Languages of Middle-earth: The Complete Guide to Every Tongue in The Lord of the Rings

Quick Answer: The languages of Middle-earth are Sindarin and Quenya (the two main Elvish tongues), Westron (the Common Speech the hobbits use), Rohirric (the language of Rohan), Khuzdul (the Dwarves' secret language), the Black Speech and Orkish dialects of Mordor, and Entish. Behind them in history stand Adûnaic, the language of Númenor, and Valarin, the speech of the Valar. Tolkien developed only Quenya and Sindarin into usable languages; the rest survive as names, phrases and short word lists. The Lord of the Rings itself is presented as a translation from Westron into English.

Ask what language The Lord of the Rings uses and most people say Elvish. That is half right. Tolkien gave every people of Middle-earth its own speech, and several of those languages are older and stranger than the Elvish everyone remembers.

This guide is the map. It gives every language one section, says how much of it Tolkien actually wrote, and points you to the page on this site that covers it in depth. The Elvish family gets one section here because it has its own hub, Tolkien's Elvish Languages: The Complete Guide to All Six. If your question is simply which Elvish the Elves speak in the films, start with What Language Do Elves Speak in Lord of the Rings?

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Every Language at a Glance

The third column tells the story: Tolkien started with Elvish and built the world around it. Everything else was made to the depth the story needed.

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Quenya: High-elven, the Latin of Middle-earth

Quenya is the oldest written language in the story and the most developed. It was spoken by the Elves who made the Great Journey to Valinor, and the Noldor brought it back to Middle-earth when they returned in pursuit of Morgoth. Its name is itself a Quenya word: Quenya is glossed "Elvish, High-elven, Elf-latin, speech."

In Beleriand, Quenya lost ground. The Silmarillion (chapter 15) tells how King Thingol, learning of the Kinslaying, forbade it in his realm, and the exiles took up Sindarin for daily use. By the Third Age, Appendix F says Quenya had become a language of lore and ceremony, used for names, songs and solemn speech, rather like Latin in medieval Europe.

That is exactly how it appears in The Lord of the Rings. Galadriel's lament Namárië, sung as the Fellowship leaves Lórien, is the longest Quenya passage in the book. Frodo's greeting to Gildor Inglorion in The Fellowship of the Ring (I.3) is Quenya. So are many royal names: Elessar, Aragorn's name as king, is Quenya, and its Sindarin equivalent is Edhelharn.

The Elves' oldest name for themselves, Quendi, means "those who speak." Tolkien put language at the root of what an Elf is. For the full history and grammar of Quenya, see the Elvish hub linked above.

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Sindarin: the Grey-elven Tongue

Sindarin is the language you hear most in Middle-earth. It descends from the speech of the Elves who stayed behind in Beleriand under Thingol, the Grey-elves or Sindar. Sindarin is a Quenya word, from sinda, "grey."

By the time of The Lord of the Rings, Sindarin is the everyday language of the Elves of Rivendell, the Grey Havens, Lórien and Mirkwood. It is also known to the Dúnedain of the North and many of the nobles of Gondor, which is why Aragorn can speak it so naturally. (Why he learned it is a story in itself; see how Aragorn knows Elvish.)

Most of the Elvish lines readers remember are Sindarin. The inscription on the West-gate of Moria reads Pedo mellon a minno, "Speak, friend, and enter." Glorfindel greets Aragorn with Mae govannen in The Fellowship of the Ring (I.12). Place names such as Lothlórien's Galadhrim and Mordor are Sindarin too.

Sindarin changes vowels to make plurals, a process called i-affection: Adan, a mortal Man, becomes Edain. That feature gives the language its Welsh-like sound, which Tolkien intended. The Elvish hub covers its grammar; our Speak Friend and Enter in Elvish breaks down the Moria line word by word.

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The Other Elvish Tongues

Quenya and Sindarin are not the whole family. Tolkien sketched several other Elvish languages, each tied to a branch of the Elves' history.

Telerin was the speech of the Teleri who reached the shores of Aman, the Sea-elves of Alqualondë. Tolkien treated it as close to Quenya, almost a dialect.

Nandorin belonged to the Nandor, Elves who abandoned the Great Journey and lived in the woods and river valleys east of the Misty Mountains. The Silvan Elves of Mirkwood and Lórien descended largely from them. Appendix F notes that by the Third Age the Elves of those forests had largely adopted Sindarin, with their own accent.

Avarin is a label for the languages of the Avari, the Elves who refused the summons west. Tolkien recorded only a few words, and noted that Avarin dialects had drifted far apart.

All three survive as short word lists and notes. None can be spoken. The detail lives in the Elvish languages hub; for the kindreds themselves, see Elves of Middle-earth: Kindreds, Immortality and Languages Explained.

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Westron: the Common Speech

Westron is the language the hobbits speak, and the language most of the book is "really" written in. Tolkien presents The Lord of the Rings as a translation of the Red Book of Westmarch. In that framing, every line of hobbit dialogue you read in English was originally Westron.

Appendix F explains its history. Westron grew out of Adûnaic, the language of the Númenóreans who settled the coasts of Middle-earth, mixed with the languages of the Men they ruled and enriched with Elvish words. By the Third Age it was spoken from the Shire to Gondor, and almost everyone in the story uses it as a common tongue, including Elves and Dwarves when talking to outsiders.

Because Tolkien translated it, genuine Westron barely shows on the page. What survives comes from Appendix F and his later notes:

Our Westron guide collects every recorded form and explains how the hobbit names were "translated."

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Rohirric and the Old English Trick

Rohirric is the language of Rohan, and it is where Tolkien's translation idea becomes clever. Rohirric was related to the ancestor of Westron, but older and separate, kin to the speech of the hobbits' own distant forebears. Tolkien asked himself how to show that in English, and his answer, set out in Appendix F, was to render Rohirric as Old English.

So the names of Rohan are Old English words: Théoden, Éomer, Edoras, Meduseld. The phrases are Old English too. When Éowyn brings the king a cup in Meduseld she says Westu Théoden hál!, "Be thou well, Théoden!" (The Two Towers, III.6). To an English reader Rohan should sound the way Rohirric sounded to a hobbit: familiar in places, archaic, clearly kin.

Genuine Rohirric barely appears. Appendix F gives the key form kûd-dûkan, "hole-dweller", the Rohirric word for a hobbit. Its Old English stand-in is holbytla, which Théoden uses for Merry and Pippin, and Tolkien offers holbytla as the imagined ancestor of the English word hobbit. Appendix F also gives Trahald and Nahald as the Mannish names behind Sméagol and Déagol, from a speech close to Rohirric.

You cannot learn Rohirric, but you can learn Old English, which is the point Tolkien was making. Full detail in The Language of Rohan.

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Adûnaic: the Language of Númenor

Adûnaic was the native tongue of the Númenóreans, the Men of the island kingdom of the Second Age. Its name comes from adûn, "west." The island itself was Anadûnê, Westernesse.

For most of Númenor's history, its kings used Elvish names and its nobles spoke Sindarin. Language became politics as Númenor turned against the Elves. The Silmarillion's Akallabêth records the kings taking Adûnaic titles, and Ar-Gimilzôr forbidding the Elvish tongues altogether. The Faithful, Elendil's party, kept Elvish alive. The title Akallabêth is itself Adûnaic, "the Downfallen."

Adûnaic matters for the Third Age because it is the parent of Westron. When the Faithful founded Gondor and Arnor, their Adûnaic merged with local speech and became the Common Speech the hobbits use.

Tolkien wrote a grammar sketch ("Lowdham's Report", in Sauron Defeated) and enough names to study the language, but not enough to speak it. The Rings of Power puts Númenor on screen, though most of its Númenórean dialogue is in English. Read more in Adûnaic: The Lost Language of Númenor, and see Isildur Explained for the Faithful's last generation.

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Khuzdul and Iglishmêk: the Dwarves' Secret Tongues

Khuzdul is the language of the Dwarves, and they guarded it. Appendix F says they taught it to almost no one and used the languages of their neighbors in public, even taking outer names from them. That is why Gimli, Thorin and Balin all have Mannish names, and why Gimli speaks Westron throughout the book.

In the legend, Khuzdul was made by Aulë, the Vala who made the Dwarves. Because they kept it secret, Tolkien recorded only a small amount, mostly names and two famous lines. Gimli's battle cry at Helm's Deep, Baruk Khazâd! Khazâd ai-mênu!, means "Axes of the Dwarves! The Dwarves are upon you!" The inscription on Balin's tomb in Moria is the longest piece of Khuzdul Tolkien published, and it is written in Cirth runes.

Iglishmêk is the oddest entry: Tolkien's later writings describe it as a secret gesture-language the Dwarves used alongside speech. He recorded none of its signs.

The Rings of Power gives Durin and Disa long exchanges in Khuzdul. Most of that is the show's own reconstruction, built on Tolkien's few words, not Tolkien's text. See Khuzdul — Tolkien's Dwarven Language Complete Guide.

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The Black Speech and Orkish

The Black Speech is the language Sauron devised for his servants. Appendix F says he made it in the Dark Years, meaning it to be the language of everyone who served him, and that he failed. Only the Nazgûl and some of his captains kept it in its pure form. The Orcs broke it into dialects so different that Orcs of different tribes often had to use Westron to understand each other.

Tolkien wrote one full sentence of pure Black Speech: the inscription on the One Ring. Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul opens the verse, "One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them." Because the English is given line by line, the words can be separated with confidence, and they show a language that builds words by adding suffixes to a stem.

Beyond that there is a curse shouted by a Mordor orc in The Two Towers (III.3), which the book leaves untranslated and Tolkien's later notes gloss only roughly, plus a few dozen names. Appendix F records that the Olog-hai, Sauron's trolls, spoke little but the Black Speech. Orkish also borrowed: tark, an Orc word for a man of Gondor, was worn down from Quenya tarkil.

The full verse is in The One Ring Inscription, the word list in Black Speech Words, and the forging itself in how the One Ring was made.

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Entish: the Language Nobody Could Write Down

Entish is the language of the Ents, and Tolkien deliberately left it almost blank. Treebeard explains that his own language is slow and long: an Entish name tells the story of the thing it names, so it takes a very long time to say. Appendix F adds that it was slow, sonorous and repetitive, and that not even the Elves mastered it or tried to write it down.

Ents were taught to speak by the Elves, and they kept a love of Elvish. Treebeard mixes Quenya into his talk and strings Elvish words together in an Entish manner. His long name for Fangorn Forest, Taurelilómëa-tumbalemorna Tumbaletaurëa Lómëanor, is built from Quenya elements, not Entish ones.

The genuine Entish on the page amounts to one rolling string, a-lalla-lalla-rumba-kamanda-lind-or-burúmë, which Treebeard offers in The Two Towers (III.4) as part of his name for the place where he and the hobbits stand looking out. Tolkien gives it no gloss.

Note that Fangorn, Treebeard's own name and his forest's, is Sindarin, not Entish. The Elves' word for the Ents is Onod. See Entish Explained.

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Valarin: the Language of the Powers

Valarin is the oldest language in Tolkien's world and the least human. It was spoken by the Valar and Maiar, the angelic powers who shaped Arda, when they took bodily form. Tolkien's later essay on the Elves' names for themselves, published in The War of the Jewels, describes it as alien to the Elves: long words, unfamiliar sounds, beautiful to hear and very hard to say. The Elves rarely learned it and borrowed only a few words.

Two of those borrowings appear in The Silmarillion as Quenya names. Máhanaxar is the Ring of Doom, the circle of thrones outside Valmar where the Valar sat in council. Ezellohar is the Green Mound where the Two Trees grew. Both look unlike ordinary Quenya, and that strangeness is the point: they are Valarin words in Elvish dress.

Valarin never appears in The Lord of the Rings; Gandalf and Sauron are Maiar, but they speak the languages of Middle-earth. The Quenya word for one of the powers is Vala, plural Valar. For more, see Beyond Elvish: Every Other Language Tolkien Invented for Middle-earth.

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Which Languages Appear in the Films and Rings of Power

Screen adaptations have needed far more dialogue than Tolkien wrote, so a good deal of what you hear is new. Here is how to label it.

Peter Jackson's films. Most of the Elvish is Sindarin, and much of it is film Sindarin (David Salo), written for scenes the book never had. Le hannon, "thank you", and gi melin, "I love you", are both film Sindarin (David Salo), not Tolkien. Salo also extended the Black Speech for Orc dialogue and battle chants, so film Black Speech is film-coined. Gimli's Baruk Khazâd! is Tolkien's; the Dwarvish heard in The Hobbit films goes beyond his corpus. Rohan's speech in the films follows the book's Old English convention. No Westron was written for the films, because in the book's own logic English already is Westron. Our glossary of every line is Elvish Words in Lord of the Rings Movies: Complete Glossary of Every Phrase Heard.

The Rings of Power. The show's Tolkien-language consultant is Carl F. Hostetter. Its Elves speak Quenya and Sindarin drawn closely from Tolkien's sources, while its Dwarvish dialogue is the show's own Khuzdul reconstruction. Númenor appears on screen, but most Númenórean speech is in English. In Season 3, which premieres on Prime Video on 11 November 2026, the season opens five years after the fall of Eregion and shows the forging of the One Ring. That forging is where the Black Speech and the tengwar meet in Tolkien's history. For what is confirmed so far, see the Season 3 Elvish preview and our Rings of Power Elvish guide.

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Writing Systems: Tengwar and Cirth

Middle-earth has two main scripts, and neither belongs to a single language.

Tengwar. Appendix E says the tengwar were devised by Fëanor in Valinor, building on the earlier letters of Rúmil. They are organized by sound: each letter's shape reflects how the sound is made. The Quenya word tengwa means "letter" or "sign." Because the system is a framework rather than an alphabet, it has modes for different languages. The Doors of Durin are tengwar used for Sindarin; the One Ring's inscription is tengwar used for the Black Speech; and Tolkien wrote English in tengwar too. Letters have names that are words: the fifth tengwa is ando, "gate", and the first is tinco, "metal."

Cirth. The runes were first made by Daeron, the loremaster of Doriath, and later extended by the Noldor of Eregion into the Angerthas, "long rune-rows." The Sindarin certh means "rune." The Dwarves adopted the runes and carried them to Moria, which is why Balin's tomb carries Khuzdul written in Cirth. Runes were easy to carve in stone and wood; tengwar suited pen and ink.

You can write your own name in tengwar with our Tengwar name tool.

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Which Ones Can You Actually Learn

Here is the honest answer. Of all the languages above, only two have enough material to learn and use: Sindarin and Quenya.

For both, Tolkien left a working vocabulary in the low thousands of words, together with notes on grammar, sound changes and word-building that scholars have been publishing for decades. You can form sentences, read his poems and understand what the film lines are doing. Quenya is the more regular, with a full system of noun cases; Sindarin is the one you hear most on screen. Which to start with is a real choice, covered in Quenya vs Sindarin: What's the Difference?

Everything else is fragments. Westron and Rohirric are a handful of words each, because the book translates them. Khuzdul is about a hundred words, kept secret on purpose. The Black Speech is one verse and a few dozen forms. Adûnaic has a grammar sketch but not enough words. Entish and Valarin are barely recorded at all.

Full dictionaries of Black Speech, Khuzdul or Westron online are modern reconstructions. Fine for a game, but not Tolkien.

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People Also Ask

What languages are spoken in The Lord of the Rings? The main ones are Sindarin and Quenya (Elvish), Westron (the Common Speech), Rohirric, Khuzdul (Dwarvish), the Black Speech and Orkish, and Entish. Adûnaic and Valarin sit in the background history.

What language is written on the One Ring? The words are in the Black Speech of Mordor, but the letters are Elvish tengwar. That is why Gandalf says the script is Elvish while the language is that of Mordor.

Is the Common Speech in The Lord of the Rings really English? No. The hobbits speak Westron, and Tolkien presents the book as his translation of it into English. Only a few real Westron words survive, such as kuduk, "hobbit."

Which languages of Middle-earth can you actually learn? Only Sindarin and Quenya. The other languages survive in fragments, from a few words to a few hundred, too little to speak.

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Learn the Language the Elves Speak

Sindarin and Quenya are the two languages of Middle-earth you can genuinely learn, and our Learn Elvish course teaches both from Tolkien's own words, with free lessons to start. To see how an English phrase comes out in Elvish, try the Elvish translator.

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Related Reading

• Tolkien's Elvish Languages: The Complete Guide to All Six
• What Language Do Elves Speak in Lord of the Rings?
• Westron: The Real "Common Speech" of Middle-earth (Why the Hobbits Don't Speak English)
• The Language of Rohan: Rohirric, Old English, and Every Word in the Films
• Adûnaic: The Lost Language of Númenor
• Khuzdul — Tolkien's Dwarven Language Complete Guide
• Black Speech Words: Every Attested Word of Mordor's Tongue (and What's Fan-Made)
• The One Ring Inscription: What It Actually Says (And Why It's Not Elvish)
• Entish Explained: Treebeard's Language and Why It's Unspeakable
• Beyond Elvish: Every Other Language Tolkien Invented for Middle-earth
• Tengwar Alphabet: Complete Guide to Tolkien's Elvish Writing System
• Cirth Runes: The Angerthas, Dwarf Runes and Moria Explained
• Races of Middle-earth: The Complete Guide to Every People and Creature
• Sindarin for Beginners: The Language of the Lord of the Rings Films