Re: Missing langs? (was: Re: Conlang T-shirt)

Paul Bennett wrote:

> Going back to the original discussion (around a pub table at the recent
> conlangcon):
>
> I think we agreed against Klingon on the principle that any useful
information
> is commercially protected.  Conlang (the list at least) seems to be far too
much
> of an "open source" endeavour to condone that sort of thing.  E-o I think
we
> could accept, but I'm not personally sure whether Quenya falls under the
same
> banner as Klingon, not knowing enough about the promulgation of Tolkiens
langs
> in general.
There's a story to be told there.  Apparently there are vast amounts
of information on Tolkien's languages *extant*, but they are in the
possession of about four scholars, who were given the material by
Christopher Tolkien in order to publish it, the way Christopher
himself has published Tolkien's history.  But they have been
singularly unforthcoming in publishing it, and have viciously attacked
people who have so much as web-published *a single sentence scrawled
absent-mindedly by Tolkien in the corner of a sheet of paper* from
that collection.

The Tolkien estate itself, and Christopher Tolkien, have not
themselves commented one way or another on this, though Christopher
Tolkien is known to have cited with apparent approval an early
"unofficial and unauthorized" publication about Elven linguistics, and
J.R.R. himself is known to have wanted more material on his languages
to be available to the public.

But these scholars, known as the "Elfconners," have done their best
to suggest that for anyone except themselves to publish anything, on
paper or on the web, about Tolkien's languages, is an offense against
his ghost and a disservice to his heirs.  They have in fact even
attempted to conceal, as much as possible, the fact that they *have*
the materials.  And needless to say complaints about the many years
going by without a single page of Tolkien's clear handwriting being
converted to print are intolerable to them.

Interestingly, while reading all this, I found out that a
net-acquaintance of mine, David Salo, whom I know from completely
unrelated contexts, plays a key part in the story:

Relevant links:
http://www.dcs.ed.ac.uk/misc/local/TolkLang/messages/Vol21/21.05
http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/copyrigh.htm


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