Did Tolkien really create entire languages before writing Lord of the Rings?

The answer

J.R.R. Tolkien, a philologist at Oxford University, began constructing Elvish languages like Quenya and Sindarin as early as 1910 - decades before The Lord of the Rings was published in 1954. He created complete grammar systems, phonologies, and etymologies for over 15 constructed languages. Tolkien himself admitted that Middle-earth was built primarily to give his languages a home, writing: 'The invention of languages is the foundation. The stories were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse.' His linguistic work drew from Finnish, Welsh, Latin, and Gothic, producing languages so complete that people study and speak them today.