End of April... Part of it is de Saussurean, I think, where language falls short of reality and the relation is often arbitrary... and the way a lot of meaning happens in context rather than the words themselves, which is something many people don't quite realise even as adults. But at the same time, it's this path to understanding, and knowing someone's language may help you understand that person and how they view the world. Which I guess is a sociolinguistic notion. The distinct way certain characters in Narnia speak, the hobbit names for hobbit things, all the elvish names for places... and sometimes, where your own language falls short, someone else's helps. (Hnau!)

Which I think also has something to do with what I think made The Hobbit unique. I'm not exactly saying MacDonald was the only one, either. I think the difference I see with The Hobbit is the way hobbits were completely new, not coming from any tradition, and the way Tolkien put the reader in the boots of a character who, strictly speaking, isn't wearing boots... :D I mean someone non-human, non-animal, theoretically unrelatable, yet very, very relatable. Although I may be wrong in there as well.