{"id":474,"date":"2011-03-04T20:51:05","date_gmt":"2011-03-05T03:51:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/library.conlang.org\/blog\/?p=474"},"modified":"2011-03-04T20:51:05","modified_gmt":"2011-03-05T03:51:05","slug":"one-conlanger-to-rule-them-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/library.conlang.org\/blog\/?p=474","title":{"rendered":"One Conlanger to Rule Them All"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/One_Ring\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"The One Ring with the inscription in the Black Speech\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/b\/b7\/Unico_Anello.png\/200px-Unico_Anello.png\" title=\"The One Ring\" class=\"alignright\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Today, I downloaded the relatively-recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/books\/laura_miller\/2011\/02\/15\/last_ringbearer\">English translation<\/a> of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kirill_Eskov\">Kirill Eskov<\/a>&#8216;s <em>\u00d0\u0178\u00d0\u00be\u00d1\u0081\u00d0\u00bb\u00d0\u00b5\u00d0\u00b4\u00d0\u00bd\u00d0\u00b8\u00d0\u00b9 \u00d0\u00ba\u00d0\u00be\u00d0\u00bb\u00d1\u0152\u00d1\u2020\u00d0\u00b5\u00d0\u00bd\u00d0\u00be\u00d1\u0081\u00d0\u00b5\u00d1\u2020<\/em> (<em>The Last Ringbearer<\/em>), the story of JRR Tolkien&#8217;s <em>The Lord of the Rings<\/em> as told from the viewpoint of Mordor and its inhabitants.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m only a couple chapters into it, but it got me thinking: Conlangers should really root for Sauron in Tolkien&#8217;s work, because Sauron is a conlanger! From what we know, he singlehandedly devised the <a href=\"http:\/\/folk.uib.no\/hnohf\/orkish.htm\">Black Speech<\/a> to be used by those who serve him.<\/p>\n<p>Well, that wasn&#8217;t very satisfying. After all, Sauron is the bad guy. (At least in Tolkien&#8217;s work, not Eskov&#8217;s). Who wants to root for the bad guy? (Although, I must admit, I thought Darth Vader was the coolest until I found out he was Luke&#8217;s father. Ew! And, mind you, this was way back when <em>A New Hope<\/em> was the <em>first<\/em> Star Wars film. But I digress&#8230;) So, I started thinking, and remembered <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Aul%C3%AB\">Aul\u00c3\u00ab<\/a> who created the Dwarves and devised a language for them, <a href=\"http:\/\/folk.uib.no\/hnohf\/khuzdul.htm\">Khuzdul<\/a>. It&#8217;s interesting to keep in mind that Sauron was originally one of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.glyphweb.com\/ARDA\/m\/maiar.html\">Maiar<\/a> of Aul\u00c3\u00ab.<\/p>\n<p>To the best of my knowledge, Aul\u00c3\u00ab and Sauron are the only two conlangers in Middle-earth. Yes, it&#8217;s true a couple elves (i.e., <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/R%C3%BAmil#R.C3.BAmil_of_Tirion\">R\u00c3\u00bamil<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.glyphweb.com\/ARDA\/f\/feanor.html\">F\u00c3\u00abanor<\/a>) devised writing systems, but they didn&#8217;t create entire languages.<\/p>\n<p><p>So, who ya gonna root for? <em>Ash durbatul\u00c3\u00bbk.<\/em>&#8220;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today, I downloaded the relatively-recent English translation of Kirill Eskov&#8216;s \u00d0\u0178\u00d0\u00be\u00d1\u0081\u00d0\u00bb\u00d0\u00b5\u00d0\u00b4\u00d0\u00bd\u00d0\u00b8\u00d0\u00b9 \u00d0\u00ba\u00d0\u00be\u00d0\u00bb\u00d1\u0152\u00d1\u2020\u00d0\u00b5\u00d0\u00bd\u00d0\u00be\u00d1\u0081\u00d0\u00b5\u00d1\u2020 (The Last Ringbearer), the story of JRR Tolkien&#8217;s The Lord of the Rings as told from the viewpoint of Mordor and its inhabitants. I&#8217;m only a couple chapters into it, but it got me thinking: Conlangers should really root for Sauron in Tolkien&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,15,77],"tags":[129,127,128,96],"class_list":["post-474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-conlangers","category-rant","tag-aule","tag-lord-of-the-rings","tag-sauron","tag-tolkien"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.conlang.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.conlang.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.conlang.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.conlang.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.conlang.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=474"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/library.conlang.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":477,"href":"https:\/\/library.conlang.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/474\/revisions\/477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.conlang.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.conlang.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.conlang.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}