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3 J.R.R. Tolkien

The fantasy novels of J.R.R. Tolkien contained heavy linguistic detail, along with philosophical ideals of what constituted notions of beautiful and ugly language. Tolkien personally loathed "guttural" consonants, so in his fictional "fair" languages, he completely omitted uvular consonants and the voiced velar fricative ( IPA /ɣ/), but kept other velar consonants intact. He further demonized the uvular R, using it only in his fictional "black" languages such as the Black Speech along with the native languages spoken by the Orcs. In contrast, the Elves spoke R as a "fair" alveolar trill at all times.

Spoiler warning: Plot or ending details follow.

These conventions were not as strictly adhered to in the various film and animation versions of Tolkien's works. In particular, the Rankin-Bass animated adaptation of The Hobbit has the Elves of Mirkwood speaking with a voiced uvular fricative. In contrast, in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, the orcs and Uruk-hai speak in Cockney-style accents with alveolar and retroflex approximants.

Uvular R



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