The stories of the Sun and Moon had a few parallels, too.
I love the way Kalevala sounds. Its rhythms. Makes me wish I knew Finnish. Tolkien read it in the original, I believe...
> The stories of the Sun and Moon had a few parallels, too.
Interesting!--I'll have to check into that!
>I love the way Kalevala sounds. Its rhythms. Makes me wish I knew Finnish.
Me, too!--also wish I knew Welsh and Old English and a few other languages so I could follow the rhythms in Elvish better. BTW I have found one computer language tutorial with a nice introduction to basic Finnish:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00009ADF3/ref%3Dpd%5Fsl%5Faw%5Falx-jeb-8-1%5Fsoftware%5F3550757%5F1/002-2284777-8884841 Software includes: Arabic, Bengali, Brazilian (Portuguese), Chinese (Cantonese), Dutch, English, Farsi (Persian), Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Norwegian, Polish, Punjabi, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog (Filipino), Thai, Tibetan, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Zulu
> Tolkien read it in the original, I believe...
Yes--his gift for language was amazing. I was reading through a list of the languages he knew once and I couldn't believe how long it was. I heard he even translated the Book of Jonah from Hebrew into Japanese!--my mind reels.