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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).
One of these languages was created in around 1915, inspired by the Celtic languages, particularly Literary Welsh. Tolkien called it Goldogrin or "Gnomish" in English. He wrote a substantial dictionary of Gnomish and a grammar. [T 2] This is the first conceptual stage of the Sindarin language.
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.
Khuzdul (pronounced) is a fictional language created by J. R. R. Tolkien, one of the languages of Middle-earth, specifically the secret and private language of the Dwarves. He based its structure and phonology on Semitic languages, primarily Hebrew, with triconsonantal roots of words. Very little is known of the grammar.
Elvish Languages mapped to the sundering of the Elves: Tolkien worked out an intricate philological mapping of the variations in his invented language families to the history of the Elvish peoples and the complex migrations that he created to make use of the languages. Shown is the word for "Elves" in each of the languages.
Tolkien allows his characters to listen and appreciate "in highly Keatsian style", [20] enjoying the sound of language, as when the Hobbit Frodo Baggins, recently recovered from his near-fatal wound with the Nazgûl's Morgul-knife, sits dreamily in the safe Elvish haven of Rivendell: [20]