J. R. R. Tolkien was both a philologist and an author of high fantasy. He had a private theory that the sound of words was directly connected to their meaning, and that certain sounds were inherently
Early 20th century movements like Italian Futurism stressed language and the sound of words. Gino Severini's 1912 Dynamic Hieroglyphic of the Bal Tabarin (detail shown) incorporates words like "Bowling" and "POLKA" in its imagery.
Tolkien described a Keatsian style of listening to poetry and song. Portrait of John Keats by William Hilton, c. 1822
Black Speech
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The Black Speech is one of the languages constructed by J. R. R. Tolkien for his legendarium, where it was spoken in the evil realm of Mordor. In the fiction, Tolkien describes the language as created
Sound and language in Middle-earth
…stories to provide a setting for his languages, rather than the other way around. Tolkien constructed languages for the Elves to sound pleasant, and the Black Speech of the evil land of Mordor to sound harsh; poetry suitable for various peoples of his invented world of Middle-earth; and many place-names, chosen to…
Black Speech has been compared to the Hurrian language, seen here on the Foundation Tablet, c. 2000 BC