In the world of cinema you will surely find many curiosities of movies that will impress you. But perhaps one of the most difficult jobs for inventors of fictional worlds, will be creating completely new languages. There can be several purposes for which they are created. On the one hand, invented movie languages give character to characters or entire civilizations, on the other hand, they can give a touch of mystery to the story being told.
While most of the languages that were invented are just jargon, a few are fully functional and you can also learn! At we tell you what they are and why they are so famous.
10 Best Invented Movie Languages
Spartan is the best known and most widespread of all invented languages, but it is not the only one. For a long time, human beings have created languages for many purposes.among them the world of cinema and fiction. hThere are a few who enjoyed (and will continue to enjoy) overwhelming success with their audience. Here you will meet them!
1. Klingon
When the Klingons first appear in one of the Star Trek episodes, tThey were still only capable of emitting a few belligerent grunts.. Who would imagine that some time later they would have their own language? The appearance of the Klingon occurs in the third film, in 1984. For this production it was decided that the Klingons should use their own language (at least when speaking among themselves). But Star Trek was, at that time, quite a company and very complex, therefore, one of the most popular invented languages today was created.
Its creator was the linguist Marc Okrand, who was in charge of developing phonological, morphosyntactic and lexical features for the language. As Mr. Spock says in one of the Star Trek phrases «Live long and prosper» for the Klingon language.
2. Na’vi
One of the most popular and recent invented languages is Na’vi, which is above all a pleasant sound system. This project, which linguist Paul R. Frommer began developing in 2005, is one of the most complete film languages. It is designed for the blue-skinned humanoids that inhabit the moon of Pandora in the movie Avatar. The purpose of this language is none other than to transmit harmony and beauty when heard.
3. Dothraki
Of recent creation is the Dothraki, the language of the nomadic people of the same name who first appeared in the Song of Ice and Fire pages in Game of Thrones. His creator, George RR Martin, only came up with a few words and expressions for his books. But the language was an invention by linguist David J. Peterson, for the film adaptation. Paterson’s work was what finally convinced the HBO television network to be the official language of the Dothraki. About 1,700 words represented the language, but it, far from being closed, is increasingly evolving thanks to the continuous work of its creator on his website..
4. Elvish
JRR Tolkien, philologist and lexicographer, He began creating his Elvish languages before beginning any of his best-known works.like The Hobbit trilogy and The Lord of the Rings. He is known to have created over 14 invented Elvish languages for his novels.with the intention of creating a fantastic universe populated by men, orcs, dwarves, elves, hobbits and others.
There are actually three forms of Elvish commonly learned by hobbyists: Quenya, High Elvish, and Sindarin., all three loosely based on Finnish and Welsh, two languages Tolkien studied. And these can be subdivided into different dialects. There are even different forms of Elvish writing, one of which you may have seen on the One Ring featured in The Lord of the Rings.
5. Parseltongue
Within the list of invented languages, we couldn’t miss one that was a blockbuster. Parseltongue or Serpent Tongue was not developed by JK Rowling, because in the books of the saga we find mere descriptions (in English) of what was talked about. For the film adaptations, it was Professor Francis Nolan who was in charge of inventing this language.
He faced several challenges when creating Parseltongue: emulate the hiss made by snakes, which was an appropriate and easy language to pronounce, and which denoted a certain distrust and terror when heard. This is one of the little-known Harry Potter curiosities!
6. Minionese
A different case of languages invented for movies is that of the Minions. Well, it is within fictional linguistics falls into the category of «incomprehensible speech». Composed by Pierre Coffin, the Minions are small yellow beings that have existed forever and are characterized by having served masters from all over the world. Thus, it makes sense that their language is a combination of international words.
7.Blade
A 1998 superhero horror movie is on the list of best invented languages. Its plot is based on a Marvel comic (which has the same name) and which tells the story of Blade, a hybrid between human and vampire who is in charge of executing vampires. To create the language, it was necessary for linguist Victoria Fromkin to create a whole fabric of nasal sounds for the language of vampires; she achieved this from a constructed language. This film, along with her language, was a total success.
8. The divine language
One of the great languages invented for movies It was done by the same actress! We are talking about Leelo, a character that Milla Jovovich played in The fifth element, although the language was originally invented by Besson himself (director of the film), Leelo, who already mastered four languages, perfected it to the point of having fluent conversations. This language has just over 400 words that were used throughout the entire filming.
9. Nadsat
To know one of the curiosities of A Clockwork Orange, you should know that Nadsat is a slang system with some combinations of nouns and verbs. However, for the linguist who invented the language, Anthony Burgess, this language is based on Russian with words from gypsy languages. This is one of the few invented languages that has a book with a complete glossary of words in Nadsat.
10.Ulam
To close our list of languages invented in movies, we tell you that Ulam appears in The conquest of fire, This language is spoken by the Ulam, a tribe of cavemen who possess fire as a weapon of destruction. As with Nadsat, this language was created by linguist Anthony Burgess and It is largely composed of guttural sounds and simple wordsto remember the root of the Indo-European languages.
Do you know more invented movie languages? Tell us. And if you want to continue reading about the fascinating world of linguistics, we recommend reading which are the most spoken languages in the world.