#tangentially: god it'd be fun to watch fingolfin beat feanor in a sword fight in 0.02 seconds

[tanoraqui]

Sons of Fëanor: Linguistic Prescriptivists or Descriptivists?

(follow-up to this post)

Maedhros: True Prescriptivist, Very Invested. If you went deep into Maedhros’s subconscious, or maybe like semiconscious, you’d find a chart in which Column 1 is Father’s Ongoing Causes - ranging from “building a new Gemcutters Guild Hall” to “300th Anniversary Getaway with Mother” to “Reviling the Descendants of Indis” (further sub-categorized by individual) - and the other columns are a scale ranging from “Truly Wholeheartedly Support in Every Way” to “Publicly Support, Covertly Attempt to Mitigate” to “Wholeheartedly Disagree and Disavow in Every Way.” No causes have check marks in that last category, though there are a number in the preceding category, “Passively Disagree; Avoid Debate with All,” including for several descendants of Indis. (There used to be even more. Marks have been erased and rewritten everywhere, over time.) UNFORTUNATELY, the cause “Prescriptivist Linguistics” is firmly in the Truly Wholeheartedly Support in Every Way category. It was easy, okay. It’s such a simple, easy thing to support (especially while covertly mitigating other things). It has larger philosophical implications, sure, but the core of the issue is an aching void where a grandmother and mother should be, which does ache in Maedhros as well, and his father generally ignores the larger philosophical implications anyway, So why should Maedhros care about them! Language has definitive rules! It objectively does, one of which is that the Þ is a common and important letter, and everyone else is petulantly making trouble about it for no reason!

(This is Maedhros’s greatest flaw as a person; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.)

Maglor: True Descriptivist (Respectful of Names), Very Invested but Avoids Argument. Maglor is a writer of Songs and songs; he plays around with language far too much not to know and love it for just that: being an ever-flexible plaything. He both sings and speaks whichever sounds finest to him in the moment, and his father begrudgingly accepts this as a matter of craft rather than a linguistic or even (family) politics. One is permitted to break the rules after learning them exhaustively, after all; that is how much of the best art happens. (Maglor deliberately diminishes the sa-si-ing in Formenos, though, as Fëanor’s temper grows ever worse.) And Maglor always crafts any lyric so as to support the correct pronunciation of Miriel Þerindë. He’s not an animal.

Celegorm: True Prescriptivist, Moderately Invested. Celegorm is a Prescriptivist on principle of family loyalty, but the only reason he really cares is that one time, some pointed out that even the languages of animals change naturally over time, and he knows and admits that, so why can’t he accept it for Elves? And Celegorm off the top of his head retorted that no creature but Elves builds tall walls of stone where nature did not place them, nor forges rings, blows glass, bakes bread, or a hundred other things that don’t happen “naturally.” So why should their language be like that of animals? Why shouldn’t they have rules as unyielding as stone walls or forged blades? And he was so proud of that argument, which really isn’t bad, that he pulled it out at every opportunity henceforth, and may never be persuaded otherwise.

Caranthir: Dutiful Prescriptivist, Minimally Invested. If asked offhand, will toe the family line. More often, will snap out whatever position is either most likely to start a fight or most likely to end whatever fight is already happening, depending on his mood. Really thinks there are better things to shout about.

Curufin: Is Going to get a Good Grade in Agreeing With Father, a Thing that is Both Normal To Want and Possible To Achieve. ‘Nuff said. (Deep DEEP deep down recognizes that language evolves, that’s what makes it cool, and incidentally this is all an incredibly stupid debate and can he please get back to the forge.)

Amrod: Dutiful Prescriptivist, Secret Descriptivist, Moderately Invested. I headcanon that the twins were born shortly after the creation of the Silmarils (I headcanon that Nerdanel and Fëanor were gossip!infamous for getting baby-making levels of horny whenever one of them created a particularly impressive thing; the Silmarils inspired twins), so they never really know a time when things aren’t getting...steadily worse and worse, in the politics of Tirion at large and the House of Finwë in particular. So neither Ambarussa would dream of saying sa-si... Except Amrod does, in fact. Dream of it. Because he’s done some research and he’s like 95% sure their father is just being wantonly emotional and covering it up with hypocrisy and just plain stupidity, about this particular issue.

Amras: Dutiful Prescriptivist, Rebellious/Fraternally Supportive Descriptivist, Minimally Invested: See above, but doesn’t really care that much...but Amrod does (later: did). So late in the Formenos era he started experimenting with a dash of dramatic teenage rebellion in the form of Þ, and after Losgar he stops being dramatic about it but one time a few years into Maglor’s terrible reign as Regent-King, he and Celegorm get into a screaming match over “Þerindë” vs “Serindë”, among other things, and Amras never speaks with a Fëanorian lisp for the rest of his time in Beleriand. (After eventual reincarnation, he concedes Þerindë, but that’s it. Language evolves. It’s fine.)

Others of Note:

Fingon: True Descriptivist, Very Invested. This is possibly the only topic on which Fingon and Maedhros will get into genuinely heated fights. Especially when it’s a thinly veiled metaphor for fighting about their loyalties to their respective fathers, but also when it’s literally a fight about linguistic philosophy. Fingon is perfectly capable of heart-stirring poetry, eloquent court language, and sesquipedalian intellectual debate, but when he’s just having fun, his default state is Buffyspeak. 

Turgon: Dutiful Descriptivist, Secret Prescriptivist, Moderately Invested. Toes the family line, of course, if only because Fëanor is an asshole. But secretly, secretly, is entirely swayed by Celegorm’s argument. Would literally not admit this under 1000 years torture in the depths of Angband, and I mean literally.

Fëanor: Begrudgingly Comes Around. It would take literal millennia of therapy for Fëanor to admit that maaaybe this isn’t about linguistic theory, maaaaaaaybe it’s really about his desperate need to keep around any part of his mother that he can. But isn’t that what the Halls of Mandos are for? (With help from Irmo, Estë, and Nienna?) Not that he comes out without a lisp, when they finally do let him out. More like...he slowly concedes, over some large number of years of being reembodied, that maybe he can...dial this debate back. For real. But! A lot of his personal pride and reputation is still invested in it (and he’s not going to let people mispronounce his mother’s literal epessë), so he just dials it back to “implicitly admitting that maybe this is slightly silly but it’s a matter of Principle (and personal emotional investment; please humor me)! we’re arguing but it’s a jokey, ‘sibling’ argument, like the kids have!” You know, the sort where you genuinely hold opposing opinions but you’re deliberately acting melodramatic about them because it’s fun? And everyone else is pretty okay to let this become something they...tease each other about. Nobody else (except maybe Nerdanel) knows that Fëanor has actually changed his mind (except about “Þerindë” itself).

Then one day in like the Fifth Age, Fëanor is enduring a particularly annoying conversation at some sort of royal event, with some particularly insipid courier, and the exact matter of insipidity causes him to snap somewhat loudly, “Language evolves, you idiot. It cannot be ordained.” And from halfway across the room, Fingolfin’s head whips around like an owl, and in the subsequent fight about who said and/or heard what, they nearly draw swords on each other in the king’s hall again.*

*I know it was only Fëanor the first time. I am not ruling out the possibility that over the course of Fëanor’s inevitably messy post-reembodiment reconciliation with his extended family, it happened mutually at least once.