Bree is available in PDF

[Terisonen]

For the same reason I don't find any Brie in Bree.

[Otaku-sempai]

Why is there no mention of any staddles in Staddle?!

It never occurred to me that were was ever such a thing as a 'staddle'.

staddle a supporting base to keep stored hay off of the ground. [Old English stathol]

[Kirppu]

You tend to refer to them as 'Staddle Stones', or at least the people I know do. You keep Grain stores and the like safe from rats and damp, although today they tend to line grassy boundaries or lawns in rural areas, often painted white. Maybe the counting house in Bree has a similar issue to granaries and needs to keep mice away, or maybe they are slowly stealing all the Staddle Stones from other nearby villages...

[Falenthal]

As for Bree-landers making games of naming things: those names have apparently been around longer than the Shire. I think Tolkien gave them Celtic-derived names to make them parallel Celtic-derived place names in England, which survived the Anglo-Saxon and Norman invasions. The Shire's place-names are all newer, Anglo-Saxon and more modern English words stuck together, while Bree-land has some older words. I believe the relative ages of Bree and the Shire were brought up in the very first draft portion of The Lord of the Rings that brought the hobbits to the Bree, so the question of ancient versus modern was in Tolkien's head when he named these places.

It is sad for me to know that I lose all these meanings when reading Tolkien's works. Even though I think that the spanish translator did a great job, there's no way names like Archet, Rivendell, Frogmorton,... can be translated and keep not just the meaning, but the implications. Even if old spanish words had been used, they would have a very different association than those of old english, gaelic, celts, etc.

Although I might read about the meaning and origins in different pages or articles, I don't get that feeling when I go through Tolkien texts.

I wanted to ask: do native english speakers get all those implications (not being linguistic scholars or such, I mean)? So, if an "average" english speaker would read the name Archet, would he get a glimpse of that "Near-Wood" origin you are talking about?

And secondary question to that: is it the same for north-americans, australians or south africans? I guess not, but just curious.

[Kirppu]

I wanted to ask: do native english speakers get all those implications (not being linguistic scholars or such, I mean)? So, if an "average" english speaker would read the name Archet, would he get a glimpse of that "Near-Wood" origin you are talking about?

And secondary question to that: is it the same for north-americans, australians or south africans? I guess not, but just curious.

On some words you know certain implications or connections straight away, on others you might get a sense of something but will have to research it if you want to know more, and then theres a lovely sense of discovering something you almost felt you knew all along - Tolkien feels very strongly of this. I'm sure it's the same in native stories in other languages to one degree or another, depending on the type of tale/folktale.

As for your second question, speaking in reverse, ( as an Englishman looking at say Australian English for example) there are some things you pick up from other nationalities that speak English, but you can be aware there are things you miss a deeper sense or framework of meaning around a word or phrase.

[Otaku-sempai]

I wanted to ask: do native english speakers get all those implications (not being linguistic scholars or such, I mean)? So, if an "average" english speaker would read the name Archet, would he get a glimpse of that "Near-Wood" origin you are talking about?

And secondary question to that: is it the same for north-americans, australians or south africans? I guess not, but just curious.

As Kirppu says, many of those references are lost even to native speakers of modern English; the language is in many ways very different from Old English. But some modern words are close enough to their roots to easily make the associations.

I'm guessing that this is even more the case with my fellow Americans, as I think that we tend not to dwell much on the old root-meanings unless we have specifically made a study of them.

[Rue]

Bree looks lovely.

I agree that we Americans (can't speak for Aus or SA), tend not to know the roots... partly because we have a very different set of landscape terms in common use here. Sure America has woods and forests, but we don't commonly use words like "copse", "hedgerow", etc. The same holds true for settlement words (we say "small town" instead of village or hamlet or the like). That takes us one step further from knowing the associated meanings Tolkien's words have.

[Rich H]

I wanted to ask: do native english speakers get all those implications (not being linguistic scholars or such, I mean)? So, if an "average" english speaker would read the name Archet, would he get a glimpse of that "Near-Wood" origin you are talking about?

Not remotely. Most Brits don't even want to read Tolkien's works nevermind understand all the deeper references etc within it!

[Jon Hodgson]

OHNOMUSTRATIONALIZE!!!

They certainly know where the name Bree comes from; they correctly say it means hill. And they clearly know what a combe is. So maayyyyyybeee they knew that Archet has nothing to do with archers but wanted to have a joke, but that sounds like a post-gotcha rationalization. Jon fell into the trap, and he's one of the writers.

Honestly, I read this and wonder if you're ok. Why would you set about finding "gotchas" in the first place? And then double down on what is an obvious joke on my part by talking about "falling into a trap" and "post gotcha rationalisation". Why so confrontational? Are you ok? Do you need a hug or a cup of tea or something?

[Stormcrow]

I wasn't looking for gotchas. Names and language in Tolkien is a big draw for me, so I pay close attention to them. The name Archet is a linguistic gotcha, because it looks like archer but is completely unrelated. So when the book says they produce bowmen, I gave a "really, guys?" statement. That's all I intended to express. But then zedturtle falls for the gotcha with his false parallel of Mr. Miller being a miller, and you echo that with another false parallel. Up until then, I'd have believed that putting archers in Archet was done with at most only an unconscious association with the name, but those false parallels suggested you really thought archer and Archet were related words as miller is related to the name Miller—or at least were playing along with someone who really thought that. So I give the etymology of the name, and point out the false parallel. Then others come along to defend the decision to put archers in Archet: it's a linguistic joke by Cubicle 7; woods naturally leads to good archers. These are rationalizations by fans who, having seen the failed linguistic argument, want to believe C7 knew that all along and had other especially compelling reasons to put bowmen in Archet beyond "just because."

I really don't have any big concern over this, and I'll be just fine whatever the truth of the matter is. I'm not trying to be confrontational; I just see some intellectual self-deception going on here. You can clear it up very easily by answering honestly: did you know the etymology of Archet before this came up, and did whoever wrote the bit about bowmen in Archet intend the bowmen's presence be related to the name, either in error or in jest?

If the bowmen were not intended to reflect the name of the village... okay. *shrug* Might be unconscious association with the name, might be sheer coincidence. If you didn't know and made the wrong linguistic conclusion, you still get a "seriously?" And if you did know and made an absurd linguistic joke... "seriously?" I really have no other reactions here.