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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, 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.
“ The Orcs were first bred by the Dark Power of the North in the Elder Days. It is said that they had no language of their own, but took what they could of other tongues and perverted it to their own liking; yet they made only brutal jargons, scarcely sufficient even for their own needs, unless it were for curses and abuse. And these creatures, being filled with malice, hating even their own kind, quickly developed as many barbarous dialects as there were groups or settlements of their race, so that their Orkish speech was of little use to them in intercourse between different tribes.
LOTR III, Appendix F, Of other races, p. 1486
News
2023-09-07 Big Transcriber update Release notes
2023-07-24 New article: Orcish / Black Speech in Amazon's “The Rings of Power” series Read
2023-07-12 Transcriber updated Release notes
2023-06-30 New article: Dushgoi, Minas Morgul and Dol Guldur Read
2023-06-11 New article: Analysis of Ring Inscription by J.R.R. Tolkien himself Read
2023-05-13 Black Speech and Albanian
Reddit users have discovered that Orcish Nations site's word-list (mostly from MERP dialect) has quite a lot Albanian words. Unfortunately these words were borrowed into Svartiska and Shadowlandian dialects too. Original post. The fact of borrowing from Albanian would be OK if it wasn't almost half of the wordlist with very lazy phonetical adaptation. So, I discourage you from using MERP-derived words. The dictionaries were updated with new etymological information, but probably I've missed few words.
Historical reference: MERP dialect is a shorthand for “Middle-Earth Roleplay”, a table-top RPG game published by Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE) since 1982 until 1997. It was 2nd best-selling fantasy RPG after Dungeons & Dragons (according to publisher's statement). The first Orkish word-list was published in book “Lords of Middle-Earth: Vol. III – Hobbits, Dwarves, Ents, Orcs & Trolls” (ICE8004, 1989), which makes it the oldest surviving Neo Black Speech dialect. Out of ~150 words almost a half were Icelandic borrowings. The second wordlist was published in 2nd Edition supplement book “Angmar” (ICE2018, 1995). It contained more than 1200 new words, almost 500 of which were Albanian borrowings. However some of these Albanian words appeared for the first time in mass at 1st Edition book “Gorgoroth” (ICE3112, 1990). More info about MERP dialect can be found at Black Speech School's wiki.
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Пользователи Reddit'а обнаружили, что словарь на сайте Orcish Nations (основанный на диалекте MERP) содержит очень много слов из албанского языка. К сожалению, они проникли и в другие популярные диалекты – Svartiska и Shadowlandian. Оригинальный пост. Факт заимствования из Албанского не был бы так плох сам по себе, если бы это не было почти половиной списка слов, да ещё и с очень ленивой фонетической адаптацией. Поэтому, я не рекомендую использовать слова, взятые из диалекта MERP. Словари были обновлены новой этимологической информацией, но возможно некоторые слова не были замечены.
Историческая справка: аббревиатура MERP расшифровывается как “Middle-Earth Roleplay” (настольная ролевая игра, издававшаяся Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE) с 1982-й по 1997-й год). Это была вторая фэнтезийная ролевая игра по продажам (по заявлению издателя) после “Подземелий и Драконов” (DnD). Первый список слов Орочьего языка был опубликован в книге “Lords of Middle-Earth: Vol. III – Hobbits, Dwarves, Ents, Orcs & Trolls” (ICE8004, 1989 год). Из примерно 150 слов почти половина была заимствована из Исландского. Второй словарь был издан в книге 2-й редакции игры “Angmar” (ICE2018, 1995 г.). В ней было уже более 1200 новых слов, из которых около 500 были взяты из Албанского языка. Однако некоторые из этих албанских заимствований впервые массово появились в книге 1-й редакции “Gorgoroth” (ICE3112, 1990 г.). Больше информации о диалекте MERP можно прочитать в вики Школы Чёрной Речи.
P.S. Фраза "Учи олбанский" заиграла новыми красками 😄
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2023-05-12 News from the Bronze Age
Reddit user u/get_on_my_level_son has made an amazing One Ring inscription in Hittite cuneiform (with ink and paper though, it's time to make a clay tablet 😊). Source
Пользователь Reddit под ником u/get_on_my_level_son сделал замечательную надпись Кольца Всевластия используя хеттскую клинопись (при помощи бумаги и чернил, осталось изготовить глиняную табличку 😊 ). Источник
Notice: this is old news from 2021 reposted for preservation during migration from old forum format.
Внимание: это старая новость из 2021-го года, скопированная в целях сохранения при миграции со старого форума.
2023-04-17 Announcement
In year 2013 I've started the Black Speech School site to collect all available information about various fan-invented "dialects" of Neo Black Speech, a language created by J. R. R. Tolkien for his "The Lord of the Rings" book, and translate it into Russian. This blog was started to replace site's dead forum used now only to publish news and occasional articles, which is not the best format for these activities. Moreover old forum's engine is not compatible with more up-to-date technologies I'm migrating the site to.
So, I encourage to visit Black Speech School's Discord server for actual discussion, while this blog will serve as the platform for news and rare articles. The blog will be filled with the copies of older forum's articles first in a couple of months.
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