Inventing a Language, from the Guy Who Made Dothraki (2015)

https://www.wired.com/2015/09/conlang-book/

by SwingingShips • 8 years ago

126 77 8 years ago

ggambetta4• 8 years ago

I guess this partially explains why making a movie or TV episode can cost millions / hundreds of millions of dollars :-/

Yes, Dothraki being an actual language is probably "better" than Leia speaking gibberish to Jabba, but to me it feels like it's way past the point of diminishing returns.

eafkuor• 8 years ago

Honestly paying this guy to invent a language mustn't have been that expensive. It's just one extra salary in a show that employs hundreds/thousands of people. And I think these details help create a stronger following, because nerds love this kind of stuff. The community behind the Dark Souls games for example wouldn't be the same without all the secrets in those games.

ghaff3• 8 years ago

See also the articles about the level of detail in the costumes in Game of Thrones.

There is a lot of attention to detail, probably including a fair bit that doesn't make it on camera, in big budget video/film productions. You could probably cut a lot of it and still have a "pretty good" final product. But being obsessive about detail rather than being content with good enough in all sorts of aspects of production, including the acting, is one of the things that separate competent shows from really good ones.

ggambetta4• 8 years ago

I get that. But spending a lot of money on things that don't make it to the final cut always felt like a waste to me. I'm very very marginally into filmmaking (see bio), and I've always had the impression that costs and time could be cut drastically just with better planning.

I often wonder what would happen if you applied startup principles to making a movie. Thinking in terms of MVP, customer value, efficiency, on top of the artistic vision. This is not just talk, I'm putting my ideas to practice by producing two zero-budget feature films with an extremely lean mentality. Let's see how they turn out :)

_Codemonkeyism• 8 years ago

If there is a lot of money, people will spend it.

As long as everything goes up this is fine.

When things start to get flat, money will dry up.

endtime• 8 years ago

I don't know the first thing about filmmaking, and my terminology will probably be wrong, but...my uninformed speculation is that creating coherent, consistent, high quality raw material gives the editors (or whoever) freedom to compose the best final cut.

robbiemitchell• 8 years ago

I don’t see how this explains those massive costs. It’s one salary out of hundreds of millions, and it’s a one-time investment.

Plus, once you have a language, you can translate an English script into it vs constantly making up (inconsistent) foreign dialogue as you go.

ygra• 8 years ago

Well, the language is extended as needed, so it's still making up foreign words as you go. They just have to fit into the language properly.

ggambetta4• 8 years ago

By "partially explains" I meant that if you spend money in this kind of thing, minor details that sometimes don't even end on the final cut, the costs can add up. I'm wondering to what extent the producers get good value for their money, or whether the Pareto principle applies here - is it possible to make something 80% as good for 20% of the cost, by focusing on the 20% that matters?

For an extreme example, think Transformers, where hundreds of millions and dollars can't save bad writing. Making things better at the screenplay level is probably much more cost-effective than spending millions in VFX (or, in this case, creating a full language where subtitled not-entirely-random gibberish would probably do)

wool_gather3• 8 years ago

For another famous conlang, there's a cool video where Mark Okrand discusses the process of inventing Klingon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5Did-eVQDc

(He also briefly talks about the Vulcan language at the beginning.) What's interesting here is that he was brought in for the third Star Trek movie. But there was already a small amount of spoken Klingon in the first movie, created by James Doohan. So Okrand, while he was tasked with actually inventing the language, felt constrained by continuity. He discusses trying to rationalize the preexisting bits and then extend the language coherently.

(And his enthusiasm is really clear. It's fun to listen to someone smart talk about something they're really excited by.)

DanAndersen3• 8 years ago

The question of continuity is an interesting one. There was a similar issue for the recent Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies, where some of Tolkien's languages are very fragmentary but there was a desire to have more invented speech.

David Salo is a Tolkien scholar who was brought onto the film team to help expand some of Tolkien's conlangs for use in the film. While his work isn't strictly "canonical," he did do a lot of serious work to make his additions fit into what fragments we have. His blog is a good read: https://midgardsmal.com/

durzagott• 8 years ago

If you're ever interested in doing this yourself, I recommend /r/Conlangs at Reddit[1]. Lots of good tips with a friendly community.

1: [https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/]

classichasclass• 8 years ago

I always theorised there was some extra-auditory or human-inaudible cues in Ubese (Boushh) that filled in the gaps. After all, the only individuals responding directly were non-human: Jabba (who probably could understand, but choose to use C-3PO for egomaniacal and/or ceremonial reasons) and of course old Goldenrod himself.

Hey, my linguistics degree had to be good for something.

lazyjones• 8 years ago

I wish they‘d use real, dying or dead languages instead of inventing advanced gibberish for movies. We could preserve languages for posteriority and the result would be more realistic.

icebraining• 8 years ago

And be accused of cultural appropriation?

l9k2• 8 years ago

Why not just work with the few last speakers / experts on the culture and language so that it's not offensive?

A lot of those people are proud of their language and would like to see it live and thrive again.

d0lph3• 8 years ago

Is language really something that can be appropriated though?

dalbasal• 8 years ago

Sometimes they do. Also, an interest in one seems to closely overlap an interest in the other.

mihaifm• 8 years ago

I can give you a really good example of that. The languages created for FarCry Primal are based on Proto-Indo-European [1]. I didn't know that at the time I was playing the game, but the more I played the more I got captivated by those languages, since a lot of words sounded familiar. And indeed after doing the research I discovered that they are based on the real ancestor for Indo-European languages. Congrats to Ubisoft for pulling this off.

[1] https://www.player.one/far-cry-primal-interview-how-ubisoft-...

jdmichal2• 8 years ago

The movie Prometheus was also somewhat famous in linguistics circles for attempting to use either reconstructed PIE directly or potentially a modified proto-Sanskrit for the Engineer.

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4008

DanAndersen3• 8 years ago

By that logic, movies should just use existing props or set designs rather than creating any new artifacts.

Conlanging isn't just gibberish, it's a legitimate artform like anything else.

However, I don't have any issue with using real-world languages to give the desired exotic flair for certain settings. I actually think that was one of the things that was great about, for example, the Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon, because it took the time to use real Chinese calligraphy as part of the worldbuilding (one of the many flaws with the film adaptation was that it tried to deemphasize the explicitly Chinese influences and ended up with pretty uninspired chicken-scratch fake-ideograms for the writing).

Similarly, the video game Riven: The Sequel to Myst had some cutscenes where the fantasy native population were actually speaking Tok Pisin, which is a creole language from Papua New Guinea. This was only fragmentary, though, and much of the Myst games have a quite well constructed language "D'ni."

da_chicken2• 8 years ago

I mean, filming on location as opposed to on a studio sound stage or lot has often been favored by audiences and directors for greater authenticity, even when it's Vancouver masquerading as another city or Tunisia masquerading as Tattoine. And I don't think anybody is suggesting that conlanging isn't "a legitimate artform like anything else," just that it's duplicating effort. Remember "don't repeat yourself"?

wool_gather3• 8 years ago

Riven: The Sequel to Myst had some cutscenes where the fantasy native population were actually speaking Tok Pisin, which is a creole language from Papua New Guinea

Interesting tidbit! I had thought they were all artificial.

yumaikas• 8 years ago

Can you provide a source for this? I'm very curious, as I grew up speaking Tok Pisin, and played some Riven, and looking up cutscenes online I can't make sense of any of the Rivenese (well, the foreign language bits, I don't know if it's Rivenese or not), at least not in https://youtu.be/-rjfyfuijrc or https://youtu.be/smOzKs1hauM.

throwvondannen• 8 years ago

I'd love to hear Lojban in a mainstream movie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban

Bonus points if it's sold as random fantasy language of a strange country and the main cast doesn't understand it either.

fusiongyro2• 8 years ago

Lojban is so big, you could create different cultures simply by omitting or making mandatory different bits. This group doesn't use rafsi but evidentials are mandatory; that group doesn't use any of the time-space marking but the other does, etc.

mccosmos• 8 years ago

Not quite a movie but having Lojban as the setting fantasy language is the idea behind this new production: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kJATTd6vF8

DominikD2• 8 years ago

You would not be preserving anything, you'd be stomping on a culture. Old and lesser known languages are rarely well researched. You're lucky if you have morphosyntax written down.

But the moment you start using existing language in a new context, you get into issues. You've got words and whole concepts missing that you have to add to something that's more or less complete.

Dothraki needs horse-related words. You need to be able to express certain social concepts that are unique to this fantasy culture.

So you set up to build this words and phrases. You derive phonotactics of a real language and patch it with your stuff. Now you've got new language based on an existing one. So you didn't preserve anything. And if I were a user of the originl lang, I'd be upset you appropriated and twisted it.

DonaldFisk2• 8 years ago

It might encourage a few people to learn the real language spoken in the movie instead of a conlang which nobody ever spoke outside the movie. The time and effort expended by Star Trek fans learning Klingon might be better spent learning Basque, Cornish, Abkhaz, Etruscan, or Sumerian. They'd learn a language with speakers and/or literature, and if the language is still spoken contribute to its continuity.

d0lph3• 8 years ago

Adding non-existent words to a language is not twisting it, it's developing it, like normal languages evolve over time. I'm assuming for any language that is chosen we would have enough writing to know the grammar and structures, so I feel like adding words is not a big deal. You did basically preserve a large part of the language though, even if it's had words added.

jdmichal2• 8 years ago

I'll just refer you to the relevant /r/conlangs discussion on this, rather than repeat the same arguments back to you:

https://reddit.com/r/conlangs/comments/8wjs73/is_there_a_cit...

SideburnsOfDoom• 8 years ago

I wish they‘d use real, dying or dead languages instead of inventing advanced gibberish for movies.

John Kani, a veteran South African actor playing King T'Chaka in the Marvel movies "Captain America: Civil War" and "Black Panther", decided to speak the Wankandan language parts in Xhosa, a South African language that he is a native speaker of. He taught the rest of the cast their lines. I think it sounded realistic.

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/john-kani-influenced-the-bla...

https://qz.com/1192662/black-panther-wakandas-language-is-is...

adityapurwa2• 8 years ago

I am writing a book that also has its own language called Erksar, the language was once a simple modified caesar crypto where I map vocal with another vocal (as a software engineer, it was pretty easy to create translator for it). “I love you” would become “E rufa tu” (it should be “E rufa tui” but I modified the result and tried to remove unnecessary letter). Now that I lost the original character map, some new words is not generated via the translator, but adapted from existing language. E.g “Versila” is adaptation of “Universe”, it also has this unique words connector to refer to: of, on, in, at, from, to, the. E.g “vi Avaga vi Posphora” which means “from Avaga to Posphora”, how we know which one is from and which one is to is the grammar rule. From always used at the beginning, it is impossible to say “to Posphora from Avaga” because the grammar rule says so. The language keeps evolving as I continue writing the book.

jgust• 8 years ago

I found it amusing that "you" translated to "tu" (or tú) which is "you" in Spanish.

krat0sprakhar• 8 years ago

“Tu” is also "you" in Hindi.

gbrown• 8 years ago

As I understand things (not a linguist), that's not actually a different language than English, though it's a neat exercise. The English language has undergone all sorts of pronunciation shifts over time, it seems like you've imposed a new pronunciation map on an existing language, but the grammatical structure should be preserved.

adityapurwa2• 8 years ago

I am not a linguist too, I would really be interested on hearing feedback from a linguist.

Yes, most words were inspired form existing English words. The caesar transformation words were mostly transformed from English words, some using Indonesian, some Arabic, some Latin.

I tried not to create a whole new word, instead the idea of adopting some words from existing language were a common practice on any language that we have now, so I tried to adopt whenever possible and change the pronounciation.

Here's an example of some words that was not adopted from an existing language (or if there was similarities, it wasn't my intention): - Vragel (soul) - Serentia (eternal) - Rus, Erus, Berus (the suffix used to implicate negativity, rus is least negative, erus is mid, berus is the most negative; e.g Vragelberus (to indicate a highly damaged, wicked, dangerous, or corrupted soul).

There's also some rule I used to create/adapt words, words that indicates greatness or something big always ends with the letter "A". E.g. Versila (universe), Elia (god), Alua (sky), Titania (giants), Manara (tower).

Name of places in the book also follows this rule. E.g Riddorana (place of huge waterfall), Zodiarchia (capital city), Altand (small ponds, note it doesn't end with an "A").

This rule allowed me to write poets that easily ended with the letter "A".

It is always interesting to learn words from existing language, then adopt it and learn how to make it fit with the existing language design.

teddyh• 8 years ago

where I map vocal with another vocal

I think you mean “vowel”, not “vocal”.

pablobaz2• 8 years ago

An interesting anecdote is when the producers couldn't contact the language creator and had to make up a line on the spot.

The language creator then back-fitted the made up gibberish into the language.

http://www.dothraki.com/2012/06/hash-yer-ast-fin/

da_chicken2• 8 years ago

Er, wrong link?

pablobaz2• 8 years ago

Thanks - fixed

skrause• 8 years ago

There is also a 2 hour long podcast interview with this guy: http://omegataupodcast.net/276-linguistics-conlangers-and-ga...

leeoniya• 8 years ago

another great read abouth Ikthuil:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/24/utopian-for-be...

bloopernova• 8 years ago

See Also: The Expanse's Lang Belta, or "Belter Creole"

Created for the book by Nick Farmer with the authors, Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, he then coached the actors and extended the language for the TV show.

Here's something from wired on that creation process: https://www.wired.com/2017/04/the-expanse-belter-language/

This is also fun, Belter Creole words and their origins: http://expanse.wikia.com/wiki/Belter_Creole_(Books)

pretty cool, sa-sa ke?

netgusto• 8 years ago

An analysis about the Star Wars Ubese language : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bnBqXQ1DE8

princeb• 8 years ago

I don't read a lot of books with invented languages, but a number that I've seen seem somewhat European. I don't remember very many Sinitic constructed languages. I think that would be nice, but the nature of the language conveys information about the culture and the society that speaks it. a reader would naturally see a Sinitic language and picture a culture that is Sinitic, even if the author did not intend it that way. so the style of the constructed language is restricted to history as it has evolved in our world, and not the fictional world the author builds.

to push even further, how would one imagine an alien language where the organisms do not speak through mouth-like organs? what if they made noises through all their pores in their skin? or non-auditory communication like colour coded messages in their eyes? what if aliens had no mouth or eyes in the first place? or skin? what if aliens spoke in methods that did not require passage of time... i.e. the entire message flash out in a single packet of information? I guess these methods of communication wouldn't allow a story to be told in a way that is familiar to typical human story telling and would thus be uninteresting. but would be nice to imagine regardless.

jimbokun• 8 years ago

"to push even further, how would one imagine an alien language where the organisms do not speak through mouth-like organs?"

That's the basic plot of Arrival.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2543164/

Kalium• 8 years ago

I think a lot of authors use a conlang to add a touch of the exotic to their work, but also try to keep it from being too unfamiliar. A confused reader is generally one who has been knocked out of the narrative flow.

I've read SF works in which light-based and even scent-based languages are posited. Authors don't always use this as anything other than background color in their universe, though.

thfuran• 8 years ago

Pandora's Star has a species that communicates by luminescence outside the (human) visible spectrum.

zhengyi13• 8 years ago

I don't recall anything Sinitic either, but it's not all an Indo-European game, at least :)

Khuzdul (the Dwarves' language in The Lord Of The Rings) is not well fleshed out, but was somewhat inspired by Semitic languages, in so far as it had tri-consonantal roots.

Klingon was created by a guy well versed in Native American language, and I think I recall reading was somewhat inspired by Inuit's agglutinative grammar.

Oh, and Laadan, an attempt at a conciously different perspective in language: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Láadan

dschuetz• 8 years ago

The article is not about How To Invent a Language, but rather about the book that guy wrote.

max_• 8 years ago

Thanks for posting

sriku• 8 years ago

I've found Mark Rosenfelder's books "the language construction kit" and "the advanced LCK" fascinating to see how much thought needs to go into a language. I felt I learnt more about existing languages from those books than actual language books. He deals with everything - from syntax to phonology to script. LoTR was the book that drew me to conlangs in the first place though.

The community is also fascinating, with folks spending passionate decades on making languages - ex: ithkuil.

Inventing a Language, from the Guy Who Made Dothraki (2015)

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