David Salo's Gundabad Neo-Orkish: transcription and analysis

[Xephyr]

I recently noticed that there doesn't seem to be any thorough and reliable analysis of the Orkish dialogue from the Hobbit films, so I decided to do the work of transcribing and analyzing the language myself.

The language was made by David Salo, based partially on material from Tolkien but mostly from his own imagination. The exact extent of what Salo has made is hard to know exactly: there was some Black Speech that he translated for the Lord of the Rings films ten years ago, which he expanded for the dialogue spoken by the Necromancer in the new films, but how much of "Neo-Black Speech" he has fleshed out... who knows. The same goes for the Orkish varieties (I prefer "Orcish" but Salo spells it with a k...): his blog says that at least five varieties of Neo-Orkish were at least conceptualized by Salo. The variety spoken in the Hobbit films is Gundabad Neo-Orkish, which he's said is much more divergent than the other varieties he sketched out, but still has some unmistakable links to Black Speech.

So far, I have made a transcription of the Orkish dialogue in the first two films (based on recordings I made of each line-- I could show you if you're interested). It is incomplete, but I don't believe I can expand it anymore until more material surfaces:

http://docdroid.net/80qo

Going off of those lines of dialogue, and information given by Salo on his blog, I have begun to write a grammatical sketch of Gundabad Neo-Orkish. So far I have a first draft of the section on verbs:

http://docdroid.net/80rr

Most of what I have to say is in the PDFs. Submitting them here for approval and/or comments and/or corrections. I will post more sections of the grammar sketch as I write them.

(EDIT: fixed a couple errors in the pdfs)

Update 15 Jan 2014: I managed to get ahold of an official script for Hobbit 2, which has the Orkish transliterated (though I found at least one typo). There are a couple places of uncertainty (of which I have asked Salo on his blog), but otherwise I now have all the Orkish dialogue from both films fully analyzed, at least in my head, with the exception of a single syllable in the first film, of which I am 75% certain of a reading anyway. In short, I'll be posting a fully redone and completely accurate transcription of the dialogue shortly.

Update Jan 2015: Working on the third Hobbit film now.

[vec]

Nice. One little thing: imperatives are finite, not non-finite. They can head independent clauses, whereas infinitives are deranked and thus non-finite.

[Astraios]

It's very Persian-flavour.

[kanejam]

Yes! I was wondering this after the first movie even, but couldn't find any information. Maybe because I was searching for 'orcish'? Anyway this is quite interesting! The site you are using isn't particularly friendly to mobiles so I'll have a proper read later on.

[Xephyr]

Nice. One little thing: imperatives are finite, not non-finite. They can head independent clauses, whereas infinitives are deranked and thus non-finite.

Drat! I should've known that...

I've written the section on pronouns and pronominal suffixes, as well as fixed the section on verbs. The updated PDF is here: http://docdroid.net/8236

I went back and looked at the making-of documentary that comes with the extended edition blu-rays of Hobbit 1, and there was quite a bit of Orkish dialogue that was given in its correct spelling. The more reliable material I can get, the better. I would kill for a real script of Hobbit 1 or Hobbit 2 about now... (the ones you can find online are BS fan scripts, full of errors and/or gaps in the Orkish lines). An updated dialogue transcript is here: http://docdroid.net/822t

I also tried my hand at adding some sound files to a PDF file. It won't work in your web browser, you'll have to download the PDF to your hard-drive to hear the sound files, but if any of you want to hear all of the Orkish lines I recorded, here ya go: http://docdroid.net/8231

[Ambrisio]

It's very Persian-flavour.

I think it's more appropriate for an elf language!

[Astraios]

All the zang band darg type words though.

[Xephyr]

[ignore]

[R.Rusanov]

there's lots of free dvd software out there

[Xephyr]

there's lots of free dvd software out there

Sorry, I should have clarified: the Extended Editions of the films are, to my knowledge, available only in Blu-Ray format. Only the Theatrical Editions are available on DVD.

EDIT: Hmm Warlmart seems to have an exclusive on DVDs of the EE + features. Might have to keep an eye for that on ebay.

[Curlyjimsam]

Nice. One little thing: imperatives are finite, not non-finite. They can head independent clauses, whereas infinitives are deranked and thus non-finite.

Drat! I should've known that...

To be fair I think you could argue it either way - imperatives often do share some properties of non-finite verbs that finite verbs lack (e.g. not inflecting for tense or aspect, not being able to take overt nominative arguments).

[Vardelm]

Have you looked at David's blog, Midgardsmal? There's a bunch of info there on his work for the movies.

[Xephyr]

Aye, I have. I asked him a couple questions, actually, but he only replied to the first.

[Xephyr]

I get the feeling that Something Is Up with the Orkish dialogue in the third film. I've been doing some analysis of it, and two things are peculiarly strange. Firstly, I can't understand hardly any of it. Based on the subtitles, if they are at all accurate, I should be able to make out most of it since it'd vocabulary that I know. But none of it sounds right... for example, the Orkish corresponding to "They cannot fight on two fronts"* contains neither the Orkish word for "can", "fight", or "two". The line corresponding to "Send out the beasts of war!" contains neither the Orkish word for "send", "beast", or "war". And so one.

Secondly... I found a line in Hobbit 3 where the Orkish line is literally taken from them chopping up portions of Orkish from previous films and stringing them together. And I don't just mean the text-- they literally reused the same audio files. It's the line where Azog says "Fools! They have forgotten what lives beneath these lands," and it consists of three chunks: the first chunk is taken from when in Hobbit 2 he says to Bolg "Do you still thirst for Dwarf blood?", the second chunk I can't identify, and the third is from Hobbit 2 when he says to Gandalf "You have come too late, Wizard! It is done." Needless to say, the line in Hobbit 3 makes no sense whatsoever.

Given the above two problems, I might be tempted to say that perhaps all of the Orkish in Hobbit 3 is gibberish, and not translated by David Salo as in the first two films. However, there are enough pieces here and there which sound correct, maybe... For example, the line of Black Speech (which is different from Orkish, n.b.) which says "Only one light... in the darkness", ends in "burzum-ishi" which definitely means "in the darkness", and the phrase immediately before it sounds almost like "ash zil" which would be "one light" in Neo-Black Speech. There are also fragments of sentences in the earlier parts of the movie, spoken between Azog and Bolg, which sound correct, though I still haven't figured any one whole sentence out.

I'm sure it's the case that some of these sentences are explicable, I just haven't been able to decipher them because of low audio quality and background noise, unfamiliar vocab, and changed subtitles. It's definitely the case that some of the lines, though, especially in the later scenes, have severely inaccurate subtitles... either because the Orkish is meaningless gibberish, or because they have rewritten the line after having it translated and/or recorded. There are other lines like this-- one line in Hobbit 2 apparently was originally given to one character when it was translated, but they changed it so that one character says the first part and another character says the second part, and the subtitles are utterly different. But you can tell if you translate the Orkish.

They thought nobody would notice. WELL I NOTICED!

I'll keep working on this. The fact that there is at least one line (probably at least two, actually) that is made up of previously-recorded lines, however, doesn't give me much confidence...

* - might not be exactly how it is in English. All I could find was a cam where the subs are in Spanish, so I'm back-translating.

EDIT: I think I may have found another line in Hobbit 3 that includes re-used lines from Hobbit 2. An interesting obsevation: all of the re-used lines I've found so far are of lines in Hobbit 2 which I haven't been able to decipher, despite having the official script of that film which has the correct transcription of all the Orkish dialogue. They just don't make any sense. This is weird.

[Zaarin]

They thought nobody would notice. WELL I NOTICED!

The Hobbit films, especially the second and third, have been so lazy in general that I can hardly say I'm surprised.

[Matrix]

The subject line for every post except the first in this thread says "transcription and anal".

[Genome]

The subject line for every post except the first in this thread says "transcription and anal".

Wow! Another thing on this thread about noticing stuff. How amazing is that!

[Xephyr]

They thought nobody would notice. WELL I NOTICED!

The Hobbit films, especially the second and third, have been so lazy in general that I can hardly say I'm surprised.

I see a lot of the criticisms that people have for these movies, but "lazy" isn't something I would call them. Lazy would've been to just make one film, not bother to give the dwarves different personalities and appearances, etc. There is grounds to complain about all of the additional material in the films, the expanded scenes, the new characters, the stuff that attempts to link these films to the others... that is fine, but I don't see how that can be called "lazy".

I have made marginal progress. One line I believe I have deciphered: when the orc army has the dwarves and elves against the ropes, right before Thorin rallies his men, Azog gives a command to advance. This is another case where they must have changed the subs, because the subtitles say "They are finished" (or however you want to translate "Ya llega su fin") but the Orkish is "Mog i nakhyash du ki" which means "Let them come to you!".* Which doesn't seem to make sense in context... unless the "you" refers to the dwarves (he says it almost like he's talking to himself, rather than to his men). That's a good sentence, though, because it's another example of the ezafe particle "i" introducing a fully-inflected verb in a subordinate clause... which is one of the relatively few grammatical niceties of Orkish that are worth commenting on.

* mog ["let"-- zero-marked verbs are either imperative or infinitive] i [introduces subclauses] nakh-ya-sh ["come"-FUT-3SBJ] du [to] ki ["you"]

[Zaarin]

They thought nobody would notice. WELL I NOTICED!

The Hobbit films, especially the second and third, have been so lazy in general that I can hardly say I'm surprised.

I see a lot of the criticisms that people have for these movies, but "lazy" isn't something I would call them. Lazy would've been to just make one film, not bother to give the dwarves different personalities and appearances, etc. There is grounds to complain about all of the additional material in the films, the expanded scenes, the new characters, the stuff that attempts to link these films to the others... that is fine, but I don't see how that can be called "lazy".

I have made marginal progress. One line I believe I have deciphered: when the orc army has the dwarves and elves against the ropes, right before Thorin rallies his men, Azog gives a command to advance. This is another case where they must have changed the subs, because the subtitles say "They are finished" (or however you want to translate "Ya llega su fin") but the Orkish is "Mog i nakhyash du ki" which means "Let them come to you!".* Which doesn't seem to make sense in context... unless the "you" refers to the dwarves (he says it almost like he's talking to himself, rather than to his men). That's a good sentence, though, because it's another example of the ezafe particle "i" introducing a fully-inflected verb in a subordinate clause... which is one of the relatively few grammatical niceties of Orkish that are worth commenting on.

* mog ["let"-- zero-marked verbs are either imperative or infinitive] i [introduces subclauses] nakh-ya-sh ["come"-FUT-3SBJ] du [to] ki ["you"]

I suppose I mean lazy in the sense that absolutely no heart was put into them, certainly not in the way it was in the LotR trilogy. I'd also argue making one or two films would not have been lazy, it would have been not stretching the source material too thin then filling it up with endless action scenes. But my criticisms of The Hobbit films, especially Desolation of Smaug, are much too long to be worth dragging this thread off topic so I'll leave them there.