Re: history of conlanging (aka Conlang influences, aka Lest darkness fall)

Me, I read The Hobbit & LotR before I started inventing ur-Livagian,
though it is possible that it was something by Tolkien that started me
on inventing scripts. But what started me on inventing a language was a
burgeoning interest in English grammar and phonology and phonetics
combined with having the sort of mind that cannot study anything
without inventing a counterpart of it. Criminally, my childhood copy
of LotR omitted the appendices; I discovered these in my mid-teens,
with great joy (and great disgust at having formerly been cheated of
them). So it wasn't Tolkien that got me into conlanging, but it was
Tolkien that got me into Conlang (the story of which I have told
here enough times before).

--And.