Ж.Р.Р. Толкин: «Жасырын әуесқойлық» лекциясы

1931 talk by J. R. R. Tolkien

"A Secret Vice", also known as "A Hobby for The Home", is a lecture first presented by English philologist and author J. R. R. Tolkien in 1931. The lecture concerns Tolkien's relations with and view on constructed languages, in particular on artistic languages. In the talk, Tolkien discusses the human desire to make languages, and his criteria to create a good language – these include phonoaesthetics (the beauty of sounds) and the presence of a mythology to accompany the language. Tolkien's presentation was the first instance of him openly exhibiting his hobby of conlanging, and includes examples of several of his languages. The talk was first published in essay form in 1983, in an anthology of Tolkien's previously unpublished works edited by his son, Christopher. In 2016, an extended edition was published, with material missing from earlier versions, new manuscript material, and a collection of essays concerning Tolkien and constructed languages. This version was edited by Dimitra Fimi and Andrew Higgins, receiving largely positive reviews from both Tolkien scholarship and the fandom.

Tolkien began his interest in conlanging, the art of inventing languages, when he was a teenager; he had previously used Animalic, a language created by his cousins. Tolkien helped to create Nevbosh with a cousin, a code based on English with concepts from French and Latin included. Tolkien's following solo work, Naffarin, was largely drawn from Spanish and Latin. During adolescence, he learnt the international auxiliary language of Esperanto, keeping a notebook in the language aged 17.

Tolkien begins the lecture by clarifying its topic as concerning artistic languages, as compared to international auxiliary languages; he briefly discusses his admiration for Esperanto, and the need for a unifying international language. He then attempts to categorise these languages by their level of complexity. The lower stages of this hierarchy comprise language games; Tolkien writes that this type of language is not art in the same way as more developed ones, and that they are crude in their simple use for secrecy or fun. To illustrate this, the example of Animalic, a language built solely from animal names, is given. Tolkien argues that the invention of this is an example of the linguistic ability of humans, and that a more developed form of this ability manifests itself in several forms: in polyglotism, poetry, and in conlanging. To show the next stage in his hierarchy, he uses Nevbosh, which showed examples of sound change and alternation, as well as a fledgling appreciation of phonaesthetics. He discusses his joy of language invention, its lack of recognition as an art form, and subsequent lack of publicity by practitioners. For the next level of development, Tolkien deems a distinction between practicality of communication and pleasure in sound making as necessary. Examining his own language, Naffarin, a language partly inspired by Nevbosh, Tolkien notes that it has more developed phonetics, moving away from its source languages, and shows his style of conlanging. He states that a successful artistic language requires a constructed mythology among other stipulations, and lists attractions to conlanging: philological experimentation, and grammatical experimentation with the creation of engineered languages. To end, Tolkien gives several examples of his poetry in Quenya and Noldorin, concluding the lecture by likening artistic languages to a form of poetry, and conlangers to poets.