Talk:Black Speech

Black Speech has been listed as one of the Language and literature good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Review: November 22, 2022. (Reviewed version).

A fact from Black Speech appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 11 December 2022 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that it was J. R. R. Tolkien's intention for Black Speech to be "full of harsh and hideous sounds and vile words"?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2022/December. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Black Speech.

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1

Did you know nomination[edit]

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by RoySmith (talk) 22:11, 3 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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Comment or view
Article history

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... that it was J. R. R. Tolkien's intention for Black Speech to be "so full of harsh and hideous sounds and vile words"? Source: Tolkien, J. R. R. (1996), Christopher Tolkien (ed.), The Peoples of Middle-earth, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, ISBN 978-0-395-82760-4. Page 35
- Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/The Bone People

Improved to Good Article status by Chiswick Chap (talk). Nominated by Onegreatjoke (talk) at 18:38, 28 November 2022 (UTC).[reply]

Newly promoted GA - long enough, neutral, well cited, free of issues. Hook is appropriate length, interesting, and cited to an offline source (AGF). QPQ done. Good to go. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 22:49, 30 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

ergation[edit]

How do we know it's ergative? —Tamfang (talk) 06:26, 28 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Because it's reliably cited to a well-known Tolkien scholar. I've not read of any other path to establishing facts in Wikipedia's voluminous policy documents. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:07, 28 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Weirdly, the page cited bases the inference of ergativity only on the use of clitic object pronouns, which are hardly unknown in non-ergative languages. Oh well, I won't press the issue. —Tamfang (talk) 03:40, 8 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Well we could relegate it to a footnote I suppose. It'd be best if another scholar wrote a rebuttal. Chiswick Chap (talk) 04:05, 8 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Irish word for "ring"[edit]

"Tolkien stated that when coining the Black Speech word nazg, he might have been influenced by the Irish word for "ring", nasc (Scottish nasg)" Nasc isn't the Irish word for "ring"; it's a verb that means "to bind". Fáinne is Irish for ring. 78.152.225.141 (talk) 22:07, 22 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks. I've edited the statement. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:48, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This gives Old Irish meanings "chain, link, tie". Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:51, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]