關於古時候的半獸人語，「據說他們沒有自己的語言，而是吸收其他種族的語言，並且將它們轉化成自己偏好的格式。不過，他們經常使用的也只有一些粗魯的短字，剛好能滿足他們生活上的需求。」（《魔戒》附錄F）。他們取走「其他語言並扭曲」的例子之一出現在《未完成的故事》：92，我們可以找到「諾多精靈」的半獸人語名：Golug，這顯然源於辛達語的Golodh（複數Gelydh），而且顯然地被姿意扭曲了。然而，另有傳言說天魔王魔茍斯「為他的手下創造了一種語言。」(VT39：27)
在佛羅多的時代，這種語言的狀況仍然沒有改變：「那些半獸人和地精有他們自己的語言，他們的語言和他們製造或使用的東西一樣醜惡。就算是為了基本需求而產生的基本語言，也需要一些善良的意志、真實的思想及感覺，才能讓語言本身充滿活力，讓人覺得有用。基於這個原因，半獸人的語言變化無常，而其含義卻超級單調，只有在表達辱?、憎恨和恐懼的時候才顯得流利無比。」（《中土世界民族錄》：21）。當然，「這些生物滿心邪惡，連自己的同胞都會仇視，因此很快就在各聚居地之中發展出複雜、分歧甚遠的方言。到了最後，連他們自己的半獸人語都不再適合於不同部落之間的溝通。」（《魔戒》附錄F）。因此根本沒有的所謂的「半獸人語」來讓我們分析。古往今來唯一適用於所有半獸人語的形容詞，大概只有「醜惡、骯髒、與昆蒂語大異其趣。」（《失落之道及其他故事》：178）。當然，「半獸人和食人妖在想說話的時候說話，不喜歡咬文嚼字。」（《附錄》F）。他們對待語言的態度和精靈截然不同，精靈熱愛並陶冶他們的語言。托爾金本人就是一位語言學家，這個頭銜的字面意義就是字詞的愛人和朋友，因此在他創造的世界中，不喜歡語言的生物只能是邪惡的。
半獸人語的多樣性和不定性對於掌控半獸人大軍的黑暗力量來說，當然是一種阻礙。因此，為了達成有效的管理（也就是絕對極權主義），索倫花了時間為他的僕人創造了一種通用語言。於此，他顯然效法了他原本的主人魔茍斯，上面引用的VT39：27就是證據。
「根據歷史記載，所謂的黑暗語是索倫在黑暗之年代中發展出來的，」《附錄》E這樣告訴我們，「他意圖將這語言擴展為所有服待他的奴僕所使用的共通語，但最後卻失敗了。不過，從這黑暗語中發展出了許多半獸人在第三紀元通用的單字，像是ghâsh 『火焰』。不過，在索倫第一次被推翻之後，這種語言就被眾人所遺忘，只剩下戒靈還記得。當索倫再起時，它又成了巴拉多要塞和魔多將領之間的語言。」後來，記載指出索倫在第三紀元培育的墮落食人妖種族Olog-hai，唯一懂的語言就是巴拉多的黑暗語。Olog-hai這個單字本身就是一個黑暗語單字。「黑暗語」這個詞應該不是索倫對自己的語言的稱呼，而是其他種族對這種語言的蔑稱。另一方面，黑暗語中的「巴拉多」是Lugbúrz，其意為「邪黑塔」，和在辛達語的名稱一樣。因此索倫可能確實喜歡黑暗，並把黑色作為自己的代表色。祂的士兵的制服上，大部分也確實是黑色。
托爾金本人一點也不喜歡黑暗語。曾有一個愛慕者送給他一只鋼製高腳杯，但讓他大失所望的是，他發現這只杯子上「刻有魔戒上的可怕句子。我當然不可能用它喝東西，而只把它作為我的煙灰缸。」（《托爾金書信集》：422）。他的觀念顯然與第三紀元的精靈及人類一樣；他們當然認為黑暗語不會比半獸人使用的其他語言好：「它充滿著刺耳、醜惡的聲音，以及其他種族無法理解的骯髒詞句，而且也不會有人試著去了解。」（《中土世界民族錄》：35）。像這種包含「剌耳、醜惡」的聲音及「骯髒」的詞句的句子，不可能會有客觀觀點的存在；這段話很主觀，反映了一般人對半獸人語及來自於索倫的任何事物的偏見（但這種偏見再強烈一千倍大概也不為過）。那些「刺耳、醜惡的聲音」幾乎已經失傳了。黑暗語擁有破裂音b、g、d、p、t、k，摩擦音th、gh、（可能還有f和kh，它們只出現在半獸人名字內），側音l，振動音r，鼻音m、n和發絲音輔音s、z、sh。由於資料有限，這些並不見得完整。它的母音有a、i、o、u，其中托爾金註明母音o是非常罕見的。黑暗語似乎沒有e，但有長音â和û （後者也被拼寫為ú，不過《精靈語入門》第166-167頁的假設可能是對的，這只是托爾金拼寫的不一致）。至少有一個雙元音存在：ai，而au也出現在一個半獸人名字中。（沒有人確定這個名字屬於什麼語言，在此就不進一步說明了。）
那麼，是什麼讓精靈如此厭惡這種語言？據記載，半獸人會使用一個小舌音r，就像在法語和德語中常見的R一樣，而艾爾達族覺得這個音很難聽，這讓人想到古黑暗語中r的標準發音就是如此（《精靈語入門》第166頁）。黑暗語也有一些複合子音，它們在並沒有出現在當時的辛達語中，分別是：字首sn、thr、sk和字尾rz、zg。無論原因為何，這種語言讓人覺得十分剌耳：當甘道夫在愛隆的會議上引述魔戒上的詩句時，「法師聲音的改變讓眾人為之一驚，突然間，它變得邪惡、強大，如同石頭般冷酷。似乎有一道陰影遮住了天上的太陽，門廊瞬間變得黑暗。所有的人都忍不住打寒顫，精靈則掩住耳朵。」－－這反應可真夠強烈的了！不過這種反應大部分應該是來自於對「黯影下」的一切的痛恨，而不是黑暗語本身無可避免的固有醜惡。
黑暗語的詞彙又是從哪兒來的呢？索倫當然不會比他的僕人們更「喜歡咬文嚼字」，而人們大概也會認為他是隨隨便便地編造出那些詞彙。這在某些例子中可能是事實，但他似乎也從許多不同的來源中挖了一些單字，甚至是從精靈語中，「（據說）索倫發明了黑暗語，作為他的子民的通用語，其中的單字uruk大概是他早先從精靈語中借來的。」（《珠寶之戰》：390）。Uruk與昆雅語中的urco、orco或辛達語中的orch類似，但它和古精靈語中的*uruk一模一樣（變形*urku，*uruku，由此昆雅語中為urco，變形*urkô；由此辛達語中可能為orch）。但索倫又怎麼會知道古昆蒂語呢？他會不會是曾經負責處理魔苟斯在庫維因恩虜獲的精靈，甚至於就是他進行了「基因工程改造」，讓精靈變成了半獸人呢？身為一個邁雅，他可以輕鬆地理解精靈的語言（《珠寶之戰》：406）。對於第一批精靈來說，魔苟斯和他的僕人們也許就是*urukî或「恐懼」，因為這個詞的原始意義很模糊、籠統，而索倫可能曾經快樂的告訴被俘的精靈，他們已經變成了*urukî。在他的腦中，這個詞一定留下了很深的印記。
但黑暗語單字還有其他來源。「戒指、環」一詞在黑暗語中是nazg，與主神語中mâchanana饂âd「毀滅之環」一詞的字尾非常相似（《珠寶之戰》：410，但拼法不太一樣）。身為一個邁雅，索倫會懂得主神語；它實際上應該是他的「母語」，這是唯一適用於此的稱呼了。如果說神的語言竟然是索倫黑暗語中「充滿著刺耳、醜惡的聲音，以及骯髒的詞句」的形成元素是褻瀆的話，那麼我們不要忘記，據彭格洛所說，「精靈並不喜歡主神語。」（《珠寶之戰》：398）。嚴格來說，魔苟斯是一個主神，祂一定知道主神語（或者至少在祂被囚禁在維林諾時，學到了這種語言）。根據《失落之道及其他故事》：178，他以一種「扭曲」的形式，將這種語言教給自己的僕人。如果真是如此，主神語的na饂âd「戒指」就很可能在第二紀元中，然後在半獸人語的一個分支中變成了nazg，然後索倫就採用它了。
索倫殞落之後，黑暗語又有了怎樣的變化？它還是以更低下的形式遊蕩在他從前的子民中。直到今天，它還沒有完全消失。
"The inscription on the Ring was in the ancient Black Speech," Appendix F informs us, "while the curse of the Mordor-orc...was in the more debased form used by the soldiers of the Dark Tower, of whom Grishnâkh was the captain. Sharku [sic, read sharkû?] in that tongue means old man." (Does "that tongue" mean Black Speech as such or the debased form? The wording is not perfectly clear, but probably the latter. In the footnote in LotR3/VI ch. 8, sharkû - the origin of Saruman's nickname Sharkey - is said to be "Orkish".)
Our sole example of pure Black Speech, then, is the inscription on the Ring: Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul. "One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the Darkness bind them." (LotR1/II ch. 2) Nazg is "ring", also seen in Nazgûl "Ring-wraith(s)". Ash is the number "one", agh is the conjuction "and", disturbingly similar to Scandinavian og, och. Burzum is "darkness", evidently incorporating the same element búrz、burz- "dark" as in Lugbúrz "Tower-dark", the Black Speech name that Sindarin Barad-dûr translates. Hence, the -um of burzum must be an abstract suffix like the "-ness" of the corresponding English word "darkness". Burzum has a suffix ishi "in". In the transcription it is separated from burzum by a hyphen, but there is nothing corresponding in the Tengwar inscription on the Ring, so this may be considered either a postposition or a locative ending. (It is remarkably similar to Quenya -ssë and may support the theory advanced by Robert Foster in his Complete Guide to Middle-earth, that the Black Speech was to some extent based on Quenya and a perversion of it. The element burz- "dark" is also vaguely similar to the Elvish stem for "black", MOR.) Though burzum-ishi is translated "in the darkness", there does not seem to be anything corresponding to the article "the", unless it is somehow incorporated in ishi. But the evidence is that the Black Speech does not mark the distinction between definite and indefinite nouns; see below.
In the word durbatulûk "to rule them all" the morphemes may be tentatively segmented as durb-at-ul-ûk "rule-to-them-all" (the alternative is durb-a-tul-ûk, but suffixes of the pattern vowel-consonant create a tidier system; remember that we are dealing with a constructed language). Similarly we have gimb-at-ul "find-to-them", thrak-at-ul-ûk "bring-to-them-all" and krimp-at-ul "bind-to-them". Verbs with the ending -at are translated by English infinitives: durbat、gimbat、thrakat、krimpat = "to rule, to find, to bring, to bind". Hence we may speak of verbs in -at as infinitives, though it may also be a specialized "intentive" form indicating purpose: The Ring was made in order to rule, find, bring and bind the other Rings of Power. The Black Speech does not only employ a suffix -ul to express "them", but also, and more remarkably, a suffix rather than a separate word to express "all": -ûk.
Then there is the curse of the Mordor-orc: Uglúk u bagronk sha pushdug Saruman-glob búbhosh skai (LotR2 III:3). In PM:83, this is translated "Uglúk to the cesspool, sha! the dungfilth; the great Saruman-fool, skai!" (There also exists another translation; see below.) This is said to be a "debased" form of Black Speech, but it is of course difficult for us to tell how it diverges from Sauron's original standard. The sound o is used thrice, though we are told that "in the [original?] Black Speech, o was rare". But the sound u is used five times (excluding the Mannish name Saruman), so this cannot simply be due to u having become o in this Orkish dialect. Tolkien did not state that o was absent in the Black Speech (cf. the word Olog-hai below).
The following observations can be made: Sha and skai are evidently simply interjections of contempt; they are not translated. Compounds consisting of two nouns have their main element last, just like in Quenya and English: hence "Saruman-fool" is Saruman-glob rather than **glob-Saruman. (Hence bag-ronk = "cess-pool" and push-dug = "dung-filth", tentatively segmenting the elements of the compounds in the way that seems most likely - but of course it may also be ba-gronk or bagr-onk、pushd-ug or pu-shdug). Adjectives follow the noun they describe: "the great Saruman-fool" is Saruman-glob búbhosh rather than *búbhosh Saruman-glob (cf. also Lugbúrz *"Towerdark", *Lug Búrz being spelt as one word). The translation thrice employs the definite article the, but it has no equivalent in the Orkish words (u must be the preposition "to"). This suggests that the Black Speech does not mark the distinction between definite and indefinite nouns (which is not in itself a defect, since this is also the case in major languages like Russian and Chinese). It is less likely that the naked stem of the noun is by default the definite form, for in that case ash nazg should translate as "the one ring", not "one ring". (On the other hand, Gandalf introduced his translation of the Ring Inscription with the words "this in the Common Tongue is what is said, close enough", a wording that suggests that the translation is not 100 % accurate. In theory it is moreover a translation of a translation, since Tolkien later rendered the Common Tongue version appearing in the Red Book into English...) We note that a preposition u "to" is used, indicating that the Black Speech has prepositions as well as suffixed postpositions like ishi (or is this one of the points where this "debased" form of Black Speech differs from Sauron's standard? May "to the cesspool" be *bagronk-u in pure Sauronian Black Speech?)
A quite different translation of the Orkish curse has been published in Vinyar Tengwar: "Uglúk to the dung-pit with stinking Saruman-filth, pig-guts, gah!" This translation seems to be later than the one mentioned above. It seems that Tolkien had forgotten the original translation and simply made up a new one. We choose to accept the translation given in PM:83 as the genuine one, though this choice is admittedly arbitrary.
Except for the inscription on the Ring and the curse, the corpus consists of little more than the words Olog-hai and Uruk-hai, denoting races of especially tough and war-like creatures evidently developed and bred by Sauron: varieties of Trolls and Orcs, respectively. Hai evidently denotes a folk or race.
It is remarkable that the word Nazgûl is used both in a singular and a plural sense. Perhaps a simple noun is neither singular nor plural, but has a very general or generic sense, and some qualifier like ash "one" or hai "folk" is added if the meaning has to be further specified. So when making statements about the Ringwraiths in general, it may be OK to say simply Nazgûl, but one specific Ringwraith is *ash Nazgûl (perhaps meaning either "a certain Ringwraith"/"one Ringwraith" or "the one Ringwraith"). The entire "race" or category of Ringwraiths may be specifically *Nazgûl-hai. But all this is pure speculation. We have never seen the word Nazgûl in a Black Speech context.
(For an independent analysis of Black Speech grammar, see the article A Second Opinion on the Black Speech by Craig Daniel.)
Orc-names, the meanings of which are unknown, are excluded. DBS means "debased Black Speech" and in effect marks words from the curse of the Mordor-orc, except in the case of sharkû. Of course, some of these words may not differ from their form in pure Sauronian Black Speech. We shall never know.
agh "and"
The historian Alexandre Nemirovsky, who specializes in the history of the Hittites and the Hurrians that lived in the Late Bronze Age, believes Tolkien's Black Speech may be inspired by the languages of these ancient peoples. As we know, some of Tolkien's invented languages were definitely influenced by pre-existing tongues; it is well known that Quenya and Sindarin were originally inspired by Finnish and Welsh, respectively. The following is a slightly edited version of the argument Nemirovsky sent me; he has kindly granted me permission to use it here:
1. On the morpheme ûk. As it is suffix, not a word (Tolkien writes all words separately in his transliteration), it can hardly express "all". This is because "all", being a pronoun, would remain, I think, a separate word. I propose to identify this ûk as a verbal suffix with the meaning of full accomplishment of the action expressed by the verbal root, so that literally it would be translated "completely, fully", which would correspond well to the translation "all", because "to rule them fully" and "to rule them all" mean the same in this context.
2. Main traits of grammar: cases are expressed by postlogs (ishi); only the Nominative case has a zero ending (nazg); the most important feature to my mind is that the personal pronoun naming the object of a transitive action is included in the verbal form only. It does not remain a separate word. Moreover, some verbal suffixes can even come after it in such a case (root + ul "them" + ûk "completely, to the very end"). In other words, we see an agglutinative ergative language - i.e. a language of non-Indo-European type, really alien to almost all others, and of a very archaic type.
3. Now my main hypothesis is that this Black Speech was designed by Tolkien after some acquaintance with Hurrian-Urartian language(s). On the possibility of such an acquaintance see Note 4 below. For now I want to emphasize that Hurrian really is an agglutinative ergative language, where personal pronouns are included in the verbal forms; by the way, jussive forms in Hurrian never include the pronoun expressing the agent/subject of a transitive action, but often include the pronoun, expressing its object. Cf. the presence of a "them"-formant, but absence of any formant expressing the agent, in the verbal forms of the Ring inscription. In Hurrian all cases except the Nominative are expressed with various flexions; Nominative is expressed with zero flexion - again just as in the Black Speech.
Of course, here we see only grammatical parallels; but many words of the Black Speech have much in common with Hurrian-Urartian words. Consider the following list (Black Speech forms are given in bold, Hurrian-Urartian forms in italics):
ash "one" / she (root sh-) "one"
durb- "to rule" / turob- "something (disastrous), which is predestined to occur; enemy". (This rendering of the main semantics of Hurrian turobe as "predestined evil" rather than just an "enemy" is based on the context of El-Amarna letter #24, where this word turns up in a construction of a type "if turobe will happen, - let it not happen! - we'll aid one another with military forces". The verbs give the impression that "an evil destiny in form of an enemy" is the meaning of turobe.)
at - formant of jussive/intended future in verbal forms / ed - formant of future in verbs
-ul "them" as object of action in transitive verbal forms / -lla, -l "them" as object of action in transitive verbal forms
-ûk "completely" as a morpheme in a verbal form / -ok- formant with a meaning "fully, truthfully, really" in a verbal form
gimb- "to find" / -ki(b) "to take, to gather"
thrak- "to bring" / s/thar-(ik)- "to ask, to demand to send something to someone", so meaning "to ask for/to cause bringing of something to someone" is implied.
agh "and" / Urartian aye, the same as "mit" and "bei" in German
burz- "dark" / wur- "to see" in fact, but the root is present in wurikk- "to be blind" and really would express something opposite to "see, seeable" with any negative particle, while there is a particle z in Hurrian with the possible meaning "to be at the very limit of, up to the end of, complete". So wur + z could really give the meaning "where the seeing is near/at its limits" - of course not Hurrian as such, but a quite possible "play" of any linguist with the Hurrian material.
krimp- "to tie" / ker-imbu- "to make longer fully/completely/irreversibly", if it respects to a rope, e.g., it nicely fits the concept of "tie tightly"
By the way, Sauron would mean "He Who is Armed with Weapons", "He Who is Armed" in Hurrian (Sau "The Weapons" + -ra, comitative case-ending, + n - "He" or -on, onne, a nominalizing ending). [The name Sauron is not Black Speech, but Quenya. Nemirovsky's observation is interesting all the same. - HKF.] Uglûk can be translated as "Frighten-everybody!", as ugil- means "to provoke fear in somebody" in Hurrian.
Taking into account the fact that we know very few Orkish words, this new fact that so many of them have possible parallels in Hurrian-Urartian seems more significant than it would be otherwise, and it may indicate that we face here something more than pure coincidence.
4. Could Tolkien know anything about Hurrian? Yes, definitely. The problem of identifying Hurrian as non-Indo-European language, the connection between Hurrians and Aryans, the Aryan inclusions in Hurrian language - these matters constituted one of the top-priority problems of Indo-European research, especially in relation to ancient history, from the 1920s and into the 1940s. It was just an English Semitist and Bible-scholar, Speiser (author of a famous commentary on Genesis), who was the most active explorer of this language: In 1941 he published his fundamental Hurrian Grammar, which made a real revolution in this field. Any English linguist deeply interested in Indo-European studies, ancient languages and Bible studies (and Tolkien perfectly fits all of these criteria) not only could, but, I think, simply had to know about all this stuff. So Tolkien had every opportunity to read Speiser𠏋 work (not to mention previous works), and to read it with interest.
Of course, it is no more than a purely hypothetical proposal. But taking into account all common features of Hurrian and Orkish (by the way, their phonologies have something in common too, and roots of "CCVC", "CVCC" and "VCC" types are typical to Hurrian - a very "harsh" language if compared to other languages of the Ancient East) and the position of the Hurrian problem in some linguistic studies in England in the twenties, thirties and forties, I can't but ask myself: What if JRRT really used some kind of acquaintance with Hurrian while designing his Black Speech?
BIBLIOGRAPHY
E.A.Speiser, Introduction to Hurrian , The annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, v. 20, N.H. 1941.
M.E. Laroche Glossaire de la Langue Hourrite. // Revue Hittite et Asianique Tome XXXIV-XXXV, 1976-1977
N.M.Hacikyan. Hurritskij i urartskij yazyki. Erevan, 1985.
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