mordant wit

In 1931, Tolkien wrote an essay about the somewhat peculiar hobby of devising private languages. He called it A Secret Vice. But in Tolkien's case, the "vice" can hardly be called secret anymore.

What, really, is going on inside the head of a man who all his life is toying with enormous linguistic constructions, entire languages that have never existed outside his own notes? For one thing must be perfectly clear: He made very much more of these languages than he could ever hope to include in his stories. True, there are a few Elvish poems and a swarm of exotic names in the annals of Middle-earth, but even so, this is nothing compared to all that Tolkien made. In Tyalië Tyelelliéva # 6, Lisa Star informs us that her own list of published words has twelve thousand entries. We are talking about enormous linguistic constructions. How did it start? How was it done? And why?