Re: Snow White's Nightmarish CGI Dwarfs

On 2025-03-30 15:33:43 +0000, Paul S Person said:

> On Sat, 29 Mar 2025 22:51:58 -0400, Zhou Wei <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> 
>> In article <[email protected]>, [email protected] wrote:
>> 
>>> https://youtu.be/0K34lo5Xll4?si=Z95qAdMSkMPcoE8g
>> 
>> Someone at Disney should've told Peter Dinklage that the dwarves 
>> in>Snow White are not little people, they're mythological creatures 
>> that>have existed for hundreds of years. Furthermore, they don't live 
>> in a>cave, they work in a cave.
> 
> I have no plans to see the recent atrocity, but the original 1937
> classic has "Dwarfs" not "Dwarves".
> 
> "Dwarves" was used by JRR Tokien using "Elves" as a model.

There are similar arguments as to whether "elfs" or "elves" is 
'correct'. These days "elves" is considered correct.



> Perhaps you are confusing his "Dwarves" with mythological "Dwarfs". Or 
> perhaps not. Apparently, this sort of thing became widespread in 2000. 
> Perhaps the news of PJ's films caused a lot of people to read JRRT.

A lot of places claim JRR Tolkien 'invented' the word "dwarves", but 
they are wrong. Tolkien's books were written the 1930s and 1940s, but 
the word "dwarves" dates back to at least 1818, and probably used 
earlier than that. Tolkien's books simply made that old version of the 
word somewhat more generally known.
<https://www.oed.com/dictionary/dwarf_n?tab=meaning_and_use#5867894>

Both "dwarves" and "dwarfs" are considered correct plurals in English, 
although "dwarfs" is more commonly used. Another simialr example is the 
plural of "wharf", with both "wharves" and "wharfs" being considered 
correct.

Using the examples of other words ending with an 'f', giving plurals of 
"elves", "shelves", "wolves", etc., the real 'correct' plurals should 
be "dwarves" and "wharves".

Just one of the many many many inconsistencies in English (even without 
including problems caused by "American English").



> Some humans are called "Dwarfs"; in this sense "Dwarfism" is a genetic
> condition. Whether this use violates PC I have no idea.
> I don't think it is clear that the Disney Dwarfs are mythological
> Dwarfs, although they may well be, since this is, after all, a fairy
> tale. I have no doubt that the recent live-action version botches this
> badly -- the only real purpose of doing a live-action version appears
> to be trashing the original animated film .
> 
> Some lawn decorations are called "Dwarfs". And there appear to be
> several species of plants and animals which have "Dwarf" in at least
> their popular, if not their scientific, name.