

How the Languages in Game of Thrones, Defiance, and Thor Were Created - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/how-the-languages-in-game-of-thrones-defiance-and-thor-were-created

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knodi123
Tolkien could probably have given a very similar interview.

He created an ancient proto-elven language called quenya, and a modern elvish
language evolved from it called sindarin. He created the language with
specific goals in mind, working on it over his whole career, and the Lord of
the Rings came into existence as a result, in the same way that a really nice
hat rack tends to naturally accumulate hats.

[https://www.academia.edu/4901880/Elvish_Linguistics_The_Scie...](https://www.academia.edu/4901880/Elvish_Linguistics_The_Science_of_Sindarin)

~~~
chc
He also created the Black Speech with the goal of making an ugly and harsh
language, but apparently never got that far with it because he found it
unpleasant.

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jordigh
It really bugs me that people consider some languages ugly or harsh. It seems
like an extension of xenophobia and racism.

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irishcoffee
Why?

French and Italian [0] are considered romance languages, because among other
things they sound pretty. Russian [1] (and I suppose most Slavic languages)
just don't generally sound pretty. For what its worth, I speak Russian; not
terribly well, but I speak it. Russian really isn't a language that sounds
"pretty" or "silky", or whichever adjective you'd prefer.

The reason I decided to respond to you comment was a little more abstract than
that though. People liking or disliking things about other kinds of people
isn't racist. Some people just don't like things. I don't like black licorice
(no idea who invented it, but I don't like it). I don't particularly care for
traditional German food (I'll eat it, its just not my go to for food), and I
don't think I'd ever wear a kilt to a wedding (I'm mostly Irish, then Italian,
then Native American).

I don't think those things make me racist or xenophobic. At least, I don't
think less of anyone who prefers any of those things. I just don't like them
for me.

I think if we start claiming that not liking something like a language is
racist, we're on a slippery slope indeed. For example, I don't like the color
red. I don't like traditional Mexican music. Do either one of those things
make me racist?

I'm not trying to attack by any means, I'm sincerely curious.

[0]
[http://www.orbilat.com/General_Survey/List_of_Romance_Langua...](http://www.orbilat.com/General_Survey/List_of_Romance_Languages.html)

[1] [http://www.russiaslam.com/2012/stories/the-russian-
language-...](http://www.russiaslam.com/2012/stories/the-russian-language-
what-does-it-sounds-like.html)

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dragonwriter
> French and Italian [0] are considered romance languages, because among other
> things they sound pretty.

No, they (along with Spanish and others) are considered "romance languages"
because they descend from Vulgar Latin, the language of the common Romans of
the late Imperial period. [0]

Has nothing to do with sounding pretty.

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages#Origins](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages#Origins)
and
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages#Name](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages#Name)

~~~
irishcoffee
No comment to the rest of it?

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benanne
For those interested in constructed languages, I recommend checking out Mark
Rosenfelder's website [http://zompist.com/](http://zompist.com/). His Language
Construction Kit in particular is a great resource:
[http://zompist.com/kit.html](http://zompist.com/kit.html)

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jessaustin
That site is a time capsule: the hilariously out-of-date "EZ Home Test", the
complaints about "Bob and Newt", a review of _Snow Crash_ , references to
various events that were current in the mid-90s. It's good that languages
don't change very fast...

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panglott
Not so much out of date as continuously maintained for nearly 20 years. It's a
remarkably useful personal Web site from the era of Geocities ;)

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jinushaun
I love constructed languages.

A great example of languages evolving to new technology is "internet".
Composed of "inter" (Latin), "net" (English) and "work" (English). You have a
culture (English) with an external influence (Latin), that sees a grouping of
connected computers and decides to compare it to a fishing net. Network
describes the topology, not the function. We see that we need a society that
has invented fishing nets to even describe the Internet. But a different
society might've called it something else. For example, the Internet is often
called a web, much like a spiderweb, which also looks like a net.

You can't just invent an alien language for a technologically-advanced society
without thinking about how they got there.

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yongjik
(Off-topic rant alert)

...And there are people who just decide they need to (and are qualified to)
make new words for new technology, and make a total botch out of it.

Case in point: Some Koreans decided to make "pure Korean" word for website.
Nothing wrong with that in itself. But then they looked at "world wide web",
and also looked at "homepage", and decided that "world" and "home" patched
together makes perfect sense as a website.

So was invented the word _nurijip_ , from "nuri" (an archaic word for "world")
and "jip" (house). A Korean website is thus a "world-house". WTF is it
supposed to mean?

Makes me twitch every time I hear it.

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viewer5
How much do people use that new word, instead of whatever they were using
before?

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yongjik
Everybody around me just says "website" or "homepage", but I've seen _nurijip_
quite frequently in news articles. I guess they're under extra pressure from
know-it-all prescriptivists to keep our language "pure".

(Well, to be fair, sometimes people do coin a good new "native" word to
describe new stuff. Sadly, that's not the case here.)

~~~
tellarin
That's why I like to use "espertofone" for "smartphone" in Portuguese. It's a
quite literal translation, but has precisely the same meaning.

And always cause people to smile when they hear it. :)

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chc2149
For all those interested, David J Peterson actually has a book coming out in
September this year on how to go about constructing your own language. Loads
of great resources can be found on [http://conlang.org](http://conlang.org),
and [http://dedalvs.conlang.org/](http://dedalvs.conlang.org/) (DJP's own
conlang website) as well!

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e1ven
Do you know the title of the book? I looked around briefly on his site, but
didn't see it.

Is the idea similar to Zompist's Language Construction Kit?

~~~
chc2149
Here it is for pre-order! [http://www.amazon.com/Art-Language-Invention-Horse-
Lords-Wor...](http://www.amazon.com/Art-Language-Invention-Horse-Lords-World-
Building/dp/0143126466/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1430935808&sr=8-2&keywords=david+j+peterson)

He told me it covered the essentials of language construction as far as his
methodology goes, but I think it offers some insight into the development of
other major and not-so-well-known conlangs as well.

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panglott
I'd also recommend DJP's interview about Dothraki on the Conlangery podcast
(the last half of the show, starting about 55'00"):
[http://conlangery.com/2012/06/25/conlangery-56-growing-a-
lex...](http://conlangery.com/2012/06/25/conlangery-56-growing-a-lexicon/)

DJP has stuff up at dedalvs.com , dothraki.conlang.org , dedalvs.tumblr.com ,
twitter.com/Dedalvs, &c. &c.

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johnchristopher
I highly recommend Carter's biography of Tolkien. I read it in my teens and
thought everybody (and especially Tolkien fans) knew Tolkien started working
on many of his fictional languages many years before and that both the
languages and the stories evolved together.

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kriro
I remember the conlanging talk from Sai at one of the CCCs. Really awesome
stuff.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEKcsto7Mjk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEKcsto7Mjk)

~~~
benanne
This is great, thanks for sharing!

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billforsternz
On Game of Thrones we accept for convenience's sake that the dominant on-
screen culture speak English, despite this being, you know, an alien world.
That's cheating on a huge scale if you think about it a little, so why not
extend the cheating a little and re-use Lithuanian (say) or some other natural
language as a proxy for Dothraki rather than going to all the trouble of
inventing a whole new freaking language.

~~~
benanne
Unlike Tolkien, George R.R. Martin never created full-fledged languages for
his books, but he did make up a bunch of words. I guess they didn't want to
replace those with different words from other real-world languages.

One of the challenges for David Peterson was to 'retrofit' the languages he
created to what Martin had already made up. He coined a bunch of words and
phrases for the books, and those needed to make sense and be grammatically
correct in the newly created languages.

The phrase "valar morghulis", meaning "all men must die" in High Valyrian is a
nice example. Peterson made the -ar suffix indicate the collective number.
This is expressed by 'all' in English, but in many languages this is a
separate number from singular and plural. He also added a paucal number
(meaning "a few"). vala (man), vali (men), valun (a few men), valar (all men).

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billforsternz
Thanks, I didn't know any of that. So my modified proposal is to add these
words and phrases as deltas on top of your selected natural language. Still
saving 99%+ of the work involved in inventing a new language.

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benanne
I guess... but that's so boring! ;)

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billforsternz
Of course you are right, and I suppose I am basically speaking with tongue in
cheek. I am sure inventing languages accounted for an absolute minuscule
percentage of the lavish GoT budget. So why not use the opportunity to be a
perfectionist and do something very cool and fun ?

Still if you are ever looking to create your own fantasy series on a
shoestring, maybe my idea has merit...

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CrystalGamma
I tried to do some conlanging in my school days, but I always hit the word
invention bottleneck. So I tried writing scripts to automate that. Turns out
making randomized phonemes sound good was too hard for me (probably still is,
haven't tried in a while). Kinda sad, really.

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meric
It's not sad. You had fun. :)

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jordigh
> di- or tri- continental root

Is that a transcription error? Surely "consonantal root", right?

~~~
benanne
I think so.

