96-471: An orc is a mythological and fictional creature. Orc or ORC may also refer to: Orc An orc (sometimes spelt ork ; / ɔːr k / ), in J. R. R. Tolkien 's Middle-earth fantasy fiction , is a race of humanoid monsters, which he also calls " goblin ". In Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings , orcs appear as a brutish, aggressive, ugly, and malevolent race of monsters , contrasting with
192-454: A vernacular language for every-day use, Tarquesta , and a more educated language for use in ceremonies and lore, Parmaquesta . The Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger observed that the "degree of proximity" to the light of the Valar affected the development of both languages in terms of phonology, morphology and semantics. The division between Light Elves and Dark Elves that took place during
288-695: A "strip of raw dried flesh ... the flesh of he dared not guess what creature". Half-orcs appear in The Lord of the Rings , created by interbreeding of orcs and Men; they were able to go in sunlight. The "sly Southerner" in The Fellowship of the Ring looks "more than half like a goblin"; similar but more orc-like hybrids appear in The Two Towers "man-high, but with goblin-faces, sallow, leering, squint-eyed." In Peter Jackson 's Lord of
384-462: A Catholic, took it as a given that "evil cannot make, only mock", so orcs could not have an equal and opposite morality to that of men or elves. In a 1954 letter, Tolkien wrote that orcs were "fundamentally a race of 'rational incarnate' creatures, though horribly corrupted, if no more so than many Men to be met today." The scholar of English literature Robert Tally wrote in Mythlore that despite
480-729: A class). They had similar names in other Middle-earth languages: uruk in Black Speech; in the language of the Drúedain gorgûn , "ork-folk"; in Khuzdul rukhs , plural rakhâs ; and in the language of Rohan and in the Common Speech , orka . Tolkien stated in a letter to the novelist Naomi Mitchison that his orcs had been influenced by George MacDonald 's The Princess and the Goblin . He explained that his word "orc"
576-468: A complex internal history of characters to speak his Elvish languages in their own fictional universe. He felt that his languages changed and developed over time, as did the historical languages which he studied professionally—not in a vacuum, but as a result of the migrations and interactions of the peoples who spoke them. Within Tolkien's legendarium, Quenya is one of the many Elvish languages spoken by
672-662: A crude accent, was used as a common language. When Sauron returned to power in Mordor in the Third Age , Black Speech was used by the captains of his armies and by his servants in his tower of Barad-dûr . A sample of debased Black Speech can be found in The Two Towers , where a "yellow-fanged" guard Orc of Mordor curses Uglúk of Isengard (an Uruk-hai chief) with the words "Uglúk u bagronk sha pushdug Saruman-glob búbhosh skai!" In The Peoples of Middle-earth , Tolkien gives
768-487: A fixture of fantasy fiction and role-playing games . In the fantasy tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons ( D&D ), orcs are creatures in the game, and somewhat based upon those described by Tolkien. These D&D orcs are implemented in the game rules as a multi- tribed race of hostile and bestial humanoids . The D&D orcs are endowed with muscular frames, large canine teeth like boar's tusks, and snouts rather than human-like noses. While
864-526: A letter dated 21 October 1963 to a Mrs. Munsby that "there must have been orc-women". In The Fall of Gondolin Morgoth made them of slime by sorcery, "bred from the heats and slimes of the earth". Or, they were " beasts of humanized shape", possibly, Tolkien wrote, Elves mated with beasts, and later Men. Or again, Tolkien noted, they could have been fallen Maiar , perhaps a kind called Boldog , like lesser Balrogs ; or corrupted Men. Shippey writes that
960-578: A need to do evil as to obtain fulfilment through the act of war. In the Warhammer 40,000 series of science-fiction games, they are a green-skinned alien species, called Orks . Orcs are an important race in Warcraft , a high fantasy franchise created by Blizzard Entertainment . Several orc characters from the Warcraft universe are playable heroes in their crossover multiplayer game Heroes of
1056-644: A particular kind of artificial language that helps to create a fictional world. Other such languages would include Robert Jordan 's Old Tongue in his novel The Wheel of Time , and the Klingon language of the Star Trek series invented by Marc Okrand . It was observed that they form "a sociolinguistic context within which group and individual identities can be created." Two journals, Vinyar Tengwar from issue No. 39 (July 1998), and Parma Eldalamberon from issue No. 11 (1995), have been exclusively devoted to
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#17327730106061152-497: A private letter, Tolkien describes orcs as: squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes: in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types. O'Hehir describes orcs as "a subhuman race bred by Morgoth and/or Sauron (although not created by them) that is morally irredeemable and deserves only death. They are dark-skinned and slant-eyed, and although they possess reason, speech, social organization and, as Shippey mentions,
1248-413: A product of ancient necromancy , or a zombie -like creature. The term "orc" is used only once in the first edition of Tolkien's 1937 The Hobbit , which preferred the term "goblins". "Orc" was later used ubiquitously in The Lord of the Rings . The "orc-" element occurs in the sword name Orcrist , which is given as its Elvish language name, and glossed as "Goblin-cleaver". Tolkien began
1344-466: A pug-nose ("flat-nosed" ) was attributable to Tolkien's written correspondence, the pig-headed (pig-faced ) look was imparted on the orc by the D&;D original edition (1974). It was later modified from bald-headed to hairy in subsequent editions. In the third version of the game the orc became gray-skinned, even though a complicated color-palleted description of a (non-gray) orc had been implemented in
1440-420: A self-consistent character not precisely like any language that I know. Finnish, which I came across when I had first begun to construct a 'mythology' was a dominant influence, but that has been much reduced [now in late Quenya]. It survives in some features: such as the absence of any consonant combinations initially, the absence of the voiced stops b, d, g (except in mb, nd, ng, ld, rd , which are favoured) and
1536-608: A similarity with the Latin word orcus , noting that "the word used in translation of Q[uenya] urko , S[indarin] orch is Orc. But that is because of the similarity of the ancient English word orc , 'evil spirit or bogey', to the Elvish words. There is possibly no connection between them". Orcs are of human shape, and of varying size. They are depicted as ugly and filthy, with a taste for human flesh. They are fanged, bow-legged and long-armed. Most are small and avoid daylight. By
1632-455: A sort of moral sensibility, they are inherently evil." He notes Tolkien's own description of them, saying it could scarcely be more revealing as a representation of the " Other ", and states "it is also the product of his background and era, like most of our inescapable prejudices. At the level of conscious intention, he was not a racist or an anti-Semite " and mentions Tolkien's letters to this effect. The literary critic Jenny Turner, writing in
1728-557: Is a mark of evil things that came in the Great Darkness that they cannot abide the Sun; but Saruman 's orcs can endure it, even if they hate it. I wonder what he has done? Are they Men he has ruined, or has he blended the races of orcs and Men ? That would be a black evil! The Germanic studies scholar Sandra Ballif Straubhaar however argues against the "recurring accusations" of racism, stating that "a polycultured, polylingual world
1824-479: Is a sacred direction'. That is not true. The North-west of Europe, where I (and most of my ancestors) have lived, has my affection, as a man's home should. I love its atmosphere, and know more of its histories and languages than I do of other parts; but it is not 'sacred', nor does it exhaust my affections. I do have, for instance, a particular fondness for the Latin language, and among its descendants for Spanish. That it
1920-453: Is absolutely central" to Middle-earth, and that readers and filmgoers will easily see that. The historian and Tolkien scholar Jared Lobdell likewise disagreed with any notions of racism inherent or latent in Tolkien's works, and wondered "if there were a way of writing epic fantasy about a battle against an evil spirit and his monstrous servants without its being subject to speculation of racist intent". The journalist David Ibata writes that
2016-429: Is generally thought to be derived from the Latin word/name Orcus , though Tolkien himself expressed doubt about this. The term orcus is glossed as " orc, þyrs, oððe hel-deofol " ("Goblin, spectre, or hell-devil") in the 10th century Old English Cleopatra Glossaries , about which Thomas Wright wrote, " Orcus was the name for Pluto , the god of the infernal regions, hence we can easily understand
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#17327730106062112-469: Is not always on the first syllable of a word. Typical Finnish elements like the front vowels ö , ä and y are lacking in Quenya, but phonological similarities include the absence of aspirated unvoiced stops or the development of the syllables ti > si in both languages. The combination of a Latin basis with Finnish phonological rules resulted in a product that resembles Italian in many respects, which
2208-579: Is not easily recognised. Tolkien almost never borrowed words directly from real languages into Quenya. The major exception is the name Earendel/Eärendil , which he found in an Old English poem by Cynewulf . Yet the Finnish influence extended sometimes also to the vocabulary. A few Quenya words, such as tul- "come" and anta- "give", clearly have a Finnish origin. Other forms that appear to have been borrowed are actually coincidental, such as Finnish kirja "book", and Quenya cirya "ship". Tolkien invented
2304-533: Is the poem " Namárië "; other published texts are no longer than a few sentences. At his death, Tolkien left behind a number of unpublished writings on Quenya, and later Tolkien scholars have prepared his notes and unpublished manuscripts for publication in the journals Parma Eldalamberon and Vinyar Tengwar , also publishing scholarly and linguistic analyses of the language. Tolkien never created enough vocabulary to make it possible to converse in Quenya, although fans have been writing poetry and prose in Quenya since
2400-523: Is untrue for my story, a mere reading of the synopses should show. The North was the seat of the fortresses of the Devil [ie. Morgoth ]. Scholars of English literature William N. Rogers II and Michael R. Underwood note that a widespread element of late 19th century Western culture was fear of moral decline and degeneration; this led to eugenics . In The Two Towers , the Ent Treebeard says: It
2496-454: Is used in addition to singular and plural. It has been suggested that Tolkien used the dual to give Quenya an "archaic feel" in its role as an ancient language of the Elves. About ten years later, Tolkien changed his mind about the origin of the Elvish proto-language. Instead of learning from the Valar, the Elves had created an original language Quenderin which had become the proto-language of
2592-471: The London Review of Books , endorses Andrew O'Hehir's comment on Salon.com that orcs are "by design and intention a northern European's paranoid caricature of the races he has dimly heard about". Tally describes the orcs as a demonized enemy , despite (he writes) Tolkien's own objections to demonization of the enemy in the two World Wars. In a letter to his son, Christopher , who was serving in
2688-675: The Monster Manual for the first edition (1977). Newer versions seem to have dropped references to skin-color. Early versions of the game introduced the "half-orc" as race. The orc was described in the first edition of Monster Manual ( op. cit. ), as a fiercely competitive bully, a tribal creature often dwelling and building underground; in newer editions, orcs (though still described as sometimes inhabiting cavern complexes) had been shifted to become more prone to non-subterranean habitation as well, adapting captured villages into communities, for instance. The mythology and attitudes of
2784-518: The RAF in the Second World War, Tolkien wrote of orcs as appearing on both sides of the conflict: Yes, I think the orcs as real a creation as anything in 'realistic' fiction ... only in real life they are on both sides, of course. For 'romance' has grown out of 'allegory', and its wars are still derived from the 'inner war' of allegory in which good is on one side and various modes of badness on
2880-774: The Sundering of the Elves is reflected in their respective languages. The Elves at first shared a common language, Primitive Quendian, called Quenderin in Quenya. Among the Eldar , i.e. those Elves who undertook the Great March to Valinor and Eldamar , Primitive Quendian developed into Common Eldarin. Some of the Eldar remained in Beleriand and became the Grey Elves ; their language developed into Sindarin . Most of
2976-568: The Third Age , a new breed of orc had emerged, the Uruk-hai, larger and more powerful, and no longer afraid of daylight. Orcs eat meat, including the flesh of Men , and may indulge in cannibalism : in The Two Towers , Grishnákh, an orc from Mordor , claims that the Isengard orcs eat orc-flesh. Whether that is true or spoken in malice is uncertain: an orc flings Peregrin Took stale bread and
Orc (disambiguation) - Misplaced Pages Continue
3072-518: The Two Trees of Valinor composed by Elemmírë of the Vanyar.) Prenasalised consonants are prominent in Quenya, and include their own tengwar . The following table presents the inventory of classic Noldorin consonants. Grouping of consonants occurs only in the central parts of a word, except for combinations with the semivowels /w/ and /j/ . Quenya orthography (using the Latin script) follows
3168-472: The "Qenyaqetsa". Examples include a different accusative or the abolition of final consonant clusters in later Quenya. Fimi suggests that Qenya as it appears in the "Qenyaqetsa" was supposed to be a mystic language, as the Lexicon contains a number of words with clear Christian religious connotations, such as anatarwesta "crucifixion" and evandilyon "gospel" – these words were not part of late Quenya. In
3264-749: The "dimininution and spiritual impoverishment" of the Noldorin culture. The Noldor at this time had fully mastered Sindarin, while the Sindar were slow to learn Quenya. Quenya in Middle-earth became known as Exilic Quenya when the Noldor eventually adopted the Sindarin language as their native speech after Thingol's ruling. It differed from Amanian Quenya mostly in vocabulary, having some loanwords from Sindarin. It differed also in pronunciation, representing
3360-406: The 1970s, when the total corpus of published Elvish comprised only a few hundred words. Since then, the use of Elvish has flourished in poems and texts, phrases and names, and even tattoos. But Tolkien himself never made his languages complete enough for conversation. As a result, newly invented Elvish texts require conjecture and sometimes the coinage of new words. The use of Quenya has expanded over
3456-669: The 1970s. This has required conjecture and the need to devise new words, in effect developing a kind of neo-Quenya language. J. R. R. Tolkien began to construct his first Elvish tongue c. 1910–1911 while he was at the King Edward's School, Birmingham . He later called it Qenya (c. 1915), and later changed the spelling to Quenya . He was then already familiar with Latin , Greek , Spanish , and several ancient Germanic languages, such as Gothic , Old Norse , and Old English . He had invented several cryptographic codes , and two or three constructed languages. Tolkien took an interest in
3552-633: The Elves, the firstborn of the races of Middle-earth, because of their close connection to Valinor, and its decreasing use also became symbolic of the slowly declining Elvish culture in Middle-earth. In the Second Age of Middle-earth's chronology the Men of Númenor learnt the Quenya tongue. In the Third Age , the time of the setting of The Lord of the Rings , Quenya was learnt as a second language by all Elves of Noldorin origin, and it continued to be used in spoken and written form, but their mother-tongue
3648-531: The Elvish language family. For this new language, Tolkien kept the many roots he had invented for Valarin in the 1930s, which then became "Quenderin roots". The Eldarin family of languages comprises Quenya, Telerin , Sindarin and Nandorin . The evolution in Quenya and Telerin of the nasalised initial groups of Quenderin is described thus in Tolkien's Outline of Phonology : These groups in Quenya normally became simplified to nasals initially. (In Telerin they became b, d, g .) Thus: In contrast to early Qenya,
3744-621: The Elvish languages by Elves, Men and Hobbits in a variety of sources. The documentation about late Quenya phonology is contained in the Appendix E of the Lord of the Rings and the "Outline of Phonology", one of Tolkien's texts, published in Parma Eldalamberon No. 19. Tolkien based Quenya pronunciation more on Latin than on Finnish . Thus, Quenya lacks the vowel harmony and consonant gradation present in Finnish, and accent
3840-532: The Finnish mythology of the Kalevala , then became acquainted with Finnish , which he found to provide an aesthetically pleasing inspiration for his High-elvish language. Many years later, he wrote: "It was like discovering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me." Regarding the inspiration for Quenya, Tolkien wrote that: The ingredients in Quenya are various, but worked out into
3936-581: The IPA, but uses ⟨c⟩ as an alternative to ⟨k⟩ , writes [ŋ] not followed by another velar as ⟨ñ⟩ (in early Quenya when this still can occur, as in Ñoldor ; otherwise it is written ⟨n⟩ ), and represents the consonants [ç ʍ] using the digraphs ⟨hy hw⟩ . Similarly, the digraphs ⟨ty ndy⟩ may represent palatal stop allophones of [t ⁿd] , namely [c ⁿɟ] , although they are not independent phonemes. In addition, ⟨h⟩ in
Orc (disambiguation) - Misplaced Pages Continue
4032-530: The Noldor Elves followed their leader Fëanor into exile from Eldamar and back to Middle-earth, where the immortal Elves first awoke. Quenya was used by the godlike Valar. The Elves derived some loanwords from the Valar's language, which was called Valarin in Quenya, although these were more numerous in the Vanyarin dialect than in Noldorin. This was probably because of the enduringly close relationship
4128-466: The Quenya name for "region", just happened to resemble Germanic Erde "earth", while it actually comes from the Valarin and Quenderin root gar- . According to Tom DuBois and Scott Mellor, the name of Quenya itself may have been influenced by the name Kven , a language closely related to Finnish, but Tolkien never mentioned this. Some linguists have argued that Quenya can be understood as an example of
4224-422: The Rings films , the actors playing orcs are made up with masks designed to make them look evil. After a disagreement with the film producer Harvey Weinstein , Jackson had one of the masks made to resemble Weinstein, as an insult to him. The Orcs had no language of their own, merely a pidgin of many various languages. However, individual tribes developed dialects that differed so widely that Westron , often with
4320-407: The Rings , according to Tolkien, "was primarily linguistic in inspiration and was begun in order to provide the necessary background of 'history' for Elvish tongues". This process of first inventing a language and then creating a background setting for its fictional speakers has been described as unique. Dimitra Fimi , a Tolkien scholar, argues that Tolkien's invention of Qenya started as a quest for
4416-565: The Rings , of which it was/is in fact independent." In his lifetime, Tolkien experimented ceaselessly with his constructed languages, and they were subjected to many revisions. Quenya had many grammars with substantial differences between the different stages of its development. During the first conceptual stage of early Quenya c. 1910 to c. 1920, the language was called Elfin in English and Eldarissa in Qenya proper. While its development
4512-503: The Storm . The orc features in numerous Magic: The Gathering collectible cards, in the 1993 game series published by Wizards of the Coast . In The Elder Scrolls series, many orcs or Orsimer are skilled blacksmiths. In Hasbro 's Heroscape products, orcs come from the pre-historic planet Grut. They are blue-skinned, with prominent tusks or horns. The Skylander Voodood from
4608-485: The Valarin and Quenderin root kir- from which sprang his Quenya word cirya . The Latin aurōra "dawn" and Quenya aure "moment of special meaning, special day, festival day" are unrelated. Quenya aurë comes from the Valarin and Quenderin root ur- . Germanic influence can more be seen in grammar (the -r nominative plural ending is reminiscent of the Scandinavian languages ) or phonology, than in words: Arda ,
4704-525: The Vanyar left the city of Túna, Telerin and Noldorin Quenya grew closer. The rebellious Noldor , who followed their leader Fëanor to Middle-earth, spoke only Quenya. But Elu Thingol , King of the Sindar of Beleriand, forbade the use of Quenya in his realm when he learned of the slaying of Telerin Elves by the Noldor. By doing so, he both restricted the possibility of the Sindar to enhance and brighten their language with influences from Quenya and accelerated
4800-480: The Vanyarin Elves had with the Valar. The Quenya as used by the Vanyar also incorporated several words from Valarin that were not found in the Noldorin dialect, such as tulka ("yellow", from Valarin tulukha(n) ), ulban ("blue", presumably from the same root as Valarin ul(l)u meaning "water"), and nasar ("red", original Valarin not given). According to "Quendi and Eldar: Essekenta Eldarinwa", Quendya
4896-428: The Vanyarin dialect, ⟨ty⟩ , ⟨dy⟩ , and ⟨hy⟩ were realised as [tʃ] , [dʒ] , and [ʃ] respectively. Tolkien wrote about ⟨py⟩ : "In Vanyarin Quenya and among some Ñoldor the cluster ⟨py⟩ was sounded with voiceless y , sc. as [pç] , which later in Vanyarin became [pʃ] "; cf. Hungarian lopj [lopç] 'steal'. The cluster ⟨hw⟩
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#17327730106064992-537: The Vanyarin varieties, but were gradually replaced with /s/ and /r/ respectively in Noldorin Quenya. Notably, voiced plosives only occur after nasals and liquids , i.e. there is no simple /b, d, ɡ/ but only the clusters /mb, (lb,) nd, ld, rd, ŋɡ/ , and these occur only between vowels. (This may not be true in Vanyarin Quenya, given the word Aldudénië , the name of a lament for the death of
5088-470: The ancestor of Sanskrit , Greek, Latin, and others; namely, one labial, one coronal, and three velar plosives (palatal, plain, and labial). The first table below provides some of the "Primary Initial Combinations" from the Comparative Tables . Another characteristic of Quenya reminiscent of ancient natural languages like Old Greek, Old English or Sanskrit is the dual grammatical number which
5184-526: The benevolent Elves . He described their origins inconsistently, including as a corrupted race of elves, or bred by the Dark Lord Morgoth , or turned to evil in the wild. Tolkien's orcs serve as a conveniently wholly evil enemy that could be slaughtered without mercy. The orc was a sort of "hell-devil" in Old English literature, and the orc-né (pl. orc-néas , "demon-corpses")
5280-577: The case. The word is Quenya in Vanyarin, and always so in Parmaquesta." The Elves of the Third Clan, or Teleri , who reached Eldamar later than the Noldor and the Vanyar, spoke a different but closely related tongue, usually called Telerin . It was seen by some Elves to be just another dialect of Quenya. This was not the case with the Teleri for whom their tongue was distinct from Quenya. After
5376-458: The cluster ⟨ht⟩ represents [ç] after ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩ and [x] after other vowels. In some instances ⟨x⟩ was used for the combination /ks/ as in Helcaraxë . Some consonants are realised differently when they occur in clusters with certain other consonants. This particularly concerns clusters that involve the approximants /w, j/ or
5472-959: The computational linguist Paul Strack created the Elvish Data Model (abbreviated to "Eldamo") to provide a lexicon – both a dictionary and an analysis of language development – of all Tolkien's languages (despite the name, not limited to Elvish). Eldamo groups Tolkien's creative work into three real-world periods: up to 1930 ("Early"); from then to 1950 ("Middle"); and from then to 1973 ("Late"). Forms of Quenya occur in each of these periods, as follows: Early Primitive Elvish Early Quenya Middle Primitive Elvish Middle Ancient Quenya Middle Quenya Lindarin Primitive Elvish Ancient Quenya Quenya Vanyarin The linguist Alexander Stainton published an analysis of Quenya's prosodic structure in 2022. Attempts by fans to write in Quenya began in
5568-521: The conflicts between orcs and humans from the orcs' point of view. In Terry Pratchett 's Discworld series, orcs are close to extinction; in his Unseen Academicals , it is said that "When the Evil Emperor wanted fighters he got some of the Igors to turn goblins into orcs" to be used as weapons in a Great War, "encouraged" by whips and beatings. Orcs based on The Lord of the Rings have become
5664-463: The creation process. He successively changed the language's name from Elfin and Qenya to the eventual Quenya . Finnish had been a major source of inspiration , but Tolkien was also fluent in Latin and Old English , and was familiar with Greek , Welsh (the primary inspiration for Sindarin , Tolkien's other major Elvish language), and other ancient Germanic languages , particularly Gothic , during his development of Quenya. Tolkien developed
5760-425: The early 1930s, Tolkien decided that the proto-language of the Elves was Valarin , the tongue of the gods or Valar as he called them: "The language of the Elves derived in the beginning from the Valar, but they changed it even in the learning, and moreover modified and enriched it constantly at all times by their own invention." In the Comparative Tables the mechanisms of sound change were described by Tolkien for
5856-457: The editing and publishing of Tolkien's mass of unpublished linguistic papers. Important grammatical texts, alluded to in the History of Middle-earth series and described as almost unreadable or quite incomprehensible, have been published in these two journals. The "Early Qenya Grammar", written by Tolkien c. 1925, was edited and published in Parma Eldalamberon No. 14. In 1992, according to
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#17327730106065952-613: The explanation of hel - deofol . Orc , in Anglo-Saxon, like thyrs , means a spectre, or goblin." In the sense of a monstrous being, the term is used just once in Beowulf , as the plural compound orcneas , one of the tribes belonging to the descendants of Cain , alongside the elves and ettins (giants) condemned by God: The meaning of Orcneas is uncertain. Frederick Klaeber suggested it consisted of orc < L. orcus "the underworld" + neas "corpses", to which
6048-497: The first game in the series, Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure , is an orc. Quenya Quenya ( pronounced [ˈkʷwɛɲja] ) is a constructed language , one of those devised by J. R. R. Tolkien for the Elves in his Middle-earth fiction. Tolkien began devising the language around 1910, and restructured its grammar several times until it reached its final state. The vocabulary remained relatively stable throughout
6144-408: The following daughter languages: Qenya, Lindarin (a dialect of Qenya), Telerin, Old Noldorin (or Fëanorian ), Noldorin (or Gondolinian ), Ilkorin (especially of Doriath ), Danian of Ossiriand, East Danian, Taliska , West Lemberin, North Lemberin, and East Lemberin . For this proto-language of the Elves, Tolkien appears to have borrowed the five-part plosive system of Proto-Indo-European ,
6240-427: The fondness for the ending -inen, -ainen, -oinen , also in some points of grammar, such as the inflexional endings -sse (rest at or in), -nna (movement to, towards), and -llo (movement from); the personal possessives are also expressed by suffixes; there is no gender. Tolkien never intended Quenya or any of his constructed languages to be used in everyday life as an international auxiliary language , although he
6336-462: The forms of the Children of Ilúvatar. Alternatively, they may have been East Elves (Avari) enslaved, tortured, and bred by Morgoth (as Melkor became known), or, "perhaps ... Avari [(a race of elves)] ... [turned] evil and savage in the wild", both according to The Silmarillion . The orcs "multiplied" like Elves and Men, meaning that they reproduced sexually . Tolkien stated in
6432-456: The glottal fricative /h/ . Clusters where the second consonant was /j/ are realised as palatalised consonants, and clusters where the second consonant was /w/ are realised as labialised. Consonant clusters where the initial consonant is /h/ are realised as preaspirated and devoiced. The pronunciation of the consonant cluster ⟨hy⟩ is [ç] in Noldorin Quenya, which is a "strong voiceless y, similar to, but more frictional than
6528-415: The grammar of Quenya was influenced by Finnish, an agglutinative language , but much more by Latin , a synthetic and fusional language , and also Greek , from which he probably took the idea of the diglossia of Quenya with its highly codified variety: the Parmaquesta, used only in certain situations such as literature. The phonology of Quenya was also inspired by certain aspects of Finnish, but this
6624-485: The ideal language, to match the moral and aesthetic objectives that were part of his project of creating "a mythology for England". Fimi argues that Tolkien deliberately used sound symbolism to unify sound and meaning and make the language appear as an ideal language, fit to be spoken in the utopian realm of the Elves and fairies of Valinor. Tolkien considered Quenya to be "the one language which has been designed to give play to my own most normal phonetic taste". From
6720-570: The immortal Elves, called Quendi ('speakers') in Quenya. Quenya translates as simply "language" or, in contrast to other tongues that the Elves met later in their long history, "elf-language". After the Elves divided , Quenya originated as the speech of two clans of "High Elves" or Eldar, the Noldor and the Vanyar, who left Middle-earth to live in Eldamar ("Elvenhome"), in Valinor , the land of
6816-538: The immortal and God-like Valar . Of these two groups of Elves, most of the Noldor returned to Middle-earth where they met the Sindarin-speaking Grey-elves. The Noldor eventually adopted Sindarin and used Quenya primarily as a ritual or poetic language, whereas the Vanyar who stayed behind in Eldamar retained the use of Quenya. In this way, the Quenya language was symbolic of the high status of
6912-521: The implied concept of evil as Boethian – that evil is the absence of good. He notes, however, that Tolkien did not agree with that concept of evil; Tolkien believed that evil had to be actively fought, with war if necessary. That is something that Shippey describes as representing the Manichean position– that evil coexists with good, and is at least equally as powerful. The possibility of racism in Tolkien's descriptions of orcs has been debated. In
7008-402: The initial sound in English huge ". In Vanyarin Quenya, ⟨hy⟩ is pronounced [ʃ] . According to Tolkien, the cluster /cj/ ⟨ty⟩ is pronounced as "a 'front explosive' [c], as e.g. Hungarian ty , but it is followed by an appreciable partly unvoiced y-offglide". Tolkien stated that the cluster ⟨ny⟩ is pronounced as in English "new" [njuː] . In
7104-690: The interpretations of orcs in Peter Jackson 's Lord of the Rings films look much like "the worst depictions of the Japanese drawn by American and British illustrators during World War II ". As a response to the type-casting of orcs as generic evil characters or antagonists, some novels portray events from the point of view of the orcs, or make them more sympathetic characters. Mary Gentle 's 1992 novel Grunts! presents orcs as generic infantry, used as metaphorical cannon-fodder. A series of books by Stan Nicholls , Orcs: First Blood , focuses on
7200-533: The linguist Helge Fauskanger , the Tolkien scholar Anthony Appleyard made "the first comprehensive attempt ... to systematize Quenya grammar in light of the new information published in The History of Middle-earth , particularly The Etymologies , in his article 'Quenya Grammar Reexamined'." Hostetter commented that Appleyard's work was by 2007 useful mainly for summarising the attitudes to Tolkien's languages at that time. He characterised it as: In 2008,
7296-573: The more modern use of the English term "orc" to denote a race of evil humanoid beings. His earliest Elvish dictionaries include the entry Ork (orq-) "monster", "ogre", "demon", together with orqindi and "ogresse". He sometimes used the plural form orqui in his early texts. He stated that the Elvish words for orc were derived from a root ruku , "fear, horror"; in Quenya , orco , plural orkor ; in Sindarin orch , plurals yrch and Orchoth (as
7392-420: The onset, Tolkien used comparative philology and the tree model as his major tools in his constructed languages. He usually started with the phonological system of the proto-language and then proceeded by inventing for each daughter language the necessary sequence of sound changes . "I find the construction and the interrelation of the languages an aesthetic pleasure in itself, quite apart from The Lord of
7488-512: The orcs are described in detail in Dragon #62 (June 1982), in Roger E. Moore 's article, "The Half-Orc Point of View". The orc for the D&D offshoot Pathfinder RPG are detailed in the 2008 book Classic Monsters Revisited issued by the game's publisher Paizo . Games Workshop 's Warhammer universe features cunning and brutal orcs in a fantasy setting, who are driven not so much by
7584-588: The orcs in The Lord of the Rings were almost certainly created just to equip Middle-earth with a continual supply of enemies who one could kill without compunction, or in Tolkien's words from The Monsters and the Critics "the infantry of the old war" ready to be slaughtered. Shippey states that all the same, orcs share the human concept of good and evil, with a familiar sense of morality , though he notes that, like many people, orcs are quite unable to apply their morals to themselves. Shippey opined that Tolkien, as
7680-573: The other Eldar continued to Eldamar ('Elvenhome') in Aman and founded the great city of Tirion, where they developed Quenya. Quenya's older form, first recorded in the sarati of Rúmil, is called Old or Ancient Quenya ( Yára-Quenya in Quenya). In Eldamar, the Noldor and Vanyar spoke two slightly different though mutually intelligible dialects of Tarquesta: Noldorin Quenya and Vanyarin Quenya . Later Noldorin Quenya became Exilic Quenya , when most of
7776-558: The other. In real (exterior) life men are on both sides: which means a motley alliance of orcs, beasts, demons, plain naturally honest men, and angels. John Magoun, writing in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia , states that Middle-earth has a "fully expressed moral geography ". Any moral bias towards a north-western geography, however, was directly denied by Tolkien in a letter to Charlotte and Denis Plimmer, who had recently interviewed him in 1967: Auden has asserted that for me 'the North
7872-410: The recognition of sound-changes which had begun among the Noldor before the exile and had caused Noldorin Quenya to diverge from Vanyarin Quenya. The change of z (< old intervocalic s ) to r was the latest in Noldorin, belonging to early Exilic Quenya. The grammatical changes were only small though since the features of their "old language" were carefully taught. From the Second Age on, Quenya
7968-402: The tongue and the back of the teeth), alveolar (involving the tongue and the alveolar ridge of the jaw), palatal (involving the tongue and the middle part of the roof of the mouth), velar (involving the back of the tongue and the back part of the roof of the mouth), and glottal (involving the vocal folds ). The dental fricative ( /θ/ ) and the voiced alveolar fricative ( /z/ ) occur in
8064-409: The translation "evil spirits" failed to do justice. It is generally supposed to contain an element -né , cognate to Gothic naus and Old Norse nár , both meaning 'corpse'. If *orcné is to be glossed as orcus 'corpse', then the compound word can be construed as "demon-corpses", or "corpse from Orcus (i.e. the underworld)". Hence orc-neas may have been some sort of walking dead monster,
8160-619: The translation: "Uglúk to the cesspool, sha! the dungfilth; the great Saruman-fool, skai!" However, in a note published in Vinyar Tengwar he gives an alternative translation: "Uglúk to the dung-pit with stinking Saruman-filth, pig-guts, gah!" Alexander Nemirovsky [ ru ] speculated that Tolkien might have drawn upon the language of the ancient Hittites and Hurrians for Black Speech. The origin(s) of orcs were explained in multiple inconsistent ways by Tolkien. Early works depict them as creations of Morgoth, mimicking
8256-473: The uniform presentation of orcs as "loathsome, ugly, cruel, feared, and especially terminable", "Tolkien could not resist the urge to flesh out and 'humanize' these inhuman creatures from time to time", in the process giving them their own morality. Shippey notes that in The Two Towers , the orc Gorbag disapproves of the "regular elvish trick" (an immoral act) of abandoning a comrade, as he wrongly supposes Sam Gamgee has done to Frodo Baggins . Shippey describes
8352-485: The years as new words have been created, forming a Neo-Quenya language that is based on Tolkien's original Quenya but incorporates many new elements. Quenya and its writing system Tengwar have limited application in hobbyist and public domain works. The Elvish languages are a family of several related languages and dialects. The following is a brief overview of the fictional internal history of late Quenya as conceived by Tolkien. Tolkien imagined an Elvish society with
8448-401: Was "derived from Old English orc 'demon', but only because of its phonetic suitability", and I originally took the word from Old English orc ( Beowulf 112 orc-neas and the gloss orc : þyrs ('ogre'), heldeofol ('hell-devil')). This is supposed not to be connected with modern English orc , ork , a name applied to various sea-beasts of the dolphin order". Tolkien also observed
8544-565: Was Tolkien's favourite modern Romance language. The tables below list the consonants (Q. ólamar ) and vowels of late colloquial Noldorin Quenya, i.e. Quenya as spoken among the Exiled Noldor in Middle-earth. They are written using the International Phonetic Alphabet , unless otherwise noted. The Quenya consonant system has 6 major places of articulation: labial (involving the lips), dental (involving
8640-407: Was a continuous process, Quenya underwent a number of major revisions in its grammar, mostly in conjugation and the pronominal system . The vocabulary, however, was not subject to sudden or extreme change. Tolkien sometimes changed the meaning of a word, but he almost never discarded it once invented, and he kept on refining its meaning, and countlessly forged new synonyms. Moreover, Elvish etymology
8736-506: Was a race of corrupted beings and descendants of Cain , alongside the elf, according to the poem Beowulf . Tolkien adopted the term orc from these old attestations, which he professed was a choice made purely for "phonetic suitability" reasons. Tolkien's concept of orcs has been adapted into the fantasy fiction of other authors, and into games of many different genres such as Dungeons & Dragons , Magic: The Gathering , and Warcraft . The Anglo-Saxon word orc, which Tolkien used,
8832-527: Was in constant flux. Tolkien delighted in inventing new etymons for his Quenya vocabulary. But after the publication of The Lord of the Rings (finished c. 1949–1950, published in 1954–1955), the grammar rules of Quenya went through very few changes and this version was then defined as late Quenya (c. 1950–1973). The spelling Qenya is sometimes used to distinguish early Quenya from later versions. Qenya differs from late Quenya by having different internal history, vocabulary, and grammar rules as described in
8928-481: Was in favour of the idea of Esperanto as an auxiliary language within Europe. With his Quenya, Tolkien pursued a double aesthetic goal: "classical and inflected". This urge was a major motivation for his creation of a 'mythology' . While the language developed, Tolkien felt that it needed speakers, including their own history and mythology, which he thought would give a language its 'individual flavour'. The Lord of
9024-582: Was the Sindarin of the Grey-elves. As the Noldor remained in Middle-earth, their Noldorin dialect of Quenya also gradually diverged from the Vanyarin dialect spoken in Valinor, undergoing both sound changes and grammatical changes. The Quenya language featured prominently in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings , as well as in his posthumously published history of Middle-earth The Silmarillion . The longest text in Quenya published by Tolkien during his lifetime
9120-432: Was the usual Vanyarin name given to the Quenya language, since in Vanyarin, the consonant groups ndy and ny remained quite distinct. In Noldorin, ndy eventually became ny . Tolkien explained that "the word Quenya itself has been cited as an exempla (e.g. by Ælfwine), but this is a mistake due to supposition that kwenya was properly kwendya and directly derived from the name Quendi 'Elves'. This appears not to be
9216-510: Was used ceremonially by the Men of Númenor and their descendants in Gondor and Arnor for the official names of kings and queens; this practice was resumed by Aragorn when he took the crown as Elessar Telcontar. Quenya in the Third Age had almost the same status as the Latin language had in medieval Europe, and was called Elven-latin by Tolkien. Tolkien described the pronunciation of
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