The idea of this book is that language is too interesting to be enjoyed exclusively by linguists. This is undoubtedly unfair to linguistsnot people who speak several languages but academic linguists for whom linguistics is the scientific study of language. Though this book is informed by linguistics, it is not a linguistics book, rather a language-not-linguistics book. It is a book about topics involving language that interest me and that I hope will be interesting to the intellectually curious reader. Its topics include J. R. R. Tolkiens languages of Middle-earth, invented and artificial languages, language