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5 Fictional Languages That People Actually Learn

August 1st, 2010

There’s something about sci-fi or fantasy works that inspires passion and obsession in certain types of people. They don’t just want to read a book or watch a movie; they want to bring the story to life by applying it to their everyday lives. Case in point: Languages used in these works by alien or ancient civilizations have become so popular that you can actually learn to speak them (assuming that you have someone around who also speaks them to understand you; otherwise you’re just a college student speaking Klingon to the mirror). The languages below mostly come from popular fiction, so if you’ve ever wanted to get closer to the characters in your favorite story, here’s your chance to at least sound like them.

1. Klingon: Klingons have been causing trouble for the peace-loving denizens of the Star Trek universe since the original television series’ brief run in the 1960s. However, it wasn’t until the 1984 film Star Trek III: The Search for Spock that the alien race was given a significant and permanent redesign that included a language and alphabet to go with their new visual style. The language was developed by Marc Okrand, a linguist whose studies included obscure and dead languages. He was hired by Paramount Pictures to create the language and coach the actors in how to speak it, and in 1985 he published what’s probably the best resource for people who want to learn to speak Klingon: The Klingon Dictionary. The book discusses the alphabet, syntax, basic grammar and translation, and how to speak certain "popular" Klingon phrases, including "Surrender or die!" Okrand also put out Conversational Klingon, an audiobook co-narrated by Michael Dorn (who played the Klingon Worf on "Star Trek: The Next Generation") that helps students of the language hear how the words are meant to sound. In 1992, the Klingon Language Institute was born. Don’t let the dated website fool you: The KLI is deadly serious when it comes to learning how to talk like a Klingon warrior. The site has writing and speaking guides for newcomers, as well as information about how to subscribe to the group’s services and get (one assumes) access to even more Klingon-based language tools. This is the granddaddy of all made-up languages, and it’s a great place to start if you want to learn a fictional tongue.
2. Elvish: It should come as no surprise that the language spoken be the Elves of The Lord of the Rings can actually be studied and learned; author J.R.R. Tolkien was a philologist, meaning he knew his way around linguistics and language construction. He didn’t just interpret gibberish statements for his characters or back-translate their sentences. He actually created hordes of languages for his works, and plunging into the appendices after Lord of the Rings or tackling The Silmarillion, his history of the fictional realm of Middle-Earth, will give you an appreciation of just how detailed the languages are. There are actually multiple kinds of Elvish, most notably Quenya and Sindarin. I can’t even begin to unpack in this space the fictional history Tolkien created for his different races and their evolving tongues. Suffice it to say that you really should take a look at his printed works, or spend a few hours on Wikipedia getting a sense of the work he put in. Thankfully, there are a growing number of resources, both print and online, available for those who want to dig in and learn a complicated but elegant constructed language. The English to Elvish Dictionary is a good start, and The Languages of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth and A Gateway to Sindarin are also fantastic references. To get you in the mood, here’s the man himself reading a poem in Elvish verse:
3. Na’vi: James Cameron’s Avatar is the highest-grossing movie ever, both domestically and around the world. Even adjusted for inflation, it’s still in the top 20 of all time. You don’t become that popular without creating some die-hard fans, as the often-named Avatards can attest. The alien race in Cameron’s sci-fi action is known as the Na’vi, indigenous to the planet Pandora. The Na’vi also had a language constructed for the film by Paul Frommer, who holds a doctorate in linguistics. Cameron’s goal was to create a real language that was also easy enough to pick up that the human characters in the film could conceivably learn it, and while Frommer came up with an entire language, the movie only displayed a vocabulary of about 1,000 Na’vi words. Since the movie’s release at the end of 2009, fans have rallied to build resources to learn Na’vi and go deeper into the movie’s world. Learn Na’vi is a popular forum for devotees of the alien tongue, and Frommer’s also written a blog post that acts as a primer for newcomers. You should also check out Avatar: A Confidential Report on the Biological and Social History of Pandora for more "history" of Cameron’s world. Here’s a tutorial to get you started:
4. Nadsat: Stanley Kubrick’s film version of A Clockwork Orange is a classic, but it was novelist Anthony Burgess who laid the groundwork with his dystopian tale laced with slang and invented language. The book is narrated by Alex, who describes his world and adventures with constructed words that readers figure out using the context of the sentence. Burgess’ invented argot is called Nadsat, a form of English influenced by Russian that Burgess, a linguist, came up with for the novel. The language modifies some words and invents others out of whole cloth, and the unique slang gives Burgess’ novel a timeless feel that would have been corrupted by using lingo that was fresh when the book was published in 1962. This online translator is a fun way to see what everyday words become in Nadsat, and this dictionary and lexicon are similarly helpful.
5. Esperanto: This one didn’t come from a movie or book, but it’s one of the most popular fictional languages of all time. I say "fictional" not because it’s tied to imaginary characters but because it was artificially constructed with the intent to provide a common means of communication among people from different countries. Dr. L.L. Zamenhof invented the language around 1880 as a means to unite the Russian Empire. The first book instructing people in the use of the language hit shelves in 1887, and the language enjoyed modest but marked acceptance around the world as time went on. The bad news is that the language hasn’t been adopted as an official communication means by any nation or group, but the good news is that there are copious resources available for those interested in learning a new tongue. This is a great list of print and online outlets for anyone looking to brush up on their Esperanto, and there are multiple videos online to help you out, as well: