That's a question with a long answer, which I don't have time for, but I'll give you the 2 minute version.
Here's what Tolkien actually did. Before and during the First World War, he began inventing languages for fun, because he was a linguistic genius and he could just do that. Then he decided to invent a history that would explain how those languages came to exist. That required a map, so he created a map, and a long series of legends (now called The Silmarillion) to go with it. And he used his incredibly extensive knowledge of Finnish and Welsh and Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian language and legend, and he borrowed the names of the dwarves from the Icelandic sagas and the stories from the Finnish Kalevala and his unbelievable depth of reading and linguistic skill went into it all.
Then he tried to publish it, and his friends said, "no way in hell, this stuff is too arcane, nobody cares about your invented languages and map and legends and so on."
Then he wrote a fun little children's story called The Hobbit, set in his world. He gave it to Sir Stanley Unwin of the book publishers Allen & Unwin, and he gave it to his kid Rayner Unwin to look at, and his kid read it and wrote this:
"Bilbo Baggins was a Hobbit who lived in his Hobbit hole and never went for adventures, at last Gandalf the wizard and his Dwarves persuaded him to go. He had a very exiting (sic) time fighting goblins and wargs. At last they get to the lonely mountain; Smaug, the dragon who guards it is killed and after a terrific battle with the goblins he returned home — rich!
This book, with the help of maps, does not need any illustrations it is good and should appeal to all children between the ages of 5 and 9."
On the basis of this recommendation, Sir Stanley agreed to publish it. It was a hit. People loved it and asked for more stories about hobbits.
So he started another fun little children's story, only his mind was working all the time, and it just got longer and deeper and darker and more grownup as he went, right through the Second World War. Then when he reached the end he had to go back and fix a lot of things, because it wasn't a children's story any more.
But almost every single thing in The Lord of the Rings is built on something he had created decades previously, and that itself was built on centuries of myth and legend from Northern Europe.
When the Riders of Rohan sing, they sing in Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse. When the elves speak, they speak in a language that actually works. Even the Ring-inscription, which is almost all we have of the Black Speech, has correct verb tenses:
Ash nazg durbatuluk
One ring to rule them all
Ash nazg gimbatul
One ring to find them
Ash nazg thrakatuluk
One ring to bring them all
Agh burzum-ishi krimpatul!
And in the darkness [to] bind them.
So -uk obviously adds all to the sense of the transitive verb. -ul- is them, the object of the verb, and -at- makes it infinitive: to rule. The root words are durb, gimb, thrak, and krimp, which probably not coincidentally means bind. All this just for a language of which we only have nine words!
So far as I know, nobody else does this, or even comes close to doing this. Of course many people don't care, but this is what amazes his more ardent fans.
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