'Shamelessly ripped,' does not apply to languages, although you could probably make a case for constructed ones. The luama (sprites) feel it's only polite to call people what they call themselves. This came some years later ~ remember I hadn't heard about Tolkien when I started this? I believe my first word for 'hobbit' in Luamavan was 'pijhot,' because yes, I was a hobbit-fancier since I read the book the first time. But then I thought it might be fun to hint that they might have some connections we don't know about, so I changed it.

Also, whaddaya MEAN 'random apostrophes'?! Sure, there's apostrophes, the bane of phoneticists everywhere but they are there for a very good reason. They are direct transliterations of punctuation. Random, indeed! ;)