Over the years and especially recently, I've had a lot of questions asked me

(and probably more have been raised without asking me) about my language work on

the films of The Lord of the Rings, and, more recently, of The Hobbit: An

Unexpected Journey.



To answer all these questions individually would involve a great deal of

repetition, and the answers would remain unavailable to other people who may

have similar questions. In order to address them in a (hopefully) orderly way,

and to make the answers available to anyone who wants to search for them, I've

started a blog, called "Midgardsmal," located at the following URL:



midgardsmal.com.



If you have a Twitter account, you can check to see if there is a new blog post

by following this account:



twitter.com/Midgardsmal



The purpose of the Midgardsmal blog is to discuss questions related to the

versions of Tolkien's languages used in the films, and particularly to the

languages which were in large part newly invented for the films: Khuzdul (or

"Neo-Khuzdul"), Black Speech, and various Orkish dialects.



Quite a lot of material was invented in these languages -- more than appears in

the films -- and it will take a while to cover all the questions that have been

asked and might be asked. So I expect this blog to be an ongoing project for

several years, and possibly indefinitely -- I may continue inventing and

extending these languages as time goes on.



The blog is a work in progress, and I expect that it will change as I continue

to work through it. At the moment I see it as being partly narrative, partly

analysis, because the way these languages look now is rooted in the story of how

they came to be, though that is fairly straightforward. But I will be discussing

some specifics of how the languages are constructed, and -- insofar as I can

remember it -- some information about the sources of inspiration and the process

of invention.



I welcome comments and questions on and in the blog, and if I see a pattern of

interest in one sort of information or another, I may be able to give priority

to discussing those questions. The comments policy is posted on the blog.



I hope this blog will be a useful tool for those who are interested in the

languages of the film, and perhaps for those who are interested in constructed

languages in general.



David Salo

Nice!