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> You've got to respect the man for his attention to detail (...) fully creating multiple language families for instance These things are related, but in the e
by pdpi 11y ago
> You've got to respect the man for his attention to detail (...) fully creating multiple language families for instance
These things are related, but in the exact opposite way from what you're suggesting.
Tolkien was, first and foremost, a linguist. Language was his passion, and he was of the opinion that, e.g., Esperanto was much more of a dead language than Latin or Ancient Greek are, because Esperanto doesn't have a culture to call its own, whereas Latin and Ancient Greek have a wealth of culture attached to them, and, therefore, a life of their own.
Elvish and dwarfish weren't invented to give Middle Earth more detail. Middle Earth was invented so that the languages would be, in a sense, alive.
- eru 11y agoAt least that's what he said. The Hobbit for example would / could have been told without the languages, and was at first independent of the Middle Earth.
- hcrisp 11y agoRelevant quote: "All this only as background to the stories, though languages and names are for me inextricable from the stories. They are and were so to speak an attempt to give a background or a world in which my expressions of linguistic taste could have a function. The stories were comparatively late in coming." From letter 163.
- Kiro 11y ago> opposite way from what you're suggesting You're saying the same thing so how is it opposite? Or was the last paragraph added after your reply?