""The Shire" is based on rural England and not any other country in the world... The toponymy of The Shire...is a "parody" of that of rural England, in much the same sense as are its inhabitants: they go together and are meant to. After all the book is English, and by an Englishman, and presumably even those who wish its narrative and dialogue turned into an idiom that they understand, will not ask of a translator that he should deliberately attempt to destroy the local colour."
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Original Language: English
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Letter to Rayner Unwin (3 July 1956), quoted in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (1981), p. 250
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien
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