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Welcome to the Black Speech School, the place where you can learn the language of Orcs, Nazgûls and other Mordor's inhabitants.

If you are interested only in Tolkien's canonical Black Speech I advise you to read the article “Canonical”.

If you don't mind against fans' additions (Neo Black Speech, Pseudo Black Speech, Neo-Orcish), start with Dialects page to understand where various dictionaries and grammatic rules used in this site have come from.

The site was changed recently, so if you're looking for older version, it was moved to Shadowlandian section.

Random quotation
“ The inscription on the Ring was in the ancient Black Speech, while the curse of the Mordor orc on p. 579 was in the more debased form used by the soldiers of the Dark Tower, of whom Grishnákh was the captain. Sharkû in that tongue means old man.

LOTR III, Appendix F, Of other races, p. 1487
 

Latest news

2024-03-09 New article: Orcish lullaby based on the Lay of Leithian

 
I’ll sing ye famous song, how in the days of yore,
When flat was our world, when Rings have not yet been made,
Our first Dark Lord defeated was by Elfin maid,
Where others failed; Tinúviel was name of her.

Idea of making a lullaby from Lay of Leithian came to me after reading a Russian translation of “Beren and Luthien” book, where line “Down crumpled Orc, down Balrog proud” resembled the song “Sleep tired toys, books are asleep…” from a children show. But making a lullaby for Orcs required changes to be made, for example baby-orc should be afraid of Lúthien. I've also made a quick research to be sure that scary lullabies are the thing in almost every culture.

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2024-02-22 Transcriber updated  Release notes

 

2024-02-12 New article: More (untranslated) Black Speech in Amazon's “The Rings of Power”

 

Twitter/X account "Rings of Power Updates" posted a sample of Black Speech without translation.


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2023-09-07 Big Transcriber update  Release notes

 

2023-07-24 New article: Orcish / Black Speech in Amazon's “The Rings of Power” series

 

This post will contain Orcish names and phrases from “The Rings of Power” series. Many of them will remain untranslated in the near feature until some official information drop. Most of the translations are my speculations. The page is updated when new information becomes available.

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