From: (No Email available)

Date: 2001-06-06 02:41:46

Comment:

While the bulk of what you say is true, I feel I must correct a few details.  French influences on English are a result of the NORMAN conquest; not French.  Though Normandy belonged to France, the Duke of Normandy acted on his own in usurping the English throne.  In fact, he later was forced by the King of France to choose between fealty to England or to Normandy, and ultimately lost his dukedom.  Before that time, Old English was the language of England.  Of course they didn't know it was old at the time.  (just a little linguistic humour.)  After the conquest, OE continued to be spoken, but only by the yeomanry.  The elite spoke Norman French.  The assimilation of French lexical items happened over many many years.
Also, since you brought up language families (English being of the Germanic) I think it's important to distinguish (since you speak of them as a group at one point) the families of various European languages.  French, Spanish and Italian are all Romance languages, while Latin (not ROMAN) is Italic.  While it's true that there was much linguistic influence from Latin on the Romance languages due to the Roman occupation of most of Europe, many of the similarites are inherited from a far older ancestor.  The Italic, the Romance, the Germanic, the Slavic, and numerous others are all descendants of Indo-European.  So, not all commonalities between French (for example) and Latin are due necessarily to the Roman occupation of modern-day France.  Instead, they may be because they both hail from a common source.  Of the same token, this also means that not all commonalities between English and French are due to French influence, but instead can be attributed to common heritage.  This also explains how Russian (an example of Slavic language) can bear any affinity to English since we know that the Roman Empire did not extend into modern-day Russia and Russian never came close enough to have any significant influence on English.  Even Sanskrit (as Sir William Jones so aptly discovered) is related to English via Indo-European.
Now, on a far more relevant note, J.R.R. Tolkien was a linguist of great renown.  He spoke fluent Anglo-Saxon (or Old English..they are one in the same) and taught it at Oxford University where he himself studied.  In fact, he occasionally corresponded to his son Christopher in the language.  OK, so what does this have to do with Lord of the Rings?  A great deal.  Almost all of the names and proper nouns in Lord of the Rings were conjured from Old English roots.  In fact, Tolkien usually had the name before he had the person, place or thing developed.  Just as an example, the word Hobbit came from a modified OE construct: Holbytla, which can be generally translated as hole-builder.  From the meaning of the word Tolkien "discovered", as he said, Hobbits instead of inventing them and later applying the name.  So you certainly touched on something when you asserted that historical linguistics might have some bearing on the popularity of the series.  
I could go on forever, but this is far more than most of you care to read anyway, so I'll cease for now.  However, if you'd like to discuss it further, my e-mail address is Perdedor9@excite.com