Re: tolkien?

<<i was wondering who many of you were in spired by tolkien? thats why i
started all this in the first place. and if you werent inspired by tolkien who or
what made you start?>>

Not I.

I had, of course, heard of Tolkien--I even attempted to read one of his
books, once.   But no, such was (and is) not for me.   At any rate, even though I
knew of Tolkien, I had no idea he created languages until I came to this list.
 I came to language creation through two classes I was taking at once:
Esperanto, and my very first introductory linguistics course.   It was in my
introductory linguistics course, during a talk on morphology (we were discussing
Semitic triconosonantal roots, and so I was intent, since I'd already taken a year
of Arabic and loved it--or was it that I wasn't paying attention because I
already knew what they were talking about?), that I came up with the idea,
"Hey...   What if one were to create a language for the purposes of fun?"   And
from there I went.   It wasn't until a month and a half later that I learned that
others had come up with this idea, too, and many long before I had.   Up
until then I thought that Esperanto was the last created language, and that since
it had solved the problem of a universal auxiliary language (I was young,
yet), there was no need to try to create another.   Anyway, my first language was
regular, like Esperanto, but used a triconsonantal system, like Arabic.
Being on the list helped me move away from the regularity, though.   Now I'm
having real fun.   :)

-David.