(see the comparative passages given on p. 8), but here the qualifying statement, warning against misunderstanding, is not present.
I cannot explain why my father should have made this cross-reference to the Foreword: Concerning Hobbits, in order to point out that it is misleading, nor why he should have retained it -
without this caveat - in his revision of P 2. What makes it still odder is that, whereas in the first versions of Appendix F (in which the 'theory and practice' of the translation of the true languages was greatly elaborated) the remark is absent, it reappears in the third version (F 3, p. 73), and here in a form almost identical to that in F': it is given as a citation, 'It has been said that "the Hobbits spoke a language, or languages, very similar to ours"', and this is followed by the same qualification: 'But this must not be misunderstood. Their language was like ours in manner and tone ...' As a final curiosity, by the time the third version of Appendix F was written the remark had been removed from the Prologue (see the citation from the text P 5 on p. 8), and replaced by 'They spoke the languages of Men, and they liked and disliked much the same things as we once did', though still, as in the published Prologue, in the context of this being a sign of the dose original relationship of Hobbits and Men.
12. Many years after the writing of F' my father noted on the typescript: 'Fragment of an original Foreword afterwards divided into Foreword and Prologue'. This was misleading, because F' played no part in the Prologue, but did contribute to the Foreword of the First Edition and to Appendix F.
*
The history of Appendix F, whose final title was The Languages and Peoples of the Third Age (while the discussion of alphabets and scripts, originally joined to that of the languages, became Appendix E, Writing and Spelling), undoubtedly began with the abortive but not unproductive text F>, but the first version of that Appendix is best taken to be constituted by two closely related manuscripts, since these were written as elaborate essays to stand independently of any 'Foreword'.
Long afterwards my father wrote (p. 299) that 'the actual Common Speech was sketched in structure and phonetic elements, and a number of words invented'; and in this work he is seen developing the true forms in the Westron tongue to underlie the translated (or substituted) names, especially of Hobbits. A great deal of this material was subsequently lost from the Appendix. This original version is also of great interest in documenting his conception of the languages of Middle-earth and their interrelations at the time when the narrative of The Lord of the Rings had recently been completed; and also in showing how substantially that conception was still to be developed before the publication of The Lord of the Rings in 1954-5.
To date this version precisely seems scarcely possible, but at least it can certainly be placed before the summer of 1950, and I think that it may well be earlier than that.(1)
The earlier of the two texts, which I will refer to as F 1, is a fairly rough and much emended, but entirely legible, manuscript entitled Notes on the Languages at the end of the Third Age. A second manuscript, F 2, succeeded it, as I think, very soon if not immediately, with the title The Languages at the end o f the Third Age. Writing with great care and clarity, my father followed F 1 pretty closely: very often changing the expression or making additions, but for the most part in minor ways, and seldom departing from the previous text even in the succession of the sentences. The two texts are far too close to justify giving them both, and I print therefore F 2, recording in the primarily textual notes on pp. 54 ff. the relatively few cases where different read-ings in F 1 seem of some significance or interest (but in the section on Hobbit names, where there was much development in F 2, all differences between the two texts are
I cannot explain why my father should have made this cross-reference to the Foreword: Concerning Hobbits, in order to point out that it is misleading, nor why he should have retained it -
without this caveat - in his revision of P 2. What makes it still odder is that, whereas in the first versions of Appendix F (in which the 'theory and practice' of the translation of the true languages was greatly elaborated) the remark is absent, it reappears in the third version (F 3, p. 73), and here in a form almost identical to that in F': it is given as a citation, 'It has been said that "the Hobbits spoke a language, or languages, very similar to ours"', and this is followed by the same qualification: 'But this must not be misunderstood. Their language was like ours in manner and tone ...' As a final curiosity, by the time the third version of Appendix F was written the remark had been removed from the Prologue (see the citation from the text P 5 on p. 8), and replaced by 'They spoke the languages of Men, and they liked and disliked much the same things as we once did', though still, as in the published Prologue, in the context of this being a sign of the dose original relationship of Hobbits and Men.
12. Many years after the writing of F' my father noted on the typescript: 'Fragment of an original Foreword afterwards divided into Foreword and Prologue'. This was misleading, because F' played no part in the Prologue, but did contribute to the Foreword of the First Edition and to Appendix F.
*
The history of Appendix F, whose final title was The Languages and Peoples of the Third Age (while the discussion of alphabets and scripts, originally joined to that of the languages, became Appendix E, Writing and Spelling), undoubtedly began with the abortive but not unproductive text F>, but the first version of that Appendix is best taken to be constituted by two closely related manuscripts, since these were written as elaborate essays to stand independently of any 'Foreword'.
Long afterwards my father wrote (p. 299) that 'the actual Common Speech was sketched in structure and phonetic elements, and a number of words invented'; and in this work he is seen developing the true forms in the Westron tongue to underlie the translated (or substituted) names, especially of Hobbits. A great deal of this material was subsequently lost from the Appendix. This original version is also of great interest in documenting his conception of the languages of Middle-earth and their interrelations at the time when the narrative of The Lord of the Rings had recently been completed; and also in showing how substantially that conception was still to be developed before the publication of The Lord of the Rings in 1954-5.
To date this version precisely seems scarcely possible, but at least it can certainly be placed before the summer of 1950, and I think that it may well be earlier than that.(1)
The earlier of the two texts, which I will refer to as F 1, is a fairly rough and much emended, but entirely legible, manuscript entitled Notes on the Languages at the end of the Third Age. A second manuscript, F 2, succeeded it, as I think, very soon if not immediately, with the title The Languages at the end o f the Third Age. Writing with great care and clarity, my father followed F 1 pretty closely: very often changing the expression or making additions, but for the most part in minor ways, and seldom departing from the previous text even in the succession of the sentences. The two texts are far too close to justify giving them both, and I print therefore F 2, recording in the primarily textual notes on pp. 54 ff. the relatively few cases where different read-ings in F 1 seem of some significance or interest (but in the section on Hobbit names, where there was much development in F 2, all differences between the two texts are
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