Inventing a Language, from the Guy Who Made Dothraki (2015) • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by SideburnsOfDoom » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 8:07 PM UTC

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 wish they‘d use real, dying or dead languages instead of inventing advanced gibberish for movies.

John Kani, a veteran South African actor playing King T'Chaka in the Marvel movies "Captain America: Civil War" and "Black Panther", decided to speak the Wankandan language parts in Xhosa, a South African language that he is a native speaker of. He taught the rest of the cast their lines. I think it sounded realistic.

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/john-kani-influenced-the-bla...

https://qz.com/1192662/black-panther-wakandas-language-is-is...

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

#72

Post by mikeash » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 8:26 PM UTC

ggambetta wrote: post #5

ghaff wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 get that. But spending a lot of money on things that don't make it to the final cut always felt like a waste to me. I'm very very marginally into filmmaking (see bio), and I've always had the impression that costs and time could be cut drastically just with better planning. I often wonder what would happen if you applied startup principles to making a movie. Thinking in terms of MVP, customer value, efficiency, on…

I don’t know much about film, but I can imagine someone saying the same thing about programming. We spend all this time building things that get replaced before they even ship. We celebrate programmers who remove more code than they add. Surely this is a huge waste that could be avoided with better planning?

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

#73

Post by yumaikas » Tue, Jul 17, 2018, 10:43 PM UTC

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…

Can you provide a source for this? I'm very curious, as I grew up speaking Tok Pisin, and played some Riven, and looking up cutscenes online I can't make sense of any of the Rivenese (well, the foreign language bits, I don't know if it's Rivenese or not), at least not in https://youtu.be/-rjfyfuijrc or https://youtu.be/smOzKs1hauM.

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

#74

Post by sriku » Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 12:18 AM UTC

I've found Mark Rosenfelder's books "the language construction kit" and "the advanced LCK" fascinating to see how much thought needs to go into a language. I felt I learnt more about existing languages from those books than actual language books. He deals with everything - from syntax to phonology to script. LoTR was the book that drew me to conlangs in the first place though.

The community is also fascinating, with folks spending passionate decades on making languages - ex: ithkuil.

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

#75

Post by adityapurwa » Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 12:38 AM UTC

gbrown wrote: post #60

adityapurwa wrote: post #25

I am writing a book that also has its own language called Erksar, the language was once a simple modified caesar crypto where I map vocal with another vocal (as a software engineer, it was pretty easy to create translator for it). “I love you” would become “E rufa tu” (it should be “E rufa tui” but I modified the result and tried to remove unnecessary letter). Now that I lost the original character map, some new word…

As I understand things (not a linguist), that's not actually a different language than English, though it's a neat exercise. The English language has undergone all sorts of pronunciation shifts over time, it seems like you've imposed a new pronunciation map on an existing language, but the grammatical structure should be preserved.

I am not a linguist too, I would really be interested on hearing feedback from a linguist.

Yes, most words were inspired form existing English words. The caesar transformation words were mostly transformed from English words, some using Indonesian, some Arabic, some Latin.

I tried not to create a whole new word, instead the idea of adopting some words from existing language were a common practice on any language that we have now, so I tried to adopt whenever possible and change the pronounciation.

Here's an example of some words that was not adopted from an existing language (or if there was similarities, it wasn't my intention): - Vragel (soul) - Serentia (eternal) - Rus, Erus, Berus (the suffix used to implicate negativity, rus is least negative, erus is mid, berus is the most negative; e.g Vragelberus (to indicate a highly damaged, wicked, dangerous, or corrupted soul).

There's also some rule I used to create/adapt words, words that indicates greatness or something big always ends with the letter "A". E.g. Versila (universe), Elia (god), Alua (sky), Titania (giants), Manara (tower).

Name of places in the book also follows this rule. E.g Riddorana (place of huge waterfall), Zodiarchia (capital city), Altand (small ponds, note it doesn't end with an "A").

This rule allowed me to write poets that easily ended with the letter "A".

It is always interesting to learn words from existing language, then adopt it and learn how to make it fit with the existing language design.

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

#76

Post by lfxyz » Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 7:41 AM UTC

ggambetta wrote: post #5

ghaff wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 get that. But spending a lot of money on things that don't make it to the final cut always felt like a waste to me. I'm very very marginally into filmmaking (see bio), and I've always had the impression that costs and time could be cut drastically just with better planning. I often wonder what would happen if you applied startup principles to making a movie. Thinking in terms of MVP, customer value, efficiency, on…

You might already be familiar with it, but Robert Rodriguez pursued a very budget-conscious approach when filming El Mariachi.

Much of the approach is explained in the DVD extras to the film, but is summarised on the film's Wikipedia[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Mariachi#Production

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

#77

Post by DominikD » Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 8:00 AM UTC

d0lph wrote: post #67

DominikD wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is not correct. Language is much more than words. At times you have social structure encoded e.g. via honorifics. You have concepts and phrases that derive from previous experiences.

Whether you take Sapir-Whorf hypothesis for granted or you think that its inverse is true, cultures and languages codevelop.

You wouldn't say "keep them at the bay" in a language used by a land-locked people. You won't call tomato "pomodoro" if gold in your area doesn't have impurites that make it red and not yellow.

You have to understand that language on a very basic level is a construct of a culture that used it. You can't separate them.

And then there are practical reasons. You won't get actors to learn Mongolic language to play Dothraki. Conlangs aim to combine "alien" with "familiar" which is a must in a movie, game or a book.

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

#78

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 8:15 AM UTC

DominikD wrote: post #77

d0lph wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is not correct. Language is much more than words. At times you have social structure encoded e.g. via honorifics. You have concepts and phrases that derive from previous experiences. Whether you take Sapir-Whorf hypothesis for granted or you think that its inverse is true, cultures and languages codevelop. You wouldn't say "keep them at the bay" in a language used by a land-locked people. You won't call tomato "…

> You wouldn't say "keep them at the bay" in a language used by a land-locked people.

If you mean to reference the expression “keep someone at bay” (no “the”) with the meaning of holding them back, that comes from “bay” as in “the howling bark of hounds” rather than “bay” as in “a partially enclosed body of water attached to a larger area”. Completely separate etymology (from old French «bay» and «baie», respectively, ending up in words that happen to be spelled the same in English.)

So, a fine idiom for a landlocked people, not so good for a people without dogs.

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

#79

Post by ggambetta » Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 10:06 AM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #72

ggambetta wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that. But spending a lot of money on things that don't make it to the final cut always felt like a waste to me. I'm very very marginally into filmmaking (see bio), and I've always had the impression that costs and time could be cut drastically just with better planning. I often wonder what would happen if you applied startup principles to making a movie. Thinking in terms of MVP, customer value, efficiency, on…

I don’t know much about film, but I can imagine someone saying the same thing about programming. We spend all this time building things that get replaced before they even ship. We celebrate programmers who remove more code than they add. Surely this is a huge waste that could be avoided with better planning?

Saying this as a software engineer that has been on movie sets - you have no idea how disorganised, chaotic, and wasteful they can be, and how long hanging is the low hanging fruit in terms of making processes more efficient.

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

#80

Post by d0lph » Wed, Jul 18, 2018, 2:19 PM UTC

DominikD wrote: post #77

d0lph wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is not correct. Language is much more than words. At times you have social structure encoded e.g. via honorifics. You have concepts and phrases that derive from previous experiences. Whether you take Sapir-Whorf hypothesis for granted or you think that its inverse is true, cultures and languages codevelop. You wouldn't say "keep them at the bay" in a language used by a land-locked people. You won't call tomato "…

It seems more culture impacts language, you don't have social structures that are created in language and implemented in culture later. I agree it's a construct of culture though, but I don't know that adding words is necessarily bad.

Why would actors learn a language when they can just learn their lines? If you're already borrowing concepts from other languages why not the whole thing. I don't know if conlangs are better, but I don't think it would be unethical to use an existing ancient language for a movie or TV show.