Can Frodo Read?

[Silky Gooseness]

Frodo is supposedly a scholar and has learned at least some Elvish. But he cannot read the inscription on the Ring; neither can he read the inscription over Moria. Can he read Tengwar at all, or is he a Runes-only sort of boy? He doesn’t work out the runes left by Gandalf upon Weathertop, scrawled although they are - it’s Aragorn who deduces they stand for G3 - neither does he translate Durin’s tomb inscription in Daeron’s runes, although this is more understandable if mostly used by dwarves. So what, exactly, can Frodo read??

[Rivvy Elf]

Frodo can read people. He was able to see the good in Smeagol/Gollum, which is quite a feat.

Was he map literate? Can he read maps? I can't remember.

EDIT: So since he's an editor of the Red Book of Westmarch, I'm assuming he knows Westron (disregarding the small possibility that he may have been speaking a foreign language this whole time and Sam was the one who did all the work and credited to Frodo). And since the Red Book has maps in it, I'm assuming he is map literate since someone had to draw out certain routes to locations.

[Boromir88]

You present some hard evidence @Silky Gooseness. Something interesting as well, the Gaffer mentions that Bilbo taught Sam his letters:

"Mister Bilbo has learned him his letters - meaning no harm, mark you, and I hope no harm comes of it." (Fellowship of the Ring: A Long-Expected Party)

There is no definitive statement about Frodo learning his letters, either being self-taught, or from Bilbo or any one else.

@Rivvy Elf as far as map reading goes, that was Merry's and Bilbo's forte. It's Merry that guided the hobbits to the Old Forest and Bree. Also, Frodo and Sam were completely lost in the Emyn Muil. They would have never found their way out if it wasn't for Gollum.

[LegolasTheElf]

I think he understands the letters, or even suspects at least that they might be elven, but not the words / language on the Ring.

"As Frodo did so, he now saw fine lines, finer than the finest pen-strokes, running along the ring, outside and inside: lines of fire that seemed to form the letters of a flowing script. They shone piercingly bright, and yet remote, as if out of a great depth.
‘I cannot read the fiery letters,’ said Frodo in a quavering voice.
‘No,’ said Gandalf, ‘but I can. The letters are Elvish, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Mordor, which I will not utter here."

[Silky Gooseness]

Oh, that’s a good point actually Leggy - so he recognises the Tengwar, but obviously wouldn’t be expected to recognise Black Speech so it just looks nonsensical to me. That seems plausible.

Still puzzling that he doesn’t know what’s written over Moria though!

[LegolasTheElf]

Ohhh... I don't think I remember that part too well. I know that Gandalf reads the letters but not about Frodo saying that he cannot.

Buut, after a bit of reasearch:

"'What does the writing say?' asked Frodo, who was trying to decipher the inscription on the arch. 'I thought I knew the elf-letters but I cannot read these.'
`The words are in the elven-tongue of the West of Middle-earth in the Elder Days,' answered Gandalf. 'But they do not say anything of importance to us.
They say only: "The Doors of Durin, Lord of Moria. Speak, friend, and enter.""

"The words are in the elven-tongue of the West of Middle-earth in the Elder Days" - so I suppose he knew only the "contemporary" elven language?

[Androthelm]

I think he understands the letters, or even suspects at least that they might be elven, but not the words / language on the Ring.

"As Frodo did so, he now saw fine lines, finer than the finest pen-strokes, running along the ring, outside and inside: lines of fire that seemed to form the letters of a flowing script. They shone piercingly bright, and yet remote, as if out of a great depth.
‘I cannot read the fiery letters,’ said Frodo in a quavering voice.
‘No,’ said Gandalf, ‘but I can. The letters are Elvish, of an ancient mode, but the language is that of Mordor, which I will not utter here."

Bit of a necro here, but — Gandalf's comment that "The letters are elvish, of an ancient mode," while it doesn't get top billing compared to the language of Mordor, might be part of the trouble here? Is Frodo having difficulty because the alphabet (at least, the alphabet Bilbo taught him) has changed over the millenia?

[Drífa]

Frodo could read. He knew elf letters and was taught elvish by Bilbo, it would seem, and knew some high-elven speech. But I am not sure he was a scholar. It was the elves that called him a scholar, possibly in jest?

Listen! They are coming this way,’ said Frodo. ‘We have only to wait.’ The singing drew nearer. One clear voice rose now above the others. It was singing in the fair elven-tongue, of which Frodo knew only a little, and the others knew nothing. Yet the sound blending with the melody seemed to shape itself in their thought into words which they only partly understood. This was the song as Frodo heard it:TFOTR

‘O Fair Folk! This is good fortune beyond my hope,’ said Pippin. Sam was speechless. ‘I thank you indeed, Gildor Inglorion,’ said Frodo bowing. ‘Elen sila lumenn’ omentielvo, a star shines on the hour of our meeting,’ he added in the high-elven speech. ‘Be careful, friends!’ cried Gildor laughing. ‘Speak no secrets! Here is a scholar in the Ancient Tongue. Bilbo was a good master. Hail, Elf-friend!’ he said, bowing to Frodo. ‘Come now with your friends and join our company! You had best walk in the middle so that you may not stray. You may be weary before we halt.’ TFOTR

'And why do you call him Dunadan?' asked Frodo. 'The Dunadan,' said Bilbo. 'He is often called that here. But I thought you knew enough Elvish at least to know dun-udan: Man of the West, Numenorean. But this is not the time for lessons!' He turned to Strider. TFOTR

Frodo began to listen. At first the beauty of the melodies and of the interwoven words in elven-tongues, even though he understood them little, held him in a spell, as soon as he began to attend to them. TFOTR

But now she sang in the ancient tongue of the Elves beyond the Sea, and he did not understand the words: fair was the music, but it did not comfort him. Yet as is the way of Elvish words, they remained graven in his memory, and long afterwards he interpreted them, as well as he could: the language was that of Elven-song and spoke of things little known on Middle-earth. TFOTR

Frodo gazed in wonder at this marvellous gift...Aiya Earendil Elenion Ancalima! he cried, and knew not what he had spoken; for it seemed that another voice spoke through his, clear, untroubled by the foul air of the pit. TTT

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Bit of a necro here, but — Gandalf's comment that "The letters are elvish, of an ancient mode," while it doesn't get top billing compared to the language of Mordor, might be part of the trouble here? Is Frodo having difficulty because the alphabet (at least, the alphabet Bilbo taught him) has changed over the millenia?

Yeah, i think that is it: in both cases it is not the Elvish letters but the ancient mode of their writing that causes him to stumble. I had not see it before, but these two scenes are rather lined up in this way.

[Androthelm]

The fact that it's the black speech also can't help of course (to echo other folks in the thread).

@Afird Splitax as far as Frodo's scholarliness, I think you're right that elves were teasing him a bit — although it's worth pointing out that he was certainly much better taught and better read than the norm was for Hobbits or even (as far as we can tell) men of what once was Arnor. Bilbo was certainly a scholar, but Frodo seems to just have that "child of an academic who picks up bits and pieces of their parent's work" vibe.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Bilbo was certainly a scholar, but Frodo seems to just have that "child of an academic who picks up bits and pieces of their parent's work" vibe.

That is nice, but feels upside down. Or if Bilbo is a scholar, he is a not very good one - which is of course in keeping with some of Tolkien's other representations of scholars (cf. 1936 allegory, where a mob demolish a tower). But if Bilbo is a scholar, and he certainly has pretensions, the autobiographical lie about how he won the magic ring in a game of riddles damages his credibility beyond redemption: he is the scholar who turns out to have obscured the whole mystery by failing to declare the exact circumstances of the 'archeological discovery' (or what have you).

I feel it is more like Frodo is the child who sees that antiquarian pursuits are all so much fun, but now is the time to do the serious research that looks the problem in its face. Frodo is about academic reformation, a new earnest generation resolved to tackle the problems of their times - he could almost have been a social scientist of the Shire had the Ring not saved him for a better fate.

We should recall, though, that Frodo is not the child of Bilbo; so we should perhaps be careful looking for reaction.

[Androthelm]

Oh sure @Chrysophylax Dives — but I was mostly talking about Bilbo’s Translations from Elvish.

Frodo isn’t his child — neither is Sam — but he seems to have rubbed off on them nonetheless.

[Rivvy Elf]

I mean, I thought Bilbo's footnotes in the Athrabeth were fine and fitting of a scholar. But maybe I was just too excited to realize that a fictional character was doing footnotes on a fictional work. Sam Gamgee also had a footnote in there too!

[Chrysophylax Dives]

So am I to take it that Bilbo Baggins is the foremost scholar of the Elvish languages among the Hobbits? His work (translations and footnotes) never undermined, as was his autobiography?

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Frodo is supposedly a scholar and has learned at least some Elvish. But he cannot read the inscription on the Ring; neither can he read the inscription over Moria. Can he read Tengwar at all, or is he a Runes-only sort of boy? He doesn’t work out the runes left by Gandalf upon Weathertop, scrawled although they are - it’s Aragorn who deduces they stand for G3 - neither does he translate Durin’s tomb inscription in Daeron’s runes, although this is more understandable if mostly used by dwarves.

So what, exactly, can Frodo read??

Frodo can read people. He was able to see the good in Smeagol/Gollum, which is quite a feat.

I think Rivvy here gives most of the real answer. One might then ask, can Frodo read a situation? And here one might distinguish between the Frodo of the conversation with Gandalf in Bag-end in 'The Shadow of the Past', one who does not understand pity, and the Frodo who hardly acts but understands all too well in 'The Scouring of the Shire'. One might then substantiate by asking comparable questions of Gandalf, who can indeed read the fiery letters on the Ring in Bag-end but stumbles in the reading of the elvish letters above the door of Moria - and then once inside, falls.

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Meta considerations

At first glance, it might seem that this steps from the literal meaning of the original question of this thread to a metaphorical answer. But this presupposes a modern ('Romantic') ideal of reading as a private activity, undertaken in seclusion from the world - an escape of the I into a book.

The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night
Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.

These lines from a modern poem by Wallace Stevens are quoted by Nicholas Howe at the start of 'The Cultural Construction of Reading in Anglo-Saxon England' (2002). Howe points out that the poem captures "our shared belief that we read best alone, at night, becoming our book, desiring to be the perfect reader we honor as the 'scholar'." And he then points out that this solitary individual silence surrounding our ideal reading would have been utterly alien and incomprehensible to early Anglo-Saxon readers, as indeed most readers in the past, for whom reading was (almost) always aloud and a public activity. Anglo-Saxon reading emerged as the performance of a 'textual community', a monastery, of which only a few members could literally read the strange marks on the page, could make these visible marks into spoken words (Latin), of which some more could translate into Old English so that the entire community could then, as it were, be on the same page - all of the monks sharing in a general agreement on the meaning of the text.

Turning to the etymology of the English 'read', Howe then takes us directly into the world of The Lord of the Rings. Some quotes:

[Of the OE ræd and rædean] these words and their cognate forms in other Indo-European languages first denoted the act of giving counsel through speech. .... these Germanic cognates share the principal meanings of 'to give advice or counsel,' 'to exercise control over something', and 'to explain something obscure,' such as a riddle... only Old English and, perhaps following its lead, Old Norse extended the meaning of 'to explain something obscure' to mean 'the interpreation of ordinary writing. 'Ordinary writing' must be distinguished from the original... writan 'to cut a figure in something' and more specifically, ' to incise runic letters in stone'. These runic inscriptions do not belong to the category of ordinary writing, and thus deciphering them would have fallen under one of the original senses of rædan, namely 'to explain something obscure.'

All of the above is Howe drawing on past scholars, but he now introduces some additional cognates to make the point that what is implicit in the above is that:

the giving of counsel, or the exercising of control, or the explaining of something obscure could only have been a spoken act in the cultures that used these various languages before the introduction of writing.

In other words, 'reading' for the heathen ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons (for they only learned to read on conversion to a religion with a Book) is inherently something that involves speaking to an audience, a 'textual community' whose part it is to arrive, as a community, at consensus as to the meaning of what is being read - think: 'Council of Elrond', when the wise read the riddle of their times.

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Take away

The original post and the very first line of the first answer point precisely to the complicated movement Tolkien is enacting on us. He knows full well (and exploits to the hilt) our modern idea of reading as solitary escape from the world (consider Pippin stealing away to a quiet spot to read the hot little stone in his hands). But he situates his story in a world in which nobody - save perhaps mad Bilbo Baggins - reads alone; even the Red Book is meant (as Frodo tells Sam) to be read aloud so that the Hobbits recall an age that was past. So as we move through this world of story we are exposed to almost a blizzard of different senses of 'reading', as also to a mythical reflection (via the Elves) upon the romantic ideal of solitary reading, a criticism of the modern idea actually, for Tolkien points out that someone is always at the other end of a text.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Yeah, a personal observation, if I may. Back in the days of G+ some 5 of us co-authored an essay (now published in a volume with the wonderful title 'A Wilderness of Dragons'). The co-authoring was a nightmare, tbh, and in reality was two of us privately writing up respectively 2/3 and 1/3 of the essay. But prior to the writing we had all spent several months in a closed G+ group reading, in tandem, Verlyn Flieger on the Old Forest and House of Bombadil, and that part - and of course much more - of LotR. I have a sense that when I trot out thanks to my co-readers and exclaim how transformative was that experience it sounds much the same empty words as when I proclaim how wonderful is now nuPlaza Lore. What can I do? The experience transformed my whole way of thinking about a story that I had already read so many times over so many years, albeit always privately.

The plaza is not a monastery! But it is a textual community, of sorts, and quite a splendid one with some amazing readers, both regulars and the odd emeritus who pops in every now and again. Engaging on the plaza is of course not exactly the same as our few months reading LotR together; it is a different version of the same, only better.

(6)

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Turning to the etymology of the English 'read', Howe then takes us directly into the world of The Lord of the Rings. Some quotes:

[Of the OE ræd and rædean] these words and their cognate forms in other Indo-European languages first denoted the act of giving counsel through speech. .... these Germanic cognates share the principal meanings of 'to give advice or counsel,' 'to exercise control over something', and 'to explain something obscure,' such as a riddle... only Old English and, perhaps following its lead, Old Norse extended the meaning of 'to explain something obscure' to mean 'the interpreation of ordinary writing. 'Ordinary writing' must be distinguished from the original... writan 'to cut a figure in something' and more specifically, ' to incise runic letters in stone'. These runic inscriptions do not belong to the category of ordinary writing, and thus deciphering them would have fallen under one of the original senses of rædan, namely 'to explain something obscure.'

All of the above is Howe drawing on past scholars, but he now introduces some additional cognates to make the point that what is implicit in the above is that:

the giving of counsel, or the exercising of control, or the explaining of something obscure could only have been a spoken act in the cultures that used these various languages before the introduction of writing.

In other words, 'reading' for the heathen ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons (for they only learned to read on conversion to a religion with a Book) is inherently something that involves speaking to an audience, a 'textual community' whose part it is to arrive, as a community, at consensus as to the meaning of what is being read - think: 'Council of Elrond', when the wise read the riddle of their times.

It ain't the word 'reading', but rædean..sounds to me as reden/redeneren in Dutch, meaning reason(ing) in English. And I feel this fits better to the concept. So in the difference of words, reasoning for the illiterate Anglo-Saxons it is the oral tradition that dominates the scene. It is an oral textual community that comes together to reason, can be philosophical, can be political, economical, social... day to day life. There wasn't obscurity to them. There is obscurity for us today, because of this oral tradition doesn't give the written fundamentals the academic world really want to have as proof. Where I see the written tradition as static, I see the oral tradition as fluent.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Aiks, you are giving random etymology! You cannot just say 'rædean' is not 'reading' but more like 'reasoning'. Well, you can and did, and I think I know what you mean. But in the post above I am quoting from someone who appears to know what he is talking about: the bottom line is that the word 'rædean' predates the speaking of words out of a book (the Book), indeed predates contact with books, and had an established meaning in ancient oral culture, and so the modern 'read' carries slivers of more ancient meanings - slivers that in the hands of Tolkien are opened up into a whole way of his characters engaging with their world. Middle-earth is read by those within it.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

It is about the sound behind the word. How does the ear hear it? Not what the eye reads. Even rædean is written differently, it got a sound base that connect for me straight to the word 'reden' in Dutch. A word we don't use so much anymore these days. Which means reason in English. Words before we standardised language to write with, came how you spoke them. Depending on area, town or even village, one word could be written in many likely ways but not the same. I know you quoted, but it doesn't mean I would agree with the quote. True the word predates reading from books and connect to the rich oral culture of the Anglo-Saxons, and other peoples from sixty and seventh century. I don't want the slivers only, I want the essence of the whole culture, feel it through. Etylomogy just helps me partly on the road, not fully. The rest I have to interpret on feelings and sound.

But aye how Tolkien went on his books, that was his work and determination and unique approach, but not what I was addressing here, but what you did.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

It is about the sound behind the word. How does the ear hear it? Not what the eye reads. Even rædean is written differently, it got a sound base that connect for me straight to the word 'reden' in Dutch. A word we don't use so much anymore these days. Which means reason in English. Words before we standardised language to write with, came how you spoke them. Depending on area, town or even village, one word could be written in many likely ways but not the same. I know you quoted, but it doesn't mean I would agree with the quote. True the word predates reading from books and connect to the rich oral culture of the Anglo-Saxons, and other peoples from sixty and seventh century. I don't want the slivers only, I want the essence of the whole culture, feel it through. Etylomogy just helps me partly on the road, not fully. The rest I have to interpret on feelings and sound.

But aye how Tolkien went on his books, that was his work and determination and unique approach, but not what I was addressing here, but what you did.

Aiks, I feel properly told off, as I have not been for a long time. Thank you.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

Aiks, I am not quite sure where to pinpoint our disagreement. You mention ear and eye, but what about also meaning?

Let me put it another way, if we assume that Tolkien was well aware of the etymology given by Howe above, then if we open the Two Towers and start to read from the very beginning of chapter 1, 'The Departure of Boromir', we discover an account, a model even, of decision-making or choice by a 'textual community'. 'Reading' = teasing out the reality behind obscure signs = guessing a riddle = the right discussion amongst the members of the textual community, the counsel, before a choice is made. Tolkien is taking us into the ancient meaning of the word, teaching us what 'reading' means, etymologically speaking.

Aragorn sped on up the hill. Every now and again he bent to the ground. Hobbits go light, and their footprints are not easy even for a Ranger to read, but not far from the top a spring crossed the path, and in the wet earth he saw what he was seeking.
‘I read the signs aright,’ he said to himself. ‘Frodo ran to the hill-top. I wonder what he saw there? But he returned by the same way, and went down the hill again.’
Aragorn hesitated...

‘I have not seen these tokens before,’ said Aragorn. ‘What do they mean?’
‘S is for Sauron,’ said Gimli. ‘That is easy to read.’
‘Nay!’ said Legolas. ‘Sauron does not use the elf-runes.’
‘Neither does he use his right name, nor permit it to be spelt or spoken,’ said Aragorn. ‘And he does not use white. The Orcs in the service of Barad-dûr use the sign of the Red Eye.’ He stood for a moment in thought. ‘S is for Saruman, I guess,’ he said at length... But Saruman has many ways of learning news. Do you remember the birds?’
‘Well, we have no time to ponder riddles,’ said Gimli. ‘Let us bear Boromir away!’
‘But after that we must guess the riddles, if we are to choose our course rightly,’ answered Aragorn.
‘Maybe there is no right choice,’ said Gimli.

‘There are some clear prints here,’ he said. ‘A hobbit waded out into the water and back; but I cannot say how long ago.’
‘How then do you read this riddle?’ asked Gimli.

‘Here is another riddle!’ said Gimli. ‘But it needs the light of day, and for that we cannot wait.’
‘Yet however you read it, it seems not unhopeful,’ said Legolas. ‘Enemies of the Orcs are likely to be our friends.'

‘That is true,’ said Aragorn. ‘But if I read the signs back yonder rightly, the Orcs of the White Hand prevailed, and the whole company is now bound for Isengard. Their present course bears me out.’

‘I said that it was a hard choice,’ said Aragorn. ‘How shall we end this debate?’
‘You are our guide,’ said Gimli, ‘and you are skilled in the chase. You shall choose.’
‘My heart bids me go on,’ said Legolas. ‘But we must hold together. I will follow your counsel.’
‘You give the choice to an ill chooser,’ said Aragorn.... ‘We will not walk in the dark,’ he said at length.
‘The peril of missing the trail or signs of other coming and going seems to me the greater. If the Moon gave enough light, we would use it, but alas! he sets early and is yet young and pale.’
‘And tonight he is shrouded anyway,’ Gimli murmured.
‘Would that the Lady had given us a light, such a gift as she gave to Frodo!’
‘It will be more needed where it is bestowed,’ said Aragorn. ‘With him lies the true Quest. Ours is but a small matter in the great deeds of this time. A vain pursuit from its beginning, maybe, which no choice of mine can mar or mend. Well, I have chosen. So let us use the time as best we may!’

[Aikári Salmarinian]

Chrys: In tale you are right. I know the search for Merry and Pippin across Rohan. And Frodo and Sam by the Anduin. I won't put in this discussion as you are right on that approach. Thanks to digging up those quote from Boromir's chapter.

But at your earlier assumption, allow me first to study actually MC of Tolkien (got this book and few others some days ago). I did study a little but didn't come further than the mention of W.P. Ker on page 9. In few hours I will have combed through the essays and get about it back to you.
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This etymology idea of me is bit messing around with languages. English, how well I express myself with it, will never be my first language. That is Dutch. And a word as 'read' I cannot feel the deeper meaning behind as a native English can. Anglo-Saxon is Germanic of origins. So it is more than logical for me to trace via modern Germanic languages which words connect better, in Dutch and German. Because often there is bit of old-fashioned word on the fringes that connects back, sounding slightly bit different. The American influence after WWII changed a lot of our use of words prior the war and internet even more. We got even here intellectual concerns about children in school who cannot even read or write proper Dutch and how poor their levels are.

So the sound behind 'rædean' sounds very much as I say 'reden' in modern Dutch. And that means reason in English. 'Redeneren' (verb of reden) is orally discussing something. Putting a conclusion together or an explanation, but there is no writing involved. It is part of the nature/structure of conversing (a talk).

But I stop this etymology topic, as I feel we have shone our light on it enough.

I'll read the Critics and get back to you.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

I have finished reading the Critics. A summarisation I posted in my Little Corner. The other I'll read tomorrow.

[Silky Gooseness]

I’ve nothing clever to add to this discussion but I’ve really enjoyed reading (ha, ha) it! I wonder what further links in other languages there might be to the various meanings of “read”.

[Chrysophylax Dives]

I think, quite seriously, that we stand on the brink of a theological discussion with that question. With the above frame, the monastery is comparable to the plaza is comparable to the three companions tracking two Hobbits - all instances of textual communities reading together. But the monastery is liable to catch us because inside here is one Book, and the fact of one Book introduces a new idea of one reading encompassing the whole world. So we would not be able to avoid the 'Word' of the Gospel, the Greek 'logos', as also the mystical Kabbalistic fascination with letters. In other words, one steps into Plato's 'Timaeus' - which has to be done, one way or another, sooner or later, because that is where Númenor arises. But it is a big step. Easier to stay with the pre-Christian etymology of English reading as it flows out of a Shire with a post office.

[Aikári Salmarinian]

I will not be part of any theological discussion. It is a line I am not willing to cross, because I have insufficient knowledge of that matter and my interest is not in it. It makes me feel uncomfortable. I am sorry.