Var lär sig mittvärldens varelser att tala och skriva?

Hobbits och Rustik Män

Den första hänvisningen till utbildning som jag kan tänka på kommer tidigt i Ringenes Herre , det allra första kapitlet faktiskt.

Mr. Bilbo has learned him his letters –meaning no harm, mark you, and I hope no harm will come of it.

Lord of the Rings | A Long Expected Party

Säger gaffern, med hänvisning till sin son Samwise som lärde sig läsa och skriva av Bilbo.

Det är tydligt ur tonen att han något ogillar det och tycker att Sam kan komma över sin station.

Senare lär vi oss att Barliman Butterbur också skrivs, och det här verkar igen vara något av anathema.

‘It’s addressed plain enough,’ said Mr. Butterbur, producing a letter from his pocket, and reading out the address slowly and proudly (he valued his reputation as a lettered man):

Lord of the Rings | Strider

Vi kan ta från dessa exempel att åtminstone i The Shire och Bree-utbildningen inte var något som var vanligt, åtminstone en akademisk.

dvärgar

Det verkar som om Durin kunde tala från det ögonblick han vaknade (eller åtminstone han lärde sig det medan han fortfarande är ensam) om vi tar Gimlis sång bokstavligen.

The world was young, the mountains green, No stain yet on the Moon was seen, No words were laid on stream or stone When Durin woke and walked alone. He named the nameless hills and dells; He drank from yet untasted wells; He stooped and looked in Mirrormere, And saw a crown of stars appear, As gems upon a silver thread, Above the shadow of his head.

Ents

(Bonusrunda) Enterna lärdes ursprungligen språk av älven.

Still, I take more kindly to Elves than to others: it was the Elves that cured us of dumbness long ago, and that was a great gift that cannot be forgotten, though our ways have parted since.

The Lord of the Rings | Treebeard

Man måste anta att de passerade sin skicklighet ner till Entings i tid.

Orcs

Vi har ingen aning om hur Orc kultur och språk vidarebefordras.

Black Tal, en uppfinning av Sauron ses ett par gånger.

The Orcs were first bred by the Dark Power of the North in the Elder Days. It is said that they had no language of their own, but took what they could of other tongues and perverted it to their own liking; yet they made only brutal jargons, scarcely sufficient even for their own needs, unless it were for curses and abuse. And these creatures, being filled with malice, hating even their own kind, quickly developed as many barbarous dialects as there were groups or settlements of their race, so that their Orkish speech was of little use to them in intercourse between different tribes. So it was that in the Third Age Orcs used for communication between breed and breed the Westron tongue; and many indeed of the older tribes, such as those that still lingered in the North and in the Misty Mountains, had long used the Westron as their native language, though in such a fashion as to make it hardly less unlovely than Orkish. In this jargon tark, ‘man of Gondor’, was a debased form of tarkil , a Quenya word used in Westron for one of Númenórean descent; see p. 906 . It is said that the Black Speech was devised by Sauron in the Dark Years, and that he had desired to make it the language of all those that served him, but he failed in that purpose. From the Black Speech, however, were derived many of the words that were in the Third Age wide-spread among the Orcs, such as ghâsh ‘fire’, but after the first overthrow of Sauron this language in its ancient form was forgotten by all but the Nazgûl. When Sauron arose again, it became once more the language of Barad-dûr and of the captains of Mordor. The inscription on the Ring was in the ancient Black Speech, while the curse of the Mordor-orc on p. 445 was in the more debased form used by the soldiers of the Dark Tower, of whom Grishnákh was the captain. Sharkû in that tongue means old man.

The Lord of the Rings | The Languages and Peoples of the Third Age

Jag fortsätter att leta efter referenser till andra män, dvärgar och älvor och orker