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zakruti.com » Knowledge, science, education » TED-Ed
Are Elvish, Klingon, Dothraki and Na'vi real languages? - John McWhorter

Are Elvish, Klingon, Dothraki and Na'vi real languages? - John McWhorter

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Rating: 4.0; Vote: 1
What do Game of Thrones' Dothraki, Avatar's Na'vi, Star Trek's Klingon and LOTR's Elvish have in common? They are all fantasy constructed languages, or conlangs. Conlangs have all the delicious complexities of real languages: a high volume of words, grammar rules, and room for messiness and evolution. John McWhorter explains why these invented languages captivate fans long past the rolling credits. Lesson by John McWhorter
Date: 2020-08-22

Comments and reviews: 10


I do agree on the grammar part, but I dont think varying in time and space is important in the same way. It is true that real languages vary due to the realities of people speaking as they wish to, but while you cant imagine a language without grammar, you can make one without variation. In fact, there are some real languages that get pretty close; Icelandic and Chinese, for some, have barely changed at all over hundreds and thousands of years.
Same can be said about irregularity; granted, it only really approaches reality in the most pedantic of conlangs like Ithkuil and Lojban, but it is not an inherent part of languages the way grammar is.

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2: 38 When they say that spanish was created, why did they put a outline of the iberian peninsula boarder instead of the spanish boarder? That way you are includind Portugal, Spain, Andorra and Gibraltar (gibraltar is tiny and it could not be seen from that map but whatever) that are diferent countries (except for gibraltar that does make part of the U. K) and speak diferent languages.
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1: 52
But a language can change at a very slow pace like Icelandic
3: 47
In Proto-Germanic the past tense was written by changing one of the vowels, now English is having a trend of putting ed at the end of words and is still in the process of doing it, words used more often will take longer to transform into the ed past tense

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I once attended an awesome interview at my university where they invited the creators of Klingon and Navi to give a talk: how they designed their fictional languages, influences, how the actors must learn this new made-up language, etc.
. sadly theres a 3rd language at that interview, but I cant remember what it was

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Good video, loved it, specially because I truly admire Tolkien.
But one small detail that can mean nothing to you, but it's kind of basic to know. Portugal is not Spain! Stop showing us as a province of Spain. We were once owners of half the globe and we're one of the oldest countries of the world!

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My son was in high school when he bought a Klingon book and taught himself to speak Klingon. To this day, he still throws out Klingon phrases (at least I assume they're Klingon) when he doesn't want people to know what he's saying.
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3: 47
Well in Proto-Indo-European thats how you knew it was past tense then Proto-German started doing special where the past is indicated by a suffix. Today this process is still incomplete.

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People often forget that Tolkien was the proffesor of old english (philologist) at Oxford. He knew what he was doing when it came to creating languages.
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God its so infuriating when people use the Tengwar of Tolkien's elvish so horribly wrong and they just pick symbols that look like letters.
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They are called the a priori language. It's a priori since it is constructed in the head and not constructed from different languages.
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