Thursday, February 21, 2013

In case ANYONE wonders, no, Tolkien's "imaginary languages" are not dream languages.

Hélène Smith dreamt up Martian in her seances. JRRT never made a seance in his life as far as I know. He did not dream up his languages, he constructed them - from childish code languages (like woc for cow, dar for there in one of them, based entirely on English, nearly - a bit like Syldavian for Marrolsch, but with a lot greater audible difference) up to Quenya and Sindarin. What Tolkien did is not at all what Hélène Smith did, but rather what devils may have done before Hélène Smith had her Martian, or before Joseph Smith had his "Reformed Egyptian of the Nephites" and what God did before giving new languages after Tower of Babel (I do not think God allowed devils to form the languages of the 72 nations). But on a less grandiose scale, for fun and not for deception./HGL

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