What would Star Trek be if the Klingons didn't speak Klingon?

What would Game of Thrones be if Daenerys didn't speak Hyvalerian?

Those are invented languages, complete with syntax, grammar and vocabulary, commissioned

by Hollywood executives. But where do they come from? Who makes them up? And what happens

when people tear these languages out of movie land and into the real world? I'm David

Pogue, and this is Unsung Science, the stories behind amazing accomplishments in science and

tech.

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Few things are more devastating than a loved one that's gone missing. From Wondry,

the vanished is a podcast where host Marissa Jones tells stories of missing persons that have

gone overlooked. Listen to the vanished podcast wherever you get your podcast, or you can

listen add free by joining Wondry Plus in Apple Podcasts or the Wondry app.

Season 1 Episode 6. How fake movie languages become real.

I don't know what you did with your pandemic, but I checked off a bucket list item I'd been

putting off forever. I finally watched Game of Thrones. All 73 hours of it, including the final

season, which was everything people said it was. A dumpster fire. Nonsenseical, rushed and just

so dumb. Otherwise, Game of Thrones is pretty great. It's a sprawling fantasy epic set in a pseudo-medieval,

sorta kind of Europe. There are hundreds of characters. Most of them speak English with,

for some reason, British accents. You don't have to do this. You don't have to do anything.

I have to lots of the gods. Not when you're sitting in that chair. But because these are made-up

tribes from made-up lands, some of them speak made-up languages. For long stretches, with subtitles.

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