The brilliant J.R.R. Tolkien. Always with a cigar in his mouth. He reminds me of US President Roosevelt.
How can you not be fascinated by a man who could speak over 20 languages and CREATED over 20 languages himself! Who does that?! NO ONE. Except this man.
As such, a wise man can learn to be wiser still by studying Tolkien and the works he created. What is most interesting to me was Tolkien’s Christian faith, the man was a strong Catholic. I want you to name someone who can speak over 20 languages and who has created over 5 languages who is not a Christian. Well, this man was, and he was one HELL of a wise man. For me, it is hard to argue with someone who was so brilliant, and yet came to the conclusion that God was real, and Jesus was the only way to the Father.
I was even more fascinated to discover that it was J.R.R. Tolkien who led C.S. Lewis to Christ, and not the other way around! Although C.S. Lewis was brought up Christian, he abandoned the faith in his teen years and become a devout Atheist and heavily interested in the occult. That all changed once he met Tolkien. I’ll bet you he used his power of reasoning to understand that anyone who was an even greater master of the craft of writing and language than he [Lewis] was, and who could speak more languages than Lewis could even fathom, was probably someone worth listening to… Someone whose faith was well founded. Right? After all, most of us probably would have to dedicate a lifetime to even begin reading the Bible in Hebrew. Tolkien probably would have it done and the Hebrew Bible memorized in a year. :/ He’d follow that up by writing the whole thing out in Farsi and Arabic, which he would’ve learned in his offtime during the times he WASN’T mastering Hebrew. *the mind wobbles*
Here are the languages Tolkien mastered and could both speak and write: Latin, French, German, Middle English, Old English, Finnish, Gothic, Greek, Italian, Old Norse, Spanish, Welsh, and Medieval Welsh. He also could speak and write in: Danish, Dutch, Lombardic, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Swedish and modern forms of other Germanic and Slavonic languages. He created the following languages himself: Elvish, Primitive Quendian (the proto-language), Common Eldarin, Quenya, Goldogrin, Telerin, Sindarin, Ilkorin, Nandorin, Avarin, Taliska, Adunaic, Soval Phare (Common Speech known as Westron in English), Dalish, Rohirric (representing Anglo-Saxon), Rhovanion (representing Gothic), Haladin, Dunlendish, Drug, Haradrim, Easterling, Khuzdul, Iglishmek, Entish, Valarin, Orcish, Black Speech (Sauron’s evil language), Naffarin, Gautisk (in which Tolkien’s name was spelled “Undarhruimenitupp” :P) and Mago/Magol…. And these are only the languages with full grammar and a vocabulary that we puny humans have written records of. He created many more incomplete and/or incomprehensible languages, and many documents that Tolkien wrote have still yet to be published in any form. Who knows what else was kicking around in Tolkien’s head, for all we know he knew and had created 50 more languages and had them all inside his brain… but never put pen to paper…. Absolutely insane.
Here is the FULL interview with JRR Tolkien first recorded in 1968! Tolkien died in 1973 at the age of 81 (he was born in 1892 as John Ronald Reuel Tolkien). Too bad no one ever had the foresight to record an interview of J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis TOGETHER. Only imagine the fascinating conversations they must’ve had….
BBC Archival Footage -In Their Own Words British Authors, J.R.R. Tolkien Part 1
BBC Archival Footage -In Their Own Words British Authors, J.R.R. Tolkien Part 2
