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#8 | |
Illustrious Ulair
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: In the home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names,and impossible loyalties
Posts: 4,240
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Quote:
Surely, what he's attempting with the Black Speech is to change 'perceptions'. Its a bit like calling wild creatures 'game', or foxes 'vermin'. If a language is full of words for ugliness, violence, cruelty, that must inevitably affect the mindset of those who speak it. As we know, it never caught on among the orcs - perhaps they retained enough of their 'eruhini' nature that they couldn't adopt it fully, but the mentality behind it seems to have 'infected' the Westron they used. The orcs seem to have spoken almost a 'black Westron'. Language, the words we use to refer to the 'things' of experience, affect the way we relate to them, so manipulation of language affects our behaviour, because it determines the way we treat things. So, 'Those who speak elvish are Good Guys. Those who use the black speech are Bad Guys.' Yes, but are to what extent do the Elves 'speak' a 'good' language because they're 'good' beings, & to what extent are they 'good' because they speak a 'good' language'. & obviously the opposite point could be made in regard to Orcs? Do races (&individuals) shape the language they use, or does it shape them?. How 'orcish' would an orc be if he had been brought up speaking only Elvish? Or, how much 'magic', or 'genetic manipulation' did Morgoth use in making Orcs from Elves? Maybe his most powerful tool in that 'transformation' was language..... |
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