{"id":56,"date":"2021-11-19T20:41:35","date_gmt":"2021-11-20T01:41:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unsung.davidpogue.com\/?p=56"},"modified":"2023-10-27T20:42:00","modified_gmt":"2023-10-28T00:42:00","slug":"who-makes-the-fake-languages-for-hollywood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unsungscience.com\/index.php\/2021\/11\/19\/who-makes-the-fake-languages-for-hollywood\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Makes the Fake Languages for Hollywood?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Season 1 \u2022 Episode 6<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>The first time you heard \u201cStar Trek\u201d characters speak Klingon, or the \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d characters speaking Dothraki and High Valyrian, you might have assumed that the actors were just speaking a few words of gibberish, created by some screenwriter to sound authentic. But these are complete languages, with vocabulary, syntax, grammar, and even made-up histories. There\u2019s only one person on the planet whose full-time job is creating them\u2014and these days, he\u2019s swamped with requests. No doubt about it: Conlangs (constructed languages) are the new special effect. Me nem nesa!&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Guests: David Peterson, author\/linguist\/full-time language maker. Mark Okrand, author\/linguist\/creator of Klingon. Angela Carpenter, linguistics professor at Wellesley College.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/unsung.davidpogue.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/unsungscience-20211119.mp3\"><\/audio><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Episode transcript<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Theme begins.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What would \u201cStar Trek\u201d be if the Klingons didn\u2019t speak Klingon?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>[Klingon sample]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What would \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d be if Danaerys didn\u2019t speak High Valyrian?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>[Valyrian sample]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Those are invented languages, complete with syntax, grammar, and vocabulary, commissioned by Hollywood executives. But where did they come from? Who makes them up? And what happens when people tear these languages out of movieland\u2014and into the real world? I\u2019m David Pogue, and this is \u201cUnsung Science\u201d: the stories behind amazing accomplishments in science and tech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>[Theme ends.]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>FIRST AD<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Season 1, Episode 6: How Fake Movie Languages Become Real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>[Music begins]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I don\u2019t know what&nbsp;<em>you&nbsp;<\/em>did with your pandemic. But&nbsp;<em>I&nbsp;<\/em>checked off a bucket-list item I\u2019d been putting off forever: I finally watched \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d on HBO Max. All 73 hours of it. Including the final season, which was \u2026everything people said it was. An absolute dumpster fire. Nonsensical, rushed, and just so dumb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Otherwise, \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d is pretty great. It\u2019s a sprawling fantasy epic, set in a pseudo-Medieval, sorta-kinda Europe. There are hundreds of characters. Most of them speak English\u2014with, for some reason, British accents.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jamie:<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>You don\u2019t have to do this. You don\u2019t have to do anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Tommen:<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>I have to answer to the gods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jamie:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>Not when you\u2019re sitting in that chair!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But because these are made-up tribes from made-up lands, some of them speak made-up languages. For long stretches. With subtitles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>[Dothraki sample]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That\u2019s Dothraki, spoken by the nomadic horseback warriors of Essos.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>[Valyrian sample]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And that\u2019s High Valyrian, which is the \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d version of Latin\u2014a dead language from a long-dead empire, kept alive mostly by scholars.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dothraki and Valyrian are only the latest in a grand tradition of phony languages\u2014better known as&nbsp;<em>constructed&nbsp;<\/em>languages, or conlangs\u2014from movies and TV shows. The only Hollywood conlang more famous than Dothraki and Valyrian is, of course, this one:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>[Klingon sample]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That\u2019s Klingon, spoken by the Klingon aliens in the \u201cStar Trek\u201d TV shows and movies.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marc:<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>I\u2019m Mark Okrand, and I guess I\u2019m best known as the person who devised the Klingon dialog for Star Trek.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>David:<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>I mean, in your real life, you\u2019re a linguist, right? Has Klingon taken over your life?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marc:<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>Now it has, because now I\u2019m retired. So\u2014so yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes, Marc Okrand is the man who created the Klingon language. But his&nbsp;<em>first&nbsp;<\/em>movie conlang wasn\u2019t Klingon. It was Vulcan, and the movie was \u201cStar Trek 2.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And how he got that gig has got to be one of the goofiest, most reverse-engineered stories in all of screenwriting.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marc:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>There\u2019s a scene where Mr. Spock and the new Vulcan character named Savik have a little discussion with Captain Kirk, and then Kirk goes off to look around. And Savik says to Spock, \u201che\u2019s so human.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><\/strong>And Spock says, \u201cnobody\u2019s perfect.\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That scene was filmed with the characters, the actors speaking English. When they went into post-production, they said, \u201cwhy are they speaking English?\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><\/strong>Why aren\u2019t they speaking Vulcan?\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The producers decided that the simplest fix was to hire a linguist to watch the scene as it was shot in English, study the actors\u2019 lips as they spoke, and make up some fake Vulcan syllables that&nbsp;<em>matched<\/em>&nbsp;their English-language lip movements. The actors would then dub those Vulcan words over the existing scene, and English subtitles would tell the audience what the Vulcan words meant.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marc:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>So I made up gobbledygook. I watched the scene, made up some gibberish that matched, I hope matched the lips.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Worked one day with Savic, who is Kirstie Alley\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>[Savic line]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2014worked a couple of days later with Spock, you know, with Leonard Nimoy.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>[Spock line]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then I drove away, realizing that I had just taught Mr. Spock how to speak Vulcan, which was very cool, and I thought this is the end of my \u201cStar Trek\u201d career, probably the end of my movie career.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was not. A year and a half later, producer Harvey Bennett called Marc up and told him about a new movie with Klingons as the villains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marc:<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>\u201dOK, now we\u2019re making this other movie. You did the Vulcan. You want to do Klingon?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, the first \u201cStar Trek\u201d movie had included a&nbsp;<em>little&nbsp;<\/em>Klingon\u2014a handful of<em>&nbsp;<\/em>very short utterances, written by producer John Povo and James Doohan, the actor who played Scotty.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marc:<\/strong>&nbsp;The longest one is three syllables.<em>&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>[Klingon lines here]<\/em>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>John and Jimmy who made it up, I think, were not all that concerned about grammar and vocabulary, and that sort of thing. They wanted to make a weird-sounding language. That was the goal.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But for \u201cStar Trek 3: The Search for Spock,\u201d released in 1984, the producers commissioned Marc to compose a full-blown, working language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marc:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>I made up a grammatical system, made up, you know, a phonological structure, you know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>David:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>Did Harve give you any kind of a brief, or a goal? I mean, did he say \u201cI want it guttural and harsh,\u201d or\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marc:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>Guttural is exactly the right word. It\u2019s actually in the script. &nbsp; it says in the script, \u201cKrug says, in his guttural Klingon, blah, blah, blah.\u201d so I assume what they meant by that is&nbsp;<em>cccchhhhh&nbsp;<\/em>kinds of sounds.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><\/strong>Most words are one syllable. It\u2019s very abrupt, because it\u2019s full of glottal stops. So it\u2019s kind of chunky. And a lot of velar and uvular fricatives, the stuff in the back of the throat that\u2019s noisy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>[Klingon sample]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marc:<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>In terms of the grammar, it\u2019s pretty straightforward. It\u2019s got no tense, it\u2019s got no gender in the sense of sex\u2014 sexually based gender. Yeah. No agreement and so forth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>[Music]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In general, the Klingon language matches the Klingon personality: hostile and spitty. It doesn\u2019t even&nbsp;<em>have&nbsp;<\/em>words for courtesies like \u201cGood morning\u201d and \u201cNice to see you.\u201d People come up to Marc all the time and say,&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marc:<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>\u201cYou\u2019re the language guy, say something in Klingon. Say \u2018hello, how are you?\u2019\u201d I say, \u201ca Klingon would never say that!\u201d&nbsp;<em>(laughter)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Once Marc had created his conlang, he recorded himself speaking the Klingon parts on cassette tapes, which he mailed to Paramount. The actors learned their lines by listening to those tapes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marc:<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>And then I went out to Hollywood. &nbsp; most of the time I\u2019m just outside the frame when they\u2019re speaking Klingon.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>David:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>So you\u2019re on set. &nbsp; cameras rolling and union sound technicians and key grips\u2026.What do you do when the actor says it wrong?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marc:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>Well, I learned really quickly what you do!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><\/strong>You know, when you make a movie, &nbsp; the director yells, \u201ccut,\u201d and then the director checks with the camera person. \u201cIs that OK?\u201d \u201cYeah, it was OK,\u201d or \u201cno,&nbsp; there was a shadow from the microphone.\u201d And if there was Klingon, check with me. \u201cWas that OK?\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><\/strong>Well I learned very, very quickly not to give \u201cno\u201d as an answer very often, because they were annoyed. &nbsp; time is money. &nbsp; So if the actor said it and set it wrong, but it still sounded like it could be Klingon to me, I\u2019d say it was fine.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I would just keep notes. &nbsp; The individual words sometimes would change from one thing to another, and sometimes even the grammar would change, as a result.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Klingon\u2019s evolution is filled with accidents like that\u2014where actor screwups wound up shaping the Klingon language for all future generations. Like the scene in Star Trek 3 where the Klingons have taken three human prisoners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marc:<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>And Krug really wants something from Captain Kirk.&nbsp; And he says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Krug:<\/strong>&nbsp;And now to show you that my intentions are sincere, I shall kill one of the prisoners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marc:<\/strong>&nbsp;And then he says, in Klingon, &nbsp; \u201ckill one of them. I don\u2019t care which one.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><\/strong>And the way to say that in Klingon, &nbsp; is \u201cWAAT! Yehoch?\u201d\u2014which means \u201ckill one\u201d\u2014 \u201cwhyte yeschoch,\u201d which means \u201cI don\u2019t \u2014I don\u2019t care about who.\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So it\u2019s time for Krug to say the line. And he says, you know,&nbsp; \u201cYaHOCH! JeHASpach.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Krug:<\/strong>&nbsp;YaHOCH! JeHASpach pei!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marc:<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>And then Nimoy yells \u201ccut. That was great!\u201d And Christopher Lloyd says, \u201cI blew it. &nbsp; I said the line wrong,\u201d which is true. He left off the&nbsp;<em>waat&nbsp;<\/em>and he left off the&nbsp;<em>vyte.&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Krug:<\/strong>&nbsp;YaHOCH! JeHASpach pei!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marc:<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>And Nimoy says, \u201cMarc. How did the Klingon sound to you?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>David:<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>Oh, boy.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marc:<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>So there\u2019s only one possible answer I could give, and I said \u201cthe Klingon sounded fine,\u201d and then I thought to myself, Now what? Because what he said in the first line was&nbsp;<em>kill<\/em>. And the whole point is \u201ckill&nbsp;<em>one<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>David:<\/strong>&nbsp;Right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marc:<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>And I thought about it, &nbsp; and I said, \u201cah\u2014here\u2019s what we\u2019ll do. This little prefix&nbsp;<em>ye<\/em>, that means it\u2019s an imperative, it\u2019s a command, is still a prefix that means it\u2019s a command, but you only use it with a singular object.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>David:<\/strong>&nbsp;Oh, man. And this is how languages evolve!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marc:<\/strong>&nbsp;Exactly. So things changed as a result of moviemaking.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>David:<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>And that doesn\u2019t violate your\u2014 your purist sense of integrity?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marc:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>Uh, not with Klingon at that stage of the game, because nobody knew anything about this language except for me. So&nbsp; I could make up new rules and bend things.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Eventually, Marc Okrand wrote some books that documented the Klingon language. They became the bibles for wannabe speakers all over the world.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>David:<\/strong>&nbsp;So how much then, is Klingon a usable language? Is there enough vocab?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marc:<\/strong>&nbsp;<strong><\/strong>Oh, totally. Well, there\u2019s not\u2014 not yet enough, but it\u2019s growing.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today, there\u2019s a Klingon Language Institute, which holds an annual five-day Klingon conference and oversees the translation of various works into Klingon, including the Bible and several Shakespeare plays.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>[Music]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here\u2019s the famous \u201cto be or not to be\u201d soliloquy from Hamlet:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>[Klingon soliloquy]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Or, more precisely: \u201cTo continue, or not to continue. Now I must ask this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>[Soliloquy repeat]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The language-learning app Duo Lingo offers a free Klingon course, right alongside French, Italian, and Spanish. It sounds like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>[DuoLingo sample]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And during \u200b\u200b period that Netflix had \u201cStar Trek: Discovery,\u201d you could turn on Klingon subtitles for the first episode. That might have been useful for the 30 or so people who speak fluent Klingon. One of them is a guy named d\u2019Armond Speers, who raised his son with Klingon as his first language.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meanwhile, Marc also helps to keep the flame alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marc:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>The Klingon Language Institute meets annually. And they send me ahead of the meeting, they send me a list of requests for new words.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>David:<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>So you are still the keeper of the leather-bound book. You don\u2019t\u2014you don\u2019t let people make up their own words.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marc:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>It\u2019s not a matter of let. It\u2019s not my choice. It\u2019s their choice. The Klingon speaking community at some point decided that I would be the sole source of new vocabulary and the sole source of solving grammatical or resolving grammatical disputes. They didn\u2019t even ask me to vote on that.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>David:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>Did I read that you have a fake informant?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marc:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>He\u2019s not fake! No, there\u2019s a guy named Maltz. Yeah, in Star Trek 3, &nbsp; There\u2019s Krug, &nbsp; And he\u2019s got two helpers named Torg and Maltz. And at the end of the movie, all the Klingon are killed except for one. This is Maltz, right? And he\u2019s taken prisoner. So I\u2019ve decided, well, he\u2019s taken&nbsp; &nbsp; prisoner, I\u2019m going to grab hold of him and learn the language from him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>David:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>So when someone comes to you with a question, you say, I\u2019ll ask Maltz?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marc:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>I\u2019ll ask Maltz. And everyone plays along with this. \u201cWhat does Maltz have to say about\u2026 da da da?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After the break: We\u2019ll meet a linguistics professor who can teach you how to make your own constructed language\u2026and the man who created all of the \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d languages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>BREAK<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In the Wellesley College course catalog, this is the description of Linguistics 315, \u201cInvented Languages:\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOver the centuries, invented, or artificial, languages have been devised for many reasons.&nbsp; The vast majority have failed, but why? Is there a place for invented language? Students will design their own miniature artificial language.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The professor is linguist Angela Carpenter. She says that invented languages are by no means a new thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Angela:<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>Not really, no. One of the earliest attested artificial languages was done in the 12th century by a nun, a woman called Hildegard von Bingen, and she created a language called Lingua Agnota and documented it.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, aside from fake movie languages, the only constructed language I\u2019d ever heard of was Esperanto, which a Polish eye doctor named Ludwig Zamenhof created in 1887.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Angela:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>So his idea was to bring the world together in peace.&nbsp;<strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Supposedly, about 100,000 people worldwide can speak Esperanto today. Mostly to each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>David:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>Would you say there are any other constructed languages that have come anywhere close to actually being spoken in the world?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Angela:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>One could say modern Hebrew is an example.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>David:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>Whaaat?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Angela:&nbsp;<\/strong><em>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;<\/em>Yes, yes, because Hebrew as a spoken language died out.&nbsp; It was written\u2014 it was used for religious reasons, for prayers, et cetera. But as an everyday language, nobody was speaking Hebrew for\u2014since, like I think maybe 200 A.D. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Enter Russian newspaper editor Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, in the 1880s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Angela:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong><em>H<\/em>e deliberately set about reviving Hebrew. But here\u2019s a problem. Hebrew, as a written language, was missing a lot of vocabulary. I mean, in the Bible, there\u2019s no word for button, or telegraph, or train. Right?<em>&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So Ben-Yehuda invented new words for modern concepts, and promoted Hebrew as an everyday, spoken language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Angela:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>Today, whatever the population of Israel is, that many are people speaking Hebrew. So one could say,&nbsp; spoken Hebrew is basically a newly constructed language.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now\u2014you, dear listener, are unlikely ever to take Linguistics 315 at Wellesley; Professor Carpenter accepts only 15 students at a time. So I invited her to give us a crash course in how her students develop new languages from scratch\u2014right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>David:<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>I mean, do you say, \u201cDecide what the letters of your alphabet will be, decide what the sound is going to be, whether it\u2019ll sound angry and Germanic, or lulling and soothing?\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Angela:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>Well, you hit the nail on the head. We start with the sounds. they get to choose the consonants and the vowels. And in my class, &nbsp; I encourage them to \u2014actually I require \u2014that they choose some sounds that are not English.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><\/strong>We also want them to choose the syllable structure. Syllables can be very simple, like what we call a consonant vowel syllable like la, ta, day, right?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><\/strong>Or you have English which can have a syllable like Sprite\u2014S, P, R\u2014right? So you can start with a very complex consonant cluster.&nbsp; Then they have to do a stress pattern.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><\/strong>So English is a language that has\u2014every multisyllabic word has stress on one side, right,&nbsp;<em>telegraph<\/em>, right,&nbsp;<em>acrimonious<\/em>, right, so they have to decide on that.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When you put those things together, your syllables and your stress pattern, you get a particular&nbsp;<em>rhythm<\/em>&nbsp;of your language. They kind of get, \u201cthis is what my language is going to sound like,\u201d even if they don\u2019t have the words yet.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>David:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>Huh!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Angela:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>One student wanted a language, a peace loving language. Very interestingly, she had two versions of her language, the regular version, which used as what we call voiced sounds, so&nbsp;<em>buht guh vuh zuh<\/em>. That\u2019s a voiced sound, right?<em>&nbsp;<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That student\u2019s name is Sam Burke, and here\u2019s what her regular, extroverted dialect sounds like. You\u2019ll hear some V\u2019s and Z\u2019s in there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>[Extroverted sample]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Angela:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>But when her speakers wanted to go into an introverted state, they changed all their sounds to voiceless sounds. So now it\u2019s like fff sss ttt \u2014words like that.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>David:<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>Cool!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>[Introverted sample]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>David:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>I see. So voiced versus unvoiced so\u2014 like, they\u2019re the same lips, right, fffff, is the same as vvvv. But in one, your voice box is activated, and the other isn\u2019t?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Angela:<\/strong>&nbsp;Exactly. Fuh and vuh are the exact same sound, just different in terms of voicing.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>David:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>And then at some point, they\u2019ve got the rules now\u2014they just start making up words that fit the rules they\u2019ve got?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Angela:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>Yes. The first thing I have them work on are their verbs, their tenses. What tenses are they going to have? Not all languages have the same tenses as English. Some languages have several future tense, or several past tense. Right?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><\/strong>I give them assignments such as, \u201cCome up with 25 verbs.\u201d And depending on the culture, there\u2019s some basics: you need walk, run, locomotion of some sort, you know, eat, that sort of thing.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><\/strong>Then after, we move from verbs, we go to nouns. Nouns also carry a lot of information, right?&nbsp; Is it one person? Two people? Three people? Gender. Some languages have gender.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>David:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>I think about&nbsp;<em>le&nbsp;<\/em>and&nbsp;<em>la<\/em>&nbsp;in French, or the three of them in German.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Angela:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>Yeah!&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>David:<\/strong>&nbsp;So presumably at the end of this class, this \u2014each student has some semblance of the beginnings of a language system, right?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Angela:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>Yeah, they have a pretty good language system. Many of them have up to a thousand words, by the time they are done.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>[Music]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Constructed languages have always been sort of a nerdy niche, occupied by leagues of language-loving linguists. But in the worlds of scifi and fantasy shows and movies, they\u2019re catching on like wildfire. They\u2019re featured in movies, like the new remake of Dune, Doctor Strange, Thor: The Dark World, Raya and the Last Dragon, and Bright, and in TV series like Defiance, Emerald City, Dominion, Another Life, Lovecraft Country, and Shadow and Bone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All of those invented languages have something special in common: David J. Peterson. He wrote them all.&nbsp;<em>And&nbsp;<\/em>the languages in \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d: In the world of Hollywood conlangs, David J. Peterson is the Man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pogue:<\/strong>&nbsp;So at this point, are you able to make a complete living from generating languages for people?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson:<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>Yeah, that\u2019s been the case since, I think, 2015.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pogue:<\/strong>&nbsp;I mean, there can\u2019t be more than five people in the world who do that full-time.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson:<\/strong>&nbsp;I think there\u2019s just one.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pogue:<\/strong>&nbsp;It\u2019s you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson:<\/strong>&nbsp;Yeah. Yeah.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>David is also an author, a linguistics professor, and probably the most famous conlanger working today. To say that languages have always interested him is the understatement of the century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>When I was 17, I woke up one day and from a dream quite suddenly, and felt very ashamed that there were millions of people that spoke French and I wasn\u2019t one of them.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><\/strong>And so I made it my goal to learn French that day, and then to learn every language on the planet, which I thought couldn\u2019t have numbered more than like 60 or 70.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At UC Berkeley, he took Arabic the first semester and Russian the second. And then one day\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson:<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>There was advertised on my dorm, just a little slip of paper, a student-taught class on Esperanto.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I had heard of it. I had heard that Esperanto was this language that somebody created, which sounded goofy to me. How do you even do that? &nbsp; So I have to take this course.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><\/strong>It was just fun. It was just absolute\u2014 an absolute joy.&nbsp; And somewhere in the middle of that first semester, I thought, \u201cwhat if I created a language that \u2014 what if I just created it for my own personal use?\u201d &nbsp; And so basically I started right then in class and I kept up with it. I kept up with, you know, creating languages for fun as long as it\u2019s been fun. So it\u2019s been 21 years now.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While getting his master\u2019s degree in linguistics at UC San Diego, David Peterson helped to start the Language Creation Society, an extracurricular group that\u2019s exactly what it sounds like. And not long thereafter, HBO came a-calling.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Benioff:<\/strong>&nbsp;Dothraki are a bit of a cross between the Mongols and some of the native American tribes. They\u2019re a horse people, they live in these great vast grass plains. And they make their living conquering other people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is the voice of David Benioff, one of the two writer producers of \u201cGame of Thrones.\u201d He\u2019s talking to the camera in an HBO bonus video on YouTube.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Benioff:<\/strong>&nbsp;For the series, we actually thought it would be much more believable if we heard them speaking their own language, rather than have them speaking in heavily accented English.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And here\u2019s his collaborator, Dan Weiss:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Weiss:<\/strong>&nbsp;We went to the Language Creation Society, who turned us on to David Peterson, and he created the language, taking into account what we told him and what was in the books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yes, there was a little bit of Dothraki in the \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d books. Author George R.R. Martin didn\u2019t invent a whole language, but the snippets he did include were at least linguistically consistent.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So for David Peterson to create a full matching language,&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson:<\/strong>&nbsp;It wasn\u2019t like \u201csit down and create the best language you can.\u201d &nbsp; It was \u201ctry to create something that looks like it was there before the books were written.\u201d That was my goal.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dothraki was his very first paid language-invention job. Then, for season 3 of \u201cGame of Thrones,\u201d they hired him to create High Valyrian, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pogue:<\/strong>&nbsp;OK, so what are some of those characteristics of, let\u2019s say, High Valyrian?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>I\u2019m trying to think of some words that really sound Valyrian. Let\u2019s see. Word for bronze is&nbsp;<em>rrrydazma.&nbsp;<\/em>And that type of thing. Has the same suffix as, honestly, as actually as&nbsp;<em>genmazzma<\/em>, which is Daenerys\u2019s last name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pogue:<\/strong>&nbsp;Stormborn, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>When you hear Valyrian, it\u2019s like these, &nbsp; na na na na, na na na na na. And then you hit these long vowels. So like&nbsp;<em>daldreee, ez buz dahdree, el da\u2019or.&nbsp;<\/em>You know? That was the line from the show. \u201cA Dragon is not a slave.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pogue:<\/strong>&nbsp;Huh!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was really cool to interview these famous conlangers, but I couldn\u2019t keep one nagging thought down: Is all the effort really necessary? The audience doesn\u2019t know what the characters are saying. Is it so important to invent an&nbsp;<em>entire<\/em>&nbsp;language, with all these rules of syntax, and all this baked-in history and culture, if we\u2019re only going to hear a few seconds of it?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Couldn\u2019t you get away with a little plausible gibberish?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the answer: These days, not really. These days, everything\u2019s on demand, everything\u2019s on YouTube, everything\u2019s replayable, and the fans are&nbsp;<em>rabid.&nbsp;<\/em>They care. They\u2019ll scrutinize every syllable. And if you\u2019re not legit, they\u2019ll catch you.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson:<\/strong>&nbsp;Fans do get it. They do get it. And it doesn\u2019t take them very long.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I remember I was watching the last season of Game of Thrones. There\u2019s this line of Dothraki where Daenaerys asks, \u201chow many today?,\u201d referring to how much have the dragons eaten.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>[Dothraki: How many today]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson:<\/strong>&nbsp;(cont\u2019d) And the \u2014he says the Dothraki for \u201cthree sheep, ten goats.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>[Dothraki: Sheep and goats]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the subtitles say, like, \u201cnine sheep, 12 goats,\u201d something like that.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the episode wasn\u2019t done airing before somebody noticed the error and tweeted at me and asked what was up, and I didn\u2019t even know what they were talking about. So I went back in and I looked. I was like, oh, my God, they\u2019re right.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><\/strong>I was like, did I just make a mistake, that I read the wrong number? But I went back to the script. It\u2019s like, no, I did the right numbers.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They just decided, \u201cnah, that\u2019s not enough sheep and goats. It\u2019s gotta be more than that.\u201d But then they didn\u2019t have me retranslate it or reshoot it. They just changed the subtitles!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pogue:<\/strong>&nbsp;Oh my gosh! That\u2019s not showing much respect to your craft.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>Well, I mean\u2014&nbsp; The thing that bothers me and boggles my mind is like, who made that decision? Who was like, \u201cNo! No, that\u2019s not enough sheep and goats. Nobody\u2019s going to believe it. We have to change it.\u201d &nbsp; Like which \u2014which people in the audience\u2014 would they be like, \u201cNot enough sheep and goats.\u201d (laughter)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lately, a flood of new commission requests is coming David Peterson\u2019s way. First, because \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d was so successful\u2014and second, because movie production is ramping back up as the pandemic lockdown throttles back down.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pogue:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>Can you remember any of the requests, the descriptive requests, that you\u2019ve gotten for projects? do they say \u201cI want an angry sounding language,\u201d \u201ca loving sounding language?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>Yep. Like honestly, all the all the ones you\u2019ve thrown out, yes. Some of the descriptors are \u2014&nbsp; harsh, soft, beautiful, whatever.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><\/strong>And sometimes they mimic descriptions like, ah, just kind of like do a little gibberish line of what they\u2019re hoping it would sound like. And it\u2019s\u2014it\u2019s really cringeworthy. But, you know. If they\u2014 if they talk for long enough, I know what they mean.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pogue:<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>Let\u2019s say I come to you with a project, and it\u2019s\u2014 it\u2019s an alien race that are just schmoopy lullabye speaking, conflict-free.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>With something like that, the first question is like, \u201cOK, they\u2019re aliens\u2014are they human aliens? Are they alien aliens?\u201d You know?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pogue:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>Oh, I see.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>In other words, like, are \u2014 are these forehead-ridge aliens, or are these aliens where it\u2019s like, they don\u2019t have ears, they don\u2019t have mouths. Instead they have these two little pincers that they go&nbsp;<em>ts-ts-ts,<\/em>&nbsp;and that\u2019s it.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pogue:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>Uh, OK. They\u2019re human\u2014humanoid.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>Yeah. So like probably what I \u2014 I love me some weak fricatives when it comes to that. Weak fricatives are things other than S and Z. So sss and zzz are very\u2014are sibilant, and like things&nbsp;<em>fff, hhhh\u2026sssh&nbsp;<\/em>can sometimes be a sibilant but it\u2019s like something along in that range. Long vowels, vowel sequences. So it\u2019s like just something like, &nbsp;&nbsp;<em>Guy you aswannnn annnay.&nbsp;<\/em>You know? Something like that.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pogue:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>Wow! that\u2019s amazing!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yeah\u2026Sorry about that falsetto thing. But I mean, he just invented the first sentence of a new conlang in five seconds.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong><em>Guy you aswannnn annnay.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pogue<\/strong>: Can&nbsp;<em>you<\/em>&nbsp;say something in Dothraki off the cuff?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson:<\/strong>&nbsp;Probably.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pogue:<\/strong>&nbsp;Can you say, \u201cbring me 10 goats?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson:<\/strong>&nbsp;Oh, my goodness. No, because I don\u2019t remember the word for ten.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pogue<\/strong>: OK, so&nbsp; bring me&nbsp;<em>four<\/em>&nbsp;goats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson:<\/strong>&nbsp;Wait \u2014is it inanimate? Crap. If it\u2019s inanimate it doesn\u2019t have a plural and that\u2019s fine. So it would be \u2014it would be like, you know, \u201cthey jussun han, desundai.\u201d \u201cBring to me four goats.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pogue:<\/strong>&nbsp;That was really good. Wait a minute. So, so inanimate or animate objects have different plural situations?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson:<\/strong>&nbsp;Yeah. Basically if \u2014if a noun is treated as grammatically inanimate, it doesn\u2019t get any plural.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pogue:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>What do the actors get then in the script? Do they have a quadrant of what the English would have been, what the written Dothraki looks like, and what the phonetic pronunciation is?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson:<\/strong>&nbsp;Yeah, actually. They also have another line, which is a word for word translation. &nbsp; Because, you know, it\u2019s important words like, you know, some actor\u2019s putting like a huge emphasis on one word because they think that it lines up with this English word. And actually they just put all this emphasis on a preposition and it sounds a little silly, you know.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pogue:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>And how do they take to having to learn a completely new language?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>Oh, they don\u2019t learn it. I don\u2019t think any of the actors who ever do that ever learn the language. Right? You just have to learn how to pronounce it.&nbsp; I, you know, just record every single line on MP3 exactly the way that it\u2019s supposed to be performed.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><\/strong>Very different from the old days. You know, when Marc Okrand was working on the Star Trek movies, he would record his lines onto a cassette tape.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pogue:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>He has said, by the way, that, you know, when actors would make a mistake, it was really awkward for him, like \u2014does he raise his hand and stop a million-dollar-a-day production process to correct some word in Klingon that no one will ever catch?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>Yeah, I would&nbsp;<em>never<\/em>&nbsp;feel bad about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pogue:<\/strong>&nbsp;You would correct them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson:<\/strong>&nbsp;Absolutely! 100 percent. I\u2019m not going to change my language just because they had a slip of the tongue. Pfft. No way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pogue:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>Are there examples in the\u2014 in the finished shows where they \u2014they spoke something wrong and you just have to live with it?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>Oh tons! Tons.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pogue:<\/strong>&nbsp;That\u2019s awful!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson:<\/strong>&nbsp;Well, what can you do? I mean, 90 percent of it is good enough. I\u2019d say like eight to nine percent of it is stellar. And then there\u2019s like, you know, one or two percent of it that\u2019s irredeemable.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pogue:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>Wow. Well, thank you, man.&nbsp; You are David Peterson, creator of languages, as they would say in \u201cGame of Thrones,\u201d probably.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong><em>Gereeeen vassay<\/em>. Thank you.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Pogue:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>In Valyrian?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Peterson:<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>Yup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>[Music]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As with Klingon, Dothraki and Valyrian have leapt off the screen and entered the real world. David Peterson published a book called&nbsp;<em>Living Language Dothraki<\/em>; he\u2019s made a DuoLingo courses for learning Dothraki and Valyrian, and academics now study his languages. And of course YouTube is full of people speaking Dothraki\u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>[YouTube lesson]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s a weird and rarefied field, this conlanging. I mean, if you look at it in a certain way, maybe the world doesn\u2019t technically&nbsp;<em>need&nbsp;<\/em>more languages than it\u2019s already got. But Wellesley professor Angela Carpenter doesn\u2019t mourn the fact that there isn\u2019t one universal language.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Angela:<\/strong><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong>I love language. I love the fact that there are different languages. I really do. I admit it would be much more convenient if we could all communicate with one language.&nbsp; But language has such a richness, such texture.&nbsp; So I just see different languages as marvelous ways of seeing how humans differ, yet how they\u2019re the same.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As for \u201cStar Trek\u201d conlanger Marc Okrand? He claims still to be amazed that Klingon, his 1982 baby, has taken on a life of its own.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Marc:&nbsp;<\/strong><strong><\/strong>I\u2019m still in awe that that that\u2014 that that stuff is happening. It\u2019s sort of like, you know, if you pick up something that you wrote a long time ago and look at it and say, \u201cI did this? how did I do this?\u201d And that\u2019s what I feel like with Klingon. How did this come about? You know.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong><\/strong>I didn\u2019t set out to make a language that people are going to use. I set out to make some lines of dialog for a film.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div class=\"powerpress_player\" id=\"powerpress_player_797\"><audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-56-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/unsung.davidpogue.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/unsungscience-20211119.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/unsung.davidpogue.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/unsungscience-20211119.mp3\">https:\/\/unsung.davidpogue.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/unsungscience-20211119.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div><p class=\"powerpress_links powerpress_links_mp3\" style=\"margin-bottom: 1px !important;\">Podcast: <a href=\"https:\/\/unsung.davidpogue.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/unsungscience-20211119.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_pinw\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Play in new window\" onclick=\"return powerpress_pinw('https:\/\/www.unsungscience.com\/?powerpress_pinw=56-podcast');\" rel=\"nofollow\">Play in new window<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/unsung.davidpogue.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/unsungscience-20211119.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_d\" title=\"Download\" rel=\"nofollow\" download=\"unsungscience-20211119.mp3\">Download<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first time you heard \u201cStar Trek\u201d characters speak Klingon, or the \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d characters speaking Dothraki and High Valyrian, you might have assumed that the actors were just speaking a few words of gibberish, created by some screenwriter to sound authentic. But these are complete languages, with vocabulary, syntax, grammar, and even made-up histories. There\u2019s only one person on the planet whose full-time job is creating them\u2014and these days, he\u2019s swamped with requests.<span class=\"excerpt-more-link\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unsungscience.com\/index.php\/2021\/11\/19\/who-makes-the-fake-languages-for-hollywood\/\">More <svg class=\"svg-icon\" width=\"24\" height=\"24\" aria-hidden=\"true\" role=\"img\" focusable=\"false\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\"><path fill-rule=\"evenodd\" clip-rule=\"evenodd\" d=\"M6.96954 10.2804L11.9999 15.3107L17.0302 10.2804L15.9695 9.21973L11.9999 13.1894L8.0302 9.21973L6.96954 10.2804Z\" fill=\"currentColor\"\/><\/svg><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"excerpt-audio-block\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/unsung.davidpogue.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/unsungscience-20211119.mp3\"><\/audio><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unsungscience.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unsungscience.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unsungscience.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unsungscience.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unsungscience.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unsungscience.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58,"href":"https:\/\/www.unsungscience.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions\/58"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unsungscience.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unsungscience.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unsungscience.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}