Languages for Stories
Constructed Languages
Course 1 · Chapter 5 · Languages for Stories
The auxlangs of Chapter 3 aim for ease and the engelangs of Chapter 4 for an idea. The conlangs in this chapter aim for something else: to make a fictional people sound real. They are built for film, television and books, where an actor must speak lines, an audience must believe them, and a subtitle must be written. That changes what the designer builds, how much of it, and for whom. This chapter looks at three of the best-known: Klingon, Dothraki and Na'vi. Tolkien's languages, which work the other way round (the stories grew out of the languages), have Chapter 6 to themselves.
Three Languages, Three Franchises
| Language | Franchise | Designer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Klingon | Star Trek | Marc Okrand, who designed it for the films from 1984 onward | A few Klingon words were spoken in earlier material, but the language as it is studied today is Okrand's |
| Dothraki | Game of Thrones (HBO) | David J. Peterson | George R. R. Martin's novels gave only a few Dothraki phrases; Peterson built the full language for the show. He also created Valyrian and co-founded the Language Creation Society |
| Na'vi | Avatar (2009) | Paul Frommer, a linguist, built on a small starting list from the film's director | The director supplied roughly the first thirty words; Frommer built the vocabulary and grammar |
What a Commission Looks Like
A fictional language is a piece of professional work, usually done to a brief. The brief has requirements that an auxlang designer never faces:
- It must sound right. The producers have an idea of the people: a proud warrior culture, a nomad horse people, a forest-dwelling clan. The sounds must suggest it without sounding silly or like a known language.
- It must be speakable by actors. A line that is impossible to learn in a week will not be filmed. Actors are given lines with recorded pronunciation to follow.
- It must be consistent. Once a word is on screen, it cannot change. A fan will check, and the designer must be able to say why a sentence is right.
- It must be able to grow. A show may run for years. The language needs a grammar and word-building system that can produce new lines on demand.
- It must be translatable. Subtitles show a meaning, so each line has to be written with an English meaning and checked for sense.
Just Enough Language
A film does not need a complete language; it needs the illusion of one. Designers speak of building just enough: a sound system, a grammar sketch, and a vocabulary large enough for the scenes. The difference between a fictional language and a real one is that the real one has to cover every topic its speakers talk about, while a fictional one only has to cover the scenes in the script. When a script needs a new idea, the designer coins a word on the spot.
Culture Built Into the Language
A fictional language does more than sound different: it shows what the people care about. Vocabulary is the clearest place. Klingon, as you saw in Klingon Basic Conversation 1, is rich in words for fighting, honour, ships and food, and thin in words for cafés, shops and hotels, which a Klingon society would not use much. The same gap in the opposite direction is a clue to the designer's world: a people who live in the forest will have more words for the forest, and Na'vi vocabulary and imagery draw on the life of a forest moon.
| What the world needs | How the language shows it | Example |
|---|---|---|
| A warrior culture | Many words for combat and honour; blunt commands; no word for "please" in the polite sense | Klingon Qapla' "success" |
| A nomadic horse people | Vocabulary built around horses, travel and open land | Dothraki, as designed by Peterson for the show |
| A forest-dwelling people | Words and images from a living forest; a strong sense of connection to nature | Na'vi, by Frommer |
From Screen to Community
Once a fictional language is public, fans can learn it, and some do: Klingon has dictionaries, a long-running institute of learners and translations of literature, and the other two have followers too. This makes them different from a purely private artlang. The community then does some of what a natural speech community does: it asks questions, finds gaps, and tests the designer's answers. That feedback is the subject of Chapter 11, A Language Lives.
- "Klingon is English in disguise." No: it has its own order, sounds and verb system.
- "A fictional language is just a few phrases." The best-known ones have full grammars and thousands of words.
- "The designer decides everything forever." Not once a community exists: fans ask, argue and propose, and the designer answers.
Hands-On Exercises
Make a comparison table for Klingon, Dothraki and Na'vi with rows for the franchise, the designer, the people the language is for, and one thing the designer had to get right (for example, the sound, consistency or growth). Mark any row you could not fill from this chapter alone as "look it up".
📄 View solutionWrite a short "brief" for a fictional language: the people (one sentence), three requirements from the list in this chapter, and the first ten words the script would need for a scene in a harbour tavern. Say which words you would invent first and why.
📄 View solutionShow how a fictional language reveals its culture. Using what you learned in Klingon Grammar 1 and Klingon Basic Conversation 1, list three features of Klingon (vocabulary, politeness, or grammar) that fit a warrior culture, and one thing a Klingon speaker would find hard to say.
📄 View solutionChapter 5 Quick Reference
- Artlang for screen: built to a brief for actors, audiences and subtitles
- Klingon (Marc Okrand, from 1984), Dothraki (David J. Peterson, for Game of Thrones), Na'vi (Paul Frommer, for Avatar, 2009)
- Requirements: sounds right, speakable, consistent, able to grow, translatable
- Just enough language: cover the scenes in the script, not every topic
- A real fictional language has its own grammar, not just a word-for-word code
- Vocabulary shows culture: Klingon is rich in war and honour, thin in cafés and hotels
- Fans turn a screen language into a community