The Languages of the Stars:
Constructed Languages in Fact, and Science Fiction
Why Make Up Languages?
Lots of reasons! Here are only a few:
Artificial languages are invented all the time - for fun, to program computers, to keep secrets, or to enrich stories.
Let us take a look at some of the reasons people make up languages:
Linguists sometimes make up "toy" languages to study the ways in which people learn real languages. A specially created language has the advantage that its rules and makeup can be easily controlled. The model language is then taught to a group of people, and their ability or inability to learn it, or its effect on how they communicate their ideas and feelings can be studied. This gives insight to how real, or natural languages, work.
How do computers think? (Or can they?) Scientists who wish to make computers behave more intelligently need to communicate human ideas to the computer , and in order to do that they need a special language that the computer can understand (computers don't do very well with English and other natural languages). Another kind of computer language, called a pivot language is used for computers to translate from one language to another.
Because computers are very, very literal, we need special languages to teach them to do what we want. These don't look much like natural languages, but they really aren't too hard for humans to read and write. And computers have no trouble understanding them!
For example the language HTML, used to write the top of this page looks like this:
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<HTML>
<HEAD> <!-- Created by AOLpress/1.2 --> <TITLE>Why Make Up Languages?</TITLE> </HEAD> <BODY BGCOLOR="#ffffe8"> <P ALIGN=Center> <IMG SRC="klin.jpg" WIDTH="377" HEIGHT="99"> <P> <B><BIG>The Languages of the Stars: </BIG></B> <P ALIGN=Center> <B><BIG>Constructed Languages in Fact, and Science Fiction</BIG></B> <P> <HR> <P ALIGN=Center> <BIG><BIG><U><I>Why Make Up Languages?</I></U></BIG></BIG> |
One of the most important reason is to try to create a language is to make a tongue that is common to different nations, but without any history - that is, a language that has no "native" speakers, who might try to force it on other people.
International Language, any of several languages, natural or deliberately constructed, used to facilitate communications among peoples with different native languages.
...many attempts have been made to construct artificial universal languages, based on elements of natural languages with simplifications of grammar and spelling. Volapük, devised in 1880 by the German bishop Johann Martin Schleyer, and Esperanto, invented in 1887 by a Polish physician, Dr. Ludwik L. Zamenhof, were both based on a combination of Latin, the Romance languages, and the Germanic languages. Volapük eventually proved too difficult to learn and to use; Esperanto is still the most widely spoken of the artificial languages. Interlingua, created in 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association, is derived from English and the Romance languages; it has primarily been used in international scientific and technological journals, thus eliminating the need for costly multiple translations.
"International Language," Microsoft (R) Encarta. Copyright (c) 1994
Microsoft Corporation. Copyright (c) 1994 Funk & Wagnall's Corporation.
In all of those cases, the languages are made to be simple. Esperanto, and other artificial languages are made to be as much like other languages as possible so people can learn and use them easily.
Some psychiatrists have used constructed languages . By looking at how a patient takes their "normal" language and reinvents or replaces it, they gain insights into their patient's minds.
EVERYONE knows at least one "secret language"! Or, I should say
everyone-ay ows-knay at-ay east-lay one-ay ecret-say anguage-lay!
Pig Latin is only one of many ways that people invent languages, often just rearranging their own language, to confuse eavesdroppers. More complicated languages, or shorthand, can also be used to shorten messages, as well as keep important information secret. In the days of telegrams many companies issued code books, where common phrases were reduced to short words. Here's a list of code words a company might have used.
|
Code Word |
Phrase |
| meat | Met with customer |
| leaf | Finished here, leaving to come home. |
| chair | Customer order |
| table | Customer dissatisfied, wants to meet with us at headquarters |
| house | need to return to last city |
| empty | need cash advance to continue sales visits |
| fresh | customer has told me about a new customer to visit |
With such a code book, a traveling salesman could take the message
Met with customer. Customer ordered 15 units of catalog number 124. Customer has told me about a new customer to visit.
and reduce it from 22 words to 6:
meat. chair 15 of 124. fresh
Not only would that save money, in a day when telegrams were expensive, it would also keep secret what the salesman was doing (you didn't know if the telegraph operator was going to sell the message for a bribe, or if someone might intercept it before it was received).
Here's what we're going to focus on - making up languages for FUN!
People who want to tell stories (especially science fiction), often like to dress up their creations with languages that complete the illusion of a whole world different from the one we inhabit day-to-day. Hundreds, if not thousands of people have done this as a hobby.
With the movie The Search for Spock, a linguist named Marc Okrand developed a language for the Klingon people, "tlhIngan Hol". This language is actively studied throughout the world today, from the United States to Australia. An international organization, The Klingon Language Institute, is actively involved in projects from translating the Bible, to the works of Shakespeare. In fact, an edition of Hamlet was published in 1996. A community of Klingonists is active on the Internet exchanging messages every day in Klingon, as well as about the language and culture of this imaginary race.
People interested in Klingon draw not only from the language developed by Okrand, but also from the many films, television programs, and novels drawn from the Star Trek universe. As a result, what began as a set of villians for a TV series in the '60's has become a kind of artifical culture in which people all over the globe take part.
This is not the only time a that a fictional people has spawned a language community in the real world. J.R.R. Tolkien (himself a linguist) wrote the Lord of The Rings trilogy partly to use his imaginary languages, and there are many people today knowledgeable in, and using his creation.
Klingon, or tlhIngan Hol is very different from the international languages
like Esperanto. Esperanto was created to be simple and easy to learn.
Klingon, however, was created to be as UNLIKE human languages as possible.
In creating it Marc Okrand used sounds unlike those in most common languages.
He is also said to have been careful to avoid making it borrow to much from
any one language. [note: students of tlhIngan Hol have spotted many
"jokes," puns in
English, German, and other languages used to create the new words of
Klingon. Despite that, listening to and studying tlhIngan Hol you will
find a language unlike any other you've learned.]
Here's a few useful words to start with: Hello, Goodbye, and Hunh?
|
tlhIngan Hol |
pronounciation |
English |
| nuqneH? |
nook-neck |
Hello (literally, what do you want?) |
| Qapla' |
kkhopla-uh |
Goodbye (literally, Success!) |
| nuqjatlh? |
nook-jatl |
Hunh? (literally, what did you say?) |
Two more things to look at - the alphabet, and number words. First the Number words
| tlhingan Hol | pronounciation | English |
| pagh | paghr | zero |
| wa' | wa-uh | one |
| cha' | cha-uh | two |
| wej | wedge | three |
| loS | loesh | four |
| vagh | varggh | five |
| jav | jav | six |
| Soch | shohch | seven |
| chorgh | chorrggrh | eight |
| Hut | khhoot | nine |
| wa'maH | wah-uh mock | ten |
Next session, we'll play game using these words! For now, practice the words, looking at addresses, and phone numbers, and "translating" them into Klingon. (You'll find that if you can simply count from one to ten in Klingon, and do it with STYLE you will convince people that YOU are fluent in tlhingan Hol!)
Here is the alphabet:
What Does Klingon Look and Sound Like?
In the alphabet above, you can see Klingon has MOSTLY sounds you know from English. Here are some special cases:
H - a hard sound K, like the composer Bach
Q - kk, like you have something stuck in your throat
S - sh, like shoulder
tlh - make a "t" sound while whispering "l" (ell)
gh - ggr
' - a glottal stop. Like an English Cockney accent saying 'appy instead of happy.
IMPORTANT:
If you use the English alphabet to write Klingon, nothing is capitalized EXCEPT always capitalize D, I, S, and H. The "ch" sound is a separate letter and is not capitialized.
The "q" and "Q" sounds are two different letters, with "q" like the normal "q" and "Q" being, as noted above, like something stuck in your throat
Try writing your name and other proper nouns using the sounds of the Klingon alphabet!
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