aviva0017:

postmodernismruinedme:

Things that crack me up about Legolas:

• Okay, so maybe the film guide says he was born in TA 87, but looking at clues from HOME and the Silmariilion, he’s at the very most a bit over 2000 years old at time of The Fellowship of the Ring. He’s the youngest elf that we know about in that time period. ARWEN is older than him. He’s creeped out by Fangorn being so old but he calls all mortals children because he’s a little shit.
• Tolkien would get super pissed off when Legolas was shown in illustrations as “pretty or lady-like” and insisted that he was the biggest, roughest, toughest of the elves and the most hardcore of the Fellowship. Legolas is like the freaking Schwarzenegger of the elves, nbd.
• Best friend is a dwarf whose father was literally imprisoned by Legolas’ father and yet he still brought him to the Undying Lands for the most awkward family reunion because screw you Thranduil. And let me remind you that a) Gimli is the only, only dwarf who got to make the trip and Legolas invited him. Other people had to get permission from like the literal Valar and Legolas was like I want to bring my mortal bff yeah he wasn’t a ringbearer but whatevs. Also b) most of the people who left in TA 3201 went on like these fleets of beautiful vessels with a master shipbuilder but Legolas was like nope, going to build one myself, never built one before but it can’t be that hard, right?
• While Sindarin is the most common Elvish language by the time Legolas is alive, it’s considered really ugly and and unrefined, but here Legolas is running around probably not even able to speak the language of his ancestors, and I imagine him super proud of what must sound like an awful accent to his people.
• Also super explains how useless he was at Moira trying to decipher the door because he doesn’t have time to deal with those snobs.
• All the Fellowship got useful gifts or ones with spiritual meaning but instead Galadriel was like no, Legolas, I’m going to give you this big ass bow that’s bigger than the Mirkwood ones and it’s going to be so sick yeah it’s like taller than you are BUT ITS GOING TO LOOK SO SWEET.

I love this post a lot for the most part, but the bit about Sindarin makes no sense? Legolas isn’t Galadriel- his ancestors were Sindar…who spoke Sindarin. Thranduil is likely descended from or possibly actually lived in Doriath, where there was a ban on speaking Quenya- what else besides Sindarin would Legolas’ “people” speak? They might speak the tongue of the Silvan wood elves, which I’m sure Legolas would have picked up, but if anything, Sindarin would be considered a higher-class language than that. Also, where does Sindarin being ugly and unrefined even come from here? Sindarin was, as you’ve said, the most widely spoken elven language at that time, there’s no evidence or reason anyone would be looked down upon for speaking it in the Third Age. Quenya was a dead language at that point, spoken by few, and even those who did (like Elrond and Galadriel) would have still used Sindarin in most everyday conversation. And even if it wasn’t, again, Legolas’ people are from Doriath, where speaking Quenya was literally forbidden (which was a major factor in it becoming a dead language in the first place). Legolas speaks exactly what you would expect him to.

(On that note, the language of the inscription on the Doors of Durin? Also Sindarin. There’s no language barrier at all. XD I assume that he could read the doors just fine, but like most of the Fellowship, he did not figure out that the “speak friend and enter” riddle actually gave away the opening word and was trying to think of what the password might be.)

Actually he might not have been able to read the door. The script is archaic and the language is Ancient Doriathrin Sindarin, not the more ‘modern’ Sindarin that we’re used to from the movies/books. It’d be kind of like expecting a modern English speaker to translate middle English ala Chaucer. I’d kind of expect Legolas to still be able to read it, since his father is Thranduil, but then again, he was also raised among Silvan elves, and I’d imagine that if anything he’d have an interesting Silvan accent that is probably the bane of Thranduil’s existence.