How would you know?

[PrinceOfTheHalflings]

Originally Posted by morwen edhelwen

OK, let's pretend that Tolkien really did translate an old book into English and used this as the basis for "The Hobbit" and "LOTR". He was a linguist and philologist and knew a lot about words, languages and their origins. From the idea that The Hobbit, LOTR and Sil are translated... how would he know for sure that he was really dealing with an ancient language and not with an elaborate hoax? Does anyone have an idea how? -Morwen.

Good question!

The answer is that to fool Tolkien the hoaxer would have needed to have known even more about ancient languages and philology than Tolkien himself did. Not likely, considering the amount of effort required to produce such an elaborate hoax in the first place!

Even assuming that someone with more knowledge than Tolkien existed, and we'd be talking about no more than a handful of people at most, the odds of any of them being able to create such an imaginative work in a made-up language is virtually zero. In my opinion, of course.