Portal:Constructed languages/Language of the month/March 2011

The Black Speech is a constructed language devised by J. R. R. Tolkien. One of the languages of Arda in Tolkien's Middle-earth legendarium, it was spoken in the realm of Mordor. Tolkien describes the language as being created by Sauron as an artificial language to be the sole language of all the servants of Mordor, thereby replacing the many different varieties of Orkish and other languages used by his servants. Tolkien describes the language as existing in two forms, the ancient "pure" forms used by Sauron himself, the Nazgûl, and the Olog-hai, and the more "debased" form used by the soldiery of the Barad-dûr at the end of the Third Age.

For Black Speech, like for all the languages invented by Tolkien, we must distinguish two timelines of evolution:

• the external one, concern the evolving conceptions of the language, its actual development done by Tolkien;
• the internal one, deals with the fictional historical evolution of the language inside the imaginary world of "Middle-earth".