Rishab Week 1: Speaking Middle Earth - How Invented Worlds Build Real Worlds

Written by: Rishab Thaker

Have you ever loved a hobby so much that you accidentally wrote one of the best-selling fantasy series of all time just to justify it?

I was reading this fascinating BBC article about J.R.R Tolkien and other writers, and it completely shifted

how I view The Lord of the Rings. Most people assume that Tolkien came up with

with his fantasy world first, and then invented the beautiful languages to make the elves and dwarves feel

authentic. It’s actually the opposite, as Tolkien was a linguist first. He invented elvish (specifically Quenya

and Sindarin) for fun, and then realized that his languages needed a world of people to speak them.

Tolkien's Elvish Script, Source: alejomiranda/Getty Images

This fits perfectly with our Q1 theme of “Language and Identity". For Tolkien’s characters, their language is their identity. The Elves speak flowing, melodic tongues that reflect their immortal, nature-bound existence. The Dwarves, on the other hand, speak Khuzdul, a harsh, secretive language that mirrors their tough, insulated, mountain-dwelling culture. You can’t separate who they are from how they speak.

Reading this made me think about how we construct our own identities through the words we choose. We may not be speaking Elvish in the hallways (although we totally should), but the slang we use, the tone we adopt with our friends versus our teachers, and even the memes we reference are all ways we signal who we are and what “tribe” we belong to. Tolkien just took that concept to his own, literal, mythological, extreme.

I am truly curious to know how you all think. Have you ever noticed yourself switching your “language”, or pattern of speech, to fit a certain identity? And be honest- has anyone here actually tried to learn High Valyrian or Elvish?


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