Language in Fantasy and Science Fiction. One language is not enough – “not yap ya’Hol” (Klingon)
By their very nature, fantasy and science fiction, in all their forms, be that books, films, anime, music or games, rely on language to relate their story, to allow the characters to interact with each other and to communicate with us, the intended audience. As these genres rely so heavily on imagination, it goes without saying that great imagination is also put into the language used, and it should come as no surprise that the demands of these genres have produced some of the most imaginative uses of language ever and include totally invented “new” languages, some of which are more common and in more use than most would probably believe.
Probably, the most famous languages created specifically for fantasy works are the languages invented by Tolkien for his books, which included “The Hobbit” and the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. The Elven group consists of several forms, including Quenya and Sindarin. They continued to be worked on by Tolkien until his death in 1973 and are heavily influenced by Tolkien’s linguistic interests in Early Germanic and Old English. The form of the letters themselves mirrors the old Runic letters of the early Germanic invaders of Britain, which is also known as the “futhark” or “futhorc” after its first six letters.
There’s no denying that I’m a huge Star Trek fan, so for any Trekkie, the Klingon language is fascinating. The Klingons are a warrior race. The very culture is based on confrontation, and is very similar to the Japanese code of Bushido. Their language reflects this attitude. It’s very harsh sounding, guttural and full of glottal stops but it is one of the few entirely invented languages that has been so fully developed it even has its own dictionary and many online courses where you can learn it.
Another series of books which feature fantastic languages is “The Witcher” series by Andre Sapkowski. Many people know and love the Witcher games and soon we’ll be able to see Henry Cavill (Superman) playing Geralt of Rivia on the small screen, as the series has been adapted for television and is due to hit our screens this December. There are several languages featured in the books, most notably the Elder Speech (Hen Llinge) but also Dwarvish, Gnomish, Vran, Vodyan, but it is the Elder Speech which is the most interesting for me as a Welsh woman, as Sapkowski, a Pole, based it mainly on the Celtic languages of Britain – Welsh and Irish. Many of the words seemed very familiar to me, something which made reading the books all the more involving and exciting.
Hope you enjoyed this post on fantastic languages. See you soon. xoxo
(All photographs in the blog post have been taken from Google images. I do not own the rights.)
Linguistic phun: The word which means “to make up a language” is “glossopoeia”, from the Greek words γλωσσα meaning “language, tongue” and ποιω meaning “to make”.
