most telling line is the last one -- an oddity I appear to share only with P J Evans -- though most of them recall the originals.

Connie (73), it's that or Salve Regina.

Posted February 23, 2007 9:58 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Half-yes. I deduced that it was fbzr fbeg bs Gbyxvra ynathntr, nyorvg na hasnzvyvne bar, but I don't know the original well enough to know the exact piece.

Posted February 23, 2007 10:00 PM by Patrick Connors

I think so...googling reveals that I am correct.

A couple of the words are dead giveaways. "palan-tirala" and the last line were what did it for me.

Posted February 23, 2007 10:01 PM by Carrie S.

Yes. Instantly.

Posted February 23, 2007 10:03 PM by Kelly McCullough

73, 75: You're sure it's not Ave maris stella?

Posted February 23, 2007 10:16 PM by TexAnne

Dear me. And I thought I knew that text. Has anyone seen my mind, lately? I appear to have lost it.

Posted February 23, 2007 10:23 PM by Dave Luckett

The size and shape of it gave me my first clue, but when I looked at the last line I knew instantly what it was...and that it was translated into a closely-related language.

Posted February 23, 2007 10:24 PM by Xopher

I had the author right, but even after looking at the link, didn't particularly recognize the piece. Then again, I haven't read the books in 30 years and the movies haven't made it to the top of the Netflix queue yet.

Posted February 23, 2007 10:27 PM by Marilee

I guessed the author (partly from that loan word and partly from the sheer feel of the thing), but not the piece, and did not recognise it even when I looked. But then I've only read the source a couple of times.

Posted February 23, 2007 10:33 PM by Julia Jones

I get... half-credit, maybe? I knew pretty quick that it was gung Gbyxvra irefr nobhg Ryorergu but then realized that I couldn't remember much of anything about the original, beyond its being 'gung Gbyxvra irefr nobhg Ryorergu.'

Posted February 23, 2007 11:24 PM by Andrew Willett

Yes. Just from the meter.

Posted February 23, 2007 11:26 PM by Elaine

Yes - although I went to look, just to be sure.

Posted February 23, 2007 11:30 PM by xeger

Without reading any of the previous comments---yes, I think I can. A few words, and something in the pattern, especially the last line---I heard it in my head in the original language when I read it up there.

The funny thing is, I can't tell what language that it has been translated into. Now to go find out whether I'm right or not.

Posted February 23, 2007 11:38 PM by Zeynep

Not remotely, some reason I read the accents as gutterals, which sent me in a Klingon direction. I suspect that's a tin ear for language overall, though--I never understand examples of bad writing, either.

Posted February 23, 2007 11:49 PM by TChem

Nope. It looked like alternate-universe Esperanto to me.

Posted February 23, 2007 11:58 PM by FungiFromYuggoth

I didn't get what poem it was - though I should have - but I'm fairly impressed with myself all the same; my immediate response was 'it's not [language of original], but it looks like it could be a related language...'

Posted February 24, 2007 12:09 AM by Penelope

"Proving only that there's a kind of geek you're not."

Heh. I heart you, Teresa. That must leave so many different kinds of geek I can be.

Posted February 24, 2007 12:18 AM by Will Entrekin

Yes. How on earth did we do that?

MKK

Posted February 24, 2007 12:30 AM by Mary Kay

Nope, didn't recognize it, couldn't place it.

I tried to read it, but my brain kept imposing a Gilbert and Sullivan tempo...

Posted February 24, 2007 12:44 AM by Bill Blum

Well, since it appeared here, I was able to guess the author. But it's been too many decades for me to actually get it.

I find it interesting that here - in this company - I don't even budge the needle on the Geek-O-Meter.

Posted February 24, 2007 1:00 AM by Bob Oldendorf

I got the author instantly, with a relatively high level of confidence - I think I saw 'palan-tīrala' on scanning it and then the first line reinforced that for me. It wasn't one of the ones I'd memorized, but there's something unmistakable about it nevertheless.

I haven't looked at the linked page yet but the URL confirmed it for me.

Posted February 24, 2007 1:46 AM by Sam Kelly

Sadly, no, although there is a Tolkienish tone to it...

Posted February 24, 2007 2:13 AM by Wakboth

Hm. Looked it up and discovered that my first idea (which I didn't believe for a second) was right.

Posted February 24, 2007 2:25 AM by inge

Got it, but could not remember the actual text of the original. Just knew what it was.

(Mind you, finding it on ML is a hint in itself.)

Posted February 24, 2007 3:00 AM by abi

Missed it utterly. I was thinking part of the Lord's Prayer. Once I clicked the link, however, I instantly understood what was going on.

Posted February 24, 2007 3:10 AM by David Goldfarb

Yes - but I wasn't absolutely certain until I double-checked.

Posted February 24, 2007 3:19 AM by Cynthia Wood

Oh dear, I seem to be a geek....

Posted February 24, 2007 4:21 AM by Dave Langford

See, clearly I had an insufficiently geek upbringing, because I was never exposed to T. while young enough to really get into it. I've tried several times to read more than just Th Hbbt, but I just can't. I always stop in about the same spot, right around the formation of the Fllwshp, when all the characters sit around and discuss the plot for several pages. Maybe there's something about epic literature I just don't get.

Without that, trying to read the Smrlln is just pointless - I just don't care about the world. By all rights I should care: I like Germanic languages, or think I do; I read fantasy regularly for enjoyment; I have no objection to obsessive geekery about a constructed world. However, I just can't bring myself to care about this particular constructed world. This even extends to the movies - I watched them once, but have no desire to see them again.

All of which is to say that following the link was not enlightening for me either, and I had to go back to googling the original for a while to find out what was going on.

Posted February 24, 2007 5:16 AM by Daniel Martin

I didn't get it at all. Then I went to the link, and still didn't get it, until the author of the original was referenced more or less explicitly near the end.

A pity. I'd been psyching myself up to go read the trilogy again (for the first time in thirty years), as preparation for watching the movies ... but being reminded of the poetry and the linguistic stuff put me right off it again.

I am not that kind of geek.

Posted February 24, 2007 5:32 AM by Charlie Stross

Half-yes. since I am not 100% sure of which original bit of the Professor's verse is being translated (and possibly re-translated).

Posted February 24, 2007 5:36 AM by Dave Bell

Recognised the source straight off, did a double take and realised that no, I'm not obsessing, yes, it really is that.

Still don't know what's been done to it, alas, as the link to the answer appears to be broken...

Posted February 24, 2007 6:05 AM by Jean

Yes.

(I have more to say on how and how much, but I observe the injunction to stick to a simple yes for now.)

Posted February 24, 2007 6:46 AM by Paul A.

I must be another kind of geek too (and I don't mean the kind that specialized in biting the heads off chickens at carnies) because when I read "Baradis, Eltāringua!", I immediately thought of "Klaatu barada nikto!", which I think translates as "Klaatu's in jail again!".

Posted February 24, 2007 6:57 AM by Serge

Yes. It was the last line that made me realize.

Posted February 24, 2007 7:21 AM by Naomi Parkhurst

abi said:
Got it, but could not remember the actual text of the original. Just knew what it was.

For me it was the first line -- but then that's the only part of the original I sort of remember.

A few other words were pretty suggestive, though "Spanoioglossen" threw me off; sounds like some kind of mock-German. (After I went to the site, I kicked myself for missing "palan-tīrala", which would have made me more confident in my guess.)

(Mind you, finding it on ML is a hint in itself.)

Oh, yes -- that plus "Geek test" narrowed the possible field a lot. (Without the "Geek test," I would have worried about all sorts of English poetry being plausible sources...)

Posted February 24, 2007 7:46 AM by Peter Erwin

Yes. Which is an OMG moment. The meter* just bump-de-bumped it into place.

*Aided by my allergy meds, no doubt.

Posted February 24, 2007 8:59 AM by Aconite

Just out of curiosity—am I the only one who was helped by knowledge of regular sound change? That is...when I see a familiar pattern, my brain automatically shuffles through closely related consonants and vowels to try to figure out where I know it from?

Posted February 24, 2007 9:07 AM by Xopher

Xopher--I do that with music all the time, but here only the meter portion of my brain lit up.

Posted February 24, 2007 9:11 AM by TexAnne

Dear G*d(s), these people have way too much time on their hands.

(Recognized source text immediately, couldn't place target language... followed link... brain explodey. Note to self, go back and read historical linguistics textbook, then try again.)

(After breakfast.)

Posted February 24, 2007 9:35 AM by Thena

Charlie, you may be pleased to know that all the poetry and linguistic stuff got left out of the movies along with most of the characters, which are replaced by cardboard cutouts of younger, cuter versions of themselves.

Posted February 24, 2007 9:39 AM by Niall McAuley

Niall 114: Along with the climax of the story.

Posted February 24, 2007 9:49 AM by Xopher

Clifton #44: Thanks! That's very kind of you to say. It's been a complicated sort of a year, and that's turned me into a lurker. I'm always about, though. (Now that I've typed that it sounds kind of creepy, I think).

Regarding my half-yes: I recognized the who and the what but couldn't remember the original text. What tipped me off was, to be terrifically imprecise, the flow.

Posted February 24, 2007 9:50 AM by punkrockhockeymom

That was uncommonly easy--I got it right away. Though I suppose I had a leg up from my former roommate, who used to recite that to herself when writing difficult papers.

Posted February 24, 2007 10:35 AM by Torie

We still remember.

Sasha says he might not have got it if he'd seen it written down rather than hearing me reading it aloud in my reading that aloud voice. I didn't know I had a special reading that aloud voice!

Posted February 24, 2007 10:58 AM by Jo Walton

Xopher (111), no, you're not: penda mīrala/penna míriel, chaiana palan/chaered palan, gallarembinai/galadhremmin, et cetera. It's a bit like reading disemvowelled text, only different of course.

I never studied consonant changes. Is there a rule whereby Spanoioglossen linduban is a reasonable transformation of Fanuilos, le linnathon? My hindbrain thinks it's logical, but I can't say why.

Posted February 24, 2007 11:10 AM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

I recognized a word, which let me know what kind of geek you'd have to be to get the whole thing.

I'm several other kinds of geek, so I don't feel *too* bad.

Posted February 24, 2007 11:10 AM by Mary Dell

Mary, considering the distinguished performances you've turned in of late, I don't think you should to feel bad at all.

Some of us read those books before the flood of imitations taught fantasy readers that invented words are arbitrary strings of phonemes -- which was appropriate, because in Tlkn's case they weren't arbitrary.

Posted February 24, 2007 11:42 AM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

I skipped to the bottom here without looking, I swear.

Yep. Mostly by rythmic structure and a couple of the words.

And yes, this will figure in a discussion of fundamental images and development at some point. Just another kind of geekiness.

Posted February 24, 2007 11:51 AM by Claude Muncey

Teresa 119: That particular one is tough. Remember, though, that we're not talking about one language descended from another (like French from Latin) but two languages descended from a common source (like French and Spanish, or more distantly, English and Sanskrit). That gives us more flexibility in postulating a common source.

Remember also that they could have drifted apart grammatically too. English and German use commas very differently, and adjectives function differently. While 'grün' means "green," 'Grün' can only be translated as "green one" (German capitalizes all nouns). So one word in one language...you don't need to be told this. I momentarily forgot who I was talking to; please forgive me!

For the phrase you cite, try saying each of them aloud with only the vowels. They're almost identical.

But for me, the cue was the last line—remember, my task was "identify this short poem," not "do a historical sound change analysis with this poem and its original as corpus." (Thank gods for that; it's not nearly enough data.) The last line of the subject text is 'Nib gaiar, sī nib gaiaran'. Compare 'nef aear, sí nef aearon'.

Let's call the problem text (and its language) P, and the original text and language S. (Yes, I intend the pun.) I would phonemically spell the last line of P /nib gayar si: nib gayaran/ and the corresponding S line /nev ayar si: nev ayaron/ (remember that the creator of S specified it was much like Latin, my reason for phonemicizing 'ae' as /ay/; and that he states that in S 'f' is pronounced /v/ in final position). The /si:/ with the long e sound is identical, as is the structure and pattern all around it.

The remaining differences are:

1. The final vowel, which is different but close.
2. The first vowel, again different but close (this time so close that many of the people I grew up around don't distinguish them at all, leading to phrases like 'ink pen', which strike me as redundant).
3. The final consonant of the first and fourth word, which is /b/ in P and /v/ in S. Those two consonants are both voiced labials, one a stop and the other a fricative. Fricatives and stops change back and forth all the time in language evolution.
4. The presence of the /g/ in the second and fifth words in P, which is absent in both places in S. This is the hard one, though not as hard as if it were in one place but not the other! I could make a case for a /g/ appearing historically, but I'd rather postulate that in the common ancestor of P and S the /g/ was there, and it was preserved in P but lost in S.

Posted February 24, 2007 11:57 AM by Xopher

Before I consciously noticed the hyphenated phrase (which as others have noted was a dead giveaway), I started to get the same earworm that's stuck in my head with the original: the lonely goatherd's yodelling song from "The Sound of Music". The "Yodelayee yodelayee yodelay (hee-hoo)" chorus interleaves between the lines.

Posted February 24, 2007 11:58 AM by Julie L.

Thank you so much, Julie. Now excuse me while I go pour bleach into my ear.

But oh, before I go, let me return the favor: try putting "doo-dah, doo-dah!" between the lines.

Posted February 24, 2007 12:06 PM by Xopher

Got it as soon as I saw the second line. Not from the words, the meter. When I actually read the words, I had a another think - but the overall shape and size convinced me. I wonder if all famous poetry is like that. If I read Ozymandias in Finnish, would it be instantly recognizable?

Posted February 24, 2007 12:27 PM by Lyle

"palan-tīrala" allowed me to guess the author, though not the exact passage.
"Eltāringua" and "Spanoioglossen" led me to guess (wildly) Interlingua for the translated language...

Posted February 24, 2007 12:46 PM by Alexis Duncan

Jo @ 118 - I think we all have special reading-that-aloud voices. I've also got a speaking-German voice, which is somewhat deeper than my conversational English voice.

Posted February 24, 2007 12:53 PM by Larry Brennan

Xopher, at 123:

I didn't know there was anyone else whose head worked like that.

Posted February 24, 2007 1:01 PM by comelovesleep

I recognized what language it was, and which dialect of it that it must be, but I wasn't sure about the source text. Amusingly, I was thinking that it might be a familiar bible verse translated, while instead it's the native equivalent.

Posted February 24, 2007 1:28 PM by tavella

Oh yes, I'd recognized that verse anywhere. I am that kind of geek, dabbling in languages and a member of a Tlkn Society.

Posted February 24, 2007 1:40 PM by Johan Anglemark

The last line was the metrical giveaway for me. I know the original by heart. That, and knowing these kinds of translations exist.

I am not the kind of geek who creates things like this. But I know the world-class experts in this particular line, intimately. You should see the translations they've made into these languages of popular song lyrics.

Some of the negative reactions to T posted above intrigued me. Like C.Stross, so put off by the poetry and the language that it interferes with his reading of the book. I'm sorry that he finds he can't just ignore or overlook the aspects he dislikes. On my first reading I found them uninteresting or bewildering: I just skimmed. But not everybody can do that.

And D.Martin saying he gets stuck in the place where, he says, the characters sit around discussing the plot for several pages. I've described that scene that way myself, but I was kidding. What always strikes me about that scene is how very differently it reads from any such scene in any other fantasy novel. And that, I've decided, is because they're not actually discussing the plot: they're discussing morality and ethics. But perhaps that is not how it reads to this particular person.

Each to their own. I'm intrigued by these differences in taste, but differences in taste is all they are and not a matter for disputation.

Posted February 24, 2007 1:49 PM by DBratman

comelovesleep 129: All the experts in this particular line have brains that function exactly like that. I can only do it myself if I really work at it, but for it to come naturally is not that uncommon.

Posted February 24, 2007 1:54 PM by DBratman

tavella said (#130):
I recognized what language it was, and which dialect of it that it must be, but I wasn't sure about the source text. Amusingly, I was thinking that it might be a familiar bible verse translated, while instead it's the native equivalent.

But... "Neo-Telerin"? I thought Tlkn only produced a handful of supposed Telerin words here and there in his unpublished papers. So where does Neo-Telerin come from? (I tried looking for relevant links on that site's wiki, but almost everything "Telerin" is a stub.)

Posted February 24, 2007 2:11 PM by Peter Erwin

Daniel Martin said (#102):
... Without that, trying to read the Smrlln is just pointless - I just don't care about the world. By all rights I should care: I like Germanic languages, or think I do; ...

Not that this will help you at all, but T. was apparently more inspired by Finnish than by any Germanic languages in his main language creation. (The main Anglo-Saxon references come in the second book of the trilogy, in Rohan.)

There's a wonderful description by T. himself here:

He had been studying for exams in the Exeter College library at Oxford when he first encountered Finnish. Years later, he compared the experience to tasting a fine wine: "It was like discovering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me; and I gave up the attempt to invent an unrecorded Germanic language, and my own language -- or series of invented languages -- became heavily Finnicized in phonetic pattern and structure." This was to become Quenya, his principal Elvish language, but elves had not yet entered the picture.

Posted February 24, 2007 2:22 PM by Peter Erwin

I knew what the target language was instantly. The source text eluded me until I recognized the pattern of the last line.

By the way, every example of this language that I paste into the Language Identification tool at http://complingone.georgetown.edu/~langid/ comes back as Lithuanian. I keep hoping it will say Finnish.

Posted February 24, 2007 2:28 PM by Allan Beatty

I identified the language, but not the content. Is that worth half-points, at least?

Posted February 24, 2007 2:54 PM by Annalee Flower Horne

comelovesleep 129: It's not a common disorder, but there are a few of us around. You just have to poke us and ask us how we knew something.

DBratman 133: All the experts in this particular line...

Thanks, but I think you flatter me somewhat. I'm a language geek, but I wouldn't call myself an expert.

Posted February 24, 2007 2:56 PM by Xopher

Yes, although if it hadn't said "Geek Test" at the top I probably wouldn't have.

Posted February 24, 2007 3:02 PM by Naomi Libicki

As long as we're discussing influences, it's long seemed to me that Tolkein's design of the Elvish Tengwar script was heavily influenced by the cursive form of the Georgian Nuskha-khucuri and Mkhedruli alphabets. A picture of an old dictionary is here.

This is just my own pet theory, ever since I saw some Georgian script in my late teens. I have no idea if linguists or Tolkein enthusiasts have considered and endorsed or rejected it.

Posted February 24, 2007 3:14 PM by Clifton Royston

Quenya was heavily influenced by Finnish, but most of the (relatively) familiar excerpts are in Sindarin, which iirc was modelled more on Welsh. Offhand, the only exception I can think of is Gldrl's song (which for some reason my brain cell keeps wanting to call an aubade) as the party leaves Lrn.

Posted February 24, 2007 3:19 PM by Julie L.

That one was easy. I can even quote the original from memory. (NERD!)

Posted February 24, 2007 3:20 PM by Lisa B

Oh, rats. All my Q's should be S's in my long post. Drat. It spoils the pun too.

Julie L...that's two. (Kidding.)

Posted February 24, 2007 3:29 PM by Xopher

I think I should get only a quarter point. I know the last line, but the rest is still avoiding my brain. I'm not going to go dig out the book from whichever-the-heck box it's currently in. Clicking the link feels like cheating.

Posted February 24, 2007 3:59 PM by P J Evans

Daniel @102:

Aged, ahem, 14 I suppose, I found the Silmarillion a real slog after I prised it from the hands of the sibling who prised it from the hands of the sibling who prised it from the hands of the sibling who bought it in hardback on sight, back in about 1978.

More recently I found it a very easy read: it's short and to the point, with thousands of years of plot compressed into a single volume as opposed to a couple of years of LotR plot stretched over three volumes.

If you try it and find some section tedious, you can just skip to another chunk a thousand years later as it's a compilation of discrete stories, not a continuous narrative.

Posted February 24, 2007 4:08 PM by Niall McAuley

Yes.

Posted February 24, 2007 4:58 PM by Lila

I should mention that I can type the original from memory without looking, though I may not get all the typography correct.

Posted February 24, 2007 4:59 PM by Lila

Xopher @ 143: Julie L...that's two. (Kidding.)

Dangit, now I'm going to be wondering how to score the trifecta. (Though if the "Hello Kali" linkage from a while back still counts...)

Recently I tried re-reading LOTR for the first time after seeing the movies, and it's a very strange experience. In many cases, the actors' voices are now firmly fixed in my brain, and yet the songs are still soundtracked to the melodies that spontaneously flowed around them when I was an urchin. (This is why the "Doo-dah" trick doesn't work on me, despite the goatherd song-- the latter is closer to the rather bouncy tune that defaults to those lyrics for me, perhaps influenced by the music from Rankin-Bass's prequel and entirely different from the canon melody that was presented to Donald Swann.)

Posted February 24, 2007 5:18 PM by Julie L.

Instantly. Though I did just reread the original's source last month.

Posted February 24, 2007 5:35 PM by Andy Hickmott

Clifton @ 44:
That's the one. On further reflection, I think I've decided it may actually be worth bonus points...of a sort...

Posted February 24, 2007 6:17 PM by Skwid

Well, I thought I had it, checked the link, decided it was a different passage, read the comments here, and am no longer sure whether it's the same bit or not. The one I'm thinking of, I only remember the first two lines, which started with a one-letter exclamation (or something), and the end of the English version of the C.T. translation given later on the same page.

As an aside, I asked my boyfriend in high school to write in my yearbook in Quechua, spelled in Qny. He did so, and I still don't know what he wrote. Dan's been dead for 30 years, so I can't ask him, and who else do I know with a penchant for both Peru and Tlkn?

Posted February 24, 2007 7:15 PM by Karen Funk Blocher

Karen @ 151: Your original guess is the one. The "Stella Maris" and similar references are humorous attempts to match it up to a correspondence in Xtian cosmology. I was confused by the first line myself; that turns out to be because the semi-divinity in question has a completely different name in the other Elvish language group.

Niall @ 145: I had much the same reaction to the Silmarillion. I never made it all the way through it as a teenager; I read it a few years back when the movies started to come out and was startled at what easy going it was.

Julie @ 148: You had your own melodies too? I had my own for this, and for 'The Road Goes Ever On' - I think they got somewhat modified when I heard the Swann melodies but are still distinct. I really wished, as a kid, that I was musical enough to write them down or play them.

Teresa: I hope it's OK to stop disembowelling words in the general subject area now? Enough has gone by up-thread that it seems pointless.

Posted February 24, 2007 7:44 PM by Clifton Royston

Ah well. The book that I have does not have the poem you mentioned. Here is the chant that I was mis-remembering;

A Elbereth Gilthoniel,
silivren penna miriel
o menel aglar elenath!
Na-chaered palan-di'riel
o galadhremmin ennorath
Fanuilos, le linnathon
nef aear, si' nef aeron!
(Where "i'" is to be an i with a grave accent over it.)

At the risk of dis-emvowelment, the source is
'The Road goes Ever On, a song cycle', music by Donald Swan, Poems by you-know-who, published 1967, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston,first printing.

Posted February 24, 2007 8:23 PM by linnen

Ooh--I got it! And then decided that was way too obvious to be the answer, so I checked the link. But I was right!

But I, like others here, wrote for myself (and notes to friends) in Tngwr.

Julie @ 148 and Clifton @ 152--I'm so glad to know I was in good company! My brain put Galadriel's song ("I dreamt of leaves..." and not the farewell song) and the song for Boromir's funeral to tunes. It may be admitting to too much, but I still sometimes find myself singing them to myself.

Posted February 24, 2007 8:25 PM by alsafi

The "I dreamt of leaves" song always sounds like "Greensleeves" in my head, which theoretically makes it interchangeable with every other tune in ballad meter ("The Yellow Rose of Texas", "Amazing Grace", etc.). Similarly, Bilbo's travelling song sounds like the theme from "MASH". I think the rest of my internal soundtrack has original melodies, though.

Posted February 24, 2007 9:15 PM by Julie L.

Teresa (119), in response to "Spanoioglossen linduban" ?= "Fanuilos, le linnathon", the answer is mostly "yes", but there are obviously grammatical alterations that can account for the rest of the differences.

Not knowing much about the languages in question, though, I can only work for guesses. It's clear that the words in the second language have undergone some phonetic simplification. Where the first has "sp", the second has "f". Where the first has "gl", the second has "l". Where the first has "nd", the second has "nn".

Take /sp/ ?~ /f/. /s/ has a tendency to disappear over time. /s/ often changes to /h/ (Latin "super" vs. Greek "hyper") and then disappears altogether (as "h" did in the Romance Languages). /s/ was also intermittently lost before consonants in many Indo-European languages (ex: English "steer" vs. Latin "taurus"). Finally, /p/ to /f/ is a common "lenition" (consonant-softening) pattern. Put together, you have the reasonable progression of /(s)p/ -> /p/ -> /f/ or /sp/ -> /sf/ -> /f/.

/g/ often alternates with /y/ (as in Old English). So we have something like /oiogl/ -> /oioyl/ -> /oil/ -> /uil/ (vowels approximate). The change /oioy/ to /oi/ is called "hapology" and is common in English (ex: "Anglaland" -> "England").

/nd/ or /nt/ to /nn/ or /n/ is another common change called "assimilation", where neighboring sounds come to sound more like each other. You hear this when people pronounce "winter" like "winner" in fast speech.

Another interpretation of this is that the proto-root is actually *linnod- or *linnodh (/d/ tends to alternate with /th/ or /dh/, as in Spanish). It's then easy for one branch to undergo lenition to "linnath" while the other undergoes "metathesis" (place-switching) to become "linndo". This is the same process that gave us "three" and "thirty".

A grammatical difference would explain the loss or addition of the "(s)en" on the end of "Spanoioglossen". Endings tend to simplify over time, but new ones are also innovated, so it's hard to tell which (if either) form more closely reflects the proto-language.

Finally, we have the "le" and the extraneous "b" in "lindubon". I'm going to chalk this up to a grammatical difference between the languages. If "lindubon" is a noun, "le" could be an article (a later innovation in many language families). "-bon" could then be an ending in the other daughter language expressing definiteness or indefiniteness rather than using an article. Or, if this is a verb in some marked tense, "le" could be a helper while "-bon" is the equivalent conjugation in the other language. Generally, with suffix-inflected languages, you don't care so much how the word ends as how it begins.

Okay - I've run on way too long here, but you get the idea.

Posted February 24, 2007 9:34 PM by Dave F.

Yes, that was it. (Sighs contentedly.) It does mean, however, that the Common translation was a rather free one.

I never made any serious attempt to learn the languages or the alphabets (except the G rune, which was a bit of a plot point), but that didn't stop me from working on my own fictional language a year after reading these books.

Posted February 24, 2007 9:38 PM by Karen Funk Blocher

Quoth Peter Erwin, back up in 135 -- The main Anglo-Saxon references come in the second book of the trilogy, in Rohan.

Well, except for Cynewulf's "Crist", arguably the seed of it all:

Éala, Éarendel, engla beorhtast,
ofer middangeard monnum sended,
And soðfæsta sunnan léoma,
Torht ofer tunglas - þu tída gehwane
of sylfum þé symle inlihtes.

Posted February 24, 2007 9:41 PM by Graydon

I don't know the exact meaning, but I recognized the language, and its origin, at once.

Now I'm going to go play chess online, drink ginger ale, and celebrate my immutable geekiness.

-JM

Posted February 24, 2007 10:12 PM by JonathanMoeller

linnen 153: you can get the i with the grave accent by typing ì (ì), but I think you actually want í (í).

Posted February 24, 2007 10:49 PM by Xopher

Yes. the palan-tirala in the fourth line brought it all back to me in a rush.
Even before Swann sang this sort of thing, I had gobs of it memorized.

I suppose I should move on to the Finnish Kalevala some decade because it's almost as lyrical poetry as the good professor's invention.

Posted February 25, 2007 1:32 AM by RuTemple

Xopher 160: HTML coding goodness.

Danke.

Posted February 25, 2007 10:36 AM by linnen

I'm not that kind of geek either (never memorized *any* of his poems), but along with Peter Irwin (#135) and others I did think it looks like Finnish. (Long ago, when