The Fascinating Art of Hollywood’s Made-Up Languages, From Dothraki to Klingon

If you ever want to find a bathroom on Vulcan or ask for dressage lessons in Essos, you’ll need to learn a constructed language first. "Conlangs", as they're known, are common in genre movies and literature, and through them, a viewer or reader can better appreciate what it would be like to approach an Arwen Evenstar lookalike at a bar or figure out whether Groot told you to turn right or left at the exploding flagship. But how, exactly, does one do that? Well, learning fictional tongues doesn't come easy, but as with any language, it's important to master the basics first.

Luckily, dialect coach Erik Singer is here to help you distinguish a voiceless alveolar lateral fricative from a uvular plosive. In the video above, he explains the Earthly inspirations behind six of the most popular conlangs: Parseltongue (Harry Potter), Dothraki and High Valyrian (Game of Thrones), Klingon (Star Trek), Na’vi (Avatar), and Sindarin (Lord of the Rings). You may know about Klingon’s unusual object-verb-subject word order, but did you know that High Valyrian has the same tapped and trilled R sounds as Spanish? Or exactly what Na'vi has in common with beat-boxing?

And if you’re already fluent in those six conlangs, Singer has some linguistic analysis of lesser-known languages, too: Ewokese from Star Wars: Episode VI—Return of the Jedi, the heptapod language in Arrival, even the unforgettable eerie squeaks of Furby. Go ahead, try that pharyngeal fricative yourself—but maybe practice with some tongue twisters first.