BBC Learnings · Section 4

Inventing languages

How are you today, Sam? Thanks for asking, Neil.

Level: B2 · 94 sentences

Transcript

  1. How are you today, Sam?
  2. Thanks for asking, Neil.
  3. I'm fine. Not.
  4. Sorry, so are you fine or not?
  5. Oh, did I confuse you?
  6. My bad. Ah, Sam is speaking English, just a very modern type of English,
  7. for example saying my bad instead of my fault as a way of accepting that she's wrong.
  8. Or adding not at the end of a sentence to show I really mean the opposite of what I said.
  9. Both are examples of small changes in English which have happened naturally over the last decade or two.
  10. Changes like these happen because unlike, say, Latin,
  11. which no one speaks day to day, English is a living language.
  12. a language people speak and use in their ordinary lives.
  13. New bits of English are invented as people use the language in new ways.
  14. But what happens when a language comes from an entirely different galaxy,
  15. somewhere like Kronos, home planet of the Klingons?
  16. Yes, when sci-fi TV show Star Trek introduced alien characters called Klingons,
  17. the makers needed to invent a whole new language, Klingon.
  18. entirely made up and unrelated to any human language,
  19. Klingon has developed a life of its own.
  20. Today, you can even study it at university.
  21. So, Neil, my quiz question is this.
  22. In 2010, Klingon became the first invented language to do what?
  23. Is it A, have its own dictionary?
  24. B, have an opera written?
  25. or c be recognised as an official language by the United Nations?
  26. Every language needs vocabulary,
  27. so I'll say a Klingon was the first invented language to have its own dictionary.
  28. OK, Neil, I'll reveal the answer later in the programme.
  29. Klingon isn't the only made-up language invented for the movies.
  30. David Peterson is the creator of Dothraki,
  31. a language used in the fantasy TV show Game of Thrones.
  32. From his home in Los Angeles, David spoke to Michael Rosen,
  33. presenter of BBC Radio 4 programme Word of Mouth.
  34. They discussed St Hildegard,
  35. who created the very first made-up language in the 12th century.
  36. What she had was an entire list of nouns,
  37. a whole list of nouns, many of them godly, many of them not.
  38. And she would drop them into songs using Latin grammar and other Latin words.
  39. And so it's not a language Proper is the way that we understand it now,
  40. because really when we talk about a language,
  41. it's not just the vocabulary, it's the grammar.
  42. Nevertheless, we still kind of look on her as the patron saint of modern conlang.
  43. Saint Hildegard invented new nouns but used Latin grammar,
  44. so David doesn't think her invention is a proper language.
  45. Nevertheless, Saint Hildegard is considered the patron saint of made-up languages.
  46. The patron saint of something refers to a Christian saint
  47. who is believed to give special help to a particular activity.
  48. Here the activity is inventing a conlang, short for constructed language,
  49. artificially invented languages like Klingon and Dothraki.
  50. Another famous constructed language, Esperanto,
  51. was invented in 1887 by Polish doctor Ludwik Zamenhof.
  52. He wanted to make it easier for people who spoke different languages to communicate with each other.
  53. Listen as David Peterson speaks Esperanto with Michael Rosen
  54. and tests how much he understands for BBC Radio 4 programme Word of Mouth.
  55. You are an English speaker from Western Europe and in the 19th century,
  56. universal meant able to be understood by people from Western Europe.
  57. And so, for example, to say I speak Esperanto, mi parolas Esperanton...
  58. Yes, I might have got that one.
  59. The pal bit from its Latin root and me, obviously.
  60. Try me again.
  61. Ciel vi fartas?
  62. Who is my father?
  63. No. Where am I travelling?
  64. No, I got stuck on that one.
  65. Like Spanish, Italian and other modern European languages,
  66. Esperanto is based on Latin.
  67. Michael guessed the meaning of the Esperanto word parolas from its Latin root,
  68. the origin or source of a language.
  69. But the second sentence of Esperanto isn't so easy.
  70. Michael gets stuck on that one.
  71. He can't answer because it's too difficult.
  72. I think I'd probably get stuck on that as well.
  73. But at least Esperanto was invented for humans,
  74. not alien creatures from outer space.
  75. And speaking of creatures from outer space,
  76. did I get the right answer to your quiz question, Sam?
  77. I asked Neil about an unusual first achieved by the made-up alien language Klingon.
  78. I guessed it was the first invented language to have its own dictionary.
  79. Which was the wrong answer, I'm afraid, Neil.
  80. Incredibly, the correct answer was B.
  81. In 2010, a company of Dutch musicians and singers performed the first ever Klingon opera.
  82. The story must have been hard to follow,
  83. but I'm sure the singing was out of this world.
  84. Magica! That's Klingon for great, apparently.
  85. OK, let's recap the vocabulary from our discussion.
  86. about invented languages, also called constructed languages or conlangs for short.
  87. A living language like English is a language that people still speak and use in their ordinary lives.
  88. The phrase my bad originated in the United States
  89. but is also used in Britain as an informal way to say my fault
  90. or to tell someone that you've made a mistake.
  91. patron saint is someone believed to give special help and protection to a particular activity.
  92. The root of a language means its original source.
  93. And finally, if you get stuck on something,
  94. you're unable to complete it because it's too difficult.