Lessons
• Lesson I – Background information
• Lesson II – Black Speech Sounds and Pronunciation
• Lesson III – Nouns
• Lesson IV – Verbs: Infinitive and Present Tense
• Lesson V – Verbs: Future Tense
• Lesson VI – Adjectives and Word Order
• Lesson VII – Pre- and Postpositions, Noun Cases, Phrase Verbs
• Lesson VIII – Verbs: Past Tense
• Lesson IX – Numbers
• Lesson X – Pronouns and Commands (Imperatives)
• * Lesson XII – Comparisons
• * Lesson XIII – Suffix Order and Indirect Objects
• * Lesson XIV – Questions
• * Lesson XV – Participles and Passive Voice
• * Lesson XVI – Conditional and Subjunctive Moods
• Appendix A: Prefixes and Suffixes
• Appendix B: Grammar quick overview
• Appendix C: Measures, Directions, Army Ranks
• Appendix D: List Of Abbreviations
• Appendix E: Canonical Tolkien's Black Speech
* Lesson XV – Participles and Passive Voice
Participles
Initially there were only two forms of participles. The first one is the active indefinite participle I (the -ug suffix), and the second is the participle II (-uga suffix). Example:
to speak | gashnat | |
speaking | gashnug | |
spoken | gashnuga |
I think it isn't enough to translate complex phrases, some languages have much more types of participles than English. Black Speech uses auxilary verbs like be or have definitely very seldom, so borrowing English grammar isn't a good practice. I've decided to keep participles somehow similar to English but with distinct suffixes for each form instead of using to have and to be. Unlike English all participles have plural form like adjectives. However there is always a way to say the same thing without participles, which is still recommended for better compatibility (b). Here is final table, explaining Participles.
Type | Suffix | Plural | Examples | Translation |
---|---|---|---|---|
-ug | -ugu | uruk akrugu shum | orcs drinking too much | |
Participle I Passive | -aga | -agaz | a) pau akraga gilrolarz maukum-ugil | a) potion usually being drunk before battle |
b) pau amut akragat* maukum-ugil gilrolarz | b) potion which is usually drunk before battle | |||
Perfect Participle I | -ugz | -ugzu | a) uruk lûmpuzat akrugz pau | a) orc fell having drunk a potion |
b) uruk lûmpuzat dhurz akruzat pau | b) orc fell because he had drunk a potion | |||
Perfect Participle I Passive | -ufa | -ufaz | a) pau thrakuzat hûr akrufa | a) potion brought courage having been drunk |
b) pau akraguzat* agh thrakuzat hûr urzkû | b) potion was drunk and brought courage after (this) | |||
-uga | -ugaz | honuz-izg uruk azuga golug-irzi | I saw an orc killed by elves |
* This is translated as Passive Voice which is discussed few paragraphs below.
Be careful to distinguish participles from continuous and perfect tenses:
* There is no word for “too” in Black Speech dictionary, but I've found “very much”. So I use “shum” instead of “too”
** “Too” modifies the word “loud”, so it cames after this word!
*** Once again, the dictionary doesn't have the word “these”, but it has “this” and “those”. I just added plural suffix to ther first one, but it's better to skip it. “Word” and “speak” have the same stem “ghashn” in Black Speech, so the translation doesn't look good enough.
Passive Voice
Initially I supposed that passive voice is formed similar to English: the verb to be in required tense + participle II. But it seems, Black Speech doesn't have a tendency of using the verb kulat (to be). The only dialect with special suffix for Passive Verbs is Horngoth, but there is no any example. So I took the liberty of proposing a new rules:
Passive Voice is formed by adding -ag suffix before any person or tense verb suffix. It has nothing to do with passive participle II. This is evident for some languages but could be hard for English-speakers, so I kept kulat + Participle II as valid (and preferrable) variant.
Examples
English | Black Speech (my proposal) |
Black Speech (old manner) |
|
---|---|---|---|
Present | |||
The ring is stolen every Age |
Nazg orskagat kûm rûgh |
Nazg kulat orskuga kûm rûgh |
|
The ring is being stolen now |
Nazg orskagat rad |
Nazg kulat orskuga rad |
|
The ring have been just stolen |
Nazg orskaguzat1) dhûzud |
Nazg kuluzat1) orskuga dhûzud |
|
Past | |||
The ring was stolen yesterday |
Nazg orskaguzat ârshlut |
Nazg kuluzat orskuga ârshlut |
|
The ring was being stolen last night |
Nazg orskaguzat bûrz tîl |
Nazg kuluzat orskuga bûrz tîl |
|
The ring had been stolen before I knew about it's power |
Nazg orskaguzat ugil îstuz-izg gothumtab-gus |
Nazg kuluzat orskuga ugil îstuz-izg gothumtab-gus |
|
Future | |||
The ring will be stolen tomorrow |
Nazg orskagubat ârshu |
Nazg kulubat orskuga ârshu |
|
The ring will have been stolen by the end of this year |
Nazg orskagubat nau-irzi ânrothzaob2) |
Nazg kulubat orskuga nau-irzi ânrothzaob |
My proposal can be used to distinguish continuous forms; for perfect always use traditional way (Participle II). For Indefinte forms you can use both variants.
When both subject and object of sentence with passive voice are pronouns, then word order is:
- when passive is expressed by verb with -ag suffix, then verb takes person suffix according to subject (patient of action), pronouns are added to the verb as usual;
- when passive is expressed by verb kulat with participle, then subject pronoun is added to the verb, which also takes person suffix according to subject, and object is written separately after the participle.
On Ergative Alignment
Ergative alignment is roughly speaking a way of forming the majority of sentences similar to passive voice of usual languages (called Nominative-Accusative). A. Nemirovsky's proposes that Black Speech is based on ancient Hurrian language, which was agglutinative ergative language with sentence structure Subject–Object–Verb. His hypothesis is quite strong. In that case Passive voice is not needed. Here's example:
Accusative | Ergative |
---|---|
Uruk throquat âps |
Uruk-irzi âps throquat |
Orc eats meat |
lit.: By orc meat is eaten |
Tolkien's examples cannot prove or deny ergative structure of language. Despite some obvious similarity to Hurrian, Black Speech does not copy all the features of this language (i.e. in Hurrian adjectives are placed before nouns). So, while new Zhâburi dialect is ergative, Shadowlandian described here is not.
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