Most languages establish through centuries of use among groups of individuals. However some have a various origin: They are invented, from scratch, from one persons mind. Familiar examples consist of the worldwide language Esperanto, the Klingon language from “Star Trek” and the Elvish tongues from “The Lord of the Rings.”
The activity isnt brand-new– the earliest tape-recorded developed language was by medieval nun Hildegard von Bingen– but the Internet now enables much larger sharing of such languages amongst the little neighborhoods of people who speak and produce them.
Christine Schreyer, a linguistic anthropologist at the University of British Columbias Okanagan school in Kelowna, Canada, has actually studied invented languages and the people who speak them, a topic she writes about in the 2021 Annual Review of Anthropology. However Schreyer brings another skill to the table: Shes a language developer herself and has invented several languages for the film market: the Kryptonian language for “Man of Steel,” Eltarian for “Power Rangers,” Beama (Cro-Magnon) for “Alpha” and Atlantean for “Zack Snyders Justice League.”
Schreyer spoke with Knowable Magazine about her experience in this uncommon world, and the practical lessons that it supplies for people trying to revitalize endangered natural languages. This interview has actually been modified for length and clarity.
How did you pertain to study something as esoteric as invented languages?
I teach a course on linguistic sociology, in which I offer my students the job of creating new languages as they learn more about the parts of languages. Around the time I started doing that, “Avatar” came out. The Na vi language from that motion picture was popular at the time and had made its method into numerous newspaper article about people finding out the language– and doing it quickly.
My other scholastic research study is on language revitalization, with native or minority neighborhoods. One of the challenges we have is it takes people a long period of time to learn a language. I was interested to understand what endangered-language neighborhoods might gain from these created-language fan neighborhoods, to find out languages faster. I wanted to find who the speakers of Na vi were, and why and how they were discovering this specific developed language.
And?
When I surveyed Na vi speakers, many stated they signed up with because they were fans of the movie and they remained for the neighborhood. Theyre very welcoming and inclusive communities. It does not matter what your race is or what your gender is, though much of these fandoms tend to be more male.
But likewise, among the important things I saw in the Na vi case was that people joined the fan neighborhood due to the fact that “Avatar” was extremely tied to native rights and ecological rights. These ideals of environmentalism are part of the language, and they detected that. That belongs to the reason that a few of them were discovering the language.
What about other developed languages?
Participants at the First World Esperanto Congress in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, in 1905. Esperanto was designed by its innovator to be a worldwide language that would unite people from all nations under a common tongue.CREDIT: HENRI CAUDEVELLE/ PUBLIC DOMAIN
The ones that are learned most commonly are those planned as an international auxiliary language, like Esperanto, indicated to be shared by individuals around the world to promote unity and world peace. Its expected to be a neutral language, and its streamlined and really simple to learn. Its been learned by countless people all over the world. You can discover it on Duolingo!
There were 300 Navi speakers when I surveyed them in 2011, everybody from newbies to extremely advanced– however they all considered themselves part of the community. Dothraki speakers were much fewer at the time, possibly 20. And research studies have actually revealed there are about 20 advanced Klingon speakers in the world.
We certainly see that with Navi. It was preferred early on, and there are still those core members who are finding out Navi. And with “Avatar 2,” which is supposed to be coming next year, we will likely see a boost in speakers.
How do you build a language?
We understand who Superman is, we know what world hes from, and there were currently a couple of words, like Jor-El and Kal-el, Krypton. I took those words and developed a sound system, the noises of the Kryptonian language.
I also had to determine how sentences are put together, and whether nouns come after adjectives or adjectives followed nouns. And I established irregular changes to the language which mirror natural language. For instance, in English we have noises that end up being more nasalized, where the air is going into your nose when a nasal noise appears after. If you state “beet” versus “bean,” you can hear that the vowel is ending up being nasalized in “bean,” because youre preparing yourself for the N.
Many natural languages have this, so I did comparable things, where noises would change depending upon if they were at completion of a word or if a noise is coming after them. In “Alpha,” another movie I worked on, I made a local dialect. Even if people dont see it, it helps produce the credibility of the language, which is what a lot of film production business are interested in.
Thats a lot of work. I would have thought that production business would have an interest in the cheapest option.
“Star Wars” has actually been critiqued for just making random sounds. Its gibberish– theres absolutely nothing behind it, simply sounds.
And thats what led you to movies– inform us how that occurred.
When I finished my survey of Navi speakers, there was a paper story about me and my work and how it tied to threatened languages. Alex McDowell, who was the production designer for “Man of Steel,” read it while flying from Chicago to Vancouver. They remained in the middle of recording, and they understood they wished to have a composed Kryptonian language all over the set, however they had not considered that it needed to be a real language. As quickly as he read the post about Navi, he recognized that he was going to have gibberish, and thats not okay. So when he landed, he had his assistant email me, and I was there within the week.
Exist other reasons individuals create languages?
People who invent languages are hugely varied. There are individuals who start making languages when theyre 8 or 9 and begin building worlds in their imagination. The writer J.R.R. Tolkien was famously understood for making languages and after that composing “The Lord of the Rings” to put his languages in. There are individuals who wish to see the world in different ways. People who wish to promote a language that is used rather of a colonial language, like Esperanto was utilized to be a language for the world. There are individuals like me who make them for popular culture, or there are individuals who make them to play with language, because theyre simply truly captivated with linguistic structures. Some people try to make a language with only verbs. Some attempt to avoid adjectives.
One really easy created language is Toki Pona. It has 123 words. The idea is that you can simply discover this set of words and anything you desire to state can be stated by mixes of those 123 words. Then we have really complicated languages like Ithkuil that were developed to avoid the obscurity in a lot of genuine languages.
If I state I know its cold out, how do I know that? Some other languages, natural languages, make this distinction with what are called evidentials. This is what some of these ultraprecise developed languages do, on even bigger scales.
You started down this course looking for lessons you could apply to your other academic work, on endangered languages. How do created languages compare to endangered ones?
I would state that they are endangered languages. Endangered languages are ones that are not being taught intergenerationally by parents to children. They have little numbers of speakers, they are low in eminence, they often dont have writing systems, theyre not main.
I was interested in looking at these people from fan communities that are discovering languages quite rapidly. How were they learning the languages?
Did you find out anything useful for the preservation of threatened languages?
Around the very same time I was working on the Navi study, I was working with the Taku River Tlingit First Nation in British Columbia. We were developing an online database to record location names throughout their territory and offer a space for people to find out those names. One of the things I found out from the Navi community is the significance of having audio files and images, a place for individuals to talk to each other, connecting it to social media.
Whats the easiest invented language to discover?
Ones that are meant to be simple are probably the most convenient. People also vote for Toki Pona.
However it depends on who you are. If youre a fan of “Star Trek,” you may have that passion and drive to discover Klingon, so that may be easiest for you, regardless of the fact that its an extremely difficult language.
This post initially appeared in Knowable Magazine, an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews. Register for the newsletter.
Familiar examples include the international language Esperanto, the Klingon language from “Star Trek” and the Elvish tongues from “The Lord of the Rings.”
I teach a course on linguistic sociology, in which I offer my trainees the task of creating brand-new languages as they learn about the parts of languages. They were in the middle of recording, and they knew they wanted to have a written Kryptonian language all over the set, but they hadnt considered that it had to be a real language. Individuals who desire to promote a language that is used instead of a colonial language, like Esperanto was utilized to be a language for the world. Some other languages, natural languages, make this distinction with what are called evidentials.