wordiness

A few months ago, Writer Unboxed had a discussion on the advisability or not of creating names and languages in fantasy.  There’s no doubt that Tolkein was the master.  But I have put more fantasies by other authors back on the shop-shelves than I have bought, simply because many of the names and languages read like a Scrabble box of letters.  My feeling for what it is worth is that the English language, ancient and modern, has a mammoth reservoir of words into which one can delve.  In addition, if a fantasy author chooses to model parts of their world on a specific culture, I feel it’s more than okay to pilfer the odd foreign word and use it for one’s own needs.  As a reader though, I need to be able to roll words around like a lozenge and taste them.  It’s an idiosyncracy and one I use in my own writing.