Re: Goblin phonology

>The phonology is based on what is known of Black Speech or Orkish:
>
>ii    uu        b/p  d   t      k/g
>    u            f   th s/z sh kh/gh  h
>   i             m   n          (n)
>      oo             l              r
>      o
>  a
>      aa
/o/ Should be rare in Orkish, the more so the closer the dialect is to the
black speech, given Tolkien's note that Black speech totally lacked /o/.
The length distinctions seem very reasonable given the ring inscription.

I think the grammar should be very regular and agglutinative, given
Tolkien's expressed preferences, and his basis for disliking many
artificial languages. Of course there should be manay abbreviations and
acronyms, for extra hideousness.

Good luck with this, I never got that far on it, but it's a good idea.

I'd also expect a lot of vowel drift in actual pronunciation: partly
because the orcs are so "slovenly" in their speech, and partly because I
think some sounds (like turned c, [&] (ae), [I]) are relatively
unnatractive. Also glides with central vowels. Shouldn't schwa be in there
along with wedge?

I'm not commenting on "naturalness" because I suspect esthetics are more
important. Morgoth could have corrupted the Orcs' linguistic abilities to
produce orkish languages more to his degraded tastes.

  -- David
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