As we know, translators are often required in the film industry for subtitling and dubbing purposes.
However, directors often call upon linguists to help construct completely new languages. These professionals are known as conlangers. In this article, we will look at the different languages that have been created for film and TV and the origins behind them.
DOTHRAKI
In the hit TV show Game of Thrones, this language is spoken by the Dothraki, a nomadic tribe from Essos.
The language was constructed by conlanger David J.Peterson in response to a competition.
As part of this, the linguist was requested to create a working language. Dothraki has a working grammar with past, present and future tenses, combining elements of Arabic and Spanish. The language does not have a writing system in place as the tribe has not advanced. Sentences usually follow a subject-verb-object order and the language has numerous cases. Fans can now learn Dothraki and become fluent using the Game of Thrones app.
MINIONESE
Spoken by the small yellow creatures featured in the Despicable Me franchise, Minionese is famous for being a fun, nonsensical language.
It is not a functioning language, however it combines funny phrases from languages all over the world such as Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese. These are merged with gibberish to form an entertaining yet strangely understandable language.
Minionese also imitates the way that babies speak, using numerous words beginning with BA and PA, the sounds used when babies first learn to speak. These are found in words such as “Bello”, “Bank you” and “Bapple”.
PARSELTONGUE
Parseltongue is the language spoken by a small number of wizards in the Harry Potter universe. Speakers of this language are known as Parselmouths. The language is extremely rare in the wizarding world and allows speakers to communicate with snakes. Speakers of this language generally have a bad reputation as it is associated with dark wizardry. A Cambridge professor was commissioned to put together phrases for the films. Since then fans have attempted to construct a full language. The current rules of the language include no articles, a complex case system and elements of the language are based on smell, heat, hearing or sight. Verbs are generally used in the imperative form.
NA’VI
Na’vi is a language spoken by the indigenous Na’vi population in the film Avatar. A number of phrases and words were constructed by the Director, James Cameron, however a full working language that could be spoken by the cast was required. A Professor in Linguistics was then asked to create a full lexicon. The language was to be fun but also sound like an alien language. Today the language has over 2,000 words and has a resemblance to Polynesian languages.
As for the rules of the languages, nouns can be inflected for dual or even trial forms, and components of a sentence can be constructed in any order.
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