From 'The Lord of the Rings' to 'Dune': how a language is created

The fremen of the movie Dune They live in the desert, where they host Paul Atreides, the protagonist of the saga, and speak in Chakobsa. In Frank Herbert's books, the language appears in phrases and single words, but for the films directed by Denis Villeneuve, and especially for the second, something more was needed, so linguists Jessie and David J. Peterson created a language complete, with its vocabulary, morphology and grammar.

As they explain in a video call, for a book it is not always necessary to build an entire language: “The author can control what the reader hears and sees,” David explains, and perhaps it is enough to resort to solutions such as “they spoke in their language.” But in a series or a movie it is not so easy to use similar techniques because the viewer sees what the cameras show. That is why some more or less epic phrase is often not enough, such as vii minaazashaho vejii ho Chausij? (do you really think he's the one?). You also have to know how to say “good coffee, friend” (oggori cheshii, e akshahii), in addition to building a structure that helps create new phrases and words if necessary.

The Petersons started from some terms included in Herbert's novels, in a language with influences from Romani, Slavic languages ​​and with terms from Arabic. These elements served as a starting point, in a work similar to what David did alone with the Dothraki and the High Valyrian for the series. Game of Thrones, from the material left by George RR Martin in his books.

Even if you don't start from scratch, building a language is a task that seems incomprehensible. Where do we start? Is it enough to make up a list of words? How is a grammar constructed? How should it sound? These are some of the steps followed by language builders, ideolinguists (or, in English, conlangers, of conlang, constructed language):

1. The precursors. There are languages ​​built long before fantasy and science fiction sagas: about nine centuries ago, the nun and philosopher Hildegard of Bingen invented her unknown lingua. This language, as David J. Peterson explains in his book The Art of Language Invention (The art of inventing languages), was more of a list of words similar to Latin and created with religious and aesthetic objectives, but it is already a first example of how the more than 7,000 languages ​​spoken in the world can fall short. .

Precisely, some of the first language builders wanted to put some order after the fall of the tower of Babel. As Umberto Eco writes in The search for the perfect language, In the 17th and 18th centuries there were dozens of attempts to create a universal logical language that would avoid semantic differences and help us reach reasoned and indisputable conclusions. However, the work of thinkers such as John Wilkins, Joachim Becher, and Cave Beck did not resolve any major philosophical disputes. Philanthropic attempts to build an international auxiliary language that would help avoid international conflicts, such as Volapük, created in 1879 by the German religious Johann Martin Schleyer, and Esperanto, created in 1887 by Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof, also did not work.

The first writer to use an almost completely constructed language for his works was the British JRR Tolkien. The author of The Lord of the rings, published in 1954, he worked for decades on a vocabulary and grammar for Elvish languages ​​such as Sindarin and Quenya.

2. First thing: culture. In his book, Peterson highlights the importance that Tolkien gave to history and culture: languages ​​are not just experiments and mental games (although they can also be), but they are born in a society and evolve with it. This story can be ours, if we want to invent, for example, another language derived from Latin, but it can also be situated in a completely different world, as occurs with the languages ​​of Game of Thrones. We can even construct languages ​​of alien civilizations, as David J. Peterson did for the series Defiancewhere he created five languages ​​for humanoid aliens.

In the case of Dune, Jessie and David J. Peterson had to distance themselves from some ideas in the novels, taking into account what we know about how language evolves: in the books, many of the words on the planet Arrakis are identical to those used today in the Earth, even though thousands of years are supposed to have passed. “It is not reasonable for them to be recognizable,” explains David.

Some language builders also create entire worlds, such as the American writer Mark Rosenfelder, who He is the author of the verdurian, a language spoken by 55 million people on the planet Almea, where his novel takes place In the Land of Babblers. In a video call, Rosenfelder says that when he works on a new language, he starts from a very detailed culture and takes into account the geography, economy, customs and history of the speakers.

3. You have to lay the foundations. Jessie and David J. Peterson explain that they prefer to start with the sound system and then move on to morphology, syntax, and the rest of the grammar. They try to go from the most basic to the most complex, to grow from solid foundations.

There are dozens of questions. What consonants and vowels do we need? Are there cases like in Latin? Is the order of the elements of the sentence fixed? How is the plural indicated? How are verbs conjugated? Do we need a different writing system, like in the chakobsa? It can even be a sign language. For Dunethe Petersons also created the Atreides battle language, although in this case it is more of a code than a language.

And building words, Jessie Peterson's favorite part, isn't just about making up a list of weird-sounding terms: “It's not about saying, for example, that this word means 'leaf,' but about knowing the structure of words.” and apply it.” It's something similar to how in Spanish we not only adopt new words (tweet) but also create derivatives naturally (tweet, tuitero, tuitazo).

A question that does not have an easy answer is when to stop, when we can say that the language “is finished.” The answer is usually when the ideolinguist (or the film producer) decides that enough is enough. What could never be: Rosenfelder continues working on his vegetable shop almost 30 years after he published this language on his website for the first time.

4. What are we building a language for? Only a few languages ​​are created for a work of fiction. Apart from those mentioned, you can add the na'vi of Avatarcreated by linguist Paul Frommer, and Klingon, built by Marc Okrand for Star Trek. This is one of the most well-known and popular languages, with translations of Shakespeare, dictionaries and original works, in addition to courses in language apps.

Rosenfelder explains that creating a complete language for a novel or a series, your own or someone else's, is not always necessary, although “it can add appeal and realism.” But there are thousands of ideolinguists who build languages ​​just for pleasure and without thinking that they could end up in a movie or a book, their own or someone else's. They share their creations in forums, where they receive comments from other ideolinguists to improve their work, and often start with the guide on-line by Rosenfelder, published on its website in 1996 and then expanded in several books.

Some of the Petersons' favorite languages ​​are precisely those invented by amateurs just for pleasure. In his book, David talks about a language invented by Denis Moskowitz, the rickchik, for a race of intelligent alien octopuses that communicate with their seven tentacles. Rosenfelder adds the example of the fith, created by Jeffrey Henning and with a structure similar to that of some programming languages. As Jessie Peterson explains, “when someone builds a language they can express creativity throughout the process.” In her opinion, it is “the definitive way to play with language.”

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