Could JRR Tolkien speak Afrikaans?

Not really. He was born in the Orange Free State but to uitlander (English-speaking) parents, and left South Africa when he was three years old. read more

His biography does mention that he retained ‘a few words of Afrikaans’ as childhood memories, but not that he could speak the language. Much later on, in the 1950s, he mentioned in a letter than he had ‘an inadequate knowledge’ of Dutch and could read it with the aid of a dictionary. read more

"J.R.R. Tolkien - A Biography" by Humphrey Carpenter That is the only reference I know of on Afrikaans in reference to Tolkien. Imho, I'd say he did not speak the language nor had much interest in it - IIRC, he does not mention this African language in any of his letters or books. read more

The philologist and author J. R. R. Tolkien created a number of constructed languages. Inventing languages (called glossopoeia by Tolkien, from Greek γλώσσα glôssa, "language, tongue" and ποιῶ poiô, "to make" paralleling his idea of mythopoeia or myth-making) was a lifelong occupation for Tolkien, starting in his teens. read more