From Klingon to Dothraki: How sci-fi languages shape worlds

Twenty Thousand Hertz

Dallas Taylor

Design, Music, Music Commentary, Arts

4.9 • 4.5K Ratings

🗓️ 2 December 2020

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sci-fi and fantasy creators often use constructed languages (or conlangs) to help us believe that the characters come from ancient times or distant galaxies. But what happens when a fictional language jumps off the screen and into the real world? This story comes from the Imaginary Worlds podcast. Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced by Defacto Sound. Subscribe on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to see our video series. If you know what this week's mystery sound is, tell us at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠mystery.20k.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Support the show and get ad-free episodes at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠20k.org/plus⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Follow Dallas on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠Facebook⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Join our community on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Reddit⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Discover more at lexus.com/curiosity. Subscribe to Imaginary Worlds wherever you get your podcasts. Episode transcript, music, and credits can be found here: https://www.20k.org/episodes/conlang Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:05.7	because when it comes to health, knowledge is power.
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0:20.0	That's Z-O-C-D-O-C.com slash H-E-R-T-Z.
0:24.3	Zocdoc.com slash Hertz.
0:29.9	You're listening to 20,000 Hertz.
0:36.5	I just so happen to be a huge science fiction fan.
0:40.3	I love sci-fi books, sci-fi movies, sci-fi TV shows.
0:44.2	I love it all.
0:45.3	And the reason I love it so much is because it lets you experience a reality that's so different from our own.
0:51.8	These writers and filmmakers create entire universes from scratch.
0:56.0	And something that I've always found really fascinating is how they deal with language.
1:01.0	When you're writing about characters in another galaxy or in the distant future,
1:05.0	it doesn't make sense for everyone to speak an existing human language,
1:09.0	especially if they're not even human. Think about all the alien
1:13.3	sounds you hear in Star Wars. Now, the alien vocalizations in Star Wars aren't fully developed languages.
1:34.3	Still, they do an amazing job of conveying emotion.
1:38.3	But sometimes, creators take things a step further and build an actual, fully constructed language,
1:45.6	complete with grammatical rules, sentence structure,
1:48.1	and carefully considered translations for every sound the characters make.
1:56.6	This story comes from imaginary worlds.
	...

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