Exploring Invented Languages

Virgilius Maro- The Grammatical Prankster of the Seventh Century

In my continuing exploration of the art and “secret vice” of language invention I am going back to the 7th century and one example of the playful and subversive work of medieval scholars who treated language itself as a canvas for creative experimentation. Schnapp (1991) characterises the Middle Ages as “a golden age of neologisms and verbal invention” (278).

The Grammatical Prankster of the Seventh Century

Enter Virgilius Maro Grammaticus, a seventh-century Irish scholar whose name itself is likely an elaborate joke.

Writing under the pseudonym of Rome’s greatest poet, this mysterious figure composed two grammatical treatises—Epitomae and Epistolae—that ostensibly drew on the respected fourth-century grammarian Aelius Donatus. But rather than faithfully transmitting established doctrine, Virgilius constructed an alternative grammatical universe characterised by deliberate obfuscation, creative wordplay, and satirical invention.

The ludic dimension of Virgilius’ project manifests in multiple layers of playful experimentation. He invented pseudo-Latin terms constructed from recognizable morphological elements but absent from any existing lexicon—words like “inscrutari,” “gande,” “declinamentum,” and “querulous”—creating what might be called “plausible Latin” that sounds authentic while being entirely fabricated. This technique remarkably anticipates modern conlanging methodology: constructing invented words from systematic phonological and morphological principles that give them internal coherence and aesthetic plausibility. In some of Tolkien’s earliest language invention he too would invent words that sounded like a primary world language, in this case Finnish, but were completely invented. For example for the Finnish name Suomi Tolkien invented an alternative place name Sutse that sounded Finnish but was completely invented (Kullervo, p. 50).

But Virgilius didn’t stop at inventing words. He populated his grammatical discussions with citations from entirely fictitious authorities, creating an elaborate scholarly apparatus of invented grammarians with exotic names such as Galbungus, Glengus, Asinus, and Aemilius Asper (not the historical grammarian of that name, but Virgilius’ own fabricated character). Long before authors like H Rider Haggard, Robert Louis Stevenson and of course Tolkien were creating ‘new romance” inspired items like maps, reproductions of invented artefacts and language glossaries, Virgilius was inventing phantom scholars who cite non-existent texts, offer contradictory grammatical rules, and engage in absurdist debates, transforming grammatical discourse into imaginative fiction. In one text, the invented grammarian Galbungus argues with another grammarian for fourteen days and nights over the vocative form of the pronoun ego!

According to Lorenzo Di Maggio’s comprehensive 2021 study (Virgilius redivivus), Virgilius’ work functions primarily as sophisticated parody combined with deliberate mystification—a reductio ad absurdum of how grammar had absorbed and replaced literary texts in the early Middle Ages. The analysis centers on the author figure as a self-proclaimed “Virgilius redivivus” (reborn Virgil) who systematically inverts centuries of poetic commentary tradition. Where ancient and medieval grammarians had used poetry primarily as raw material for extracting grammatical rules, Virgilius reverses this relationship: he uses grammatical apparatus as material for creative invention, constructing a linguistic parallel universe populated by a bizarre cast of pseudo-classical authorities presented as elaborate pastiche. It is interesting to compare this to what Tolkien does in some of his own para-textual language related documents. For example, in his “Name List to the Fall of Gondolin”, Tolkien has his primary world mariner Eriol record a philological argument among invented Elvish philologists about the meaning of one of the names of the Gondolithim Egalmoth

Egalmoth is a great name, yet none knew clearly its meaning – some have said its bearer was so named in that he was worth a thousand elves (but Rumil says Nay) and other that it signifies the mighty shoulders of that Gnome, and so saith Rumil, but perchance it was woven of a secret tongue of the Gondolithim, yet he was lord of the house of the Heavenly Arch, and got even out of the burning of Gondolin and dwelt ever after at the mouth of Sirion, but was slain in a dire battle there when Melko seized Elwing.

Vivien Law, in Wisdom, authority, and grammar in the seventh century : decoding Virgilius Maro Grammaticus however argues that the works of Virgilius are both too long and too complex to be simply parody, and that the unusual mixture of traditions and genres within his works suggests that he is concerned with more than just grammar. She concludes that Virgilius is a serious metalinguistic thinker.

What connects Virgilius’ seventh-century linguistic pranks to today’s language inventors? Perhaps it’s the recognition that language is not merely a transparent tool for communication but a medium ripe for creative manipulation—a system whose very structures can be dismantled, reimagined, and reconstructed for purposes ranging from the satirical to the sacred.

Virgilius understood this deeply. His elaborate hoax wasn’t merely pedantic mockery—it was a demonstration that grammatical discourse could become a vehicle for imaginative play, anticipating by thirteen centuries what modern conlangers know instinctively: constructing a language forces conscious decisions about grammar, phonology, and meaning that illuminate the peculiarities of human language itself. As Tolkien wrote in his November 1931 lecture “A Secret Vice,” successful language construction requires “chosen principles” and the discipline to “courageously abide by your own rules, resisting the temptation of the supreme despot to alter them.” (SV, p. 91)

What Virgilius’s medieval forgery and Tolkien’s modernist craft share is a recognition that language-making is both creative freedom and self-imposed constraint. The hoax worked precisely because Virgilius committed fully to his invented system, never breaking character to serve convenience - in a sense creating what Tolkien in On Fairy-stories called “inner consistency of reality” (OFS, p. 59). In this sense, the art of the con—whether grammatical or linguistic—lies not in deception but in fidelity: the maker’s willingness to be bound by the world they’ve created. Virgilius proved that even fabricated rules, rigorously followed, can reveal genuine truths about how language shapes thought.

Next time we will explore another example of Irish Medieval Language Invention - Tenga Bithuna - a real tongue twister!

Namárië for now.

Di Maggio, Lorenzo. Virgilius redivivus: Einführung, Kommentar und Übersetzung zu Virgilius Maro Grammaticus. WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier 2021

Vivien Law, Wisdom, authority, and grammar in the seventh century : decoding Virgilius Maro Grammaticus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995

Schnapp, Jeffrey T., “Virgin Words: Hildegard of Bingen’s Lingua Ignota and the Development of Imaginary Languages Ancient to Modern”, Exemplaria III, 2, 1991, pp. 267–298.

Tolkien, J.R.R. “Si Qente Feanor and Other Elvish Writings’ edited by Patrick Wayne, Christopher Gilson, Carl Hostetter, Bill Welden and Arden R. Smith, Parma Eldalamberon, 15, p. 23, 2004

Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien On Fairy-stories. Edited by Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson. London: HarperCollins, 2008.

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Story of Kullervo. Edited by Verlyn Flieger. HarperCollins, 2015.

Tolkien, J.R.R. A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages. Edited by Dimitra Fimi and Andrew Higgins. London: HarperCollins, 2016.