Introduction

The Land of Shadow's Black Speech

This dialect of the Black Speech know as the Shadowlandian Black Speech was created by Scatha, the great Dragon Queen of Mordor and Morgoth's Lair, and was made for the Dark Community of Mordor... the Land of Shadow.com and Dark Messages our community board. She has since expanded it's use across the web into many of our fellow Dark Sites, including Morgoth's Lair and Lugburz ensuring it's longevity over time and giving the dedicated students of this dialect of the Black Speech, a variety of forums and communities to discuss, learn, speak and write in the Dark Tongue of Mordor.

We will be forever grateful to Scatha and many other dedicated Black Speech linguists who contributed to this great work of linguistic wizardry that breaths life into the expedience of Tolkien's Land of Shadow. We Thank you Scatha!

An Introduction from Scatha the Black Speech Linguist

Then J. R. R. Tolkien invented the Black Speech for his Lord of the Rings trilogy, he created only a few phrases and orc names. In order to develop the language for use and communication, we have invented new words and have developed some grammatical rules. In order to make it clear which words came directly from Tolkien, and which ones were created by other people, source abbreviations (in all caps) are given with each word. This dictionary was based on several online Black Speech discussions and resources. (See URL's in Appendix below.) I tried to base my new words on Tolkien's original BS vocabulary and on his proper names for orcs. The rest I extrapolated from the sources noted below and from Quenya. I apologize if I have neglected to credit anyone. If you find that I have, please email me. Please also let me know if you find any errors or problems.

Several different groups and people have invented various versions of Black Speech. This is entirely in keeping with Tolkien's observations that orcs spoke many different dialects. These “dialects” are named by their creators. Mine is called “Uzg Bûrgulu-ob” (Land of Shadows). There is also a dialect called “Horngoth”, another one by a Swedish LARP group called “Svartiska”, and a defunct one by the name of Mugbûrz. If you decide to create your own dialect, please give yours a distinctive name. Please feel free to to use, share, or copy these dictionaries and lessons as you wish, but please do give credit to the various creators. Thank you.

Note from author of this site: I let myself change the order of lessons according to my point of view about their difficulty and consistency. Lessons marked with asterisk are written by me. My notes to Scatha's original lessons are marked with different font. Lessons for russian- and english-speaking users are different because of distincts in grammar and phonetics. Language-specific parts of lessons are marked with a flag and dashed border (all of russian-specific parts and some of english-specific parts are mine).

WARNING: however dictionaries featured here contain words from almost all dialects of Black Speech, grammatical rules of these lessons are applicable only to Shadowlandian dialect (LOS).

For information about Tolkien's canonical Black Speech see Appendix E.