JRR Tolkien created Elvish and many other writers have made up new words and phrases. But can you really construct a whole new lexicon? Hephzibah Anderson takes a look.

Authors regularly create worlds that are so fully realised they come with their own topography, history and mythology. Yet nothing is as piquant as language, which is why some writers go that step further and create their own. Martin may have only sprinkled his books with Dothraki, but JR Tolkien created multiple conlangs, several so precise that they’ve become the subject of university classes.

A philologist whose day job was teaching classical languages at Oxford University, he learnt Latin, French and German as a child, and later picked up Welsh, Finnish, Old Norse and Old English. When it came to writing The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, his intimacy with all those tongues infused the names of the people and places he dreamt up. It also shaped his construction of Middle-Earth languages including High and Common Elvish (Quenya and Sindarin), along with Dwarvish, Black Speech and Entish, and a clutch of others that are less fully developed. More.

See: BBC

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