Lesson VII – Pre- and Postpositions, Noun Cases, Phrase Verbs

In Black Speech, prepositions (from, in, of, to, by, etc.) are suffixed to the noun they modify (thus becoming postpositions). However, this rule is often ignored in hasty speech, especially when orcs curse one another (and for preposition “to”). The following examples are grammatically correct, although orcs sometimes incorrectly place the prepositions before the word when they are speaking to one another (another example of Debased Black Speech).

Below is the table of all prepositions attested in Black Speech. It was heavily modified, expanded and complicated comparing to original Scatha's lesson. I and II are declensions of nouns (ending with consonant and vowel respectively).

* these words are often used as real prepositions placed before nouns, not postpositions as usual.

** note that the Tolkien orc curse, “sha Saruman” and “u Mordor” are both grammatically incorrect. Technically, the orc should have said, “Saruman-sha” and “Mordor-u”.

*** it could be confused with Past Tense suffix -uz (next lesson), see my comments about it at the end of the lesson.

Also note that in the Ring Verse, we have “lata nut” instead of “nut-lata”. It has been suggested that this was done to make the verse scan as poetry. By now you will have noticed that there are many examples in Black Speech where the speaker has placed the preposition before the noun. Therefore, this is probably a fairly flexible rule, especially in Debased Black Speech. However, for the purpose of learning Black Speech, try to observe the rule as much as possible when translating the lessons (at least for now). When you write preposition before the noun, preposition is always used in form of Declension I singular, and noun takes Objective/Accusative case (if not stated other; in most cases omitted in favor of Nominative) and required number suffix.

Strictly speaking, the prepositions should also become plural when they modify a plural noun, but I have only seen one example of that. It occurs in the Ring Verse, which is in Classical Black Speech, not Debased Black Speech. (Please remember that the full Ring Verse was translated by a Tolkien fan on the Tolklang board, not by Tolkien himself). The ring verse uses the plural “ûru” (for), as well as “ishiz” (in).

Excerpts from the Ring Verse:

I think theese examples show that plural noun suffices should be placed after prepositions, not the fact of pluralizing prepositions.

It will be more correct to call these words postpositions, but I'll stick with more familiar term.

Exercise

Translate the following into grammatically correct Classical Black Speech.

(*note that the preposition modifies Gondor, not beasts!)

Joining two prepositions together

Whenever you have to use two prepositions together, you should join them with hyphens, although most orcs would never do this in Debased Black Speech. For example, if you want to say, “into Mordor” (Mordor + in + to) you would connect the prepositions this way: “Mordor-u-ishi”. But because this combination would be somewhat difficult to prounounce, most Orcs would simply say, “u Mordor-ishi”.