“My advice to all who have the time or inclination to concern themselves with the international language movement would be: 'Back Esperanto loyally.”

—  John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"A Philologist on Esperanto" in The British Esperantist (May 1932).
Years later, in a 1956 letter (quoted more extensively below) he stated that Esperanto and other constructed languages were "dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends."

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John Ronald Reuel Tolkien 78
British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy … 1892–1973

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