opiniontolk

What do I think?

When we try to study an author, the best thing is taking his works as the basis for any approach. This is easy to understand, as if an author is known is because of what he has written.
In my opinion, each book constitutes a particular world in which nothing is without a reason. Each one of these new worlds has its own characteristics and describes some facts that are enclosed within a contex. These worlds reflected in the books have been well elaborated and have reproduced all the aspects needed to constitute an individual society.
A society is composed by different people, but all of the have something in comun that makes them part of a comunity. This aspects are a comun history, a comun culture and traditions, and a same language. Language is the basis of comunication, and without it people cannot mantain their unity (as it is ilustrated in the story of Babel).
When I have come to Tolkien´s works, I have noticed how different are the languages shown in his works from those existing nowadays. I had always thought that this languages were just some characters joined together without any other sense but stylistics. However, this thoughts were wrong. Through this essay, I have learned that the languages we can see in Tolkien´s books are deeply elaborated and take care of any little aspect. We can see how the languages he created have all the aspects we could look for in any actual language. He developed its morphology and syntax, but he also gave his languages a phonologic level. There is stll something left, these languages couldn´t have been identical to the existing ones if he would just developed these aspects, because languages change throughout the time. As the time goes by, the languages undergone some changes, but Tolkien new this too, and gave his lanuages a diachronic evolution.
I do think, that Tolkien´s works would not have been the same if he had not developed the languages of his novels to the extent he did, giving in that way unity to the societies he reflected and making in that way a difference between the different comunities he created. Thus, if they had an own language we infer that they had an own culture, and therefore if we read about a group of people with a different language we infer that they have a different culture, a different way of thinking and concieving the world; their world.