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Inventing a Language, from the Guy Who Made Dothraki (2015)

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Re: Inventing a Language, from the Guy Who Made Dothraki (2015)

#61

Post by wool_gather »

_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #59
fusiongyro wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are all Indo-European languages; English once had forms of "you" like this: thou/thee.

As the singular, with you / ye as the plural. (Then later you was used as the formal form with thou as the familiar, like French's tu vs vous , and then later the informal thou / thee fell out of the use. [And new plural forms were innovated, e.g. youse , y'all etc.])

Right; classically the counterpart to "you" in English would have been "usted" in Spanish. (Not really anymore, of course, since English doesn't use the formal/familiar distinction.)

Re: Inventing a Language, from the Guy Who Made Dothraki (2015)

#63

Post by endtime »

ghaff wrote: post #4
ggambetta wrote: post #2

I guess this partially explains why making a movie or TV episode can cost millions / hundreds of millions of dollars :-/ Yes, Dothraki being an actual language is probably "better" than Leia speaking gibberish to Jabba, but to me it feels like it's way past the point of diminishing returns.

See also the articles about the level of detail in the costumes in Game of Thrones. There is a lot of attention to detail, probably including a fair bit that doesn't make it on camera, in big budget video/film productions. You could probably cut a lot of it and still have a "pretty good" final product. But being obsessive about detail rather than being content with good enough in all sorts of aspects of production, i…

I don't know the first thing about filmmaking, and my terminology will probably be wrong, but...my uninformed speculation is that creating coherent, consistent, high quality raw material gives the editors (or whoever) freedom to compose the best final cut.

Re: Inventing a Language, from the Guy Who Made Dothraki (2015)

#64

Post by wool_gather »

DanAndersen wrote: post #26
lazyjones wrote: post #19

I wish they‘d use real, dying or dead languages instead of inventing advanced gibberish for movies. We could preserve languages for posteriority and the result would be more realistic.

By that logic, movies should just use existing props or set designs rather than creating any new artifacts. Conlanging isn't just gibberish, it's a legitimate artform like anything else. However, I don't have any issue with using real-world languages to give the desired exotic flair for certain settings. I actually think that was one of the things that was great about, for example, the Avatar: The Last Airbender cart…

> Riven: The Sequel to Myst had some cutscenes where the fantasy native population were actually speaking Tok Pisin, which is a creole language from Papua New Guinea

Interesting tidbit! I had thought they were all artificial.

Re: Inventing a Language, from the Guy Who Made Dothraki (2015)

#67

Post by d0lph »

DominikD wrote: post #35
lazyjones wrote: post #19

I wish they‘d use real, dying or dead languages instead of inventing advanced gibberish for movies. We could preserve languages for posteriority and the result would be more realistic.

You would not be preserving anything, you'd be stomping on a culture. Old and lesser known languages are rarely well researched. You're lucky if you have morphosyntax written down. But the moment you start using existing language in a new context, you get into issues. You've got words and whole concepts missing that you have to add to something that's more or less complete. Dothraki needs horse-related words. You nee…

Adding non-existent words to a language is not twisting it, it's developing it, like normal languages evolve over time. I'm assuming for any language that is chosen we would have enough writing to know the grammar and structures, so I feel like adding words is not a big deal. You did basically preserve a large part of the language though, even if it's had words added.

Re: Inventing a Language, from the Guy Who Made Dothraki (2015)

#68

Post by d0lph »

icebraining wrote: post #20
lazyjones wrote: post #19

I wish they‘d use real, dying or dead languages instead of inventing advanced gibberish for movies. We could preserve languages for posteriority and the result would be more realistic.

And be accused of cultural appropriation?

Is language really something that can be appropriated though?

Re: Inventing a Language, from the Guy Who Made Dothraki (2015)

#69

Post by mccosmos »

throwvondannen wrote: post #33
lazyjones wrote: post #19

I wish they‘d use real, dying or dead languages instead of inventing advanced gibberish for movies. We could preserve languages for posteriority and the result would be more realistic.

I'd love to hear Lojban in a mainstream movie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban Bonus points if it's sold as random fantasy language of a strange country and the main cast doesn't understand it either.

Not quite a movie but having Lojban as the setting fantasy language is the idea behind this new production: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kJATTd6vF8

Re: Inventing a Language, from the Guy Who Made Dothraki (2015)

#70

Post by Y_Y »

projektir wrote: post #55
DonaldFisk wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might encourage a few people to learn the real language spoken in the movie instead of a conlang which nobody ever spoke outside the movie. The time and effort expended by Star Trek fans learning Klingon might be better spent learning Basque, Cornish, Abkhaz, Etruscan, or Sumerian. They'd learn a language with speakers and/or literature, and if the language is still spoken contribute to its continuity.

This seems to be one of those "why don't you just be productive?" arguments, which tends to miss the point of why someone did something to begin with. There's a reason Star Trek fans learn Klingon and not a real language, they're fascinated with Klingons but not a real culture, so the energy to learn, say, Basque, was never there to begin with. I feel similar with history, if I am just doing it for entertainment I'd…

But if Klingon had just been Basque, then they would have been learning two cultures at once. Ironically it's cultural hegemony from evil empires that real hurts these minority human languages.
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