Tongues (General Help)

In Tolkien's works, each race and nationality spoke their own tongue. Through the process of garbling text, we have resembled this in The Two Towers. You will notice that many NPCs speak their own language, and without prior learning, you will not be able to understand them! However, to ease things for new players, most NPCs in the "newbie areas" speak the common language, Westron.

The breakdown of languages is as follows:

• Dunlendings speak Dunael
• Dunedain speak Adunaic
• Eorlings speak Rohirric
• Edain speak only Westron
• Hobbits speak only Westron
• Dwarves speak Khuzdul
• Silvan speak Silvan
• Sindar speak Sindarin
• Haradrim speak Haradaic
• Numenoreans speak Adunaic
• Easterlings speak Easterling
• Uruk-hai speak Orcish
• Variags speak Variag

There are also some special tongues which different species speak. Black Speech is spoken by top servants of Sauron. Orcish is not a language of itself, but is the term applied to the many tongues of the Orcs. Since the language varies from tribe to tribe, no one, not even the Orcs themselves, can know Orcish 100%. Certain races of man who trace their ancestry to the far east may also speak easterling.

You start the game knowing two languages: Westron and a language specific to your race, as per the list above. The exceptions to this are Edain and Hobbits - they do not have their specific language. During the course of the game, you will encounter NPC trainers who will be willing to teach different languages, for a price. It is usually worth it to learn them, as linguistic knowledge may be necessary to complete certain quests. Language prices are constant up to 100% proficiency, unlike other training prices (stats and skills) which scale upwards. This makes languages fairly cheap to learn. To view your current language proficiency, type "languages".

As a player, you may also choose which language your character will speak. You may do so by using the "speak" command; for example, typing "speak khuzdul" will change your language to Khuzdul. The change will be in effect until you change it back.