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[en] The Prancing Pony => The Lord of the Rings => Thema gestartet von: Radagast der Musikalische am 11. Mär 2021, 17:16

Titel: Neo-Black Speech and Neo-Orcish
Beitrag von: Radagast der Musikalische am 11. Mär 2021, 17:16
Hello all,

lately I've been studying the languages of Middle-earth more often, especially David Salo's Neo-Languages for the movies. I have tried to analyze the film quotes in Orcish and Black Speech from the two film trilogies using the available materials. For Neo-Elvish and Neo-Khuzdul there are already many reliable sources, for the languages of Sauron's servants the situation is unfortunately a bit different. The information available here is very limited and one of the main problems is that neither the English nor the German subtitles use the correct translations for the sentences. For example: The subtitle in the movies says: "They guard the gates! Not all of them!". The spoken Orcish lines translate to: "Now some sleep! Ugly Elves! They guard their territory!". But I tried my best to gather as many translations as possible.

I don't know if there are any other nerds here who are as excited about the languages as I am, but I thought I'd share my findings here just in case anyone is interested.  [ugly] For all of them I also have a derivation, which I have omitted here because the presentation cannot be reasonably accomplished in the narrow MU window. If someone is interested in the derivation, the individual word and sentence parts or the pronunciation of a quote, just ask and I will help. :)

Titel: Re: Neo-Black Speech and Neo-Orcish
Beitrag von: Fredius am 17. Jun 2021, 21:34
Just found this beauty, well done Radagast! This is so useful.
Titel: Re: Neo-Black Speech and Neo-Orcish
Beitrag von: Radagast der Musikalische am 25. Jun 2021, 18:47
Great to see that I'm not the only one being geeky about this.  [ugly]
Tolkien's languages have always been one of the most interesting parts of the universe for me. Seeing David Salo or other (amateur) linguists try to develop the languages further just fascinates me. Especially Elvish but also Khuzdul are now really mature languages, while the Black Language and Orcish have always remained somewhat mysterious.

By using Salo's word list and analyzing the familiar lines from the movie, I'm now able to formulate some sentences in Neo-Black Speech and Neo-Orcish, which I think is really dope. While I don't know yet if I'll ever be able to put it to good use, at least I'd know I could if ever needed.  xD

On that note: Biri borz dorgun! (For the Dark Lord!)
Titel: Re: Neo-Black Speech and Neo-Orcish
Beitrag von: Fredius am 26. Jun 2021, 15:45
Hahah trust me they are very useful, especially because I am friends with a voice actor who can nail the Orcish accent used in the movies xD.

By the by, I noticed many BotFA llines are missing (like Azog commanding Bolg to travel to Gundabad or the orders he gives on top of Raven-hill). Will these be added to your list at some point as well?
Titel: Re: Neo-Black Speech and Neo-Orcish
Beitrag von: Radagast der Musikalische am 26. Jun 2021, 19:39
Unfortunately, I have not been able to decipher them yet. As mentioned in the opening post, subtitles and what is actually said don't always match. I have tried several times, but words seem to be used that do not appear in Salo's word list so far. In other places I can decipher words, but the grammar is not correct.
Titel: Re: Neo-Black Speech and Neo-Orcish
Beitrag von: Fredius am 26. Jun 2021, 21:41
Gotcha, that's unfortunate. Thanks for the information regardless, it's very valuable xD.
Titel: Re: Neo-Black Speech and Neo-Orcish
Beitrag von: Radagast der Musikalische am 26. Jun 2021, 22:57
Yes that’s very unfortunate.

It bugs me that I’m not even able to decipher the sentence „Ride to Gundabad“
It sounds like „Harsh gar bir Gundabadul“, but this makes no sense. This would translate to „Travel them already to Gundabad“. The imperative form is usually used without pronoun suffixes so it should simply be “Har bir Gundabadul”. So the question is what the middle part could mean. I also know that if Bolg speaks about Legolas according to the subtitles, he only uses “golug-dorg” = Elf-master/King instead of “undag golug-dorg” = son of the elf-master/king. Maybe dorg can also mean prince.
The only other things I’ve identified so far is “Golgai, ânai, khozdai (the mountain will be their grave), but even here it sounds like he uses the word “lôg” instead of “ord” meaning lake. Strange sentences… xD
Titel: Re: Neo-Black Speech and Neo-Orcish
Beitrag von: Fredius am 27. Jun 2021, 09:39
Well here could be a solution to the "Ride to Gundabad":

If you listen closely he says "Harsh ga bir Gundabadul". He doesn't pronouce it as gar, as it lacks the "r" at the end. This gives me the impression that "ga" could be a grammatical variant to "gur", which according to Salo translates to "go quickly", or "hurry" in your translations. Combine this with the fact that "bir" is pronounced as "be-ar" by Azog in this sentence, although it could simply be his pronounciation of it? That seems strange to me because he does pronounce "biriz" properly. So going forward with that logic the translation to the whole sentence would be something like "travel quickly to Gundabad", keeping in mind the spirit that the Orcish language is supposed to be as simplified as possible.

Now as for Golug-dorg, I think Dorg is supposed to just mean master/lord, implying an Elf with a leadership role. In Orcish, whatever the hierarchical status, I assume everyone who is a leader can be called Dorg. Yet another example of everything being simplified :P.

I could of course be just grasping at straws haha.
Titel: Re: Neo-Black Speech and Neo-Orcish
Beitrag von: Radagast der Musikalische am 27. Jun 2021, 11:18
I also wondered if he was just saying "ga" instead of "gar", but I just couldn't find a word in the list that becomes "ga" by inflection. Even if it is an adverb form of the verb "gur", which is rather unlikely because adverbs usually don't end in vowels, the problem remains that "harsh" makes no sense. The imperative form does not need subject pronoun suffixes, only object suffixes, e.g. "Gor" = "Kill!" but "Gorid" = "Kill him!". The suffix -sh(i) stands for he/she/it/they, but why would Azog address Bolg in the third person? And if he means he has to travel with someone it would rather be "Harid". Or should it be Harzga, har-z-g-a = travel-(for)me-you-? This is all very strange and Azog mumbling like this doesn't make it any better.

Regarding "golug-dorg": It really seems that Salo is simply using "dorg" here for any kind of leader or dignitary. Strangely, this again contradicts the fact that there is also an extra word for prince, "tung". So why not "golug-tung"?
Titel: Re: Neo-Black Speech and Neo-Orcish
Beitrag von: Fredius am 27. Jun 2021, 12:35
Zitat von: Radagast der Musikalische am 27. Jun 2021, 11:18
I also wondered if he was just saying "ga" instead of "gar", but I just couldn't find a word in the list that becomes "ga" by inflection. Even if it is an adverb form of the verb "gur", which is rather unlikely because adverbs usually don't end in vowels, the problem remains that "harsh" makes no sense. The imperative form does not need subject pronoun suffixes, only object suffixes, e.g. "Gor" = "Kill!" but "Gorid" = "Kill him!". The suffix -sh(i) stands for he/she/it/they, but why would Azog address Bolg in the third person? And if he means he has to travel with someone it would rather be "Harid". Or should it be Harzga, har-z-g-a = travel-(for)me-you-? This is all very strange and Azog mumbling like this doesn't make it any better.
It's definitely brain racking! I honestly have no explanation to the -sh suffix. However the word "ga" is used by Bolg at Gundabad as well, when he yelled "ga har gar!" before the Orcs came out of the gates. Given the context I think the word being an abverb of "gur" would make the most sense, but of course I could be wrong. I will do some more thinking about this later!

Zitat von: Radagast der Musikalische am 27. Jun 2021, 11:18
Regarding "golug-dorg": It really seems that Salo is simply using "dorg" here for any kind of leader or dignitary. Strangely, this again contradicts the fact that there is also an extra word for prince, "tung". So why not "golug-tung"?
Tung actually means "price" not "prince" :P.

(https://i.imgur.com/Sb414U6.png)
Titel: Re: Neo-Black Speech and Neo-Orcish
Beitrag von: Radagast der Musikalische am 27. Jun 2021, 13:19
Wow, how an additional letter changes a word completely!  xD
Funnily enough I have always read Prince :D

I just can't get used to "ga" as an adverb for quickly. It simply contradicts the previous pattern of adverbs always ending in consonants. There is so far only one exception for "shâ" = not, but as negation this is again special and moreover also means "no". And if we look at the other dialogues, for "Quickly" it would be more logical to translate it with "Gur!"
Titel: Re: Neo-Black Speech and Neo-Orcish
Beitrag von: Fredius am 27. Jun 2021, 18:08
You're probably right, I do think that "ga" is it's own word as it seemingly is used on multiple moments, but the list is just incomplete. I will try to decipher it at some point though, we may have missed a clue somewhere xD.
Titel: Re: Neo-Black Speech and Neo-Orcish
Beitrag von: Radagast der Musikalische am 28. Mai 2022, 19:52
I have added three more lines to both lists. I was able to decipher three more lines in the movies and have also found three additional lines in Neo-Black Speech from SoW.

I was also thinking that this one line might have been "Harzga bir Gundabadul! Margra nakh ash", which which could be loosely translated as "I make you travel to Gundabad, attack from the other side"

Travel-I-you-??? to Gungabad
Har-z-g-a bir Gundabadul

Attack-???-?? back some
Marg-r-a nakh ash

I also wondered in if perhaps parts in the last film were gibberish. It sounds from time to time as if they recycled parts from the first two films and cut them together differently.