A fascinating show on invented languages. J.R.R. Tolkien probably has the most widely known and inventive group of languages, which he created for his Middle Earth books like the Lord Of The Rings trilogy. He was an interesting fellow, and if I recall correctly he was a professor of English at Oxford and became known for his work on Beowulf and Gawain And The Green Knight, written respectively in Old and Middle English. He was British, but was born and raised in South Africa, so I imagine his environment of multiple languages drove his career choice and influenced his writing. Another famous invented language of course is Klingon from Star Trek. The show gave me one piece of info I had never known: James "Scotty" Doohan (also a Canadian from Vancouver) was first asked to create the Klingon language for an early Star Trek movie. He did this, and its success contributed to its continued development for the movies and ultimately as a credit course in Californian universities.
I love language and languages and if I were again considering career choices as a young man, could have easily gone into linguistics. My Chinese is okay, and I continue to find it useful. For some reason I run into Chinese speakers; for example while standing on our remote cul de sac here, have been asked twice by Mandarin speaking tourists for directions. Luckily I know "waterfall" in Chinese because they're often looking for the well known hiking trail to the local waterfall, and would love to hear the conversation in the car after the driver stumbled onto the one Chinese-speaking Caucasian in the area. My Thai became passable after four years in Bangkok, and I worked on Italian and German for a few months prior to visits. And of course, growing up in Canada I took French from Grade 4, all the way through university.
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