How Tolkien Invented Elvish Before He Wrote The Lord of the Rings
In 1931, J.R.R. Tolkien gave a lecture with an embarrassed title: "A Secret Vice." The vice was inventing languages. He'd been doing it since childhood — and by then, he had already spent two decades building Elvish.
The Lord of the Rings wasn't published until 1954. Here's how Tolkien created Elvish long before the story that made it famous.
The Counterintuitive Truth: Tolkien's Stories Were a Side Effect of His Languages
Most fans think Tolkien invented Elvish to make his stories richer. Tolkien said the opposite. In a letter, he wrote that the invention of languages was the foundation, and the stories were made to provide a world for the languages.
That's language-driven world-building: inventing a language first, then asking, "Who speaks this? What happened to them?" The answers became Middle-earth.
Timeline: Elvish Before Middle-earth
| Year | Milestone |
|---|---|
| ~1900s | Young Tolkien plays with invented languages like "Animalic" and "Nevbosh" with cousins |
| ~1910 | Begins serious work on early Elvish |
| 1915 | Early Quenya ("Qenya") lexicon |
| 1917 | Early Sindarin ancestor ("Gnomish") grammar |
| 1931 | "A Secret Vice" lecture |
| 1937 | The Hobbit published |
| 1954–55 | The Lord of the Rings published |
| 1973 | Tolkien dies, still revising his languages |
Tolkien the Philologist
Tolkien was a philologist — a scholar of the history of languages.
- Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford (1925–1945)
- Merton Professor of English Language and Literature (1945–1959)
- Worked on the Oxford English Dictionary early in his career, researching words beginning with W
His expertise in Old English, Old Norse, Gothic, Finnish, and Welsh shaped everything he invented. Try the real language he taught in the Old English Translator.
How He Built Quenya
Tolkien discovered Finnish as a student and described it as intoxicating — like finding a wine cellar full of bottles of an amazing wine. Finnish sounds and grammar inspired Quenya's vowel-rich words and case endings.
How He Built Sindarin
Tolkien loved Welsh, which he found beautiful. Sindarin borrowed Welsh sound patterns and consonant mutations. Its early form was called "Gnomish" (Goldogrin), later "Noldorin," and finally Sindarin as Tolkien reorganised his mythology.
Why He Created So Many Languages
Tolkien understood that real languages exist in families and change over time. One language wasn't enough. To feel real, Elvish needed:
- An ancestor language
- Descendants that split apart
- Sound changes over thousands of years
- Borrowings between peoples
He also created languages for Dwarves, Men, Orcs, and Ents — because a real world has many peoples.
We call this ecosystem conlanging: building many related languages to create a believable linguistic world.
The Sound of Beauty
Tolkien had strong opinions about beautiful sounds. In his 1955 lecture "English and Welsh," he mentioned that many English speakers find the phrase "cellar door" beautiful when separated from its meaning — an example of pure sound pleasure.
He applied that sensitivity to Elvish, choosing sounds he found pleasing. That's why Quenya and Sindarin feel musical.
How He Wrote Languages Into Stories
Tolkien used languages to reveal history within his books:
- Names carry meaning: Mordor (Black Land), Gondor (Stone Land), Legolas (Green Leaf).
- Inscriptions reveal lore, like the Moria gate and the One Ring.
- Songs preserve older forms of language.
Readers feel history even without understanding a word.
Why Tolkien's Languages Feel Real
- Decades of development — over 60 years
- Historical depth — invented sound changes
- Real-language inspiration — Finnish, Welsh, Old English
- Cultural grounding — each language fits its people
- Imperfection — revisions and inconsistencies, like real languages
That last point is key. Tolkien's changing ideas created contradictions that resemble the messiness of natural languages.
What Experts Say
Scholar Tom Shippey, who taught at Oxford and wrote The Road to Middle-earth, has argued that Tolkien's philology is inseparable from his fiction. Linguists at the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship continue to publish Tolkien's language notes, revealing layers he never included in the novels.
Where Tolkien's Legacy Is Heading
Tolkien's unpublished language papers are still being edited and released. We predict that within the next two decades, more of Tolkien's linguistic material will be published than appeared during his lifetime — turning Elvish into one of the best-documented invented languages ever, half a century after its creator died.