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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.
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.
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).
Tolkien developed a complex internal history of characters to speak his Elvish languages in their own fictional universe. He felt that his languages changed and developed over time, as did the historical languages which he studied professionally—not in a vacuum, but as a result of the migrations and interactions of the peoples who spoke them.
Beowulf ' s eotenas [ond] ylfe [ond] orcneas, "ogres [and] elves [and] devil-corpses" helped to inspire Tolkien to create orcs, Elves, and other races. [13] Tolkien was an expert on Old English literature, especially the epic poem Beowulf, and made many uses of it in The Lord of the Rings.
Later a great number of languages of Middle-earth were written using the Tengwar, including Sindarin. Tolkien used Tengwar to write samples in English. [9] The inscription on the One Ring, a couplet in the Black Speech from the Ring Verse, was written in the Elvish Tengwar script, with heavy flourishes, as Mordor had no script of its own. [10]
Macbeth was a favourite of the seventeenth-century diarist Samuel Pepys, who saw the play on 5 November 1664 ("admirably acted"), 28 December 1666 ("most excellently acted"), ten days later on 7 January 1667 ("though I saw it lately, yet [it] appears a most excellent play in all respects"), on 19 April 1667 ("one of the best plays for a stage ...
The Finnish language had been a major source of inspiration, but Tolkien was also familiar with Latin, Greek, and ancient Germanic languages when he began constructing Quenya. Another notable feature of Tolkien's Elvish languages was his development of a complex internal history of characters to speak those tongues in their own fictional universe.