Whether you talk to your friends in code or are Dwight Shrute speaking Dothraki, we have all used a made-up language at some point in our lives. In this article, we are going to explore the history behind these languages and their applications in the modern day. However, first off: What is an invented language? These languages are popularly referred to as “conlangs” or constructed languages. A few requirements have been agreed upon by linguistic fanatics, laid out in a book called The Language of Construction by Mark Rosenfelder. This piece says that there are five elements needed for a language: phonetics, morphology, orthography, syntax, and semantics. Essentially, these are what make a language a language! 

Making up languages for fun was a beloved pastime of author J.R.R. Tolkien. Even before he began to write his world-famous trilogy The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien was creating beautiful linguistic masterpieces. He described his Middle Earth as simply a world for his languages to “live in.” Tolkien created eight distinct Elvish languages, with two examples being Quenya and Sindarin. These languages take heavy influence from the Finnish language, as well as the Germanic languages, which are evident when listening to the conlangs. Tolkien also created writing systems, Tengwar and Cirth, for Middle Earth. 

In addition to the languages of Middle Earth, other pieces of literature, movies, TV shows, and the entertainment industry as a whole have created languages. For example, in Game of Thrones, Dothraki was spoken. One of the most famous speakers of this was Dwight from The Office! In fact, Dwight even influenced some of the grammar that is now used in Dothraki. Dothraki was created by language enthusiast David Peterson, who was later hired to ensure The Office was using correct grammar. Dothraki took influence from Russian, Swahili, Estonian, Turkish, and Inuktitut. When listening to the language, it sounds very aggressive and warlike, which was the intention!

On the other hand, there are some individuals who create languages for more practical purposes. Ludwik L. Zamenhof, a Jewish ophthalmologist living in the late 1800s, created the language of Esperanto, one of the only conlangs to go on to become a world language. The language was meant to act as a lingua franca, a back-up for people if they had different native tongues. In the beginning, Esperanto was viewed in a negative manner—Stalin thought of it as dangerous, and Americans viewed it as an “aggressor” language. Now, however, Esperanto has over two million speakers, with roughly 2,000 of these speakers growing up around this language. Esperanto has no irregular words, all the letters have only one pronunciation, and many of its words are extremely similar to modern day languages such as Spanish and English. Esperanto is the language many wish English was!

Despite some of these languages not catching on or catching up to modern day pop culture, they show the power language has to connect people. Language, although a barrier at times, has the ability to transcend groups of people and bring them together in a show of shared humanity. 

Information retrieved from Storied, Boise State University, The Guardian, PoliLingua, Esperanto.net, and, The Week.