I respectfully disagree with both of you.
I think that Tolkien and Okrand are simply two different geniuses who deserve respect with none of us really having the authority to disrespect one while deferring to the other. Neither Okrand nor Tolkien would have had anyone interested in their languages if not for the fictional worlds in which those languages were spoken. Tolkien certainly went broader in terms of developing multiple languages for multiple cultures in the same fictional universe, basing them on his personal research into earlier languages in the British Isles, and in creating that universe, but none of those languages have the useful vocabulary of Klingon because Tolkien never dove that deeply into any of the languages he created. He was too busy creating novels to create robust, extensive dictionaries.
Too busy creating novels to create robust dictionaries. You haven't got the slightest idea what Tolkien was doing with his languages, do you?
Tolkien's purpose wasn't to create speakable languages, or to
create languages in which he or anyone else could translate texts.
He was creating languages as works of art. The aesthetics were
entirely the point, not the ability to communicate in them. They
were mostly used for naming things. He wasn't too busy writing
novels to develop the languages; the novels were written because
of the languages. All of it, the stories, the languages, the
scripts, it was all part of the same thing. His languages were
continually changing and growing in detail for his entire adult
life. Tolkien was a professor of English literature and language
and a philologist. Philology is the study of the origin and change
of language over time through literature, history, art, music,
etc. It is hardly studied anymore, because it is damn
hard, and Tolkien used it as the basis for his hobby.
No one is disrespecting anyone here. I simply said that Klingon is not a work of genius. It's good, but as constructed languages go, it's not amazing. Okrand is a linguist who happened to be in the right place at the right time to produce something influential, and I'm sure he would be the first to agree with that.
This isn't a popularity contest. I speak and write Klingon, not
Sindarin or Quenya. I know a bit about the elvish languages, but
not enough to write a single original sentence in any of them. I
also like Star Trek V, even though I know that it's
inferior in many ways to most other Star Trek films. Embracing
something is not the same as saying it's a work of genius.
I dealt with one Tolkien language fan who boasted of how superior Elvin was to Klingon by translating a sentence he gave me into Klingon and then asking him to translate something into Elvin for me. His face froze, and he backpedaled to say that he didn’t PERSONALLY know the language well enough, but OTHERS certainly could… and so forth.
And I've been to science-fiction conventions, walked up to people
pretending to be Klingons, and said, tlhIngan Hol bojatlh'a'?
and they've looked at me like I was speaking an alien language,
which I was, and which they didn't understand at all, no matter
how many times they shouted kuhplah! The quality of the
fans is not related to the quality of the work.
-- SuStel http://trimboli.name