Editing Midnight RPG - Orcish Written Language (section)

== Adam ==

One thing you might want to consider is both the Linguistic and the Political connotations of the Black Tongue. 

Linguistically, Black Speech is a bastardized pidgin of Dark Speech, the Language of Evil, unspeakable by man (well... almost). The Black Speech is a crude dialect both because it is designed to be very easy to learn, but also because the language from which it is taken is seriously incomplete to begin with. According to Book of Vile Darkness: 

"There are no words in the Dark Speech for good concepts such as kindness, mercy or purity. However, Evil characters can speak of Misery, Anguish, Hate, and Betrayal with an accuracy impossible in any other language."

It seems reasonable then that any new system should distance itself as far as possible from Black Tongue and its self-limiting linguistic artifacts. 


Politically, Black Tongue is even worse. Firstly, it places the Odrendor on the same linguistic plane as Ogres and Trolls, reinforcing both the cultural link with the minions of Shadow and the Orcish slave-mentality. Even worse, the language itself is composed of the cast-off verbal crumbs of the Dark God himself. It seems wise that any Orcish language, especially given its existing antecedants in Old Dwarven and the linguistic adaptability of the Odrendor, should borrow and include as much as possible from other, already successful languages, as I'm sure it already does to some degree (Just as English does).


Hope this helps.