Re: Was Tolkien a good conlanger? (was: Re: Good Books

David P:

> Further, I remain to be convinced that Tolkien was actually a
> *good* language creator, rather than just a prolific, or highly
> public, one.
Tolkien is the conculturist sans peer, based on the lasting critical and
commercial success of LOTR.

As for his conlanging reputation...

He was the first conlanger I know of to create related languages derived
from a proto-language.  I doubt anyone would have attempted that before 1786
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jones_(philologist)] and I'm not
familiar with anyone who attempted it before Tolkien.

He was the first conlanger since Swift to have many languages in a story,
each clearly with its own personality, even if the language in reality was
no more than a sketch.

I think some criticism of his conlanging abilities would be anachronistic --
there was little or no interest in fictional languages when he started
writing them in the early 1900s, so he never published any primer for any of
his languages, as there was assumed to be no market for such.

He was the first academic I know of to publicly confess to conlanging.

For me, he is and always will be the seminal figure in constructed languages.


> Yet, despite all this, and how hateful such words are to fans
> of fantasy and Tolkien (which includes a good many conlangers,
> I know), I claim that, as a conlanger, you should be glad of them.
> Why?   Simply because, as a community, we need diversity.
Um, I can't think of a hobby with more diverse interests than ours.  We
divide our langs into artlangs, auxlangs and loglangs, but acknowledge many
other types.  Many of us place different emphasis on aspects of the hobby --
neography, phonology, grammar, texts, conculture, art.

It's a beautiful and diverse hobby the way it is today, IMHO.

Best regards,

Jeffrey