Where to find words in the Orkish language?

[Holdwine]

Anybody know of a good website were you can find word in orkish?

 

[jallan]

Go to the usual one for all Tolkien language stuff: Ardalambion.

The subsite you want is Orkish and the Black Speech.

 

[Khôr’nagan]

Indeed yes, Ardalambion is the site to go to (IMO). There are some other dictionaries around, but the only ones that are different are only different because they include words that weren't made by Tolkien, but rather by other people. However, one thing that can be done is to morph words from any of the languages of Middle-Earth and use it as Orkish, because that's pretty much what the Orcs are said to have done to get their language in the first place. For example, if you wanted to make the word "bane" into Orkish from another language, you could take Sindarin dagnir and change it into taknôr, or something of the like. Pretty much, you just have to make sure the word will sound very gutteral and sharp when spoken with a "demonic" voice, as the Orcs preferred their language to be that way.

 

[childoferu]

Wow, so I guess you could say Orkish is a bastard language

 

[Gothmog]

Actually, there is not a language that can be called "Orcish" as each tribe or group of Orcs had their own mutually incomprehensable speech. The nearest you get to something that could be called the Orcish language is "The Black Speech of Mordor". This was invented by Sauron and imposed on the Orcs of Mordor by him so that they could all talk together. It is this that was used for the inscription on the One Ring.

 

[HLGStrider]

You mean "Lok'tar! For the Horde!" isn't really Orcish?

 

[Gothmog]

Not in the same way as the equivelent in Sindarin or Quenya would be "Elvish" or in Westron would be "Manish". If "Lok'tar" is in "The Black Speech" then it would be, "Mordorian", if it were not the Black Speech then it would be from a tribal speech that might not be understood by Orcs from a tribe or group 10 miles away.

I think that my post was not as clear as it could have been. I did not mean that there is no such thing as "Orcish" but that, with the exception of the Black Speech (invented and imposed by Sauron), each tribe or group had their own speech which could not be understood even by other groups of Orcs.

This could be why Orcs only formed large offensive armies when under the command of Melkor or Sauron. At other times, although extremely dangerous they were only regional problems.

 

[HLGStrider]

Actually, that was just a bad World of Warcraft joke.

 

[Gothmog]

Ahh. Well, having nothing to do with world of warcraft (other than deleting WoW spammers on this site ) I would not have got the joke even if it had been good . However, my comment about not being clear in my other post is still valid

 

[Eledhwen]

I would think Tolkien only invented enough Orc/Mordor speech for the purposes of the story, whereas Elvish languages were extensively built. I haven't researched this - it's a guess.

 

[Elhath]

The most "famous" fan-made Neo-Orkish materials are probably the ones found below. They were also utilized by the Austrian band Summoning on their latest album.

http://www.thelandofshadow.com/mordorgate/darkdownloads/blackspeech/speech3.htm
http://www.geocities.com/thequietwraith/rhowordlist.html

In contrast to these, the linguistic consultant David Salo put together his own basic Neo Black Speech morphemes for the Peter Jackson movies:

http://www.elvish.org/gwaith/movie_soundtrack_fotr.htm#ring

An interesting note: When making Orkish words out of other M-E languages, you can also use some phonetic rules drawn from comparison of synonyms of equal length; e.g. looking at Eldarin morn- next to B.S. búrz- (or Q. lië & Adûnaic lâi next to Orkish hai) might give the observant person a few ideas.
(Obviously, while attempting this it's a good idea to pay attention to the *location* of the phonemes in a word... not to mention the actual Eldarin *word roots* from The Lost Road and Other Writings as well.)