Well - wonderful thread and ideas, but I'm still baffled as to why some of you compare JRRt's creation of a language with Sauron's. To me they are essentially different, in the same way that surgery and mutilation are different (well - maybe that was a poor simile, but the only one that I can think of now. [img]smilies/rolleyes.gif[/img] ).
Besides what littlemanpoet said about the difference in aesthetics, I have to add the difference in purpose. While Sauron created Black Speech for the sole purpose of controlling and enslaving the people; JRRT did it simply for the sake of creating something beautiful (it was his passion, his vice - as understood from the quotations Bethberry posted). For Tolkien, the linguist, creating a language was had a purpose in itself, he did not have ulterior motives, good or bad. As I believe you already know, all the races, the lands and the stories of ME came chronologically after the creation of the languages, in order to bring the languages 'to life'.
Also, a widely held idea is that languages changes the people who speak them, or, better said, the language spoken by a certain nation is in concordance with the mentality of the people, of their 'character' as a whole. This is in close connection to the aesthetics of the language (can you picture hobbits speaking Black Speech?). This is why I was surprised that Tolkien liked the idea of Esperanto - to me, this kind of artificial language contradicts the above idea, that Tolkien seemed to adhere to.
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And no one was ill, and everyone was pleased, except those who had to mow the grass.
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