5

Creating A Language Is Full Of Hidden Pitfalls

20th Century Fox

"Perhaps the most challenging aspect of all is not letting your own native language -- in my case, English -- unconsciously influence the decisions you make about the language you're constructing," Dr. Frommer says. And not solely because English is a bastard language raised by 20 different abusive parents.

"Suppose you come up with a word for 'long,'" he explains. "Does it only refer to physical length, or can it be used for temporal length as well (as English does when we say 'a long time'? Maybe it doubles as the word for 'tall.' Those answers aren't obvious; you need to determine such things if people are going to use the language accurately."

4

A Well-Constructed Language Helps Tell The Story

Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times / GettyImages

3

Even Language Creators Sometimes Forget Their Own Rules

HBO

Nobody is perfect, as demonstrated by every single decision Ned Stark makes in Game Of Thrones. This also applies to conlangers. They unintentionally break their own grammatical rules from time to time, because who can proofread for them? That's how errors sometimes creep into the final product.

HBO
You can cover them up as wacky comic relief with the right writer.

Peterson gives an example: "I forgot that I specifically designed the genitive/possessive case in Dothraki to make the nominative and genitive [as in Bill versus Bill's] of the word 'khaleesi' identical, save in stress. Initially I was going to make a language-wide rule that two identical syllables be simplified to one, meaning the genitive of 'khaleesi' would first be 'khaleesisi,' but due to the rule about reduplicated syllables, the form would be 'khaleesi' with word-final stress. I thought it'd be a pretty cool way to make the word unique. Unfortunately, I forgot about that rule before it was too late. Thus the genitive is now the regular 'khaleesisi,' which sounds atrocious to my ear. It didn't really cause a problem (easier for language learners) -- just a bummer."

HBO
Don't feel bad: Even the Mother Of Dragons took several montages to get the language down pat.

2

Constructing Languages Isn't Always Serious Business

HBO

On Game Of Thrones, the Dothraki are like a sexier Mongolian horde, while Valyria is more or less Atlantis with dragons. They are two proud and ancient cultures, and that's precisely what makes it so funny when you mess with them via language.

"The Dothraki word for 'eagle' is 'kolver,' which is based on Stephen Colbert's name," Peterson says. "If there is no connection between the world of the language and the real world, you can do things like have a word that looks (visually) like someone's name in the real world, as long as it's a licit form (i.e. phonologically, it's a pattern that works in the language)."

HBO
Fun fact: The Dothraki word for "I am currently choking on my own blood" sounds exactly like it does in English.

"Some [Dothraki] words are even based on my wife's name," he says. Her name is Erin, so we get "erin," "erinak," and "erinat," which mean: "kind," "kind one," and "to be good." Aww, that's actually really sweet, but then again, knowing the Dothraki, how often do you think they actually use those words?

Even the Dothraki word for "friend" ("okeo") is based on the name of the Petersons' family cat. This type of tribute appears in Dr. Frommer's Na'vi as well: "The word for 'happy' is nitram, which is my brother's name spelled backwards," he explains. "It happens to fit into Na'vi phonology just fine."

But conlangers can't abuse their power like the mad, mad gods they are. Because ...

1

Conlangers Don't Own The Rights To Their Languages

HBO

"How does one own a language, given that languages are alive only so far as people use them?" Dr. Frommer asks. "Are Klingon and Na'vi and Dothraki speakers using a language owned by someone else, or do they in fact own it by virtue of their being the ones who use it for real communication? I'll leave it to the lawyers to try to figure that one out."

There's also the fact that constructing languages is always classified as work for hire, but Peterson points out that even if that wasn't the case, they couldn't own the rights to their work. "A conlang can't be copyrighted, and neither can a vocabulary; otherwise one could publish a dictionary, copyright all the words, and sue everyone who uses that language for royalties -- even if the language is English. A specific definition can be copyrighted (the wording used to define a term), but not the word or its meaning in the abstract sense."

HBO
"My second is legalese."

Of course, conlangers would love to receive royalties for their work, but it'd require a complete overhaul of our copyright system. So, in the meantime, they have to settle for making our fiction more engaging while immortalizing their loved ones in languages that thousands of people learn every day. That's almost as good as money.

David J. Peterson is a language creator and author. You can find him on Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, and his website. Paul Frommer's blog on the Na'vi language is at naviteri.org. For elementary learning materials, see the fan-created site learnnavi.org. Contact Frommer at frommer@marshall.usc.edu. See also conlangingfilm.com for information on an upcoming feature-length documentary about constructed languages: Conlanging: The Art Of Crafting Tongues. Cezary Jan Strusiewicz is a Cracked columnist, interviewer, and editor. Contact him at c.j.strusiewicz@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter.

Have a story to share with Cracked? Email us here.

For more insider perspectives, check out 6 Bizarre Lies Hollywood Tells When They Base A Movie On You and 5 Things I Learned As A Child Star Of The Worst Movie Ever.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out Why Living In A Shakespeare Play Would Suck, and other videos you won't see on the site!

Also, follow us on Facebook, and we'll follow you everywhere.