Q: How Many Languages Did J.R.R. Tolkien Invent for Middle-earth?
ANSWER: There can be no correct or complete answer to this question. The reason why the question cannot be answered simply or authoritatively is that there is no true canon for Tolkien’s Middle-earth. The question of canon — what is authoritative and definitive with respect to settling questions about J.R.R. Tolkien’s vision of Middle-earth — has plagued Tolkien researchers for decades. It will probably never be settled, at least not in any generally acceptable way. For example, if Christopher Tolkien himself were to compile a final guide to the canon of J.R.R. Tolkien I and other researchers would most likely challenge one or more points in it, simply because the task of defining what should and should not be accepted as J.R.R. Tolkien’s intention is impossible to resolve.
J.R.R. Tolkien changed his mind about many things, sometimes many times. So even when you read a well-respected scholar’s attempt to explain a single concept in Tolkien’s world, you will find people who can point to exceptions, discrepancies, and convenient omissions of facts. The best scholars have to cherry-pick among the available information in order to construct a coherent thesis and attempt to support it; and no two scholars ever seem to agree on all the cherries they would pick.
Worse, many scholars — for lack of definitive information from Tolkien himself — resort to what Carl Hostetter so astutely named “Conflation and Circularity” in his essay “Elvish As She is Spoke”. Conflation is the process of combining texts from different periods of Tolkien’s life — drawn from different “phases of the work” (as Christopher sometime put it) — and treating them as if they are contemporary, provide enlightenment into each other, and can be used interchangeably. This practice is notably common in many Internet arguments where people quote chapter and verse from random Tolkien books as if they were all composed in a day. Circularity relies upon assumptions that are supported by conclusions and conclusions that require assumptions, often without clear disclosure that these cojoined assumptions and conclusions are directly related to each other.
An example of conflation is provided by the people who discuss the Second Prophecy of Mandos. This prophecy was introduced into one “phase” of the legendarium, dropped, and subsequently reintroduced in a later phase in a very substantially different form. In the earlier version Turin Turambar was to return to life/Earth at the end of Time to help defeat Melko for the final time. At that time he and his sister would be admitted to the ranks of the Valar (!) and become gods. In the later version, or more precisely the final version was explained by Christopher Tolkien in The Peoples of Middle-earth:
Another reference is found in the Annals of Aman (X.71, 76), where it is said of the constellation Menelmakar (Orion) that it ‘was a sign of Turin Turambar, who should come into the world, and a foreshowing of the Last Battle that shall be at the end of Days.’
In this last reappearance of the mysterious and fluctuating idea the prophecy is put into the mouth of Andreth, the Wise-woman of the House of Beor: Turin will ‘return from the Dead’ before his final departure, and his last deed within the Circles of the World will be the slaying of the Great Dragon, Ancalagon the Black. Andreth prophesies of the Last Battle at the end of the Elder Days (the sense in which the term ‘Last Battle’ is used shortly afterwards in this text, p. 371); but in all the early texts (the Quenta, IV.160; the Annals of Beleriand, IV.309, V.144; the Quenta Silmarillion, V.329) it was Earendil who destroyed Ancalagon.]
There are those who argue that there is only version of the Second Prophecy, and that it foretells the return of Turin at the end of time — a view which Christopher directly contradicts in this passage. In any event, this prophecy was not included in any form in The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, or The Road Goes Ever On (all of which were published by J.R.R. Tolkien himself). We only learned of the Second Prophecy while reading The History of Middle-earth, which is Christopher’s extensive annotation of his father’s unpublished papers — not actual books that J.R.R. Tolkien intended to publish. The Silmarillion itself is a primary example of conflation by Christopher as he drew upon source material composed at nearly all stages in his father’s career.
An example of circularity is provided by the linguistic community, where many scholars speak of “Primitive Quendian”, a constructed language which J.R.R. Tolkien did not include in any of the books mentioned above, and which Christopher Tolkien did not include in The Silmarillion. Again, we only learned of “Primitive Quendian” from reading The History of Middle-earth, as well as Ilkorin, Noldorin, and many other languages or proto-languages. Because these languages were obvious precursors to the constructed languages used in The Lord of the Rings they are used to analyze those languages, and because they are used to analyze those languages they are used to expand those languages (such as David Salo’s extensions to Sindarin, and other people’s extensions of Quenya). If the new vocabularies and grammatical rules merely “extend” from Tolkien’s own examples, then are these extensions not valid additions to the invented languages?
The question is not a simple one because some people honestly wish to use these languages to compose new works: poems, songs, stories, jokes, idiomatic expressions, names, etc. Regardless of whether they are borrowing from Tolkien’s own examples or constructing their own, these people are creating a new iteration of Tolkien’s constructed languages beyond his intentions. Their intentions are not to preserve what he created but to use it — to reimagine these languages as living languages capable of growing and evolving.
On the other hand, these post-humous additions, extrapolations, and rearrangements (regardless of how well they match Tolkien’s own style, use, and conventions) do not in any way represent Tolkien’s fictive creation — they are not “languages of (J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth)” because they cannot be found in any of Tolkien’s writings. So is it fair to the future student of Tolkien’s literature and creative process to assemble these post-humous collaborations on the same shelf with the two classes of Tolkien works already in existence?
The commercialization of Tolkien’s literary invention as manifested primarily through the licensing managed by the Saul Zaentz company has further complicated the situation. After all these commercial derivations are legally licensed and mandated — there is no one, not even Christopher Tolkien, who can legally forbid or restrict their creation. Saul Zaentz could license the fabrication of 100 languages for Middle-earth products, all claiming some connection to the two books (The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit) to protect their use of trademark licensing; worse, because there is no collaboration between the Tolkien Estate (which controls all the other books) and the commercial licensees, any new fabricated languages would have to avoid using the examples, rules, and conventions that are only published in the unlicensed books. So any “Primitive Quendian” language Zaentz’ licensees might wish to create could not legally be called that — they would have to devise some other name so as to avoid consumer confusion with the properties of the Tolkien Estate.
So when people ask “how many languages did J.R.R. Tolkien invent for Middle-earth” they open a can of worms that quickly explodes into complexities that I haven’t even explored. For example, what constitutes a “language”? If all we have are a half-dozen words as examples of some “Pre-Numenorean Tongue”, is that really an invented language? For the casual reader it may be sufficient; for the professional scholar it may only be an illustrative example of an undeveloped language — and if it is “undeveloped” then can we say that Tolkien invented it?
Therefore all the Websites that provide lists of various Tolkien languages are inevitably misinforming their visitors, for these may be “Tolkien languages” but it cannot be shown that they are “Middle-earth languages” — not to everyone’s satisfaction, not according to the same rules. For the reasons given above and others that time and space do not permit me to go into (not to mention lack of expertise), there can be no complete, authoritative, definitive, or correct answer to the question, “How many languages did J.R.R. Tolkien invent for Middle-earth?”
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