I have been working Very Hard today, so haven’t fully kept up with Livejournal. I will say this: at one point in the evening twilight I saw a glowing neon sign on a Brussels building which appeared to say PIJE, which means "drinks" in Albanian and also Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian. When I looked a bit closer I realised it was a sign saying PUB with a shadow over the middle of the U and another over the right-hand side of the B. But the basic concept is similar. I suppose.
Anyway.
Terry Pratchett on his illness.
Harry Brighouse on Kenneth Morgan on Michael Foot.
Various Canadians are traumatised at the thought of a coalition government, for the first time since 1917. Oh dear, poor diddums.
This is a puzzle. Appendix E says:
This indicates that o is pronounced /ɔː/ (the vowel in lord for most English speakers).
But apparently Tolkien made some clarifications and corrections in The Road Goes Ever On (which I do not own, so cannot check) and all the pronunciation guides I can find on the web (e.g. this gentleman) take o to be /o/ as in (British) English pot. This is the pronunciation (mostly) used in the movies.
But if is remembering correctly, Tolkien himself pronounced it as /əʊ/!