Constructed languages

Micro-level
The micro level study of Language (and therefore, all human languages)
concerns
• the structure
• the organization
• the universal and language-specific properties
of the linguistic system (General or Theoretical Linguistics)
Some of the questions we asked were
• Spoken systems of sounds (Phonetics and Phonology)
• Working with words (Morphology)
• Stringing of sentences (Syntax)
• Meaning making (Semantics)
• Drafting a Discourse (Discourse Structures)
• Pragmatic Practices (Contextual Use, Pragmatics)
 Forensic
Psychology M A
Education Sociology,
Anthropology A P
Applied C P
Media R R
Biology O O
Language A
History,
C
Archaeology
H
Neuroscience E
Computer S
Science Literature
C L
Morse,
O A Smoke
Language
N N signals
Games
Fictional
S G /Artistic
Languages
T U Whistle
/Drum
R A Natural Languages
U G International
Languages
Auxiliary
C E Languages
T S Engineered
Languages
E Ritual
Languages Holy
D Languages
 What is?
• Artificial languages that are intentional products of individual
humans’ conscious imaginations, created by one or more people for a
specific purpose. Abbreviated “conlang”.
• Often contrasted with “natural language”, which arise spontaneously
and effortlessly from the collective human capacity for language – but
really a spectrum (e.g. natural > planned > games > mixed > fully
constructed)
• They have often everything a natural language has: phonology,
lexicon, morphology, syntax, pragmatics, speakers, etc.
• Intended to be spoken unlike programming languages.
• Some are or have become natural languages : Modern Hebrew,
Esperanto; seems to mirror pidgin – creole distinction.
• Other familiar names : Klingon, Na'vi, Orc-ish, Dothraki, Elvish
languages Quenya and Sindarin
 Language Games, Ludling, Argot
• is a system of manipulating spoken words to render them
incomprehensible to the untrained ear.
• language games are used primarily by groups attempting to
conceal their conversations from others.
• fairly widespread language play phenomenon in which
phonological forms of words are systematically altered
• with any language game, the difference between the language
game word and the corresponding word in the real language is a
systematic one, so, the language game is potentially productive –
insertion, rearrangement, substitution, deletion.
• encoding and decoding are possible (recall sender – receiver)
 Pig Latin (also Hog Latin, Dog Latin…)
• The most well-known language game in the English-
speaking world is Pig Latin.
• To change a normal English word into Pig Latin, the
word-initial consonant (or consonant cluster) of the
English word is moved to the end and then the vowel
[e] is added after it.
• Thus Pig Latin in Pig Latin would be [ɪgpe ætɪnle].
• And [ɪlche aime endfre]?
• Come here, let me tell you something that you ought (to)
know]

Omecay erehay, etlay emay elltay ouyay omethingsay atthay

ouyay oughtway (otay) owknay
 Verlan
• The name verlan is an example: it is derived from inverting the
sounds of the syllables in l'envers [lɑ̃vɛʁ], "the inverse",
frequently used in the sense of "back-to-front".
• français [fʁɑ̃sɛ] becomes cèfran [sɛfʁɑ̃]
• cigarette may yield garet-si or ret-siga
• Verlan is less a language than a way to set apart certain words
that often refer either to sex or drugs, related to the original
purpose of keeping communication secret from institutions of
social control and is generally limited to one or two key words per
sentence.
• The stage name of Belgian pop artist and songwriter Stromae
(real name Paul Van Haver) is verlan for "maestro."
 Others - insertion
Afrikaans P-taal Insert " p" before Writing generally depicts
the first vowel of the sounds instead the
each syllable. original letters.
Syllables with Daar onder in die vlei
stacked consonants stap 'n mannetjie →
may follow Depaar epondeper epen
additional rules. depie vlepei stepap epe
mepannepekepie.
 Insert "k" and the
"Kalimera" →
vowel(s) of the
Greek Korakistika "Kaka liki meke
original syllable after
raka”
each syllable

Each vowel or "Deutsche

diphthong is Sprache" →
German B-Language
reduplicated with "Deubeutschebe
a leading 'b'. Sprabachebe"
Malayalam has a language game in which the sequence pa- is
inserted before every syllable of the word. Thus the Malayalam
name kamala is realized in the language game as [paka-pama-pala].
 Ritual languages
• Damin (being silent), ceremonial language register used by the
advanced, initiated men of the aboriginal Lardil and Yangkaal
people (Gulf of Carpentaria). It was taught during the initiation
ceremony, in isolation, but it can be used in the community at
large.
• Damin lexical words were organised into semantic groups and
shouted out to the initiate in a single session, with a second
speaker giving the Lardil equivalent.
• The speakers were known as Demiinkurlda ("Damin
possessors"). They spoke the register particularly in ritual
contexts, but also in everyday secular life, when foraging,
sitting about gossiping, etc.
• Only click language outside of Africa, with about 150 lexical
roots, each standing for several words of Lardil or Yangkaal.
It had only two pronouns (n!a "me" (ego) and n!u "not me"
(alter)), for example, compared to Lardil's nineteen, and had
an antonymic prefix kuri- (jijuu "small", kurijijuu "large").
 Ritual – Lingua Ignota
• German abbess Hildegard of Bingen created the Latin-based
Lingua Ignota (unknown language) in the 12th century.
• Its true purpose is lost to time and it is not known who,
besides its creator, was familiar with it. Some believed that
Hildegard intended her language to be an ideal, universal
language. Now it is generally assumed that it was devised as a
secret language – divine inspiration.
• The extant text is a glossary of 1011 words with glosses in
Latin and German of mostly nouns with a few adjectives.
Grammatically it seems to be a partial of Latin, that is, new
vocabulary in an existing grammar. relexification
 Balaibalan, Iran (Timurid Dynasty)
• Balaibalan is the only well-documented early constructed language not
of European origin, and it is independent of the fashion for language
construction that occurred during the Renaissance.
• Its original creator may have been 14th century mystic Fazlallah
Astarabadi, founder of Hurufism, or his followers in the 15th c.
• Probably designed as a holy or poetic language for religious reasons, or
may also have been a secret language of an inner circle.
• A single dictionary is the documentary evidence.
• Written with the Ottoman variant of the Arabic alphabet. The grammar
follows the lead of Persian, Turkish and Arabic; it is agglutinating. Lexis
appears wholly invented, but some words are borrowed from Arabic
and the other source languages.
• Abraham:Hebrew, Jesus:Aramaic and Muhammad: Arabic. Balaibalan :
new religious revelation?
 Sacred or holy languages
• Liturgical language, cultivated for religious purposes
• When a language is linked to religious worship, the followers
often attribute virtues to the language – but not to their
vernaculars.
• For sacred texts, loss of authenticity and accuracy by a
translation or re-translation is a constant fear
• A sacred language is also vested with a solemnity and dignity
that the vernacular lacks. The training of clergy in the use of a
sacred language becomes an important cultural investment, and
their use of the tongue is perceived to give them access to a
body of knowledge that untrained lay people cannot (or should
not) access.
 Sample sacred languages
• Theravada Buddhism uses Pali as its liturgical language, and
scriptures (Tipitaka) are studied in the original Pali. In
Thailand, Pali is written using the Thai alphabet, resulting in a
Thai pronunciation of the Pali language.
• Mahayana Buddhism makes little use of its original language,
Sanskrit. In some Japanese rituals, Chinese texts are read out
or recited with the Japanese pronunciations of their
constituent characters, resulting in something unintelligible in
both languages. In Tibetan Buddhism, Tibetan is used, but
mantras are in Sanskrit.
 Christian liturgical traditions
• Ecclesiastical Latin of the Catholic Church
(N.B. Latin is the official language of all formal works of the church, but replaced by the
vernacular in liturgical use since 1964.)
• Koine Greek in the Greek Orthodox Church and Greek Catholic Church
• Church Slavonic in Eastern Orthodox Churches and Eastern Catholic Churches
• Old Georgian in the Georgian Orthodox Church and the Georgian Catholic Church
• Classical Armenian in the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Armenian Catholic
Church
• Ge'ez in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, Ethiopian Catholic Church and Eritrean
Orthodox Church
• Coptic in the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria and Coptic Catholic Church
• Syriac in Syriac Christianity represented by the Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic
Church, Syrian Catholic Church, Syrian Orthodox Church, Maronite Church and Saint
Thomas Christian Churches
 • Oldest forms of long-distance
Symbolic: communication and was used to transmit
Smoke signals news, signal danger, or gather people to a
common area.
• Widespread use among Native Americans,
Aboriginal Australians, Chinese etc.
• Today, the selection of a new Pope by the
College of Cardinals is conducted by a secret
ballot. The ballots are burned after each
vote. Black smoke indicates a failed ballot,
while white smoke means a new Pope has
been elected.
• Black smoke: Potassium perchlorate,
Anthracene, Sulphur
• White smoke: Potassium chlorate, Lactose /
milk sugar, Colophony / pine rosin
Morse code
 Drum and Whistled Languages
• Drum languages and whistled languages are alternate
linguistic systems that convert the spoken word into
whistles or drumbeats.
• Their primary purpose is to transmit messages over
long distances.
• Whistled languages can be divided into two groups,
those that are based on ‘tone’ languages and those
based on non-tone languages
 Tone Languages
• Tone languages use relative pitch to convey meaning. Tone is
found in languages primarily in Asia and Africa, and in some
Native American languages; in India, Punjabi is the only tonal
language (the voiced aspiration is lost and replaced by tones –
high, mid and low)
• Bambara (Manding, spoken in Mali, Africa)
(á = high tone, à = low tone, ǎ = rising tone)
bàlá dòn ‘it’s the porcupine’ but bálá dòn ‘it’s the
balaphone’
bá dòn ‘it’s the river’ but bǎ dòn ‘it’s the goat’
 Where are whistled languages found?
• Mexico: Mazatec, Tepehua, • West Africa: Ewe, Tshi,
Nahua, Otomi, Totonac, Marka, Ule, Daguri, Birifor,
• Kickapoo, Chinantec, Zapotec, Burunsi,Bobo, Bafia, Bape.
Amuzgo, Chol.
• Nepal: Chepang
• Bolivia: Siriono
• France - village of Aas, French • Burma: Chin
Pyrenees • New Guinea: Gasup,
• Spain (Canary Islands): Binumarien
Gomero Spanish ("el silbo") • Vietnam: Hmong
• Turkey: Kuskoy • China: Bai
 Whistling a tone language
• When a tone language is whistled, the whistles convey
the high and low pitches
• Pitch is the perception of a sound as relatively high or low
frequency or the rate of variation in air pressure
• Fundamental frequency (F0): rate of vocal fold vibration,
measured in Hertz (Hz); the higher the F0, the higher the
pitch
 When whistled
• The acoustic properties of
sound can be measured
and displayed as a ‘pitch
track’.
• Low toned vowels have
lower pitch than high
toned vowels.
• Sentence is from Moba, a
Gur language of nothern
Togo – ‘the young ones
follow the footsteps of
their elders.’
• The pitch of the whistle is much
higher than for a vowel, but it
follows the same contour
• Visual display is a ‘spectrogram’,
which displays component
frequencies of sounds
• Moba whistled speech is used
by children instead of a
corresponding drummed
language and to prevent
missionaries who run the
school from understanding
them!
 Others
• Mazateco Indians of northern Oaxaca, Mexico employ whistled
speech only men use whistle speech, but women can understand
it. It is used to communicate at a distance and used by boys to
communicate in the presence of elders talking. It can involve
multiple exchanges (questions, answers), - much of whistled
speech is ritual greetings, with unambiguous messages
• Huautla Mazatec is a tone language - Numbers indicated tone
levels (1 = low, 4 = high)
hna1 khoa2?ai4-ni3 ‘where are you coming from?
1243
ni3?ya2 khoa2?ai4-nia3 ‘I am coming from Huautla’
32243
 Whistled non-tonal languages

• The most famous example of a non-tone whistled language

is that of Silbo Gomero, whistled Spanish used on the
Gomera Island of the Canary Islands. Deemed Masterpiece
of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by
UNESCO in 2009.
• There are also non-tonal whistled languages in Turkey and
France.
• Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgEmSb0cKBg
 Vowel to whistle
• Whistled versions of non-tone languages convey linguistic information
primarily by transposing the F2 (second formant frequency) of vowels
• Vowels have two main formants:
F1 - corresponds to vowel height
– Low F1 = vowel articulated with high tongue position (i, u)
– High F1 = vowel articulated with low tongue position (a)
F2 - corresponds to vowel backness
– Low F2 = vowel articulated with back tongue position (a, o,u)
– High F2 = vowel articulated with front tongue position (i e)
• Silbo Gomero also conveys information about the consonants by
• 1) periods of silence – ‘voiceless’ consonants such as p t k f s
• 2) transitions from vowel to consonant
 Drum Languages
• Drum languages are found in West Africa and
parts of South Asia. They are used to convey
messages at a distance, but also for standardized
proverbs and greetings
• Like whistled languages, they convey the tone of
the source language
• The length of the drumbeat also corresponds to
the length of the syllable
• Percussive instruments: membrane drums, iron
gongs, slit-gongs, and xylophones are among the
instruments most widely described.
 Non-percussive instruments
• wind instruments: whistles and horns, Africa; flutes used by the
Lhota Naga; hollow-seed membranophones, used by Chinese
boys of Fukien.
• stringed instruments: lute, used by the Olombo (Congo) ;
musical bow, African “piano”;
• Improvisation frequently employs such utilitarian objects as
troughs (Haka Chin) or canoes (Fiji and the Choco of Colombia),
anoval paddle-shaft employed in the Congo as a two-toned
instrument. Indeed, the buttress roots of trees may be used, as
among the Kwoma (New Guinea) and in Indonesia.
• The two-tone systems of West African languages are converted
to drums with two different drums (small – high tone, large –
low tone)
• varying the points where the drum is hit, Ex. Akan (spoken in
Ghana)
• LHHHLLL
• ònípá sé ɔ̀̀d ɔ̀̀ wò
• ‘a man says he loves you’
 Renaissance

• Dante Alighieri – search for an ideal vernacular

• Ramon Llull – Ars Magna – devising a perfect language
that would persuade infidels of the truth of Christianity
• Musical languages from the Renaissance were tied up with
mysticism, magic and alchemy, sometimes also referred to
as the language of the birds (Solresol is one such).
• Bacon, Descartes and Leibniz, all proposed international
languages
 Auxiliary Languages: Esperanto
• 1887: Introduced by Dr. L.L. Zamenhof
• No concentrated area where it’s spoken, but speakers are everywhere—
between 100,000 and 2,000,000
• Does not replace other languages—acts as a second common language
between people.
• Universal language
• Can supposedly be learned in much less time than other languages.
• Is politically unbiased.
• He did not really make an artificial language, but a sort of synthesis of our
principal modern languages. He chose for the vocabulary of his language the
most international roots, all very Latin and Germanic
– Telefono, telegrafo, teatre, arto, muziko, onklo, sukcesi, marklo
– Link: many on you tube
 Principles
• To render the study of the language so easy as to make its
acquisition mere play to the learner.
• To enable the learner to make direct use of his knowledge with
persons of any nationality, whether the language be universally
accepted or not; in other words, the language is to be directly a
means of international communication.
• To find some means of overcoming the natural indifference of
mankind, and disposing them, in the quickest manner possible,
and en masse, to learn and use the proposed language as a living
one, and not only in last extremities, and with the key at hand.
 Esperanto Phonetics
• A, “father”  K
• B  L
• C, “bits”  M
• Ĉ, “church”  N
• D  O, “go”
• E, “get”  P
• F  R, “burrito"
 S, “said”
• G, “go”
 Ŝ, “shed”
• Ĝ, “jet”  T
• H, “loch”  U, “boot”
• Ĥ  Ŭ, “water”
• I, “machine”  V
• J, “yes”  Z
• Ĵ, “measure”
 Esperanto Grammar
• Every letter has only one sound and is always pronounced.
• Accent is always on the next-to-last syllable (penultimate).
• Vowels are never diphthongized.
• Parts of speech are formed by adding endings to words:
– “o” = noun… instruisto (teacher)
– “a” = adjective… nova (new)
– “j” = plural… Inteligentaj personoj (intelligent people)
– “n” = direct object… Esperanto havas facilajn regulojn (Esperanto
has easy rules)
– Past tense = -is
• No irregularities
 Esperanto Grammar
• No inflectional endings for cases

Infinitive Present Past Future Imperative Conditional

To see Sees Saw Will see See! Would see

-i -as -is -os -u -us

Vidi Vidas Vidis Vidos Vidu vidus

Noun Subject Object
Singular -o -on
Plural -oj -ojn
Adjective Subject Object
Singular -a -an
Plural -aj -ajn
 How successful?
• Became popular post the second Word War but slowly faded
into a quiet existence
• With the internet, it has become more popular – community
of speakers
• Used for artistic output – songs, comedy, poetry, novels and
magazines; jokes, puns, swear words (LOTR and the Bible
have been translatedand a full length feature film Incubus
starring William Shatner!) – not just as a tool for commerce,
science or international diplomacy
• Native tongue for a few hundred
• Annual Universal Congress held
• Other auxiliary languages: Interlingua, Ido, Novial
 Artlangs
• Languages invented for artistic purposes alone – to express a personal
idea of what a language could or might be.
• By imagining a whole world or culture, and then making a language to
fill out that culture.
• By taking love for a natural language (the way it sounds, the way it
creates new words, the way it encodes social roles) and riffing on it
artistically.
• By taking philosophical curiosity about the relationship between
language, mind, and society, and drafting “thought experiments” to see
what kind of relationships a language might theoretically capture.
• By coming up with the most bizarre, original language.
• Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0knxW76bDuI
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80sMfx7WhIs
 J.R.R. Tolkien and his Languages
• 1892-1973
• author of Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The
Silmarillion
• philologist
• to complement his Middle Earth, created several
languages, Quenya and Sindarin being the most well-
developed
• Tolkien considered languages inseparable from the
mythology associated with them, and he consequently
took a dim view of auxiliary languages:
Volapük, Esperanto, Ido, Novial, &c, &c, are dead, far deader
than ancient unused languages, because their authors never
invented any Esperanto legends.
• Glossopoeia and mythopoeia
• Tolkien well understood the power of the written and
spoken word, philologist that he was—he knew that words
were magic. ... For Tolkien, words provide the means to
unify and extend the social community, to understand the
various species of nature, and to cross the boundaries of
time (past and present) and space (the equivalent of
earthly supernal, and infernal in Middle-earth).
• He also spoke several languages including Old Norse,
Welsh and Finnish
 Hobbit and Lord of the Rings
• Despair over the loss of cultures and languages resonates throughout
Tolkien's narrative in The Lord of the Rings. The Elves are disappearing
from Middle-earth. High and Common Elvish, languages that few outside
of the Elves speak or understand, are vanishing along with thousands of
years of Elvish culture and knowledge.
• Likewise, the cultural realm of the Dwarves is dwindling, with only a few
strongholds remaining. And though in many ways the hobbits live an
idyllic life, they are culturally isolated and have little knowledge of the
outside world—a characteristic that threatens to destroy them.
• Yet it is from the hobbits—thought of by Elves and Dwarves as
insignificant and powerless—that hope arises against the threat of
extinction for all of Middle-earth's cultures.
• Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen,
yéni únótimë ve rámar aldaron!
Yéni ve lintë yuldar avánier
mi oromardi lisse-miruvóreva
Andúnë pella, Vardo tellumar
nu luini yassen tintilar i eleni
ómaryo airetári-lírinen.
Sí man i yulma nin enquantuva?
An sí Tintallë Varda Oiolossëo
ve fanyar máryat Elentári ortanë,
ar ilyë tier undulávë lumbulë;
ar sindanóriello caita mornië
i falmalinnar imbë met, ar hísië
untúpa Calaciryo míri oialë.
Sí vanwa ná, Rómello vanwa, Valimar!
Namárië! Nai hiruvalyë Valimar.
Nai elyë hiruva. Namárië!
 A Brief History of Elvish

Quendian

Quenya Common Avarin

Eldarin

Telerin Sindarin Nandorin

 History of Elvish
• Of the Eldarin tongues two are found in this
book: the High-elven or Quenya, and the Grey-
elven or Sindarin. The High-elven was an ancient
tongue of Eldamar beyond the sea, the first to
be recorded in writing. It was no longer a birth-
tongue, but had become, as it were, an ‘Elven-
latin,’ still used for ceremony…” (ROTK 1101).
• Tolkien's High Elvish language, Quenya, was
inspired by Finnish. Tolkien taught himself
Finnish in order to read the Kalevala, a 19th-
century compilation of old Finnish songs and
stories arranged by Elias Lönnrot into a linear
epic poem and completed in 1835 and revised
in the mid-1800s.
 Writing and Speaking

Quenya, the Ancient

Tongue
The Tengwar “Alphabet”

• Not technically an alphabet—just a bunch

of consonants that languages could pick and
choose from—Men and Elves could both use
it
•None of the letters have a fixed value, but
relationships between certain letters were
recognized
•Five pages in the appendix on how different
languages employ the Tengwar letters
 Can you learn Elvish?
• You can’t, really. Although words and phrases can be spoken,
“the vocabulary, grammar, and syntax of Tolkien's invented
languages, even of Quenya and Sindarin, are far too incomplete
to allow its casual, conversational, or quotidian use.” (The
Tolkenian Linguistics)
• Other languages invented by Tolkein are Dwarvish (Khuzdul),
Entish, and Black Speech of Mordor.
• For Tolkien, language was the beginning of a culture rather than
merely a product of it. “The invention of languages,” he wrote,
“is the foundation. The 'stories' were made rather to provide a
world for the languages than the reverse.”
 Names and roots
• Saruman's name derives from the Anglo-Saxon, or Old English, root
"searu-" for "treachery" or "cunning."
• "Sauron" is linked to the Old Norse or Icelandic stem meaning
"filth" or "dung" or "uncleanness."
• "Mordor" derives from the Old English word "morthor," which
means "murder."
• "Middle-earth" is related to the name "middan-geard," which was
the name for the Earth itself in Old English poetry and was
considered to be the battleground between the forces of good and
evil.***
 Black speech
The Ring Verse
Shre nazg golugranu kilmi-nudu
Ombi kuzddurbagu gundum-ishi
Nugu gurunkilu bard gurutu
Ash Burz-Durbagu burzum-ishi
Daghburz-ishi makha gulshu
darulu
Ash nazg durbatulûk
ash nazg gimbatul,
ash nazg thrakatulûk
agh burzum-ishi krimpatul
The Ring Verse
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of
stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows
lie.
One Ring to-rule-them-all
One Ring to-find-them,
One Ring to-bring-them-all
and in-the-Darkness bind-them
 Klingon
͡
• [ˈtɬɪ.ŋɑn xol]) is the constructed language spoken by the fictional
Klingons in the Star Trek universe.
• In the 1984 film, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, the director,
Leonard Nimoy, and the writer-producer, Harve Bennett, wanted the
Klingons to speak a real-sounding language rather than gibberish, so
they commissioned the linguist Marc Okrand to create Klingon.
• To make Klingon sound alien, consonants and combinations of
consonants, particularly retroflex, velar and uvular ones, uncommon
in natural languages are used, such as /q͡χ/.
• In 1992 Dr. Lawrence Schoen founded the Klingon Language Institute,
an organization that facilitates communication among Klingonists
through publications, language proficiency certification, an annual
conference, this website and a sense of community. The KLI has
published Klingon language editions of works including Hamlet, the
Tao Te Ching, and Gilgamesh.
 Klingon grammar
• Klingon sentence structure is about as complex as it gets. Verb endings can indicate
person and number. But Klingon uses prefixes rather than suffixes for such purposes,
and instead of having six or seven of them, like most romance languages, it has 29.
There are so many because they indicate not only the person and number of the
subject (who is doing) but also of the object (whom it is being done to).
• Klingon also has a large set of suffixes. Klingon has 36 verb suffixes and 26 noun
suffixes that express everything from negation to causality to possession to how
willing a speaker is to vouch for the accuracy of what he says. By piling on these
suffixes, one after the other, you can pack a lot of meaning on to a single word in
Klingon—
• nuHegh'eghrupqa'moHlaHbe'law'lI'neS: They are apparently unable to cause us to
prepare to resume honorable suicide (in progress).
• Powerful insult: Your mother has a smooth forehead (Hab SoSlI' Quch! )
• nuqneH (Literally, “What do you want?”, said to someone approaching you, and does
not mean “Hello”)
 Avatar and Na’vi
• Created by Paul Frommer
• For the sapient humanoid indigenous inhabitants of the fictional moon
Pandora
• Based on Cameron's initial list of words, which had a "Polynesian flavor"
according to Frommer, the linguist developed three different sets of
meaningless words and phrases that conveyed a sense of what an alien
language might sound like:
– one using contrasting tones
– one using varying vowel lengths
– one using ejective consonants.
Of the three, Cameron liked the sound of the ejectives most. His choice
established the phonology that Frommer would use in developing the rest of
the Naʼvi language – morphology, syntax, and an initial vocabulary – a task
that took six months.
 Na’vi grammar
• Na’vi also has a set of infixes which mark how the speaker feels
about the state of affairs they are describing – the infix ‹ei› indicates
the speaker feels good about what they’re saying, while ‹äng› means
they’re unhappy.
• Ngaru irayo s‹eiy›i oe. I thank you (and am happy to).
Kxawm oe h‹arm›ah‹äng›aw. Maybe I was sleeping (and am
unhappy about that)
• Number marked – singular, dual and trial
Nantang hahaw. A viperwolf is sleeping.
Menantang hahaw. Two viperwolves are sleeping.
Pxenantang hahaw. Three viperwolves are sleeping.
Aynantang hahaw. Viperwolves (four or more) are sleeping.
 Tripartite

• Separate marking of transitive subjects, intransitive

subjects and direct objects is quite rare, and is known as
a tripartite case alignment.
• Nantangìl frìp tutet. The viperwolf bites a person.
– Nantangìl frìp tutet.
Frìp tutet nantangìl.
Tutet nantangìl frìp.
• Nantang hahaw. The viperwolf sleeps.
 Tense
• Na’vi doesn’t simply mark past and future, but
distinguishes the recent past from the general past,
and the near from the general future. Both of these
future tense forms mark a prediction about a future
event.
• Oe k‹ìy›ä. I am about to go, I will go soon.
Po k‹ay›ä. He will go.
Oe pܓm݊hem. I just arrived.
Fo p‹am›ähem. They arrived.
 Summary – Artificial/Constructed Languages
• Two types:
– A priori—built from scratch, completely novel elements
– A posteriori—Can be made with elements of natural languages
– If it is based off a natlang, it can be a simplified version or a
version that could have developed naturally
• Richard Kennaway’s list has 312 named—but there are
many more
• Self study: Dothraki and its grammar