On Fri, 11 Feb 2005 22:21:18 -0500, Chad Perrin
<perrin(a)apotheon.com> wrote:
If we were going to create a(nother) Middle Earth
language Wikipedia, it
wouldn't be Quenya that I'd want. I'd want Orcish, personally.
Of course, I realize how ludicrous that is. There isn't even a recorded
Orcish language, as far as I'm aware.
As I recall, there was no one language: Orcs just grabbed random
fragments of nearby human languages and used them. The exception
would be Sauron's Black Speech, a consistency 'imposed from above',
the language of the famous "One ring..." poem.
Orcish would just be too cool, though. . . .
Funny enough, I was just reading the Appendices just last week, and
was moved enough by the following fragment to transcribe it from the
printed copy. (Apologies in advance for the frivolity of posting this
here.)
"But Orcs and Trolls spoke as they would, without love of words or
things; and their language was actually more degraded than I have
shown it. I do not suppose that any will wish for a closer rendering,
though models are easy to find. Much the same sort of talk can still
be heard among the orc-minded; dreary and repetitive with hatred and
contempt, too long removed from good to retain even verbal vigour,
save in the ears of those to whom only the squalid sounds strong." —
J. R. R. Tolkien, Appendix F, The Lord of the Rings
There's a definite set of universal Or(c|k)ish terms, though. For
instance, "waaaaaaaaaaaargh" is understood by Orcish peoples everywhere.
I vote for ork: as the linguistic code for Orcish.
Okay, I'm going to shut up about this horribly, badly off-topic subject now.
--
Chad