stupid question

[Rapscallion]

how does everyone learn how 2 speak elfish?

[Rao]

not to many people do actually, i think there are only a handful who know the entire language, i could tell a bunch of words in elven, lol, but i couldnt give you a sentence.

[Rapscallion]

what about dwarvish? anyone speak dwarvish?

[TerraFrost]

although elvish plays a prominent role in all of tolkien's work, i'm not sure if there's even a single dwarvish word in all of tolkien's works,heh.

i mean, all of the dwarvish things we see hae ,iirc, elf names - like the nauglamir.

of course, this makes since considering that the silmarilion is supposed to be by elves and that the lord of the rings (red book of westmarch) was written while bilbo was living amongst elves.

[Rapscallion]

what about orcish? anybody speak orcish?

[Rao]

No, Elven is the only real language Tolkien created and brought out of the books.

[Rapscallion]

i was gonna ask, "does any one speak hobbitish?" but the jokes getting old.

[Dracofrost]

There's only about one line of the Black Speech, and Tolkien himself gave just a few translations of it, so much of even what they have is left to speculation. However, if you want to know more about it, check here:
http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/orkish.htm
That place is my favorite source on the internet for information about Tolkien languages, and as far as I can tell, seems to be the most informative and complete location.

You can also find a good bit about what of Dwarven exists by looking here: http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/khuzdul.htm

And here, in answer to your first question, is a link to a small course in Quenya: http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/qcourse.htm.

http://www.uib.no/People/hnohf/ is the link page to all those other ones, and has a good bit more about the linguistics of Arda. Good place to waste time...

[TerraFrost]

Black Speech is, I suspect, derived from Elvish (Quena, or something). I mean, everything else they made was derived from other things. Trolls from ents, orcs from elves, dragons from eagles, etc.

of course, the fact that they *couldn't* create life (only Eru can do that) might kinda scew the conclusions one might draw from the above precidents.

[Dracofrost]

Well, the thing is... just look at Orcish and Elvish. They're very different just down to the types of sounds used. And the Black Speech itself was created by Sauron, as a sort of Esperanto of Evil. So, while it may be very distantly from elvish, I believe just about every sound and possible root word has been distorted beyond recognition by thick orc tongues over years and years.

[Rapscallion]

thanks, guys!

[harmony1917]

i wanna learn elfish lango

[chaotic century]

A girl at a local highschool i heard wrote the answers to a test on her arm in elvish. the teacher noticed the writing on her arm and only commented "thats pretty"