 |
| The Black Speech by A. Appleyard A.APPLEYARD@FS1.MT.UMIST.AC.UK Adapted from an article currently stored in the TolkLang archive file ftp.dcs.ed.ac.uk/export/TolkLang/articles/Appleyard.BlackSpeech I have written a form-based survey you might take a look at if you have the time. |
|
Black Speech vinyakaarier by various people have prompted me to codify and
coordinate the available BS matter. We have: Other matter by Tolkien (mostly in LOTR). 'Gakh Nazgi Ilid/Albai/Golug - durub-uuri lata-nuut. / Udu takob-ishiz gund-ob Gazat-shakh-uuri. / Krith Shara-uuri matuurz matat duumpuga. / Ash tug Shakhbuurz-uur Uliima-tab-ishi za, / Uzg-Mordor-ishi amal fauthut burguuli. / Ash nazg' (etc as RI to) 'krimpatul, / Uzg-Mordor-ishi amal fauthut burguuli.' = "3 rings for elf rulers under sky. 7 in their (noun omitted)s of stone for dwarf lords. 9 for men mortal to die doomed. 1 only for lord dark in this his throne, in land Mordor where hide-themselves shadows. (Ring inscription) in land Mordor where hide-themselves shadows." (OG): Orc-greeting, by 'Andrew', quoted by 'Elerrina' in 'Quettar' #16 p7:
'Gaakh Golug narkuu gimbubut lat' = "may" (= Quenya 'nai') "Noldor never find you" (I saw an analysis of it somewhere). Inventors: TK = Tolkien, LL = 'Lalaith', EL = 'Elerrina', AN = 'Andrew', AA = me. AO = 1st Age Angband Orkish, BOLT = Book of Lost Tales, BS = Black Speech, CBS = Classical Black Speech, DBS = Debased Black Speech, LOTR = Lord of the Rings, SD = Sauron Defeated, TH = The Hobbit. Tolkien wrote that Sauron invented CBS in the 'Black Years' in the Second Age when he had the run of much of the west of Middle-earth except for Elvish holdout areas in Eriador and Nuumenoorean influence areas along the coast. Noun + noun compounds are in 'big-endian' (= English) order with the signifying element last: 'Nazg(-g)uul' = "Ring-wraith" LOTR, copied in 'Gazat-shakh' = "Dwarf-lord" EL. Noun + adjective compounds are in 'little-endian' (= Welsh or Sindarin) order with the signifying element first: 'Lug-buurz' = "Tower Dark" LOTR, copied in 'Shakh-buurz' = "Lord Dark" EL. This compound endianness variation brings new features to what may be called 'krimpum gakhob' or 'gakhkrimpum' = "the binding of three", i.e. "in a three-part com-pound word, which of the two junctions binds closer?", affecting meaning. (The term 'endian' is taken by me from computer use, where it refers to the order of (1) bytes in an integer value, (2) parts of email addresses of emailers.) The word 'Nazguul' is used unmodified and unaccompanied as singular by an Orc, and elsewhere by various LOTR characters as plural. 'Morgoth's Ring' says that Sindarin 'guul' = "black magic" {ngol} occurs also in BS. If so, and with the same meaning, then 'Nazguul' likely means "Ring-sorcer(y/or)". Tolkien said that DBS was 'a more degraded variety' of Sauron's original CBS. DBS likely has phonetic and other corruptions, and words from other languages such as current forms of Orkish. In OC 3 out of the 12 vowels (ignoring the Mannish name 'Saruman') are 'o''s: as Tolkien said that 'o' is rare in BS: (a) DBS words should be phonetically corrected to CBS if they are used as CBS; (b) I would replace 'o' by 'u' in EL and LL words such as '-ob' = "of". There is an 'o' in 'Dushgoi' TK. In a note to 'Mordor' EL says "Could be 'Murdur'"; but I would have preferred a BS translation: 'Uzg' + some supplied BS word for "black". Tolkien said that in BS written in tengwar the vowel tehtar for 'o' and 'u' are the opposite way round from in the Common Speech. EL noun plural is '-i' after consonant, '-z' after vowel, <after> any case or possessive pronoun suffix. LL noun plural is '-u' after consonant. 'tak-ob-ishi-z' = "them of in pl." EL is a case of a case (inessive plural of genitive of 'tak') = "in their houses" (c.f. Quettar #43 pp15-16). The '-z' pluralizes omitted "house", not "them" which is already plural. Known declension cases are '-ishi' = "in", '-ob' = "of", '-uur' = "for". Vowel stems: in 'ta-ob' "him of" > 'tab' EL, the root vowel wins, but in 'Barcelonum' LL = "of B." the root vowel loses. I do not care for LL's '-um' = "of", as '-um' also means "-(y)ness". Known prepositions are 'u' = "to" and 'sha' = "together with" (OC), 'lata' = "under" and 'tala' = "above" EL. Pronouns form cases as nouns in the available forms. '''tak' = "them" is already plural in meaning and does not take plural '-z' or '-i' after case endings. 'burzum' / '-buurz' TK shows that BS had vowel length gradation in some words. I do not know whether 'ghaash' TK / 'ghashum' LL is another example of it, as LL's '-uluk' = "them all" shows that LL's spelling ignores vowel length. 'durb-' TK / 'durub' EL shows that unstressed stem vowels can come and go during word derivation. If EL extracting '-ug' = "-ing" is correct, then 'pushd-' = "stink" and likely sometimes > 'pushud' for pronounceability. EL's past passive participle suffix '-uga' was misprinted in 'Vinyar Tengwar' as '-aga', a form which I prefer to '-uga' as it is more clearly distinct from the active participle: e.g. 'throquug' = "devouring" v. 'throqu(u/a)ga' = "having been devoured" need <very much> to be kept distinct! 'Ilid/Albai/Golug' = "Elf" EL tells the reader to choose between these. With 'Golug' compare Sindarin 'Golodhrim'. Ethnic nouns ('Ilid, Albai, Gazat, Shara' EL; 'Golug, Uruk, Olog, Oghor, Tark' TK) probably add 'i'/'z' for "some" and '-hai' for collective plural. Sauron seems to have taken '-hai', and therefore likely other BS words, from 1st Age Angband Orkish. If 'za' = "this" in RV refers to the adjacent word 'uliima', then this BS version was likely meant to be used where Sauron's throne is near enough to be called "this". This word "this" is not in the other language versions. As RV is verse, the word order "throne this" may be merely for metrical reasons. The orc-name 'Ufthak' (LOTR) resembles and may have been inspired by 'Dufthakr', a Viking spelling in one of their sagas of the name of an Irishman (Gaelic form 'Dubhthach') who they carried to Iceland as a slave, and rebelled and so died there. For verb conjugation, see '-aga' '-at' '-ub' '-ug' '-uga' '-ut' below. For pronouns, see '-ul' '-ut' 'ta' 'tab' 'tak' below. EL uses 'tab' with genitive ending as a suffix. Acute accent in the chapter 'The Uruk-hai' in LOTR, and circ elsewhere, both probably mean ordinary long vowel in BS and Orkish. PN = personal name. >> = "changed by Tolkien to, before LOTR was published". With thanks to Lisa McBriety (Lisa_McBriety%bitnet.nihdrg@cu.nih.gov) (TolkLang 5.62 on 21 April 93) for some personal names that I had missed. A possible real-world origin of the Black Speech could be thus. In the First Age Tolkien named all or most things concerned with Morgoth and Angband in Sindarin ('Glaurung, Thuuringwethil, Carcharoth, Draugluin,' orc-names, etc), and he at first likely would have done the same with Sauron and Mordor. But (this is something of a long shot) Mordor's position to the east of Gondor would have reminded him as of Persia as seen by an ancient Greek, or by a scholar in Ancient Greek, as an eastern mountain-girt land of a dangerous enemy; and if out of interest he had looked up Persia in a (modern) atlas in his early years studying Greek at school, he would have found the <Elburz Mountains> along the north of Persia. Regardless of any actual Persian meaning, the name stuck in his subconscious, and later when needing a dark and ominous sounding Mordor placename it resurfaced in some form such as Sindarin 'Ered Burzum' or 'Dor Buurz'''. But the 'z' made it phonetically invalid for Sindarin, so he had to reject 'burz' or else invent a new language around it. Thus BS arose; another early-invented BS word was likely 'nazg' = "ring" << Gaelic 'nasg, nasc' = "ring". DBS follows English word order more closely, and I suspect that Tolkien made it using what to him were the less attractive parts of English phonology (ignoring meaning), c.f. "bag", "rank", etc. With 'skai' = "gah!", compare a statement by Tolkien (in his Biography) that he "found "cellar-door" more [phonetically] attractive than "sky"". BS borrowings into other languages. As 'Nazguul' is often used in (Westron represen-ted by) English speeches by characters, it was likely accepted as a Westron word and was not subject to Elrond's objection to Gandalf speaking in BS in Imladris. BS persistence after the fall of Sauron?: If on liberation many of Sauron's slaves proved to have no language in common except some form of BS learned perforce from their masters, BS may well have persisted as a common language in Mordor long after the fall of the regime that enforced it. If thus BS (or some form of Orkish) became a language of free Men, it would inevitably need enriching and ennobling, whether from its own resources or by wholesale borrowing from Westron or Elvish; if so, any arbiters of standard usage would likely have tried to encourage Sauron's original BS as a 'choice of evils' rather than Orkish corruptions of it. Possible debatable extractions of BS words are:
AFTERTHOUGHT] The Orc-curse could be interpreted otherwise, creating in me some sympathy for Ugluuk by describing him as being in a position that I have often been in!, for often I have had to interrupt my programming to go 'u bagronk sha pushdug' computer-user-'glob' (i.e. with bits of paper tape, discarded punch cards, unwanted output, and every sort of litter) when mucking-out the computer terminal room in the morning! | ||