Talk to him about languages,
metallurgy and/or cats. There’s a great chance you catch his attention.
Why, Curufin… we have so much in common. *chinhands*
*raises brow*
Is that so? Then I suppose my son’s mistake is a bit more… understandable.
you say mistake, i say a beautiful relationship that ended unfortunately in a misunderstanding and an exercise in taxidermy…
*clears throat* Indeed! Did you know before I compiled the complete Lumbut-Hai lexicon (what you refer to crudely as ‘the black speech’), orcs had over 900 separate dialects, half of which were incomprehensible to each other except with aid of pidgin languages and common gestures? A rich tapestry for linguists, but disastrous for an army!
Did you know, orcs have twelve separate words just for the scents associated with different stages of decaying flesh? It’s fascinating! With such nuance in their language, it would have been a shame not to maintain as many common root words as possible! And indigenous Orcish is highly adaptable– many of the loan words from Sindarin were in use already, I simply had to adapt and standardize them for syntactical clarity.
Ah– and here we find a most fortuitous segue into another shared interest! Orcs, in their advent as a species, were not a metalworking society; they relied on flintknapping and bone carved tools primarily and, if I may say so, ingeniously. But after the Great Inscription into the service of Melkor and Angband, they acquired basic smelting and forging technology, but lacked the terminology of the craft. Here, I took it upon myself to introduce some words from my native Valarin, of course adapted to Orcish pronunciation and spelling.
Truly, the construction of a common language was one of the most expansive and satisfying projects I’ve ever undertaken! Sadly I believe it will not be counted as one my great creations… for many centuries my work has been relegated to the mechanics of war. But for myself, I look upon Lumbut-Hai as a work of smithcraft, perhaps one of my best.
There– now you know something of me that is not merely enemy intelligence.
MisbehavingMaiar: Tumblr Archive 