Author-ized L.J.
@ljwrites@writeout.ink  ·  activity timestamp 2 weeks ago

"Also I particularly like #Esperanto, not least because it is the creation of one man, not a philologist, and is therefore something like a 'human language bereft of the inconveniences due to too many successive cooks'--which is as good a description of the ideal artificial language (in a particular sense) as I can give."

- JRR #Tolkien, A Secret Vice (1931) #conlang
Author-ized L.J.
@ljwrites@writeout.ink replied  ·  activity timestamp 2 weeks ago

"I shall never forget a little man--smaller than myself--whose name I have forgotten, revealing himself by accident as a devotee[ of artificial languages], in a moment of extreme ennui . . . We were listening to somebody lecturing . . . rather we were trying to avoid listening, though the Guards' English, and voice, is penetrating. The man next to me said suddenly in a dreamy voice: 'Yes, I think I shall express the accusative case by a prefix!' . . . How far he ever proceeded in his composition, I never heard. Probably he was blown to bits in the very moment of deciding upon some ravishing method of indicating the subjunctive. Wars are not favourable to delicate pleasures."

- Tolkien, A Secret Vice