Sixteen

That’s the number of languages J.R.R. Tolkien understood: Ancient Greek, Latin, Gothic, Old Norse/Old Icelandic, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Anglo-Saxon/Old English, Middle English, German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Italian, Welsh, and Finnish.

Seventeen, if you include Esperanto, which he taught himself as a young teen.

He is credited with constructing in his works anywhere from fourteen to twenty-one languages. The discrepancy depends on how one defines a “language” – do a few lines etched in a runestone qualify? Off the top of my head I count seven – Quenya, Sindarin, Numenorean, Hobbitish, Dwarvish, the Black Speech, and, uh, did the Eagles speak their own language? Not sure. It’s been about a year and a half since I cracked upon a book written by the Professor.

Anyway, this small but wonderful bit of trivia regarding Tolkiennish linguistics reminds me that I still have The Fall of Gondolin, a birthday gift, waiting patiently on deck. And I have an unused Amazon gift card waiting to be spent. Maybe I should take the plunge and pick up something off my bucket list, something from The History of Middle-earth perhaps? Hmm? I think so.

I’ve also just begun another bucket-list book, about which I’ll have more to say in an upcoming post.