Alien Languages @ neuvel.net

Alien languages

Ewokese

Spoken on Endor by short fuzzy creatures.

According to the StarWars website, "Ewok language is liquid and expressive, and not that difficult to speak for other species. Actually, the Ewok language was created by altering and layering Tibetan, Mongolian, and Nepali languages. Sounddesigner Ben Burtt says: "I broke the sounds down phonetically, and red-edited them together to make composite words and sentences. I would always use a fair amount of the actual languages, combined with purely made-up words."

Ewok Sample 1

Ewok Sample 2

While Ewokese realy makes no sense, the Ewok celebration song, heard at the end of Return of the Jedi (it was replaced in the new version), has been translated into English and has given rise to this sorry attempt at an Ewok dictionary (see also the"hutties" dictionary (I'm assuming he means Huttese, as in the language spoken by the Hutt...)).

If you're ready to take that final step into geekdom, you can learn the lyrics to the Ewok Celebration song, affectionately called "yub nub", and sing along with Wicket and the others.

The Divine Language of the Fifth Element

Spoken by the most beautiful alien of all.

Big Badaboum! Ewoks may be fuzzy and cute but no alien looks as good as Milla Jovovich in The Fifth Element. Leloo (her full name is a lot longer. hear it.) speaks what is refered to as "the divine language". Here is an excerpt from the movie.

Melaloy-re takhtad asountimon de Mondoshawan Metalkcta ligurat! Isperobera khrasma, perod'jun dat dero fergi hamas'met tatroskit zhit handlha...Tsouk tsouk...
Topometimbackta selovoy! Itoumalena palela fer kiko hammas statoncro bom sonoy dot pan-adindoskal.. nealla dindo... djalla boom... bada boom. hear it.

A Dictionary of the Divine Language is available online. If you can get your hands on it, there is also a book by Luc Besson in which he talks more about the language. As for Milla, did you know she was also a singer? She released her first album, The Divine Comedy in 1984 when she was 18. (Listen to samples at Amazon) She has recently toured with a now defunct band Plastic has Memory. Learn more about Milla's music here, or visit www.millaJ.com for everything Milla. On a less vital note, my ex-cat was named Leeloo (she was lost in a custody battle), you can see a picture of her here.

tlhIngan Hol

The Klingon Language

Sadly enough, that's me on the left...

By far the most developped alien language in the galaxy. The Klingon language was created for Paramount by linguist Mark Okrand (apparently, you can still find his name in bibliographies on Sino-Tibetan). The most complete ressource on the Internet is The Klingon Language Institute, directed by Lawrence Schoen (PhD, linguist at a Pennsylvania college). There you can learn to read, write and speak Klingonaase and buy a copy of Klingon Hamlet while you're at it.

In the meantime, here's your first lesson in tlhIngan Hol:

nuqjatlh?

Huh?

nuqDaq 'oH puchpa''e'

Where is the bathroom?

Hab SoSlI' Quch!

Your mother has a smooth forehead!

You should try and find Teresa Lynn Wells M.A. thesis at Arizona State titles : "A Survey of the Artificial Language tlhIngan Hol: from creation to creativity" (It used to be online but I can't find it anymore) . Or browse through the course material (in German) for the Klingon course offered in 1994 at the University of Koblenz. (You have to like anything titled "The Semantics of Klingonaase")

Dune Chakobsa

Secret Language of the Fremen & Bene Gesserit

An example of Chakobsa is seen in the ancient funeral ritual of the Fremen in which "water"(blood) of a dead tribesman is magically blessed:

Ekkeri-akairi, fillissin-follas.
Kivi a-kavi, nakalas! Nakalas!
Ukair-an ... jan, jan, jan ...
(Dune, p. 315)

Read CHAKOBSA: A Dune® Language designed by Alan S. Kaye, Ph.D. and John Quijada. This article was originally published in the Cal State Fullerton Linguistics Newsletter, Fall-Winter 1991.

"Darmok"

Spoken by the Childern of Tama

"Darmok" is an episode from the fifth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation in which the Enterprise encounters an alien race, the Children of Tama, whose language has so far eluded human comprehension. These aliens express themselves in parabels and Captain Picard must learn to communicate with them in order to survive.

Excerpts from the episode.

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.

Rai and Jiri at Lungha. Rai of Lowani. Lowani under two moons. Jiri of Ubaya. Ubaya of crossed roads. At Lungha. Lungha, her sky gray.

Visit The Darmok Dictionary.

Romulan

Spoken on Romulus

The Romulan language is a "made-up" language (Of course it's made up, but it is fabricated even in the made-up world of Star-Trek). In this excerpt from The Romulan Way by Diane Duane and Peter Morwood. (©Pocket Books.), they explain:

A team of semanticists and poets [...] began building the Travelers' new language just after the ships' keels were flown. They did not, of course, try to divorce it completely from Vulcan, but they went back to the original Old High Vulcan roots and "aged" the words in another direction, as it were--producing a language as different from its ancient parent and the other "fullgrown" tongue as Basque is different from Spanish and their parent, Latin.[...] To Terran ears it frequently sounds like a combination of Latin and Welsh.
You can consult this Romulan Dictionary online, you can also get more details on the creation of the Romulan language by visiting the homepage of Diane Duane. You can even get the program they used to generate Romulan sentences in the novels.

Wookie

Spoken by a guy in a suit.
What else is there to say?

.

More Alien Languages

Visit The Alien Languages of Star-Trek.