Re: Common Orcish Article (Long) - was Re: tolkien?

In a message dated 12/14/2003 11:52:32 AM Eastern Standard Time,
ray.brown@FREEUK.COM writes:


>> and with?  . . . The sound and grammar of a language will almost certainly
>> reflect the cultural environment in which it is used.
>superstitious bosh!

Well, we are dealing with a fantasy world here, and Tolkien made much the
same assumption when he designed the Elvish languages so that they would sound
pleasant to readers, and made the fragments of his Orkish that apear in the
books unpleasant.


>> The vowel sounds are A (as in
>> "at"), E (as in "egg"), and O (as in "off"). . .
>Why? Low vowels are neither harsh nor guttural sounds.

Well, high vowels are ruled out because orcs (in Heaton's conception) can't
close their mouths far enough to make them, so that leaves the lower vowels.
Using the "at" sound [&} instead of [A] or [a] is probably a concession to the
(English-speaking) readers, who would be inclined to pronounce a word spelled
"dag" with [&].



>What a pity that a creation of an accomplished linguist like JRRT is
>subject
>to such a poorly designed language.
>In fact, according to JRRT (perhaps Mr Heaton hasn't read the appendices of
>the LotR), there could be no 'common Orcish", or "Orkish" as JRRT spelled
>it.

You're being a bit too harsh on him.  Note that he's creating a language for
orcs as they appear in Dungeons & Dragons games, not as they appear in
Tolkien's works.  So he's not obligated to reflects JRRT's orcs' lack of a common
language, or to use a phonology similar to Black Speech..

Doug

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