Dothraki

Dothraki is one of the languages in the Game of Thrones fantasy universe. Spoken by the Dothraki people, a nomadic horse warrior tribe living in the desert across the narrow sea, the language largely draws on Arabic and Spanish sounds. To expand the language for the series, linguist David Peterson took on the project, creating its grammar and a dictionary with 4,000 words. But how does he balance creative conlanging with the effort of training English-speaking actors to actually speak the language? 

For instance, Dothraki is an intonation language like English, meaning that pitch doesn’t affect the meaning of individual words, but is instead used as a conversational tool, for example, to signify a question with a rise in pitch at the end of sentences. This contrasts with languages like Mandarin or Cherokee, which are tonal languages where pitch changes the meaning of each word. Words in tonal languages can be very hard to pronounce correctly for actors who natively speak English, so David Peterson deliberately made Dothraki an intonation language. He also crafted Dothraki with a lot of attention to detail that might be unknown to most viewers. For example, he included loan words and borrowings from High Valyrian (another conlang created for the show) to name concepts the Dothraki people may not have their own words for, such as the Dothraki word timvir (book), which is borrowed from the High Valyrian tembyr. So, the meticulously and intelligently crafted Dothraki language is definitely worth learning before your next Game of Thrones marathon! Me nem nesa—it is known.

Klingon

Developed by linguist Marc Okrand for the Star Trek universe, Klingon is a language spoken by humanoid alien characters, the Klingons. This language is—arguably—the most famous conlang, and according to the Guinness Book of Records, it is actually the most spoken fictional language in the world. Klingon has been so popular with fan and linguistic communities that a Klingon Language Institute (KLI) was founded in 1992 by North American Star Trek fans. The KLI, still active today as a non-profit organization, offers Klingon language courses, linguistic research on Klingon, translations or original stories and regularly hosts Klingon events. 

The language itself is designed to be very dissimilar to English in order to pass as an alien language. So, although all of the sounds and grammar exist in natural human languages, the unusual combinations and pronunciations of sounds make Klingon truly unique, causing it to sound harsh, guttural, and forceful. The sentence pattern is also particularly intriguing, as the conlang follows an object-verb-subject pattern, unlike nearly all natural languages, including English, which use a subject-verb-object pattern. This makes Klingon a truly alienesque language that sounds quite strange to human ears. Additionally, what is special about Klingon is that it doesn’t only exist as a spoken language, but also includes a writing system with custom characters. This has enabled numerous Klingon translations, for example of Shakespeare's plays, and many other pieces of world literature.

Star Trek’s Klingon is regarded as one of the most researched and beloved conlangs—by fans and linguists alike. It truly amazes me how much heart has gone into creating and maintaining the language, even over thirty years after its creation. tlhIngan Hol Dajatlh'a'?—Do you speak Klingon?