Re: CHAT: Cockney Orkish as she is spoken.

On Tue, 23 Feb 1999, John Cowan wrote:

>         <pedantic>It's "bubhosh".</pedantic></whinge>
>
My apologies for my insensitivities towards the Orkish members of this
list!  Leaving off the end of a curse seems strange to me, especially as
any orc would want it to become true - so long as it happens to the other
chap.

The line in the script runs "Curse the Uruk-hai! Uglu(u)k u bagronk sha
pushdug Saruman-glob (buubhosh skai)!"  I never realised that practising
code-switching would prove to be so difficult.  I'm only just getting to
the stage where it rolls naturally.

It seems to me that Black Speech/Orkish is intended to be language that
Tolkien found unattractive: lots of gutterals and back vowels, uvular R
(which I'm trying to master for the code switching), consonant clusters
like -sg that could have come from Irish.  This doesn't mean another
conlanger would find it an unattractive language, or consider Cockney to
be an Orkish accent.  I hope to attempt it with a broad dialect that I
hear used by punks, skinheads and bogans.

It still sounds more like troll to me; "'Ere, 'oo are yoo?" as in the
Hobbit.

> These are about transsubstantiation, but what do the next two
> refer to?
>
> > whether whistling be a vice or a virtue; whether
The use of musical accompliment to singing in church; the Free Church of
Scotland would be the only church I know of, at least in the Western
world, where singing the psalms exculsively without accompliment is still
an option.  This controversy is virtually dead.

> > it be better to kiss a post or throw it on the fire..., with many more.
The use of images in worship.  The complete quote is found on p 292 of the
Penguin version.

- andrew.

Andrew Smith, Intheologus                       hobbit@earthlight.co.nz

Difference in opinions hath cost many millions of lives: for instance,
whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; whether the juice of a certain
berry be blood or wine; whether whistling be a vice or a virtue; whether
it be better to kiss a post or throw it on the fire..., with many more.
                                - Jonathan Swift; Gulliver's Travels.