How do you say Gandalf?

Gandalf rhymes with Golf.

Like “fall” to my ear.

Great story, great movies.
However. So many actors had to essentially make up accents.

I saw Liv Tyler on a talk show once, and she was saying they had sort of invented “Elvin,” because they didn’t want to sound nonsensical while speaking the pretend language.

I would go with “Gan”-“dolph.” Like Adolph.

But you definitely hear different characters saying names and trying to add the made up accent, with mixed results.

I’ve always rhymed it with Ralph.

Here’s a recording of Tolkien saying and that’s how he pronounced it as well. Which I think is pretty definitive…

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NLJ9z2bzAdQ&feature=youtu.be

@Lightlyseared – but the creator of .gif calls it “jiff” Authors can be wrong.

Anyway, I’m just advocating for artists not owning the public imagination, just because they contributed to it.

To me it’s Gand-all-f, and Sah-roo-man, but that’s just because the Mind’s Eye got to me before the movies came out.

I just want to point out that @Smashley and I completely agree on the .gif vs .jif thing. Gif stand for graphical interface format. Jif stands for a brand of peanut butter.

I thought you were going to ask whether it was “gan-dolph” or “gan-doff”. We often don’t pronounce /l/ between a vowel and another consonant (e.g. walk, talk, half, and for many people: palm and calm).

I would say Gandalf with a as in pal.