Words Per Mile

Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul,
ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

Happy birthday, Professor Tolkien! How many of you will be doing the Tolkien Toast later tonight?

It is crazy to think about just how much one man’s work has influenced fantasy as a genre–although reducing Tolkien’s collected works and universes down to the phrase “one man’s work” feels diminutive as well. I dare someone to find me a fantasy novel written in the last century that doesn’t have his mark all over it.

And the funniest thing about it all–at least to my nerdy self–is how, on some level, Tolkien created this sprawling, lengthy, extremely-well-developed, and massively-influential world/epic/series…largely to give his constructed language a platform and a reason for other people to care.

Constructed languages, or conlangs, aren’t new–the oldest entry on Wikipedia is from the 12th century AD–but they’ve exploded in popularity in the last century or so. Turns out that it’s pretty impossible to artificially construct a new language (it can happen naturally, such as in the case of Nicaraguan Sign Language), but that doesn’t stop people with a passion for inventing and learning these languages.

Two excellent books I’ve read about conlangs include In the Land of Invented Languages by Arika Okrent and The Art of Language Invention by David J. Peterson, who built the Dothraki language for HBO’s Game of Thrones. Of course, both writers pay homage to Tolkien.

To the Professor!