Middle Earth Ranger Forum

I have always pronounce the dragon’s name with an ‘aw’ (like saw) sound, and then my son asked why they pronounced it with an ‘ou’ (like proud) in the movie. I assured him they were wrong and he needn’t concern himself with trifles produced by hacks.

Then I read the pronunciation guide in appendix e of ROTK. Turns out they got one thing right in those movies.

Time to go admit my mistake.

Well, I guess I've always been wrong to then, I shared your view that they were wrong in the movies, with your first pronunciation being the way I always read it in the books. Time to retrain my brain

Hunh. Well of course there's a pronunciation guide. I'd forgotten that.
Being away from my books at the moment, did it note the origin of the name by any chance?

Also... interesting: there's a Westron version as well, though without any etymology it seems:
https://www.elfdict.com/w/smaug

Elleth wrote:Hunh. Well of course there's a pronunciation guide. I'd forgotten that.
Being away from my books at the moment, did it note the origin of the name by any chance?

Also... interesting: there's a Westron version as well, though without any etymology it seems:
https://www.elfdict.com/w/smaug

Well, Appendix E didn't reference the Smaug specifically, just the way to pronounce dipthongs in Sindarin and where other languages differed in comparison. There was only the Sindarin for the au dipthong so I assume that, without any notes to alternate spelling, the Sindarin pronunciation is the standard.

I think I've read that Smaug is related to something from Welsh, which is interesting, because the Polish word for dragon is 'smok.'