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Glossopoeia, the construction of languages, was Tolkien's hobby for most of his life. [1] [2] At a little over 13, he helped construct a sound substitution cypher known as Nevbosh, [T 1] 'new nonsense', which grew to include some elements of actual invented language. Tolkien stated that this was not his first effort in invented languages.
The folklorist and Tolkien scholar Dimitra Fimi writes that the desire to create a national mythology was not unique to Tolkien. Attempts, sometimes fraudulent, with varying degrees of success, had been made in Denmark, Finland, Germany, Scotland, and Wales in the 18th and 19th centuries. [ 14 ]
As Tolkien stated: The invention of languages is the foundation. The 'stories' were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows. [T 1] Tolkien created scripts for his Elvish languages, of which the best known are Sarati, Tengwar, and Cirth.
Tolkien constructed languages for the Elves to sound pleasant, and the Black Speech of the evil land of Mordor to sound harsh; poetry suitable for various peoples of his invented world of Middle-earth; and many place-names, chosen to convey the nature of each region.
The languages were the first thing Tolkien created for his mythos, starting with what he originally called "Qenya", the first primitive form of Elvish. This was later called Quenya (High-elven) and is one of the two most complete of Tolkien's languages (the other being Sindarin , or Grey-elven).
A Secret Vice 2016 critical edition cover Editors Dimitra Fimi Andrew Higgins Author J.R.R. Tolkien Language English Subjects Conlanging, Linguistics, Philology Published 7 April 2016 Publisher HarperCollins Publication place United Kingdom Media type Hardback Pages 300 ISBN 978-0-00-813139-5 "A Secret Vice", also known as "A Hobby for The Home", is a lecture first presented by English ...
Scholars including Nick Groom place Tolkien in the tradition of English antiquarianism, where 18th century authors like Thomas Chatterton, Thomas Percy, and William Stukeley created a wide variety of antique-seeming materials much as Tolkien did, including calligraphy, invented language, forged medieval manuscripts, genealogies, maps, heraldry ...
Tolkien is best known as the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, both set in Middle-earth. [4] He created a family of invented languages for Elves, carefully designing the differences between them to reflect their distance from their imaginary common origin.