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But true 'rational' creatures 'speaking peoples are all of humanoid form. Only the Valar and Maia are intelligences that could assume forms of Arda at will. Huan and Sorontar (Thorondor) could be Maia-emissaries of Manwe, but unfortunately...Gwaihir and Landroval are said to be descendants of of Sorontar
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HoME 10; Morhoth's Ring
And in the same essay here are some of Tolkien's latter view on Orcs and what they are.
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I think that 'talking should not be the sign of possesion of a rational soul or 'fea'...Melkor taught them (Ork's) speech and as they have bred they have inherited this; and htey have as much indepedence as dogs or horses...the same sort of thing may be said of Huan and the Eagles, they were taught language by the Valar-but still had no fear
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What confuses me here is that it claims they were taught the language of the Valar, which 'Quendi and Eldar' (HoME 11) tells us was notoriously difficult to understand/speak, even for the Noldor, except of course for Feanor. [img]smilies/biggrin.gif[/img] And it seems that Huan must have known both Quenya and Sindarin, hence the fact that he could understand Luthien's speeches to him, but weren't Northern Sindarin (The one by and large spoken by the exiles) and Sindarin of Doriath diffrent? So did he have (and others like him) have some kind of 'special power' that allowed them to quickly pick up speech, like the Valar and Maia?