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I'm confused about what people see as "learned" sorcery or magic. Are we just thinking incatations, potions and spells? Or is it rather learning how to use your "power" to do specific things, so that the sorceror would be harnessing an already existant power that was in themselves, rather than just in the words of the spell.
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Yes, good question. In the case of Gandalf, the fire and light bewitchments that he learned quite possibly simply involved him harnessing his already inherent power. This goes back to the idea that I touched on earlier of him perhaps re-learning Maiar powers that he was unable to bring with him to ME in his Istari form.
In the case of the Nine, it could be that the Rings of Power given to them bestowed upon them some innate power that they were able to tap into in order to become sorcerors. But what of the Mouth of Sauron? As noted earlier, it is unclear whether he became a sorceror before or after he fell in with Sauron. It is quite possible that he learned his magic independently.
In any event, my own view is that magic can be learned whether or not the student has any inherent "magical" ability. And by "learned" magic, yes, I mean acquisition of the knowledge to cast spells using command words, ingredients, physical gestures or a combination of all three. OK, that means that (subject to the possible racial limitations discussed earlier) anyone with sufficient intelligence could learn to use magic. But the scarcity of "learing opportunities" nevertheless meant that sorcerors were rare indeed in ME.
(Yes, I know that this is a very AD+D view of magic, but that's where my ideas on magic mainly come from - and it makes sense to me. [img]smilies/tongue.gif[/img] )