Too Much To Dream

A pedantic clarification: most people in Luxembourg speak French or German. This language is kept "alive" as a nationalist myth, much like how Romansch is actually spoken by only about 1% of the population of Switzerland, i.e., it was a dialect that did not even have a written form until the 19th century.

Monegasque, however, is admittedly an order of magnitude more fictitious. It's on the street signs in Monaco only because the French government effectively killed Provencal during the process of establishing a national education citizen. See "Peasants Into Frenchmen" by Eugen Weber.

That should say "system" not "citizen". Duh.

Well, according to the guy who did the translation (see the "English" link on his website, den-hobbit.com), he had to learn to speak it so he could communicate with his neighbours, so they must speak it in some parts of the country -- though he points out that it was, until recently, considered just a dialect of German.

Luxembourgish is pretty well indistinguishable from Moselle-Frankish (a dialect of German). Though my Luxembourgish colleagues used to get really upset when I said that to them.

I used to stay in a small village on the German side of the border (Nittel) and my ear would get in for Moselle-Frankish. When I crossed over to work in Luxembourg I could understand Luxembourgers talking to each other - that would seriously piss them off.

I would disagree with Mr Jaroslav - Luxembourgish is no more of a nationalist myth than Frankish, Hessich, Saexisch, Bayerisch or any other German dialect (though it is the only such dialect given status by the EU). Of course everybody can speak either Hoch Deutsch or French - so can the great majority of the dialect speakers of either country. People are used to speaking dialect at home and proper speech in public.

I walked through Luxembourg one day- never heard anyone say a word in any langauge. (Quiet place.)

And since no one else has mentioned it, the bit posted is the one about who gets how many rings, and what the one ring is for. (Eleven rings for the elves, nine for man and one ring to round 'em up and move 'em out.) It's close enough to German that I can get the gist of it.

Of course, this bit, in any language, begs the question: How many rings were there, total? Twenty? Or did the later half of this poem speak of more?

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
On Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them,
In the Land of Mordor, where the Shadows lie.

(Three rings for the elves, by the way -- dräi meaning obviously the same as "drei" in German. That makes twenty rings in all.)

My fault for not having a copy of LOTR here at my desk. Yes, twenty rings. Unless someone (other than me) wants to argue that the rings mentioned in lines 4, 6 and 7 above are all DIFFERENT rings. I never thought that until recently re-reading the passage. I can see where some over-studious (over-caffeinated) person might want to make an argrument for 23 total rings. I'm happy with the twenty, though. I've got mine. At home. Safe. Precious.

For some reason (I'll have to re-read the book again!) I thought that there were other 'magical' rings in the land. It just happened that these twenty were created by magic that Sauron taught them.

Throughout the books, these are referred to as the "great rings", implying that there are lesser magical rings as well. I'm not sure if it ever specifically comes out and discusses any of the lesser ones.

I think Amy and Tony are right: There was certainly the implication that there were 20 powerful rings, but perhaps more than a few lesser rings. These Many Rings were probably made off-shore at considerable savings and sold at the Wal-Mart in Hobbiton as well as on the Elves' Shopping Network.

Near the end, Saruman does make the claim of creating a Ring of power. I always wished there had been a little more info on that. (Or maybe there is in one many books Christopher Tolkien has put out.)

And there is that odd comment of Gandalf's to Bilbo about "many magic rings in the world".

I've always thought that for reasons of pattern there should have been five rings for some other set of people.

Sigivald,

I believe you may be confusing this with the always-emphasized Five Golden Rings in the Twelve Days of Christmas. A comment error, I admit.

Er, um, "common," not "comment" error. Duh.