tolkienlanguages1-1  Exercise 1: What a Philologist Is
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A sample answer.

A philologist studies old texts and how languages change over time: where
words come from, how sounds shift, how languages are related.

Why it matters for Tolkien: he built his languages as families with ancestors,
so that words in them look as though they have a history, as real words do.

Two features a philologist cares about:
  1. Regular sound change (an old sound turns into a new one in a pattern).
  2. Word origins and relationships (words in two languages that come from
     one ancestor).