As some of you know, I'm a student over at +Mythgard Institute and +Signum University . Recently, Andrew Higgins (who recently completed his PhD dissertation on Tolkien's invented languages) began a monthly column in the  _Signum Eagle_, our monthly academic newsletter. The column is called In Dembith Pengoldh and will be on the topic of Tolkien's invented languages. I thought I'd share an excerpt and a link for those interested.

During the Medieval period, one of the key language inventors was the German Benedictine Abbess of Rupertsberg, the writer and philosopher Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) who invented a language that has become known as the Ignota Lingua. Hildegard claimed publicly that this clearly invented language came to her through divine revelation. Her actual language invention process started when she wrote out a dictionary of 1,011 “unknown” nouns which are annotated by Medieval German and Latin glosses (Higley 2007, p. 23). Higley characterizes Hildegard’s invented language as “a strange mix of compounds with an apparently haphazard application of syllables that would suggest an on the spot creation with its several repeats of words assigned different meanings” (2007, p. 25). Like Tolkien, Hildegard would use several of these invented words in verse and poetry with a gloss for these words in the manuscript to their Latin meanings. For example, In Hildegard’s antiphon O Orzchis Ecclesia (“O Immense Church”), there are five invented words used among the Latin text including adjectives which show that Hildegard’s invention went beyond the list of nouns; first given in Ignota Lingua with the corresponding Latin word and Higley’s English translation: orzchis/immensa (immense), caldemia/aroma (fragrance), loifolum/populus (people), crizanta/ornata, uncta (anointed/adorned) and diorzta/choruscans (glittering) (Higley 2007, pp. 30-32).