The Nature of Language

            For many of us, language probably feels like something innate, something we don’t remember a time without possessing. Speaking in our respective native tongues can feel oddly natural, as if that is the language we are meant to speak. Many of us even have favorite languages (I am no exception to the rule) and while sometimes we can say why a language might appeal to us, be it the sound, the structure, or the way it rolls off the tongue, there is also an inherent quality to a language that makes it so appealing, something I would argue that can’t be explained. I know for me that saying something in one language may feel more “right” than in another; some words just feel more correct in one tongue than in a different one, even if perfectly translated. It’s like trying to describe what the color red looks like to someone else; you can point to an object that is red, but there is no real way to easily and conclusively describe the color red. At the same time however, we were not born with an inherent understanding of any language. While we may not, as previously mentioned, remember a time without it, we had to learn how to speak it, and someone had to make the conscious effort to teach us. With all that being said, this brings us to a question that arises from much of Tolkien’s work: is language, and the love of it, innate and unique for each of us, or is it just another learned behavior, that, by virtue of it being taught so early, just has the appearance of being hard-wired for every single person?

            The main argument for language being inherently separate from us, or in other words, something that we are not born knowing, lies in the way Tolkien described not only his passion for languages, but also the way in which he created them. For example, in letter 257 in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, he says, “I began the construction of languages in early boyhood: I am primarily a scientific philologist. My interests were, and largely remain, scientific” (345). Here we see the study of language, and also the creation of language, boiled down to a science; for language to merit its own subgenre of scientific study, it seems as if at least part, if not all of it, must be inherently separate from people; we were not born with language, we came into it. Also, from Letters, in this case 131, he describes more specifically the invention of Elvish tongues,

“But I have never stopped, and of course, as a professional philologist…I have changed in taste, improved in theory, and probably in craft. Behind my stories is now a nexus of languages (mostly only structurally sketched). But to those creatures which in English I call misleadingly Elves are assigned two related languages more nearly completed, whose history is written, and whose forms…are deduced scientifically from a common origin…This gives a certain character (a cohesion, a consistency of linguistic style, and an illusion of historicity) to the nomenclature, or so I believe, that is markedly lacking in other comparable things” (143-144).

This shows explicitly that creating languages is very much a scientific process; they are not formed from an innate sense of style or aesthetic, but instead using broadly applicable and universal rules of form and grammar and forming a language from it. However, in some of Tolkien’s other writings, while they are fiction, he describes the possibility of language being innate to each person. The two most notable examples of this are in his Notion Club Papers and in The Lost Road. While the former is not mainly based around language, and instead around potential time and space travel, there is an important section of dialogue that ties into the idea of being born with a knack for language,

“’Well, if you really want to know what these names are,’ said Ramer, ‘I think they’re my native language…We each have a native language of our own – at least potentially. In working-dreams people who have a bent that way may work on it, develop it…It may be no more than giving a personal twist to the shape of old words; it may be the invention of new words (on received models, as a rule); or it may come to the elaboration of beautiful languages of their own in private…’But the inherited, first-learned, language – what is usually mis-called “native” – bites in early and deep. It is hardly possible to escape from its influence. And later-learned languages also affect the natural style, coloring a man’s linguistic taste; the earlier learned the more so…In language-invention, though you may seem to build only out of material taken from other acquired tongues, it is those elements most near to your native style that you select” (201-202).

Whether Ramer, the character speaking in this passage, is supposed to represent Tolkien or not when he describes native languages is beside the point; authors inject some of themselves, either wittingly or unwittingly, into their stories. Considering the large role that philology plays in this character’s story, it is likely that Tolkien used Ramer as a vehicle to express what in his mind may have been the foundation of language; the languages we speak are not native to us, but there is something inside us that is. Not everyone may be able to find it, but some will. In a similar vein, much like Ramer makes this discovery in a dream, so does Alboin in The Lost Tales. While in school he learns many classical languages like Greek and Latin, when he is dreaming or lost in thought he, without any conscious effort, starts to learn new languages piecemeal,

“And the Dreams. They came and went. But lately they had been getting more frequent, and more – absorbing. But still tantalizingly linguistic. No tale, no remembered pictures; he wanted to see, very much, and would give much to see and hear again – and these fragments of words, sentences, verses. Eressëan as he called it as a boy – though he could not remember why he had felt so sure that that was the proper name – was getting pretty complete” (49). Much like with Tolkien, for Alboin, the story came second, but the language came first. I would argue that maybe neither Ramer nor Alboin individually are a good representation of Tolkien; but perhaps when combined, they reveal what Tolkien truly believed about language; they can be studied as separate from us, and viewed as a collective creation of humanity, but inside each and every one of us is, maybe not a fully-fledged language of our own, but an intuitive understanding of the importance and beauty of language, something that is different for each and every one of us.

 - SGK