Concerning Tolkien (and Philology) - Part One

My dear Professor Tolkien (a title which he didn't like, so I'll call him Mr. Tolkien, cuz that's what he preferred) was a philologist. (Philology is, contrary to what one would think, not the study of guys named Phil - though Linda might like that. It's the study of sounds, words, and word origins/the development of languages.) What a great job. Just to study words and languages.

Philology is where his heart truly lied. That is how Middle Earth came to be: he invented a language, but in order for a language to exist there has to be a culture to support it, thus the creation of Elves and the rest of Middle Earth. He studied the evolution of languages, and saw how words could have developed and used that pattern to guide the development of his own languages. (There are two forms of Elvish - Quenya and Sindarin.) Mr. Tolkien also used patterns from Old English, Middle English, Anglo-Saxon, and Old Norse to develop words used by other peoples of Middle Earth that, because they follow a specific pattern, sound not so foreign to us. He also brought back some words that had vanished long ago.

(Sorry if I don't make myself clear. Sometimes when I understand something, I think other people do, too, so I don't see that I'm unclear. [That would be why I can't teach.])