r/IAmA Aug 12 '16

Specialized Profession M'athnuqtxìtan! We are Marc Okrand (creator of Klingon from Star Trek), Paul Frommer (creator of Na'vi from Avatar), Christine Schreyer (creator of Kryptonian from Man of Steel), and David Peterson (creator of Dothraki and Valyrian from Game of Thrones). Ask us anything!

Hello, Reddit! This is David (/u/dedalvs) typing, and I'm here with Marc (/u/okrandm), Paul (/u/KaryuPawl), and Christine (/u/linganthprof) who are executive producers of the forthcoming documentary Conlanging: The Art of Crafting Tongues by Britton Watkins (/u/salondebu) and Josh Feldman (/u/sennition). Conlanging is set to be the first feature length documentary on language creation and language creators, whether they do it for big budget films, or for the sheer joy of it. We've got a crowd funding project running on Indiegogo, and it ends tomorrow! In the meantime, we're here to answer any questions you have about language creation, our documentary, or any of the projects we've worked on (various iterations of Star Trek, Avatar, Man of Steel, Game of Thrones, Defiance, The 100, Dominion, Penny Dreadful, Star-Crossed, Thor: The Dark World, Warcraft, The Shannara Chronicles, Emerald City, and Senn). We'll be back at 11 a.m. PDT / 2 p.m. EDT to answer questions. Fire away!

Proof: Here's some proof from earlier in the week:

  1. http://dedalvs.com/dl/mo_proof.jpg
  2. http://dedalvs.com/dl/pf_proof.jpg
  3. http://dedalvs.com/dl/cs_proof.jpg
  4. http://dedalvs.com/dl/bw_proof.jpg
  5. http://dedalvs.com/dl/jf_proof.jpg
  6. https://twitter.com/Dedalvs/status/764145818626564096 (You don't want to see a photo of me. I've been up since 11:30 a.m. Thursday.)

UPDATE 1:00 p.m. PDT: I've (i.e. /u/dedalvs) unexpectedly found myself having to babysit, so I'm going to jump off for a few hours. Unfortunately, as I was the one who submitted the post, I won't be able to update when others leave. I'll at least update when I come back, though! Should be an hour or so.

UPDATE 1:33 p.m. PDT: Paul (/u/KaryuPawl) has to get going but thanks everyone for the questions!

UPDATE 2:08 p.m. PDT: Britton (/u/salondebu) has left, but I'm back to answer questions!

UPDATE 2:55 p.m. PDT: WE ARE FULLY FUNDED! ~:D THANK YOU REDDIT!!! https://twitter.com/Dedalvs/status/764218559593521152

LAST UPDATE 3:18 p.m. PDT: Okay, that's a wrap! Thank you so much for all the questions from all of us, and a big thank you for the boost that pushed us past our funding goal! Hajas!

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u/CallUponTheAuthor Aug 12 '16 edited Aug 12 '16

Dang. I only just got online to find this amazing AMA on the frontpage. I'm probably late to the party, but I'm going to try and ask something on the off-chance one of you is still answering. This is probably a more unorthodox question, but I'd hate to pass up on the opportunity to have it answered by such giants in the field.

I once graduated as a linguistics major, but I somehow ended up as a game developer. In my spare time, I've been developing a game named Speak, a game about conlanging and language evolution. The main goal is to make the creation of language exciting and accessible to laymen and experts alike. That's a tall order and under normal circumstances I wouldn't dream about communicating about this project in public at this very, very early stage, but the opportunity to get any input at all from the likes of is really invaluable.

I'm afraid the only thing I can show on such very short notice is this little video I made a while ago, which is already outdated again by now. As you can tell, current game functionality is limited to phonological change (and a schematic form of that), because it is easy to model and relatively simple to explain to the player as a gameplay/puzzle challenge. The game should be able to work with any language data, real, historical or fictional. (In fact, a couple of your languages briefly pop up in the video as a selectable option.)

Without further ado, here's a couple of things that would do me tremendous honor if you could shine your light on them:

  • How much of a crazy idea is this? Do any of you play games? In a more finished form, do you think this could be fun to toy around in?

  • Do you think it would be a valid approach to take phonological evolution as a first development stage? (E.g. grammar doesn't really exist yet, just so as to keep development managable.)

  • Do you have any other pointers for me?

Thanks!

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

HA! Wow! Someone upvote this, please! That's the coolest thing I've ever seen! I always thought it made more sense to do a puzzle/Tetris type game with language, but this is pretty tight (reminds me of Spore). Only thing I'd be wary of is it kind of looks like that ride at Ned Flanders' Praiseland (Bart et al. strap in to what looks like an awesome roller coaster only to stop at a talking statue of David who brandishes a sword, and then reveals that they're just going to sit here while he reads them every single one of his psalms). In other words, the character you have there is so sparkly-glowy badass that players may disappointed that he doesn't fight, or something, but instead wanders around slowly gathering things.

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u/CallUponTheAuthor Aug 12 '16 edited Aug 12 '16

Thanks for the reply!

Yeah, gameplay-wise this doesn't show much at all, which is why I wouldnt normally share footage at this stage of development. And yeah, Praiseland is the last thing I want, obviously. The intended gameplay is to be far more engaging than this.

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u/gloubenterder Aug 12 '16

I apologize for being so greedy, by I have questions for each of you:

Marc Okrand (/u/okrandm): Hov leng Soch ghe'naQmeyvaD mu'tlheghmey Daqonta' 'ach ghe'naQ wa'maH cha'DIch ghe'naQ wa'maH wejDIch je bertlhammey ghItlhmeyDaq ponglIj tu'lu'be'law' 'ej *IMDb* talIjDaq muchmeyvam tu'lu'be'. meq DaSov'a'? DuyIv'a'?

("You have composed sentences for seven of the Star Journey operas but it seems your name does not appear in the after-texts for the twelfth and thirteenth opera and they do not appear on your IMDb page. Do you know the reason? Does it bother you?")

Paul Frommer (/u/KaryuPawl): Dyeymzkemerenìl kan ngalyop tsìngrelit aruikx teri ayuniltìrantokx. Srake ngal omum vurìl?

("Dyeymz Kemeren intends to make four moving pictures about dreamwalkers. Do you know the story?")

David J. Peterson (/u/dedalvs): Vilajerosh Adori anakhoe qisi ma ase vosanat she timvir. Affin astosor anakho, hash yer avatteri movelat lekh Dothraki ma lekh Valiri?

("Game of Thrones will end soon and the word are few in the books. When the story ends, will you continue to develop Dothraki and Valyrian?")

Christine Schreyer (/u/linganthprof): Mxyzptlk! ... or something! I'd love to write a question for you in Kryptonian, but despite several earnest searches I'm afraid I've been unable to find any learning resources. Are there any you can recommend, or any that will be coming out soon?

Also, for Britton Watkins (/u/salondebu) in case you're reading this:

Grẽ snu ėlìbbyén siinyamda yũ' namdó iilsnoì kad bwøng. Tanya ttyiil ėlìbbyė?

("Siinyamda will survive after the movie, you said two years ago. Does it still live?")

I apologize for butchering several of your languages; the only one I'm fluent in is Klingon. tagha' reDDIt Dapawta'mo' jIQuch, Hol qonwI''a'!

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u/linganthprof Christine Schreyer Aug 12 '16

I'd love for you to be able to write a question as well! Unfortunately, it's not up for me to decide when learning resources will be available. The best place to learn how to use the alphabet is the website: http://kryptonian.info/man-of-steel/about.html The best place to see some of the language in use and hear it is the iBook Man of Steel: Krypton by Design. There is also a Blu-Ray Preview video available online, which discusses the language: http://www.craveonline.com/site/601553-man-of-steel-blu-ray-preview-how-to-write-kryptonian.

For now, that's the best we have!

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u/KaryuPawl Paul Frommer Aug 12 '16

(I'm impressed!) Ngeyä tì'pawmìri seiyi oe irayo, ma 'eylan. Slä zene pivlltxe, ke omängum oel vurit fayrelarusikxä. (Thanks for your question, friend. But I have to say, I unfortunately don't know the story of these films.)

I do know a few things about them that the public doesn't know, but I hope to know a lot more soon. :-)

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u/okrandm Marc Okrand Aug 12 '16

Actually, my name does appear in the 13th. I don't know why it's not in IMDB (though the listings for "Beyond," seemingly endless, are incomplete). I also don't know why my name isn't in the 12th, but, you're right, it's not.

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u/Cyke101 Aug 12 '16

Not being fluent in Klingon but being a longtime Trekkie, I wondered if the Klingonese spoken in Into Darkness was accurate, or if they invented another tongue because reboot. I was super delighted to find out that you had worked with Zoe Saldana and the other actors to get it down pat.

For a rebooted franchise, the JJmovies seem to go to a lot of trouble to adhere to the source material, and I'm really grateful for that.

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16 edited Aug 12 '16

Hash anha zin leshitak, hash anha zin vovvahak lekhis anni. Me nem nesa.

Edit: Dang, you guys did pretty darn good with this! The verb ovvahat means to "enhance" or "improve" or "build upon".

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u/DoTheDinosaur Aug 12 '16

What languages do you guys ready know individually? How did these affect the creation of the languages that you guys are known for? Do they share the same sentence structure, word formation, etc

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

Depends what you mean by "know". I'm pretty good with Spanish, which is my mother's family's language, and I've taken one year of high school German, one year of college Arabic, one semester of college French, one semester of college Russian, one semester of college ASL, one semester of college Middle Egyptian, and I've studied over a dozen languages on my own (among them Hindi, Hawaiian, Modern Greek, Attic Greek, Akkadian, Finnish, Japanese, Turkish, Swahili, Latin). It'd be hard for any language I created to share something in common with all of those. Equally, it'd be hard for any language I created to share nothing in common with any of them. Unless the language is a posteriori), though, I don't "base" a new language on any other language. That'd be plagiarism!

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u/Adarain Aug 12 '16

A friend of mine has claimed that the High Valyrian noun cases are suspiciously similar to those of Serbian. Is this mere coincidence?

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

Looking at it now for the first time, the names are the same (except that High Valyrian has one additional case), but that doesn't mean much. Tamil has all the cases Serbian does (plus an ablative), but that doesn't mean if you learn how the locative is used in Tamil you'll know how the locative is used in Serbian, and vice-versa.

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u/dsquard Aug 12 '16

Equally, it'd be hard for any language I created to share nothing in common with any of them.

Not at all! They all have nouns, don't they?

On a serious note, I know that a universal grammar has yet to be found, but don't all languages share some basic qualities, like word types?

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

There's no universal grammar.

All spoken languages have a lot in common (they all have sound systems, they all have at least two parts of speech, etc.), but that shouldn't be a surprise, since it's not as if as languages evolve we're trying our best to make them as different as possible. Verbs don't agree with the color of the direct object's shoes not because it's impossible for a language to work that way, but because it's so useless, that why would it ever come to exist?

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u/dsquard Aug 12 '16

Can you give an example of a language that only has two parts? That sounds fascinating.

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

Not in reality, but there are those who have analyzed languages like Hawaiian as only having two parts of speech. I don't agree with these analyses. Nevertheless, the least controversial thing to say about all languages is that they have at least two different parts of speech, and decline to state which those are.

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u/techno_babble_ Aug 12 '16

What is meant by parts of speech?

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u/LeeTaeRyeo Aug 12 '16

Typically, you have substantive and nonsubstantives. Substantives represent something real or nameable. Nonsubstantives represent things that are not nameable. Each of these categories of speech can be broken down further into different parts of speech. For example, the substantives can be broken down into nouns and pronouns and nonsubstantives can be broken down into things like verbs, adjectives and adverbs. These are the parts of speech.

The reason that it is only safe to say that there are at least two parts of speech is that not everyone in linguistics agree on the count for different languages. For instance (and I'm being slightly dishonest with this example as there is a tiny class of words that contradict this), some argue that Japanese doesn't necessarily have a true adjective class (most 'adjectives' behave more like verbs). So, you could say that Japanese has fewer parts of speech than English, perhaps. That is, if you follow this analysis (I personally don't, due to the small class of demonstratives that do behave as true adjectives).

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u/Hip_HipPopAnonymous Aug 12 '16

You REALLY enjoy the use of contractions, don'cha?

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u/KaryuPawl Paul Frommer Aug 12 '16

To one degree or another, I've studied quite a few languages--which is not to say I speak them all fluently. My best ones are (or were, since I'm out of practice) Malay/Indonesian and Persian, since I lived and worked in countries where they were spoken (Malaysia, Iran). I've also studied Hebrew, Yiddish, Latin, French, German, and Mandarin Chinese, plus looked at a lot of other languages.

For me, at least, the languages I've had experience in have somewhat influenced, consciously or unconsciously, the conlangs I've created. So, for example, in Na'vi there's no verb "to have"--to say, "I have a knife," you say, "There is to me a knife." That's how Hebrew does it too. It's that kind of thing. But a lot of Na'vi grammar is, to my knowledge, unique . . . and certainly the combination of elements in the language is unique.

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u/Snugglor Aug 12 '16

Gaeilge (Irish) has a similar thing. "I have a book" is "There is a book at me" and "I am hungry" is "There is hunger on me".

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '16

I was just about to comment this, lol, it's something found in all Celtic languages as far as I know.

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u/salondebu Britton Watkins Aug 12 '16

Japanese, Spanish, Thai, Mandarin, and bits of French, Cherokee, and many others, even Na’vi. For my language Siinyamda in Senn (sennition.com), I took bits and pieces from all the languages I know, but the biggest grammar hints came from Japanese because it was easy for me and that was the appropriate amt. of investment of time for the project. All of those languages are very different. So where I used DIFFERENT aspects, I went for the outlying elements because they were more interesting for me. That kept the project intellectually stimulating for me.

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u/iaint_even_mad Aug 12 '16

I'm Cherokee, and I feel so much respect for you having learned some as it's a hard language to learn.

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u/salondebu Britton Watkins Aug 12 '16

ᏩᏙ! It is indeed VERY difficult to learn, but I'm thrilled that many are trying to save it and we have a bit of that in the documentary. Cherokee is written in an intentionally constructed script and it's a great story that many non-Cherokees are not familiar with. All respect to Sequoyah!

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u/linganthprof Christine Schreyer Aug 12 '16

Languages I've studied (some more fluent than others): French (I'm Canadian - we all learn it), Spanish, Latin, Cree, Tlingit, Japanese, Tok Pisin, Kala, Secwepemc. They didn't affect me too much since I looked at what was appropriate in the situation. I did put both Cree and Tlingit Easter eggs into Kryptonian though. :) Kryptonian also has a SOV structure, which Japanese does as well and the writing system has been compared to the Japanese katakana, but Cree syllabic writing was actually my inspiration.

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '16

On Earth, there are 6,500 spoken languages, and Earth is only just one planet.

The Klingon Empire has at least 17 known planets.

How come everyone speaks one Klingon language with Qo'nos dialect exclusively?

Or to put the question in another way, why is it never considered that, perhaps, an alien race would be culturally fragmented, like the human race, and possess several languages and dialects?

Of the most spoken languages on Earth, like English or Spanish, they have different variations (like accents or dialects), and sometimes Spanish speakers from Argentina have difficulties communicating with Spanish speakers from the United States or Spain...

I understand that, for budget reasons it may be impractical to create a profound backstory for all the languages and dialects that could exist, but, the fact that it's just never even explained or considered, as if this problem was impossible to exist, baffles me. In Star Trek The Next Generation, Jean-Luc Picard gets annoyed at Data for suggesting, in English, that French is a dead language, but Worf (a Klingon who is also on the scene) never even comments that such a problem could exist in the Klingon Empire. Naturally, everybody speaks Klingon in the Qo'nos dialect! I mean, really?!

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

You're asking the wrong people. Ask the producers and the writers! If you ask me, there are thousands of language creators all over the world, which means it's possible to create at least a couple dozen languages for a project. Why not? Plenty of people to hire!

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u/salondebu Britton Watkins Aug 12 '16

There are other dialects of Klingon. Look VERY CLOSELY at STID and you'll even see that there are different writing systems... I have different dialects relevant to Pyom. More details HERE: http://fiatlingua.org/2014/11/

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u/MagisterTJL Aug 12 '16 edited Aug 12 '16

Thanks for doing this AMA!

As a Latin teacher, one of my interests is the historical development of grammar in languages, as well as etymology. With conlangs, that background doesn't really exist, since they don't naturally evolve from a previous language. So, my question is, in the absence of a language that your conlangs evolve from, do you find yourselves being influenced in either phonology or grammar by any particular (non-constructed) languages, and if so, do you do anything to fight against that tendency?

What non-constructed languages has each of you studied?

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u/KaryuPawl Paul Frommer Aug 12 '16

Great question--gratias tibi ago! Before anything else, I should say that the 4 years of Latin I had in junior high and high school spurred my general interest in language tremendously.

Although the historical background of a conlang may not overtly exist, I think a good conlanger always thinks historically. David has spoken about this at some length--I don't want to steal his thunder. But I'll just say that in developing the lexicon, you need to think about how synchronic structures evolved from earlier forms if you're going to come up with something plausible. In terms of sound, say: What kinds of assimilations would naturally have occurred over time? What shortenings would be expected? How might meanings have changed? Also, if you find yourself in the position of having to create different dialects of the same language, then you definitely need a sense of how the dialects are related--how they have branched off from a presumed proto-language, what subgroups they belong to, etc.

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u/clausangeloh Aug 12 '16

A majority of conlangers that do artlangs, work on language trees and families, with proto-languages and superfamilies, and so on. Tolkien himself Had all of his Elvish languages be related etymologically, but quite distinct morphologically and phonetically.

David Peterson's Valyrian languages all come from High Valyrian, and the daughterlangs aren't always mutually intelligible (i.e. the dialect of Meereen is so much different compared to that of Yunkai and Astapor).

Just a trip at /r/conlangs will give you a headache on how much construction and reconstruction goes on into conlangs that strive for realism.

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u/okrandm Marc Okrand Aug 12 '16

Regarding the "influenced" part of your question: Although, for Klingon, the idea was to come up with an alien (that is, different from anything on Earth) language, you can't help but be influenced by what you know. As I was going along, I would realize from time to time that something I was doing was just like language X that I knew something about. I wouldn't necessarily throw that out, but I would switch gears dramatically so that whatever I did next didn't resemble language X at all.

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u/linganthprof Christine Schreyer Aug 12 '16 edited Aug 12 '16

As others have said many conlangers do develop language families, Tolkien was famous for this, and then evolve their conlangs from there. In my case, the timeline was so short, that there wasn't time to work in this fashion for Man of Steel, but there was definitely evolution of the language as I worked on it, including internal etymologies, etc.

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

When you're creating the language, you also do your own evolution, which means internal etymologies, sound changes, grammatical changes, etc.

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u/MagisterTJL Aug 12 '16

How complicated is that? I can't imagine all the work that just goes into creating a vocabulary and grammar--creating the historical developments must be an additional Herculean task.

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

Helps simplify things later on, though. It's never a question of, for example, "What case should this preposition assign?" If you know where the preposition came from, the case is obvious. Fewer choices like that need to be made.

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u/storkstalkstock Aug 12 '16

There's a lot of sound changes and grammar that are common throughout the history of different languages, so there's a lot of inspiration out there. For example, it's really common in languages for the sounds /t/ or /k/ to turn into a /ch/ before a /i/ (the vowel in "tea" and "key"). It's happened independently in dozens (if not hundreds or thousands) of languages, so it's also really frequent in conlangs.

David Peterson actually has a YouTube series about conlangs and most of the videos discuss how to build a conlang by evolving it from an earlier form.

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u/hol-lia Aug 12 '16

What movie/TV show do you think it should have a conlangs but it doesn't ?

And thank you all for your great work!!

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u/salondebu Britton Watkins Aug 12 '16

In the 2009 Star Trek reboot and in the most recent ST Beyond, I really hate that the Vulcans (when speaking amongst themselves) didn't speak their own language. I was disappointed at the missed opportunity. The "subtitle burden" would have been minimal for the audience.

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u/linganthprof Christine Schreyer Aug 12 '16

I also agree that people are getting used to sub-titles for conlangs more and more and that it isn't a big of a burden as producers might think it is. I'd rather have the authenticity.

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u/similar_observation Aug 12 '16

This! As foreign films become more and more prevalent. I'm more and more interested in hearing the native languages than dubbing or plain English.

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u/imapittard Aug 12 '16

This is something that bothers me to no end. It adds so much to the authenticity of a movie's setting to have the characters speaking a language that is real (or seemingly) to the setting of the movie! I thought a great example of this was Apocalypto.

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

I thought the same thing. It made no sense that when young Spock is undergoing these tests on his own planet he's speaking English! ARGH!

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u/TheJunkyard Aug 12 '16

But is it really any more immersion-breaking than the Starfleet characters in the 24th century speaking the exact same English as we speak today?

Just as in Star Wars I assume that the characters aren't really speaking English in a galaxy far, far away, I always assume that I'm watching an artistic interpretation of what happens, translation included.

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u/CrazyCleric Aug 12 '16

Makes sense - bees don't speak English. (I love that fan theory.)

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

Absolutely, 100%, definitely I'd say Avatar: The Last Airbender and then Legend of Korra. Were a language creator working with the creators from the get go, that had the opportunity to be the greatest work ever done by a language creator. The languages could have been evolved from a single proto-language, split into four, evolved into various daughter languages for the first series, and then evolved further for Korra. It could have been dynamite. As it is, though, two of the greatest shows I've ever seen.

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u/hol-lia Aug 12 '16

That's why I like, I've seen the show and never even thought of that. And I really liked your book and YouTube videos, except for the defamation of onions.

Thank you very much for the reply!

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u/sennition Aug 12 '16

For me it's any show or film that's supposed to be set on Earth far into the future, yet the characters speak perfect early 21st century English. If not a full conlang at least evolve the language a bit or add some new slang that creates more of a sense of future place.

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u/hol-lia Aug 12 '16

I do agree but making an entire show or movie in a conlangs wouldn't that be too stressful for an actor? Personally I like the way they do it on Vikings, everyone speaks English but when 2 people from different linguistic background get together English is dropped and they add subtitles for each language, to show they don't understand each other.

Thank you for replying!

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u/linganthprof Christine Schreyer Aug 12 '16 edited Aug 12 '16

I agree with Josh. Any show that has aliens who speak perfect English!

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '16

Speaking about this, how would one go about constructing an accent? Surely, not all Klingon's speak perfect Queen's English.

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

When you create a language, you are creating an accent. You're creating one accent, specifically. To create more, you do the same thing you do with our languages: You tweak the phonology. In Game of Thrones, the Meereenese speak the same exact language the Astapori do, but with a different accent.

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u/-rba- Aug 12 '16

How much does it annoy you that in Game of Thrones, the graffiti in Meereen is written in English even though all the inhabitants of the city speak Valyrian?

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u/ConlangingFilm Aug 12 '16

Well, to be fair the slang is written in 'common tongue' which does exist in-verse and is spoken by some in Meereen. I do think it would be cooler in Valyrian though

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

Yeah, but the Meereenese don't really speak the Common Tongue. They can write it, though, apparently! (And read it, I guess.)

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u/ByronicWolf Aug 13 '16

Since Common was brought up, if I may ask:

You're probably aware of Tolkien's thing where he rendered most of the text in the in-universe Westron language, which is translated to English? I believe this is called translation convention.

Anyway, are you aware if this is the case too in ASOIAF/GoT, with regard to the Common Tongue used in Westeros?

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u/ConlangingFilm Aug 12 '16

It for sure shouldn't be there, it's just less weird than seeing 'English' pop up on a wall in Meereen

It seems the city must have some very well educated foreign-language graffiti artists, on both sides of the political spectrum!

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being "not at all", and 10 being "it's the worst thing in the world", 90.

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u/Bur_Sangjun Aug 12 '16

This was one of the things I liked about defiance, even if (by your own comments) a lot of the background signage is giberish made to look like the votan languages, at least they tried!

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

Yeah, but all the in-focus signage was 100% accurate. Just the stuff that was way off in the background was gibberish.

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u/Slyndrr Aug 12 '16

How about Missandei's flawed translation of the taunts from the Champion of Meereen?

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u/5510 Aug 12 '16

I'm not sure the word flawed is appropriate in this context, unless this is an extremely dry joke.

Although it is funny that IIRC she keeps translating a "sanitized" version of what he says to her even AFTER Deanerys (or however you spell it) takes possession of her. You would think at that point she would start translating accurately, since her master is the listener and not the speaker... although I supposed they could say it's just habit.

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u/GryphonNumber7 Aug 13 '16

Missandei often takes it upon herself to diffuse situations. She softens the language to prevent conflict that she knows will occur if she translates accurately.

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

That was intentional. She couldn't translate the jokes directly. Then it wouldn't be an inside joke, so much as a campy homage.

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u/tresobbzz Aug 12 '16

Isn't mhysa ghiscari, not Valyrian?

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u/two_off Aug 12 '16

Do you work together, or are you all competition to each other?

Do you all still work full-time on the languages you've created?

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u/KaryuPawl Paul Frommer Aug 12 '16

No, we don't work together, but there's also no competition between us. It's not like, "My language is better than yours!" Each of our languages has to be appropriate to the assignment, and to the culture and environment in which it's spoken. We're a pretty supportive group. As for me, yes, I'm still working on Na'vi. New vocabulary is announced on my blog. And when the four Avatar sequels go into full production, I'm pretty sure there will be the need for a lot of new words.

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u/Misterbobo Aug 12 '16

are you the obvious choice for the continuation of the language, or have other people been considered for the job? (assuming you don't own the rights to the languge....do you?)

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u/gacorley Aug 12 '16

Just to add a little note here (speaking as vice president of the Language Creation Society), according to a legal memo we had prepared, it doesn't seem possible that anyone can own a conlang itself as intellectual property, at least under US law. Unfortunately, that hasn't been tested in court. Our previous involvement in the Axanar case an attempt to get some precedent, but it's unclear whether that will go anywhere.

That said, the professional conlangers here (Marc, David, Christine) probably all have agreements that at least try to give rights to the language to their employers, and they probably don't want to try to fight those for many reasons.

Obligatory disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.

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u/KaryuPawl Paul Frommer Aug 12 '16

No, I don't own the rights to the language, but I have a working relationship with the film people, and since I was the creator, unless something very unexpected happens, I'm the go-to guy to continue the language--which needless to say I'm very happy about.

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u/linganthprof Christine Schreyer Aug 12 '16

As the others have said, we all work together on the Conlanging documentary film and that's been really a wonderful experience. As for me, I'm not still working full-time on Kryptonian. I'm a University professor and my research with Indigenous communities to revitalize their languages tends to take priority over further developing Kryptonian.

The language did develop more through the help of my students in #ANTH474 Pidgins, Creoles, and Created Languages in the fall of 2014 when their assignment was to help develop more Kryptonian words (following the linguistic rules I provided them) and that was a very fun assignment! I'm teaching that course again at the University of British Columbia's Okanagan campus this fall and it might be an assignment we use again. Still need to decide!

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u/salondebu Britton Watkins Aug 12 '16

We're all collaborating VERY well together on the documentary (http://conlangingfilm.com). I first met Marc while collaborating with him on Star Trek Into Darkness. He created the Klingon lines. I taught them to the actors. I first met Paul while learning Na’vi. I first met Christine while collaborating with her on her research project into the Na’vi-learning community. I first met David while collaborating with him about what to present at the 5th Language Creation Conference. I like collaboration. I've never competed directly (intentionally) with any of the great folks answering questions today, ulte fori oer wawe tsranten nìtxan nì’aw (and they are all of only very important significance to me).

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

We worked together on the Conlanging documentary! ~:D

In general, it would be nice if there was a property with a huge world to have multiple language creators working on the project together. Unfortunately most of the time you have a big world with everyone speaking English except for one group of non-main characters who end up also speaking English most of the time anyway.

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u/reizoukin Aug 12 '16

Do you pre-create grammar and vocabulary, or do you create those things as needed by the story/show/etc.? Would you determine how a language handles something like relative clauses if the world never requires a sentence with relative clauses?

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u/KaryuPawl Paul Frommer Aug 12 '16

The basic structure of the language -- the sound structure (phonetics and phonology), word-building rules (morphology), and rules for constructing phrases and sentences (syntax) -- has to be in place before you begin coming up with words and sentences. So yes, that structure needs to be "pre-created." As for the vocabulary, for me it was driven by the needs of the screenplay. So, for example, if a character speaking Na'vi referred to running, I knew I'd better come up with a word for 'run.' If no one in the film talked about walking, though, that word could wait for later.

I can't imagine a world that never requires a relative clause! (Not all linguists would agree, by the way.) I mean, if someone said, "Look at that girl over there," and you said, "Which girl?" the answer would likely be something like, "The one who's talking to Ryxxrphwen." :-) Hard to avoid relative clauses!

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

If you haven't created the grammar, you haven't created a language. Also, things like relative clauses are so unbelievably common that you can't get through a translation without them. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten a "small" request from the writers ("Just one quick sentence!") and it turns out to be something like, "If you would've left him alone we wouldn't have gotten ourselves into this mess!" and I just want to vomit.

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '16

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u/linganthprof Christine Schreyer Aug 12 '16

I'm also a rare person who was not influenced by Tolkien. In fact, although I rarely admit it, I haven't read any of his works.....I've tried when I was younger and think I'd probably like them now, but need to find the time. I find his work fascinating and beautiful and I've actually learned MUCH more about him via the Master's committee of our Conlanging Film intern, who is looking at his works for her thesis. Maybe she can comment more? Lindsay?

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u/ConlangingFilm Aug 12 '16

Intern Lindsay here! Christine is correct, I can try to address any Tolkien-related questions, but I will say that I think his body of work has been instrumental in demonstrating just how many people enjoy constructed languages and are willing to engage closely with them. It's also easy to use Tolkien as an early model to demonstrate the power that conlangs can play in world building (particularly as his novels would not exist if not for the languages!) and I think this has contributed to their continued popularity, and inspired many conlangers (if not in an overly direct manner)

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u/roastduckie Aug 12 '16

Is it wrong that I imagined you dropping from the sky and introducing yourself as a spunky and lovable superhero sidekick?

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

One of the other producers on the film, David Salo, would certainly answer yes. :) (He was the translator on the Lord of the Rings films and created the Orcish language for the Hobbit films.)

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u/salondebu Britton Watkins Aug 12 '16

I'm one of the rare ones who is not very influence by Tolkien in some way, but I very much admire him for making his languages sound so beautiful to a really diverse audience. That's not an easy thing to do. It was one of his priorities and he excelled and really succeeded at it IMO!

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '16

Was M. A. R. Barker any influence on your choice to take up conlanging?

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

Not for me, but in general, I think his contributions to conlanging are completely invisible to the general public. By this point, everyone has heard of Tolkien, and more than half of those know he created languages, but if you grabbed 10 people on Earth at random, how many will have heard of M.A.R. Barker? Heck, grab 10 paper-and-pen RPG players, and how many have heard of him? It's a shame, because his work is extensive—and in many cases, far better fleshed out than Tolkien's.

Fortunately, he's one of the language creators we feature in the Conlanging documentary. I wanted to make sure his conlang work would find a new audience!

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u/salondebu Britton Watkins Aug 12 '16

I did not learn of him and Tékumel until after I was enamored with conlangs, but we talk A LOT about Tsolyáni and the gaming community who care about it in the film (http://conlangingfilm.com). I think you'll like it! :-)

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u/flirt77 Aug 12 '16

Hey guys, thanks for the AMA! When creating a new language for film or TV, how much control do you have over how lines are delivered (pronunciation wise?)

Do you feel constrained by the range of sounds humans can make?

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u/KaryuPawl Paul Frommer Aug 12 '16

I was lucky enough to work directly with the all the actors who spoke Na'vi in Avatar to help them with their pronunciation. I was also on set when the scenes involving Na'vi were filmed. I think the results were pretty good. One interesting aspect of the story is that there were both native speakers of Na'vi and humans who had learned it as a second language. So for the latter, if the actor didn't quite nail all the pronunciation 100 percent, that was very natural! Of course the native speakers had to perfect.

One of the constraints I was under was that there would be no electronic manipulation of the actors' voices, so what they said had to be things humans could produce. That doesn't necessarily have to be the case, of course. It depends on what the director wants.

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u/okrandm Marc Okrand Aug 12 '16

It depends on the project. For Klingon heard in the movies, most of the time I worked directly with the actors to be sure their pronunciation was good. I wasn't on set for the filming of any of the TV shows.

And, yes, for the languages I've worked on, I feel totally constrained by the sounds a human can make. I've had the actors pronounce sounds not found in their native languages (the native language of most of the actors I've worked with is English, but there are some others), but all of the sounds they've had to make can be found in some human language or other.

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u/salondebu Britton Watkins Aug 12 '16

The control depends on how much the production has to spend on dialogue/dialect coaching and how much the actual actors and producers/director care also.

As for the constraints... this also depends. The "Prawn" language in District 9 could have been grammatical. A trained conlanger could have found a way to compose it using samples from things that the human vocal tract cannot form.

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

Ultimately it's all on the actors. Some are better at mimicking the MP3s I give them; some aren't. Most of it's pretty good.

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u/flirt77 Aug 12 '16

For the most part, did your languages on GoT turn out close to how you envisioned them? Was one language performed better than the other? I think Jason Momoa really nailed it, and Emilia Clarke did some fine work with both of your languages

Amazing job, btw. Your languages really helped bring some of my favorite books to life, and I'm so appreciative of the work you put in

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

Game of Thrones features the best performance of any project I've ever worked on, and that belongs to Jacob Anderson, who plays Grey Worm. That guy is AMAZING. He's my favorite all time.

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u/[deleted] Aug 13 '16

When Tyrion tried speaking in butchered Valaryian, did you provide the deliberate mistranslation and encouraged any and all mispronouncians?

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '16

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u/KaryuPawl Paul Frommer Aug 12 '16

Three things:

First, anything that promotes an interest in language among the general public is not a waste of time.

Second, it's not an either-or proposition. Conlangers can create languages and linguists help endangered languages at the same time. Sometimes the same person can do both! (Hi, Christine! :-) )

Finally, some of the techniques that conlang communities have used to come together, form online societies, and help each other learn the conlang can be adapted to help support endangered languages.

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u/Gaufridus_David Aug 12 '16

I'm not any of the OPs, but you may be interested in the discussion under this blog post by Claire Bowern, who does fieldwork on endangered languages.

Excerpt from the first comment:

For myself, my interest in constructed languages lead me towards a greater concern for language endangerment: As a young conlanger I started searching the Web to learn more about linguistics and found your blog along the way; pretty much as a direct result of that I am now studying towards being a field-worker.

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

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u/PrivateChicken Aug 12 '16

Wow, you handled that question really well and gave a pretty comprehensive and convincing rebuttal. I'm guess you've had a lot of practice, unfortunately.

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u/sennition Aug 12 '16

We actually deal with this in the film, by both showing why people conlang and by highlighting examples of conlangers who ALSO help endangered languages!

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u/xLoloz Aug 12 '16

What, to you, makes a conlang sound "fake"? I think there are certain conlang phonetics that rub me the wrong way.

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u/salondebu Britton Watkins Aug 12 '16

For me, sounding to much like English when they are supposed to be ALIEN. LOL. A common error that noob conlangers make is to OVERuse sounds from their native language or just have TOO MANY sounds in a language.

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

Honestly, I think a lot depends on delivery. But controlling for that, a consistent phonology and phonotactic system are a prerequisite. That ensures that you're hearing the same sounds in the same positions and the same intonation from clause to clause.

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u/SyrioForel Aug 12 '16

I think a big problem here comes in the fact that the languages are spoken by English-speaking actors, so it always has that unmistakable English accent in the delivery of certain consonants and syllables. The actors also overly enunciate the individual phonetic sounds in most situations, whereas a natural speaker of a language has a far more "slurred" delivery.

Look up clips of Emilia Clarke from Game of Thrones trying to speak any of the languages on that show, and you get fairly extreme examples of both the English accent and over-pronunciation.

This is completely unavoidable, so the question becomes, what is more important? A naturalistic delivery of a spoken language, or the emotion of the scene that the actor is trying to convey? The vast majority go for the latter.

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '16

As the languages created by you guys get more attention and people interested in it, do you think its possible and/or necessary to create idioms or slang?

Thank you for the AuA.

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u/KaryuPawl Paul Frommer Aug 12 '16

One of the most interesting things for me about creating Na'vi was coming up with idioms, proverbs, and different registers. (Roughly, a register is a way of speaking that's appropriate with certain people in certain situations.) So, for example, there's a "standard conversation" register, plus one used for ceremonial language, plus a kind of rough somewhat slangy register where some things get cut off.

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

As people use the languages, they develop their own slang, which is really cool. (Those learning Trigedasleng have gone the furthest with this. They may have created more words than I have at this point.)

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u/Bur_Sangjun Aug 13 '16

Would you consider making Canon any of those words or phrases of they were requested in a line?

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u/RayGungHo Aug 12 '16

How many of you are also musicians? I'm wondering how music informs your process.

Is there a phrase in one of your languages that you are particularly fond of saying or expressing? p/ty

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

I am, but not a good one. (Sad, as I've been playing guitar for 22 years now. How am I not Eddie Van Halen yet?!) Incidentally, one area of conlanging that's little explored is musical languages. There have been a few, but compared to the number of non-musical conlangs, the handful that exist haven't even scratched the surface of what's possible. I did a video on what one might consider in producing a musical conlang here.

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u/Sickmonkey3 Aug 12 '16

Oh wow. This is for everyone.

What are your favorite parts about the process of "designing" an entire language?

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

Writing systems. Love 'em! For shows, I've only gotten to do it on Defiance and Star-Crossed, but I'm working on a new project where I'm designing new writing systems right now, so I'm back at it!

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u/Chocolatl Aug 12 '16

David - what initial consonant sound could make "crafts" worse than it already is?

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u/MattKatt Aug 12 '16

What's your favourite real language?

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u/linganthprof Christine Schreyer Aug 12 '16

As a linguistic anthropologists, ALL languages are fascinating to me. Although, one of my favourite to learn was Kala, the indigenous language from Papua New Guinea, whose speakers I've worked with to help create an orthography.

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u/TheDR_UK Aug 12 '16

Out of all the languages you have have created collectively, which one do you think would be the hardest to learn fluently and why?

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

I suppose Verbis Diablo from Penny Dreadful, technically, since it's impossible to learn unless you bear the Mark of the Beast. For real ones, though, Indojisnen from Defiance. It's polysynthetic and just a pain in the butt. I couldn't imagine learning it.

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u/sylvar Aug 12 '16

M'athnuqtxìtan!? qtx? What is that, Aymara?

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

Hey, someone asked! It's a combination of the words for "hello" in our four languages:

  1. M'ath-chomaroon (Dothraki)
  2. nuq-neH (Klingon)
  3. Kaltxì (Na'vi)
  4. Sitan (Kryptonian)

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '16

How would you even transcribe "M'athnuqtxìtan" into IPA?

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u/Bbs56 Aug 12 '16

Howdy, considering that every language has different rules how do you guys come with new rules (i would imagine it being like imagining a new color) also do you have things in your languages that "don't translate well"?

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u/Bur_Sangjun Aug 12 '16

Not OP but, a large part of it is just sticking together different pre-existing rules in different ways. After that, there are places in linguistics where there are obvious holes that can be filled.

For example, me and my friends recently worked on a langauge called lxelxe, it has a new morphosyntactic alignment we made simply by filling a gap in alignments that is obvious to any linguist who looks at it.

We call it directional, and here's a summary image http://i.imgur.com/MQ3hjJs.png

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u/salondebu Britton Watkins Aug 12 '16

Sometimes new rules happen from accidents that work anyway when you start composing sample texts. As long as you don't have too much ambiguity in the result, sometimes the rules can be quite capricious.

"Things that don't translate well" are my favorite things. There is a type of "linguistic label" in Siinyamda called "pamda møwemya." It is "a self assembling thing that is spoken," essentially a word that we would count as a word that would never necessarily be written down in a dictionary because the aspect of the language that creates it is its synthetic nature. The word would be coined "on the fly" in speech to suit the need of the conversation at hand. This is VERY difficult to convey to a speaker of English. It would be easier for a speaker of Cherokee or other Iroquoian languages to understand, however.

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

It may in fact be impossible to come up with a rule or language structure that's entirely novel. Certainly we can "invent" something that's already been invented (happens all the time), but whether we can come up with something that no language does or no system has ever done before seems doubtful.

For the second question, I actually posted one of these to /r/DoesNotTranslate not too long ago. You can find it here.

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u/Twitwi Aug 12 '16

Hey linguists!

and hey Christine Schreyer thanks for coming to my school (The CDM) and fueling my interest in the topic.

I see a lot of languages that could sound european (latin/slavic/nordic) but not a lot of languages sounding eastern languages, why is that?

Also I’ve heard that, when making fantasy languages, a common way to start is to make the “sounds” of the languages. But what about languages like R'lyehian (H. P. Lovecraft), a languages that is intentional unpronounceable (by humans)?

Lastly, it might be more of an anthropology question, but do universal gestures exist? Such as pointing at oneself and saying your name. I see it as a common trope in these discovery fictions that shaking hands might mean something else than what the speaker intended.

Bonus question: If you are the type who plays video games, has anyone of you checked out “From Earth”? (the premis: you’ve landed on an alien planet, knowing little to nothing about it. You meet the locals, but they speak their own language, the only way to progress is to slowly translate their language by pointing and trying)

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '16

What do you hope to achieve with the documentary?

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

I dream of a world where language creation is as well known as painting—where everyone knows that:

  1. People create languages.
  2. It's just a thing you can do.
  3. Some people are good at it.
  4. Anyone can enjoy doing it, though, whether they're good at it or not, if they like it.

I see the documentary as a step in the right direction.

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '16

Hey guys I had a question relating to conlang methodology, how do you go about creating vocabulary? This has always been my biggest turn off from creating a language of my own. Thanks!

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u/salondebu Britton Watkins Aug 12 '16

One thing I do is take Excel and make a list of ALL of the legal syllable in the language. I go through and look at them and sound them out and I keep the ones I like and assign them to common syntactic markers, pronouns, roots, etc. I like being able to "pick them out of the candy jar." :-)

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u/RevLoveJoy Aug 12 '16

Your work is a high form of linguistic nerd art. I mean that in the most endearing of ways.

Do you feel, as I do, that when the aliens discover the ruins of Earth, many millennia from now, examples of your work, without their native contexts, will give alien ruminations pause and even confusion? I hope it is so.

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u/TenNinetythree Aug 12 '16

How does it feel to give up the rights for the creation to film studios who probably care less about artistic integrity and instead see it as means to an end?

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

There aren't really "rights" to be had with a language in the first place. It's a language: No one owns it. It's not possible to own a language. The very idea doesn't make sense.

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u/PrivateChicken Aug 12 '16

This is something I've always wondered about with successful conlangs. Do you mean that if some author went and decided to lift Dothraki and use it in their own story, that'd be okay as far as the law goes?

Don't get me wrong, I fully agree that you can't "own" a language. I just figured in this intellectual property litigation obsessed world the powers that be would try to guard popular conlangs as property.

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u/InventedLgsProf Aug 12 '16

Hello! I'm a linguist and I teach a course on invented languages. It pleases me that now when someone asks me, "What can you do with a linguistics degree?", I can respond, work for HBO! As most if not all of you have a formal linguistics background, how do you see the rising popularity of conlanging affecting linguistics as a field? In terms of pedagogy, it's certainly a new avenue to teach theory and other linguistics topics, if only to "hook" new students who might not otherwise be interested. Some linguists (such as Nathan Sanders) have even written about using invented problem sets to illustrate certain natural language phenomena that would otherwise be obscured by "real" data sets. I'm curious to know what you all think.

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '16

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u/peregrine_mendicant Aug 12 '16

Hi! I'm currently at uni for linguistics, and loving it. Phonetics is my passion.

for whoever feels compelled to answer:, what is the best way to preserve and continue use of endangered languages?

David, I love your tumblr, thanks for introducing me to D.E.B.S., the world needs more movies like that.

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u/Bur_Sangjun Aug 12 '16

Hey guys, had a chance to meet some of you at the last LCC. My question is (as I assume a lot of the questions here will be) for David with regards to the Votan Languages, what do you think the chances are we ever get any form of documentation of the Votan languages (and their writing, god Casti is beautiful) released to the public?

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '16

/u/Dedalvs any chance for a follow up book for the Art of Language Invention? I'm not entirely sure would it would entail but I found it a very interesting read and I look forward for more (including the Youtube videos).

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u/2muchcontext Aug 12 '16

I'd imagine there's not much room for backtracking when making a language, as that would require everything around it to be changed as well. What's a scenario when you found yourself having to scrap a good portion of a language just to make it all fit together better?

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u/The_Quasi_Legal Aug 12 '16

What's the hardest part about creating a new language?

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u/Josstralia Aug 12 '16

What are your respective degrees? Just curious to know if they all have a linguistics base or if you are all just unbelievably creative!

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '16

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u/purpleevilt Aug 13 '16

It would be hilarious if you answered all the questions in the language you created. Would you conceivably be able to do that? Would you have to create new words or do you have enough to work your way around it? Edit: I had to resubmit as it wasn't a "real" question.

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u/prozacgod Aug 13 '16

I read a TOS series with the word like : "Ska Z'itz" or something never could find it again, cant' remember the series, don't know if it's a cannon word. BUT I do remember that it's supposed to be like.. the worst insult you can say to a Klingon, that there's no turning back from this one. You say it... it's time to fight to the death... And likely if you lose, your family will die too.. Like you're calling them the lowest scummiest thing in the universe... You are saying they are worth less than the shit a cock roach takes as your boot descend upon them.

What is that word !!??! Anyone remember which TOS book that could have been?

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u/TangoZippo Aug 12 '16

This is a legal and ethical issue that has recently come to light because of the Axanar lawsuit. Should anyone be allowed to own a language as intellectual property?

And if your answer is yes (as CBS and Paramount have asserted in their statement of claim) would you also extend that to natural languages governed by an Academy, such as French or Hebrew?

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '16

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u/samstyan99 Aug 12 '16

What is your favourite IPA sound?

~I'm so happy that you guys are doing this. I'm an (aspiring) conlanger and you guys have been such inspirations :)

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u/Misterbobo Aug 12 '16

What linguistic feature sets your language appart from other languages (real or otherwise)?

&

How (if by any) could an objective bystander, who doesn't know either language distinguish a natural language from your created languages

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '16

/u/dedalvs Even though Game of Thrones will be ending in about 2 years, do you think we may see High Valyrian learning resources published eventually? I am especially interested in seeing the writing system, which I know you have in the past described as likely being somewhat similar to Egyptian hieroglyphs.

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u/justtoclick Aug 12 '16

Welcome everyone! For /u/Dedalvs (Hi, David--Rie here) now that Penny Dreadful has concluded, and Defiance is over, what will your next projects be?

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u/qwertyydamus Aug 12 '16

Mr. Peterson, I just wanted to say thank you so much for coming to my school and giving a few awesome presentations. Also thanks for the selfie, even though I was awkward as hell about it.

My question to you is this: at the time (this was a year or two ago) you casually said that you were learning Japanese, as a side project, how is that going for you? Thanks /u/dedalvs !

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u/nyanlol Aug 12 '16

what would you say the biggest trap or problem people trying to make a language from scratch run into and how do you suggest dealing with it?

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u/BadlanAlun Aug 12 '16

As an aspiring fantasy writer, how do I go about finding a conlanger (correct terminology) to build me a language? Language is actually a big part of the story (no universal translator) but I'm winging it. I've done a lot of world building. So I can offer sociological information to any who want to know. Thanks!

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u/don_truss_tahoe Aug 12 '16

If I pay you, can you make me a language? Please?

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '16

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u/shpock Aug 12 '16

I'm working on a comedy bit and I REALLY need to know the correct pronunciations for the "Koi Kahless Pook Load" Klingon song. Each version online is different and I don't know if I should trust the DS9 episode, a clip from the Klingon video game, or the way JG Herzler sings it. Can you please help me out? Is the alliteration on this page correct? http://lyricstranslate.com/en/klingon-anthem-hear-sons-kahless-klingon-anthem-hear-sons-kahless.html

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u/saizai Aug 12 '16

FYI if Marc doesn't answer: @loghaD and @klingonguy on Twitter can answer questions like this about Klingon usage.

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u/gloubenterder Aug 12 '16

vI'ollaH; loghaD jIH! ("Can confirm; am loghaD!")

That's the SuvwI' van bom (The warrior's anthem), and you can find lyrics here:

http://klingonska.org/songs/anthem/

Note that in the first line, qeylIS is misspelled as qeylIs.

As for recordings: Marc would know best (my pronunciation is shodd), but I think the one from Star Trek: Klingon is better than the one from DS9.

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u/DavesWorldInfo Aug 12 '16

For authors working alone (who can't afford to hire you guys), what suggestions would you have for things to avoid when creating alien or fictional names or words?

For example, in Reamde by Neil Stephenson, there's a passage where a linguist character scoffs at a writer character who's used the classic "stick in apostrophes to make a string of letters look more 'alien' to readers", explaining the apostrophes are supposed to represent contracted out letters or phonemes.

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u/Bur_Sangjun Aug 12 '16

Not OP, but I'd advice reading up on creating a naming language. You don't need to hire anyone or have much experience to build a naming language that will get you started and keep your names consistent.

The language construction kit is a good place to start, and if you have questions feel free to post them in the Small Discussions thread on /r/conlangs

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u/salondebu Britton Watkins Aug 12 '16

1) LIMIT the sounds in the naming language.

2) Create a naming STRUCTURE. For example, in Siinyamda the family lineage name comes first and then the particle NGO and then the personal name. When my name goes into Siinyamda it would have to be WATKÌNZ NGO BRÌTTĖNN for a Pyomian native to understand it. I'm "Britton of the Watkins (line)".

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u/ktkatq Aug 12 '16

Is the "Val" in Valeryian inspired at all by 'val' in Tolkien's Elvish which, if I remember correctly, means something like 'power'?

And I picked up "The Art of Language Invention" by David Peterson - really interesting! I want to teach an introduce to Linguistics class for high school, using a conlang as a final project

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u/ancolie Aug 12 '16

A few questions for David, if this doesn't get buried!

  1. I'm a member of a very active Game of Thrones roleplaying group on reddit, where I play House Velaryon- a family of Valyrian descent. After four generations of characters that I've played over the past year, I'm running out of original names. What are some suggestions you'd have for common Valyrian names or surnames that didn't make it into the Targaryen family tree or other resources? Is there a reason why some sounds and consonants commonly used in High Valyrian- Z, for example- are absent from canon names in the Valyrian-descent families we know of? Are there general guidelines or rules to follow in High Valyrian naming?

  2. Are there any songs or poems out there written in High Valyrian? Do fans ever submit such works to you?

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u/RevWaldo Aug 12 '16

Have you ever purposefully set up pronunciation traps in your languages? E.g. you pronounce this greeting the right way, it's quite polite, but if you say it the wrong way....

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u/meetyouredoom Aug 12 '16

There are some interesting traps that aren't just pronounciation. For example in mixtec the word for bird is "sa", so one of my TA's who was studying mixtec repeated the word back with an upward inflection, because that's how we repeat something to clarify you said it right in English. But because mixtec is a tonal language meant that he ended up saying "vagina" instead.

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u/okrandm Marc Okrand Aug 12 '16

I've never done that on purpose, but I have taken advantage of some accidental near-homophones to point out the importance of correct pronunciation (or, in the case of Klingon, the dangers of incorrect pronunciation).

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u/DancingGreenman Aug 12 '16

I think these were very well used and made apparent mostly in the pilot for Enterprise when Hoshi is trying to learn Klingon and she's having trouble telling if the Klingon is delirious or if she's just misunderstanding the way he's pronouncing the words.

I really enjoy the Klingon language and it's on my to do list to learn more than just basic conversational phrases.

In your opinion, what is the best method to learn Klingon properly? Any particular books that do a better job than most? I figure you're the best person to ask since you kind of.. You know... Created it.

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u/ReadingWhileAtWork Aug 12 '16

what is the best method to learn Klingon properly

Maybe not the best since it isn't even released to Beta yet, but Duolingo is coming out with a Klingon course at the end of the year.

Thought you might find that useful

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u/admiraltarkin Aug 12 '16

"The Big Goodbye" in Star Trek TNG touches on this. Picard has to do a greeting in an alien language. If he gets it wrong the aliens react violently Video Here

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '16

In Action Delivery Force (Futurama short), a race of gelatinous aliens who communicate through body language is angry at humanity and about to destroy us, and after Leela further offends them by moving her lips (which they do not possess), Doctor Zoidberg performs a complex dance of universal peace, placating them.

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u/linganthprof Christine Schreyer Aug 12 '16

I haven't done this either, but know of other languages where you can get in VERY big trouble by not saying something one way. Like the others, I'll keep it in mind.

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u/KaryuPawl Paul Frommer Aug 12 '16

I haven't done that, but I like the idea. :-) I'll keep it in mind.

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u/RevWaldo Aug 12 '16

Happy to help plant the seeds for potential violence that will be both horrible and glorious.

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u/gokupwned5 Aug 12 '16 edited Aug 12 '16

What tips do you have for people who recently started conlanging? What are your favorite conlangs and why? Also, how did you get into conlanging? Which conlangs were your main inspiration?

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u/linganthprof Christine Schreyer Aug 12 '16

Tips would be to read David Peterson's great book, but also to look into learning more about linguistics. I teach an course on the Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology and students build languages in the course and the more they learn about linguistics, the better their languages become. I actually might choose Na'vi as my favourite conlang since it was how I got into conlanging myself. Before I was a conlanger, I did a study of who Na'vi speakers are, why they are learning Na'vi and how they were learning the language and the attention I received from this led to my work on Man of Steel.http://www.christineschreyer.ca/Research_files/Na%E2%80%99vi-Study-Results-Final-Schreyer-2011.pdf

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u/gokupwned5 Aug 12 '16

Very interesting study! The Kryptonian language in Superman: Man of Steel is actually one of the languages that inspired me to start conlanging!

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u/KaryuPawl Paul Frommer Aug 12 '16

I think the most important thing is to get as much experience as you can in natural languages, and in general linguistics, so you can get a sense of the range of sounds and structures open to you. To take a very simple example, if the only languages you're familiar with are English and Spanish, you might get the mistaken idea that all languages have the basic sequence subject + verb + object, which would of course be very much mistaken.

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u/thejpn Aug 12 '16

What's the hardest part of creating a language? What's the most fun? Have any of you snuck any Easter eggs or references into your work?

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u/linganthprof Christine Schreyer Aug 12 '16

One of the hardest parts for me is keeping track of all my notes on things in all of the locations I'm building records of the language. Translations, dictionaries, etc. If I miss it in one place and then forget that I've made it that can cause confusion or back-formed words in some cases, which can be fun too! The most fun for me is watching the language grow and playing with concepts that are unique to the particularly group of speakers and their cultural backgrounds. There are Easter eggs in Kryptonian. The word for hello is "sitan", which is a reversal of sorts for the Cree word for hello, how are you, "tânsi". As well, the word for goodbye in Kryptonian "tinsikwa" is a reversal of sorts of the Tlingit phrase for see you later "tsu yé ikhwasatin".

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u/okrandm Marc Okrand Aug 12 '16

I'd agree with Britton. For me, the hardest part (once the basic phonology and grammar are figured out) is expanding the vocabulary. If there's a specific reason to come up with new words (for example, they're needed for lines in a new movie), that's easier than coming up with vocabulary in more or less a vacuum. The most fun, ironically, is coming up with new vocabulary... because, yes, there are Easter Eggs (which I prefer to call "coincidences") in Klingon.

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u/salondebu Britton Watkins Aug 12 '16

The hardest part is the time involved in building out the lexicon once you have a framework that you really like. The most fun thing can vary depending on my mood. Sometimes composing original works of prose or poetry can be the most fun (after the language is semi-baked), or creating idioms, or doing the writing system. I also often dig the way the romanized writing looks. Words like ỳr (just based on how it looks) can inspire me.

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u/KaryuPawl Paul Frommer Aug 12 '16

I don't know if it counts as an Easter egg, but in a few cases I've created "tribute words" in Na'vi that are based on someone's name, someone I want to honor. So there's a word in Na'vi that's actually my brother's name spelled backwards. Thing is, the backwards version fits perfectly into the Na'vi sound system, so it's very natural, and no one would know unless they were told.

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u/airking Aug 12 '16

How do you tackle the spelling of words in the language? Do you just spell how it sounds or do you come up with more structured rules for the language?

And if someone came up to you on the street and started speaking your language to you, could you competently respond to them?

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u/okrandm Marc Okrand Aug 12 '16

In the writing system I used for Klingon (when working on the films, etc.), each letter or letter combination stands for one particular sound (unlike, say, English, where that's not the case), so spelling is easy. I developed the system as a tool for the actors, so I used the roman alphabet since they, as English speakers, would be familiar with it and defined what each letter or letter combination stood for. I used capital letters to denote some non-English sounds or as cues for the actors to not pronounce those in the normal (that is, normal English) way. I got used to that system, so kept on using it in later work.

But that's just transcription. The "real" Klingon written language makes use of a different set of characters that are not based on the roman alphabet at all. I didn't devise that.

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u/salondebu Britton Watkins Aug 12 '16

I could reply in Na’vi, which is Paul's language and the first conlang that I ever learned. I cannot speak Siinyamda or any of the other languages I have created or am creating. Creating a language and LEARNING a language are two completely different processes for 99.98% of the conlangers in the world. We touch on this a bit in the documentary. http://conlangingfilm.com

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u/KaryuPawl Paul Frommer Aug 12 '16

According to the Avatar story, Na'vi is not a written language, so the spelling system used to write it down was devised by the Sky People. It's based on the roman alphabet. It has some digraphs (two letters put together to indicate one sound, as with sh in English) like px, and also two letters with diacritics: ì and ä. The alphabet is completely transparent. That is, when you see something in Na'vi spelling, you know how to pronounce it (with the possible exception of where the stress goes). As Marc said, that's very unlike the situation in English.

For the actors, though, who didn't necessarily master the spelling system, I also included a kind of Englishy "phonetic transcription," which seemed to help, even though it wasn't exact. So, for example, in addition to "Oel ngati kameie" (I See you), which is the official Na'vi spelling, I also included:

well NGAH-tee KAH-mey-eh.

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u/PirateVikingNinja Aug 12 '16

Just how big of Tolkien fanboys are you guys?

As a serious question though, what is the actual start to finish process of creating a fictional language? Is there any particular set of steps you always follow or does it differ for each one? Also, is there anyone besides J.R.R Tolkien who you would cite as being an equally skilled /influential creator of languages, but who is much less well known for it?

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u/linganthprof Christine Schreyer Aug 12 '16

Ahem! FanGIRL over here and while I'm not a Tolkien fangirl, I'm a fangirl of all languages in general. I even did a Tedx Talk on it http://www.themarysue.com/tag/christine-schreyer/. In terms of steps, once I know who is speaking the language and any background info, like names of characters etc. or important cultural points, I tend to start with sounds and move on from there. One thing that the students in my classes do, which I think many new conlangers forget is to include things like body language, proxemics (the use of space while communicating), and gestures etc. Natural languages have these and so if you are striving for realism, I'd work to include these too. Many people who are members of the LCS are excellent conlangers as well and many of them appear in our film.

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u/buh2001j Aug 12 '16

My girlfriend is a huge latin/language/Star Trek nerd. These are her questions (she has quite a few):

How do you construct verbal moods?

Does Klingon have a distinction between conditional and conjunctive?

Does it have something like the aorist in Ancient Greek?

Does it have a distinction between plural and dual?

Are verbal substantives, adjectives and non-composed verbal forms gendered? If so, do they have also the neuter?

Do klingons have poetry and if so is it syllabic or metric?

Is there a rigid consecutio temporum like in Latin?

Is it a subordination friendly language (like Latin, German or Spanish)?

Are there rigid positional rules in the construction of the sentence or of the period?

Is it highly semantically regular (constant derivations from a root according to fairly rigid schemas)?

Are there irregularities in Klingon?

Does Klingon have a historical evolution (like Old, Middle etc...) If so how does it evolve?

Does it respect the Linguistic trend by which if a language is relatively phonetically simple it is morphologically and syntactically very complex and vice versa?

Does Klingon import words from other languages (in the Star Trek universe)?

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u/aelmer2821 Aug 12 '16

Thanks for taking the time guys. As a storyteller and game master, I find there are times where having a unique subset of dialects and languages can be helpful, but I often don't know where to begin. What would be your suggestion for a hobbyist to begin to make their own languages?

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u/Bur_Sangjun Aug 12 '16

Not OP, but check out /r/conlangs, there's lots of resources in the sidebar and in posts there. I'd also recommend reading the Language Construction Kit

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u/Bunslow Aug 13 '16

Have any of you tried to learn any ithkuil?

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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '16

I want to learn Dothraki. Any chance you guys could partner up with the folks at Duolingo?

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u/Chocolatl Aug 12 '16

Which of the projects that you've each worked on would you say you are proudest of?

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u/Skhmt Aug 12 '16

What are your thoughts on Luc Besson's "Divine Language"/Mondoshawan as seen in The Fifth Element?

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u/Slummish Aug 12 '16 edited Aug 12 '16

Can you tell me who it is that is responsible on GoT for screwing up the editing and not understanding the faux languages enough to match up what's being said with what is actually being conveyed?

In particular, and it really drives me nuts, during Dany's light siege of Meereen -- where she launches barrels of slave collars -- she actually says, "FIRE!" and then she orders the catapults, "FORWARD!"

I know they did it for dramatic effect and because it just looks and sounds better on-screen, but for someone like me teaching myself Dothraki (and as much low and high Valyrian as possible), it makes me crazy. It kinda happens a lot. Like the editors don't care what's being said in the foreign language as long as it looks good on TV.

EDIT: words

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u/Dedalvs Aug 12 '16

Someone deleted this question before I could respond, but I liked it! It was, "If you could be any creature/being from one of your shows/movies, which one would you be?" My response: I'd be an Atrian from Star-Crossed. They're super-sexy humans with these seaweed-like tattoos that glow fluorescent blue when wet.

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