Black Speech : The tongue devised by Sauron for the use of his minions in place of the Common Speech.It is said to have been devised 'in the Dark Years',meaning sometime in the Second Age.It would presumably have fallen out of use after the War of the Ring.
Common Speech : The Westron,the language that evolved from Ad�naic as spoken in N�menor,as the common tongue of the peoples of Middle-earth.
Common Tongue : The Common Language used throughout the northern and western lands of Middle-earth.It developed from the N�men�rean tongue,Ad�naic,but with many additions and changes from other languages,to become almost universally spoken.
Dwarf-tongue : The language of the Dwarves,more commonly referred to as Dwarvish,or by the Dwarves' own name for the tongue,Khuzdul.The details of the language remained largely unknown to outsiders,because the Dwarves held knowledge of their tongue as one of their races' deepest secrets.The vocabulary and grammar of the language are an almost complete mystery,with a very few exceptions found in place-names,inscriptions,and in the famous Dwarvish war cry 'Baruk Khaz�d! Khaz�d aim�nu!'.
Dwarvish : The secret tongue of the Dwarves,called by them Khuzdul and seen only in a very few place-names (such as Khazad-d�m) and other fragments.
Eldarin : A term used to describe any of the languages of the Eldar and especially Quenya and Sindarin.
Elven-tongue : A term that strictly could be used of any of the Elvish languages but more normally in Middle-earth indicated Sindarin or Quenya.
Elvish : A general term for the languages of the Elves.In Middle-earth,it most commonly refers to Sindarin but can also apply to Quenya,the High-elven tongue.Other Elvish languages in Middle-earth include dialects derived from Sindarin (for example,the language of the Wood-elves of Thranduil).
Entish : The sonorous,rumbling and ancient language of the Ents,a language quite unlike those used by Elves or Men.Entish was a slow and thoughtful language for a slow and thoughtful people,in which words and names told the story of the things they described.This perhaps part of the reason for the Ents' shyness about names, considering their own Entish names to be private things only to be told to trusted friends.
Grey-elven : The language of the Telerin Elves who remained in Beleriand under the kingship of Thingol;more commonly called Sindarin.
High-elven : A name for Quenya,the tongue of the High Elves of Valinor.
Khuzdul :The Dwarves' name for their own secret language,of which only a few words were ever discovered by outsiders.With the exception of a few fragments and place-names,Tolkien gives us little insight into the Dwarvish tongue (as the Dwarves kept their tongue secret,it is natural that little of it should have survived in records).Our main sources are in words such as Khazad-d�m (Khaz�d being Dwarvish for 'Dwarves') and Khuzdul itself and in the Dwarvish war-cry,'Baruk Khaz�d! Khaz�d aim�nu!' ('Axes of the Dwarves! The Dwarves are upon you!). During the Third Age,the Dwarves seem to have considered Khuzdul in much the same way as the Elves of Middle-earth looked on Quenya,as an ancient and noble tongue of the past.The Dwarves would more commonly speak,even among themselves,in the native tongues of the regions in which they lived,to the extent that they took their names from these languages.The Dwarves also had secret 'inner' names,presumably derived from the Khuzdul tongue but they were extremely secretive about these,to the extent that they were not even given on their owners' tombs.
Mannish : A term used by Tolkien to refer to the languages of Men,as opposed to the Elvish tongues,or those of the other races of Middle-earth.By far the most prominent Mannish language in Tolkien's works is Westron,also called the Common Speech.
Nandorin : The language of the Nandor,those Telerin Elves who broke from the Great Journey east of the Misty Mountains.As Sindarin became the dominant Elvish tongue of Middle-earth,Nandorin became little-spoken and by the Third Age,was represented mainly in old place-names and Silvan dialects developed under its influence.
N�menorean : An alternative and less common name for Ad�naic,the native tongue of the people of N�menor.
Orkish : A general term for the jumble of languages used by the Orcs,composed from corrupted borrowings from other languages of Middle-earth.The variations in Orkish between different tribes and types of Orc were so great that it was often useless for communication and so a standard language was necessary.Sauron devised his Black Speech for this purpose in Mordor but in practice the Common Tongue was more normally used.
Quenya : The tongue of the High Elves in Valinor,the first to be recorded in writing.It was never widely used in Middle-earth except among the Noldor;the related Eldarin language,Sindarin,was more commonly spoken.By the Third Age,Quenya had become,in Middle-earth,a language used only on formal or state occasions by the Elves and the descendants of the N�men�reans.
Silvan Elvish : On the Great Journey of the Elves into the West,a part of the Elf-kin known as the Teleri broke away and settled in the wooded lands east of the Misty Mountains.The language they spoke was an early form of Elvish,from which developed dialects known as Silvan Elvish,used both in L�rien and the Woodland Realm of Mirkwood.The cousins of these Silvan Elves were the Sindar,also of Telerin origin,who settled far to the west in Beleriand and whose speech evolved into Sindarin,which would become the main Elf-tongue of Middle-earth.After the First Age,the surviving Elves of Beleriand carried their speech back into the east.Sindarin-speakers settled in both the main Silvan realms and in L�rien,at least,Sindarin quickly overtook Silvan Elvish in common use.The history of the tongue in Mirkwood is more difficult to determine - some sources suggest that it,too,was quickly overtaken by Sindarin but other sources dispute this.Whatever the historical situation in Mirkwood,Silvan Elvish was eventually overcome by the Sindarin speech,so that by the end of the Third Age,its only remnants were a few names,like Caras Galadhon or Amroth,that betray the influences of Silvan words.Those names aside,Silvan Elvish seems to have fallen completely out of use.
Sindarin : The language of the Grey-elves of Beleriand and most commonly used of the Elf-tongues in Middle-earth.When the Noldor returned to Middle-earth at the beginning of the First Age,Thingol decreed that their tongue Quenya,was not to be spoken in his realms.So the language of his people,Sindarin,came to dominate.Quenya, though,was still used as a language of ceremony and poetry.Sindarin shared common roots with Quenya and the two languages had many similar words.Sindarin was said to be more changeful than the older tongue,however,and there were a number of regional 'dialects' of the tongue.The Sindarin spoken in Doriath was said to be the highest and most noble form of the language.
Telerin : The language of the Teleri of Aman,a tongue related to both Quenya and Sindarin.
Valinorean : The language of the Eldar in Valinor;another name for Quenya.
Westron : Derived mainly from Ad�naic,the ancestral tongue of the Edain and their kin,the Westron was widely spoken by the Men of Middle-earth.When the N�men�reans began to return to Middle-earth during the Second Age,Westron developed into a lingua franca allowing conversation between them and their distant kin.As the Second Age passed and especially after the establishment of the N�men�rean kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor at the end of the Age,Westron became widely spoken by all races in Middle-earth,not just Men.Hence it is often referred to as the Common Speech.As the chief language of the northwest of Middle-earth,Westron is naturally represented in Tolkien's work by modern English,even to the extent that names of the ancient Westron form are also translated into equivalent forms based on Old English (prominent examples being Hobbit,Rivendell and Shelob although many others occur).Hence,we have very few examples of 'real' Westron words and names.There are in fact only two significant sources.The first appears in the isolated notes at the end of Appendix F II of The Lord of the Rings,where 'banakil', and 'kuduk' (both referring to hobbits) are given with some other examples.The second source is the names of the N�men�rean kings from Ar-Ad�nakh�r ('King,Lord of the West') to Ar-Pharaz�n ('Golden King'); these are in Ad�naic and hence closely related to Westron.
