A secret vice

"A Secret Vice" is the title of a conference given by J. R. R. Tolkien in 1931 at an Esperanto congress. Twenty years after his presentation, Tolkien reviewed the manuscript for a second presentation.

"A secret vice" is about the languages ​​built in general, and the relationship of each mythology with its language. Tolkien contrasts auxiliary languages ​​with artistic languages ​​built for aesthetic pleasure. Tolkien also discusses the phonoaesthetic of various languages, mentioning Greek, Finnish and Welsh as examples of "languages ​​that have a very characteristic and, in their own way, beautiful formation of words". Tolkien's opinion on the relations between mythology and language is reflected in examples in qenya and noldorin, predecessors of their most evolved elven languages, Quenya and Sindarin. The essay contains a passage of eight lines in Noldorin, as well as three poems in qenya:

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