Cockney Orcs

[Diane C]

Our friends outside the UK maybe wondering what I'm on about, and therefore I offer my apologies at the outset.

Anyway, in The Two Towers and ROTK, there were a couple of scenes with orcs and/or Uruks speaking to each other in heavy Cockney accents!

I know this is only a very small, trivial point, but as soon as I heard them my view of them totally changed. All of a sudden I was thinking "Eastenders" and Phil Mitchell saying "wossall this then!! you 'aving a larrff? gerr'ourrrt myyyy parrrb you slaggg!"

And so it was with these Orcs. I was just waiting for one of them to start singing "knees up, mother Brown!" while immitating Pearly Kings down the Old Kent Road! To be honest I absolutely piddled myself everytime they spoke because I just couldn't take them seriously anymore, gov'nor!

This is just a pointless little observation that has been bothering me for years. I will now go back to sleep

[davem]

There's an interesting bit in Brian Rosebury's book, Tolkien, A Cultural Phenomenon, regarding Orc's speech patterns:

With the Orcs, whose speech is intended to suggest a closed militaristic culture of hatred & cruelty, Tolkien draws on a number of models. Indeed, there are at least three different dialogue-types for Orcs, corresponding to differences of rank and of tribe.. (None of them, incidentally, is ‘working-class’, except in the minds of critics who - themselves, it seems, unconsciously equating ‘degraded language’ with ‘working-class’ language - have convinced themselves that the Orcs’ malign utterances betray Tolkien’s disdain for ‘mere working people’.) The comparatively cerebral Grishnakh, for example, talks like a melodrama villain, or a public school bully.

Quote:
'My dear tender little fools," hissed Grishnakh, 'everything you have, and everything you know, will be got out of you in due time: everything! You'll wish there was more that you could tell to satisfy the Questioner, indeed you will: quite soon. We shan't hurry the enquiry. Oh dear no! What do you think you've been kept alive for? My dear little fellows, please believe me when I say that it was not out of kindness: that's not even one of Ugluk's faults."


The Uruk-hai, Grishnakh’s rivals, are an arrogant warrior horde, not without a certain esprit de corps, and are given to yelling war cries. (‘Bring out your King! We are the fighting Uruk-hai! We will fetch him from his hole, if he does not come. Bring out your skulking king!’) Lastly, the dialogue between individual Orcs at moments of animosity (which is most of the time) is brutal & squalid in a rather underpowered way.

Quote:
’The Black Pits take that filthy rebel Gorbag!' Shagrat's voice trailed off into a string of foul names and curses. 'I gave him better than I got, but he knifed me, the dung, before I throttled him...’

‘'I'm not going down those stairs again,' growled Snaga, 'be you captain or no. Nar! Keep your hands off your knife, or I'll put an arrow in your guts.


If Tolkien is reduced here to stylised snarls, & bowdlerised suggestions of excremental vituperation, one recognises his difficulty: more overt obscenity & violence would not so much have offended twentieth-century sensibilities as have evoked, incongruously, the world of the twentieth-century crime novel. Most readers, engrossed in the narrative, will absorb this functional, & sufficiently expressive, dialogue without being unduly detained by its artificiality or derivativeness.

[Eönwë]

Originally Posted by Diane C

Anyway, in The Two Towers and ROTK, there were a couple of scenes with orcs and/or Uruks speaking to each other in heavy Cockney accents!

Maybe they picked them up from the Trolls!

[Morthoron]

Actually, I never considered the guttural speech patterns of Orcs to be Cockney. Compare the accents of the Trolls in The Hobbit and any speech of Orcs in LotR (or the Goblin King in The Hobbit, for that matter). The Troll's speech is far more reminiscent of Cockney than the Orcs.

[Lalwendë]

I always found those cockney Orcs in the film quite amusing myself. I know I ought not to but...they were funny.

Originally Posted by Brian Rosebury

(None of them, incidentally, is ‘working-class’, except in the minds of critics who - themselves, it seems, unconsciously equating ‘degraded language’ with ‘working-class’ language - have convinced themselves that the Orcs’ malign utterances betray Tolkien’s disdain for ‘mere working people’.)

This is correct. I've read pieces by people who claim that the way the Orcs talk is down to Tolkien having class prejudice against people with regional accents. And I wonder if they've actually read the texts because of the glaringly obvious example of Sam with his own accent!

Tolkien might have spoken very 'far back' and been an academic but it does not mean he had any prejudice against accents. Far from it, he seems to have delighted in them, and one of his biggest influences was his tutor Joseph Wright, an expert in dialects. Here's a snippet about him if you haven't heard of him before, a truly fascinating figure:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Wright_(linguist)

[narfforc]

Lor luv a duck Diane C I had a giraffe, I had to run up the apples and pears to the spotty dog for a jimmy riddle. Seriously, having lived amonsgt the Cockney Orcs for 17yrs, I instanstly recognised the accent, at least it wasn't Dick van Dyke-ish "Maree Poppinsh". The other accent that stands out is Hama at the doors of Meduseld, I wouldn't want to meet him at a night club door.

[Orofarne]

Either Merry or Pippin (I can never tell the difference in the movie until Gandalf splits 'em up) has a Scottish accent-ish thing. That really bothered me. But I really wondered: narfforc, could you please translate your post for the benefit of we poor rural people?
I seriously thought that the orcs were talking with their mouths full, or something, because I didnt have a clue what they were saying without the subtitles. Thank you all, for clarifying that.

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by Orofarne

Either Merry or Pippin (I can never tell the difference in the movie until Gandalf splits 'em up) has a Scottish accent-ish thing. That really bothered me. But I really wondered: narfforc, could you please translate your post for the benefit of we poor rural people?

I believe that nafforc is relating how, much like the original poster, he found the scenes in question so amusing as to endanger his control of his bladder, necessitating a rapid ascent via staircase to the lavatory facilities.

I know that accents the real world is a shortcut to God to give us a place to hang our prejudices and stereo types about it, and can only hope, as the cheeky cockney Chippies not mind the comparison.