Languages constructed by Tolkien

The English philologist and author J. R. R. Tolkien created several constructed languages, mostly related to his fictional world of Middle-earth. Inventing languages, something that he called glossopoeia (paralleling his idea of mythopoeia or myth-making), was a lifelong occupation for Tolkien, starting in his teens.

Tolkien's glossopoeia has two temporal dimensions: the internal (fictional) timeline of events in Middle-earth described in The Silmarillion and other writings, and the external timeline of Tolkien's own life during which he often revised and refined his languages and their fictional history. Tolkien scholars have published a substantial volume of Tolkien's linguistic material in the History of Middle-earth books, and the Vinyar Tengwar and Parma Eldalamberon journals. Scholars such as Carl F. Hostetter, David Salo and Elizabeth Solopova have published grammars and studies of the languages.

He created a large family of Elvish languages, the best-known and most developed being Quenya and Sindarin. In addition, he sketched in the Mannish languages of Adûnaic and Rohirric; the Dwarvish language of Khuzdul; the Entish language; and the Black Speech, in the fiction a constructed language enforced on the Orcs by the Dark Lord Sauron. Tolkien supplemented his languages with several scripts.

Tolkien was a professional philologist of ancient Germanic languages, specialising in Old English. Glossopoeia, the construction of languages, was Tolkien's hobby for most of his life. At a little over 13, he helped construct a sound substitution cypher known as Nevbosh, 'new nonsense', which grew to include some elements of actual invented language. Tolkien stated that this was not his first effort in invented languages. Shortly thereafter, he developed a true invented language called Naffarin. One of his early projects was the reconstruction of an unrecorded early Germanic language which might have been spoken by the people of Beowulf in the Germanic Heroic Age.

In 1931, Tolkien gave a lecture about his passion for constructed languages, titled A Secret Vice. Here he contrasts his project of artistic languages constructed for aesthetic pleasure with the pragmatism of international auxiliary languages. The lecture also discusses Tolkien's views on phonaesthetics, citing Greek, Finnish, and Welsh as examples of "languages which have a very characteristic and in their different ways beautiful word-form". Part of the lecture was published in The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays; in the part that was not, Tolkien gave the example of "Fonwegian", a language with "no connection whatever with any other known language".

Being a skilled calligrapher, Tolkien invented scripts for his languages. The scripts included Sarati, Cirth, and Tengwar.

Tolkien was of the opinion that the invention of an artistic language in order to be convincing and pleasing must include not only the language's historical development, but also the history of its speakers, and especially the mythology associated with both the language and the speakers. It was this idea that an "Elvish language" must be associated with a complex history and mythology of the Elves that was at the core of the development of Tolkien's legendarium.

Tolkien wrote in one of his letters: