Article Discussion: Lord Of The Strings Part 2

When I saw the latest in the Lord of the Rings trilogy of movies a short while ago, I wondered how Tolkien had invented the artificial languages of Middle Earth, such as Dwarvish and Elvish. In my previous article, Lord of the Strings (Part 1), I told of my desire to discover which real language had been the biggest influence on Tolkien for his invented ones. As a software developer, I wanted to discover this information algorithmically. My idea was to use my own string similarity algorithm to compare each word from a list of Tolkien words to words from 14 other real languages. For each Tolkien word, I would find and record the language with the word that is (lexically) most similar. The set of most-similar words and the languages from which they came would provide new insights into the influences on Tolkien.


Read the full article here: Lord Of The Strings Part 2

Bro, 2 reactions:

1. (From the rabid Tolkien fan that I am) This is really cool! What a neat idea (I should also indicate that my mother is a linguist and I have a tattoo on my arm in Elvish).

2. (From the gainfully employed person and parent that I also am) Dude, you have waaaaay too much free time on your hands!

Keep it up though, it was fascinating reading.