Black Speech

The Black Speech is the fictional language of Mordor in The Lord of the Rings. In the story, when Sauron created the Orcs, he created this language of evil for the Orcs to speak. The orkish dialect is merely a debased form of the language; the only example of "pure" black speech is the inscription upon the One Ring, which when spoken by Gandalf at the Council of Elrond was physically painful to elves and alarming to other races.

In real life, J. R. R. Tolkien created this language with the intention of making it harsh and ugly, although people who speak the European languages that he emulated may disagree with his methods. The Black Speech is unfortunately one of the more incomplete languages in Tolkien's novels, because the forces of good refuse to utter it, as it attracts the attention of the Eye of Sauron. 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 eyes (or ears?), he did not enjoy writing in it. The result is a random collection of words that are hard to actually use in day-to-day conversation.

For the 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.

Related topics

• Constructed languages
• Fictional languages
• Languages of Middle-earth

External links

• Orkish and the Black Speech - base language for base purposes

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