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Revision as of 13:15, 9 August 2018
- Frodo: "It's some form of Elvish. I can't read it."
Gandalf: "There are few who can. The language is that of Mordor, which I will not utter here." - —Frodo Baggins and Gandalf the Grey, on the inscription on the One Ring, The Fellowship of the Ring (film)
The Black Speech, also known as the Dark Tongue of Mordor, was the official language of Mordor. Sauron created the Black Speech to be the unifying language of all the servants of Mordor, used along with different varieties of Orkish and other languages used by his servants.
History
The Black Speech was likely based entirely on Valarin, as Morgoth and his Maiar (all of whom would have spoken Valarin) minions did not possess the Secret Fire, but were only able to corrupt things to their service. It may have also been based on Quenya.
Tolkien describes the language as existing in two forms, the ancient "pure" forms used by Sauron himself, the Nazgûl, and the Olog-hai, and the more "debased" form used by the soldiery of the Barad-dûr at the end of the Third Age. The only example given of "pure" Black Speech is the inscription upon the One Ring:
- Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul,
- ash nazg thrakatulûk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
When translated into English, these words form the lines:
- One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
- One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
These are the first two lines from the end of a verse about the Rings of Power.
Many Orkish dialects had adopted words from the Black Speech. One Orc from the band that took Merry and Pippin prisoners utters a tirade of curses at one point that is presumably Orkish, but apparently contains at least some elements of Black Speech.
In real life, J. R. R. Tolkien created this language with the intention of making it harsh and ugly. The Black Speech is unfortunately one of the more incomplete languages in Tolkien's novels, because the forces of good refuse to utter it. Unlike Elvish, there are no poems or songs written in it (apart from the Ring's inscription), and because Tolkien designed it to be unpleasant in his own mind, he did not enjoy writing in it; according to Tolkien, he once received a goblet from a fan with the Ring inscription on it in Black Speech, and Tolkien, finding it distasteful, never drank from it and used it only as an ashtray. The result is a random collection of words that are hard to actually use in day-to-day conversation. We learn from the text in the ring and its translation that the Black Speech is a strongly agglutinating language.
Black speech could be understood by anyone who wore the One Ring. Samwise wore the ring in the tower of Cirith Ungol to be invisible from orcs of Sauron, and in the process heard many of the orcs' plans.
Russian historian Alexander Nemirovski identified an ergative case in durbatuluk and thrakatuluk according to a common suffix -tuluk meaning "them all", relating to the verb's object rather than to its subject. This was found as a similarity to other ergative(-absolutive) languages such as an ancient Mesopotamian language, Hurrian.
Black Speech to English
- agh -and (for conjoining sentences)
- ash - one
- burz - dark
- burzum - darkness
- durb - rule
- ghâsh - fire
- gimb - find
- glob -filth (Debased Black Speech)
- gûl - wraith
- hai - folk
- -ishi - in
- krimp - bind
- lug - tower
- nazg - ring
- olog - troll
- ronk - pit/pool (bagronk, as muttered in the Uruk-hai chapter of the 2nd book, means a dung-pit, of Orthanc, in that case.)
- sha -and (for binding nouns)
- sharku - old / old man (Debased Black Speech)
- snaga- slave
- thrak - bring
- u - to (Debased Black Speech)
- ûk - all
- -atul -them
- -um -ness
- uruk - orc
- una - son (of)
Portrayal in adaptations
Neo-Black Speech
For Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, the linguist David Salo used what little is known of the Black Speech to create enough of a language for use in the movies. This is usually referred to by Tolkienists as neo-Black Speech. A vocabulary list of unattested neo-Black Speech could be found at the LOTR Fanatics Plaza. In the The Hobbit films, Orkish is spoken universally by Orcs characters amongst each other, unlike in the prior trilogy The Lord of the Rings, in which Orcs spoke primarily the Common Tongue, basically it would consist in the Orcs speaking three languages: Orkish, Black Speech and Westron. Other orcs know absolutely nothing about Black Speech, like Ratbag in Middle-earth: Shadow of War who does not understand his friend the Olog-hai Ranger.
One substantial neo-Black Speech lexicon, referred to as "Shadowlandian Black Speech", was invented by fans at thelandofshadow.com sometime before 2014.
Translations around the World
Foreign Language | Translated name |
---|---|
Afrikaans | Swart Spraak |
Albanian | Fjala e zezë |
Amharic | ጥቁር ንግግር |
Arabic | الكلام الأسود |
Armenian | Սեւ ելույթը |
Azerbaijani | Qara çıxış |
Basque | Hizkuntza beltza |
Belarussian Cyrillic | Чорная мова |
Bengali | ব্ল্যাক বাক |
Bosnian | Crni Govor |
Bulgarian Cyrillic | Черна реч |
Burmese | အနက်ရောင်မိန့်ခွန်း |
Cambodian | សុន្ទរកថាខ្មៅ |
Catalan | Llengua Negra |
Cebuano | Itom nga Sinultihan |
Chinese | 黑暗語 |
Cornish | Kows Du |
Croatian | Crni Govor |
Czech | Černá řeč |
Danish | Sort Tale |
Dutch | Zwarte Taal |
Esperanto | Nigra lingvo |
Estonian | Must kõne |
Faroese | Svartur Mál |
Fijian | Vosa Loaloa |
Filipino | Itim na pananalita |
Finnish | Musta kieli |
French | Noir parler/Langue noire |
Frisian | Swarte Rede |
Galician | Lingua negra |
Georgian | შავი ენა |
German | Schwarze Sprache |
Greek | Μαύρη Ομιλία |
Gujarati | બ્લેક સ્પીચ |
Haitian Creole | Nwa Lapawòl |
Hausa | Baƙi Jawabin |
Hebrew | הלשון השחורה |
Hindi | काले भाषण |
Hmong | Hais lus dub |
Hungarian | Fekete Nyelv |
Icelandic | Svartur Tal |
Indonesian | Bicara Hitam |
Irish Gaelic | Teanga dhubh |
Italian | Linguaggio Nero |
Japanese | 暗黒語 |
Javanese | Wicara Ireng |
Kannada | ಕಪ್ಪು ಭಾಷೆ Kappu bhāṣe (Latin) |
Kazakh | Қара тіл (Cyrillic) Qara til (Latin) |
Korean | 암흑어 |
Kurdish | Axaftina Reş (Kurmanji Kurdish) |
Kyrgyz Cyrillic | кара сөз |
Latvian | Melns runa |
Lithuanian | Juodoji kalba |
Luxembourgish | Schwaarz Ried |
Macedonian Cyrillic | Црна говор |
Malagasy | Mainty Miteny |
Malay | Ucapan Hitam |
Malayalam | ബ്ലാക്ക് സ്പീച്ച് |
Maltese | Diskors Iswed |
Maori | Kōrero Pango |
Marathi | काळा भाषण |
Mongolian Cyrillic | Хар хэлсэн үг |
Navajo | Shash Saad |
Nepalese | काला भाषण |
Norwegian | Svart Tale |
Pashto | تور وینا |
Persian | زبان سیاه |
Polish | Czarna Mowa |
Portuguese | Língua Negra |
Punjabi | ਕਾਲੇ ਸਪੀਚ |
Romanian | Limba Neagră |
Romansh | Linguatg Naira |
Russian | Чёрное наречие |
Sanskrit | राजिका वाच् |
Samoan | Tautala Uliuli |
Scottish Gaelic | Dubh Òraid |
Serbian | Црни Говор (Cyrillic) Crni Govor (Latin) |
Sindhi | ڪارو تقرير |
Sinhalese | කළු කථාව |
Slovak | Temná reč |
Slovenian | Črni govor |
Somalian | Hadalka Madow |
Spanish | Lengua Negra |
Sudanese | Hideung Biantara |
Swahili | Nyeusi Hotuba |
Swedish | Svartspråk |
Tahitian | Parau Ereere |
Tajik Cyrillic | Суханронии сиёҳ |
Tamil | கறுப்பு பேச்சு |
Telugu | బ్లాక్ స్పీచ్ |
Thai | ภาษามืด |
Turkish | Kara Lisan |
Ukrainian Cyrillic | Чорна говірка |
Urdu | سیاہ خطاب |
Uzbek | Қора Нутқ (Cyrillic) Qora Nutq (Latin) |
Vietnamese | Chữ Đen |
Welsh | Lleferydd Du |
Xhosa | Intetho Abamnyama |
Yiddish | שוואַרץ שפּראַך |