![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraineheckofabecca asked at Tumblr:What cities/areas in Gondor apart from Dol Amroth do you imagine spoke Sindarin fluently? (It's for a fic :3)
[This vaguely waves at the Appendix explanation as it passes by.]
Well—Minas Tirith!
I mean, for me, it always goes back to Minas Tirith. Apart from Rivendell and Lothlórien, it’s the only city where we see Sindarin widely spoken. But it’s also the only city in Gondor that we see at all.
I think we can view that either on the meta level or story level.
On the meta level, Minas Tirith serves as a sort of microcosm of Gondor, a window into Gondorian life and culture. If we consider it as representative, then I would imagine Sindarin as common or even dominant in most Gondorian cities.
In-story, though, there’s no reason to assume MT is typical. It’s a military fortress, it’s the capital, it’s geographically distant from many of the other cities. In that framework, I tend to wonder about who the Sindarin-speaking Gondorians are.
The first one we really hear about is Denethor (and obviously Faramir and Boromir). The Húrinionath have been in MT for ages, so it might reflect that, or Sindarin doubling as a class marker, or as an Ithilien thing.
Then we find that the Rangers of Ithilien use it among themselves as “a language of their own.” All we know about their origins is that they all come from families that fled Ithilien when it was overrun—they went over the river, largely to Lossarnach.
Then we meet the Sindarin-speaking common people in MT as Beregond and Bergil escort Pippin around; Beregond comes from Ithilien refugee families in the valleys of the White Mountains (Ringló, Lossarnach, Blackroot, Tumladen—we don’t know which.)
There’s a reference to Queen Morwen of Rohan being a Sindarin-speaker; she was from Lossarnach.
Ioreth, a very old woman, comes from Lossarnach and evidently doesn’t speak Sindarin. But her name literally means “old woman” in Sindarin; IMO it’s almost certainly a Sindarin nickname (probably picked up in MT) rather than her birth name (which I suspect is not Sindarin at all).
Beyond that, I don’t think we know anything. So what I tend to imagine:
1. Any city is going to have a mix of Sindarin- and Westron-preferring people. Rural areas are more unpredictable: there are areas that favour Sindarin, areas that favour Westron (often exclusively), areas where a few surviving pre-Adûnaic languages hang on.
2. Westron is the only language spoken just about everywhere in Gondor. It’s usually but not always a native language; here and there are pockets of Gondorians who aren’t fluent in it. In Minas Tirith, you can find people who speak Westron, speak Sindarin, and/or are fully bilingual, and everything in between. Most of the citizens are bilingual, but MT has a strong preference for Sindarin; you’re much more likely to find primary Sindarin-speakers who barely speak Westron than the other way around.
MT definitely has the highest concentration of primary Sindarin-speakers. Westron is more commonly used among immigrants to the city and (contrary to expectation) the aristocracy, who deal more with outsiders.
3. Significant swaths of Lossarnach and the other mountain valleys use Sindarin, reinforced by the Ithilien refugees, who even generations later hold onto it. I think that suggests that they live in a place where Sindarin was already present—perhaps not as predominantly before they showed up, and not entirely, but it’s definitely there.
It also suggests that Sindarin was a big deal in Ithilien (perhaps part of the reason MT skews so much to Sindarin-speakers—while technically it’s the Anórien seat, modern MT seems principally attached to Ithilien, and undoubtedly it’d be the first place the Ithilien refugees would go).
4. Pelargir is the most Westron-dominant of the major cities. As a port city, there are a lot of languages there, but Westron is going to be the one they’ve all got in common. And historically, Dúnadan sailors lean heavily to Westron and played a significant part in spreading it. It would be very unusual to find Sindarin-speakers who weren’t also native Westron-speakers there.
I imagine Lebennin skews to Westron in general.
5. Dol Amroth, Elvish blood and iconography aside, is probably the most balanced between primary Westron-speakers, primary Sindarin-speakers, and fully bilingual people. Even the quasi-royal family uses Adûnaic names here, Sindarin there, when the rest of Gondor pretty invariably uses Sindarin ones.
Despite Lebennin’s nearer proximity, however, post-Kinstrife Dol Amroth/Belfalas has maintained close cultural/political ties with Minas Tirith/Ithilien (to some degree, even before: they’re the two main Dúnadan centers, with everything that entails). I imagine it skews a bit more that direction; someone from MT is going to feel a lot more at home in Dol Amroth than in Pelargir.
6. Anórien seems likely to be Westron-dominant. It doesn’t have the big Dúnadan strongholds afaik, and it borders Rohan, which clearly considers Westron as the main language of Gondor.
Tl;dr—I imagine something like:
[Emyn Arnen and Ithilien: primarily Sindarin-speaking]
Anórien: primarily Westron-speaking, fluent Sindarin rare
Minas Tirith: primarily Sindarin-speaking
Dol Amroth and Dor-en-Ernil: Sindarin- and Westron-speaking, fluent Sindarin common
Lebennin and Pelargir: primarily Westron-speaking, many minority languages (including Sindarin) with Westron as lingua franca
Linhir: Sindarin- and Westron-speaking, fluent Sindarin a significant minority
original tags:
#i could have just answered with the end but... y'know #jrrt decided it was a nobility/purebloodedness thing but it's a dumbass decision so i've elected to ignore it #also makes no sense of mt as actually written #but short version is that i think traditionally sindarin was strongest in ithilien to minas tirith #then in belfalas esp dol amroth #weakest in anórien and pelargir #mixed but mostly heavy on sindarin in the valleys #there are villages in the mountains who can barely understand each other #but you'd be hard-pressed to find any region of gondor without any sindarin-speakers at all
no subject
on 2018-12-13 03:51 am (UTC)