Klingon And Elvish Represent The Power Of World-Building Fictional Languages
Star Trek and The Lord of the Rings are two franchises well-known for being fully fleshed-out entities. There is one element they both share that, compared to other media, makes their world-building exist on a whole new level of immersion. This would be the beautiful power of combining linguistics with creativity, the art of creating fictional languages, in this case, Star Trek’s Klingon and The Lord of the Rings’ Elvish.
The Art Of World-Building
Thorough world-building is often one of the most important storytelling elements when a form of media takes place in a fictional universe. It provides essential context to the environment the characters interact with, and without it, the story feels uninspired and unnatural. For a viewer or reader to feel fully immersed in whatever world the creator intends them to visit, the world must feel real, and the inclusion of fictional languages is a dominating facet of that effect.
Fully Realized Languages
This may seem confusing as many pieces of fiction and fantasy allude to characters speaking unearthly languages. However, Klingon and Elvish are not merely a series of throwaway phrases or words scattered here and there to convey “otherness.” They are fully-fledged stand-alone fictional languages composed of their own unique written symbols, grammatical structures, and dialects.
Tolkien Treated Language As A Foundation
Dedicated fans of the two franchises try to reach fluency in these fictional languages like a high schooler might in their AP French class. So much so that a notable chunk of the two fanbases can read and write in Elvish and even speak in Klingon with ease. Some go so far as to extensively record the components of each language, uploading them to the internet or even writing books so that future fans can start on the same journey.
In the case of The Lord of the Rings, author J.R.R. Tolkien saw the creation of Elvish as a key component of his world-building. As he famously once wrote, “The invention of languages is the foundation. The ‘stories’ were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse.”
Today, an international fan-made group called The Elvish Linguistic Fellowship devotes itself to the scholarly study of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fictional languages and has five different volumes centered around them published and currently available on Amazon.
Klingon Has Gone Beyond The Series
Klingon, a fictional language spoken by the species of the same name in Star Trek, has largely outgrown what has been represented in film and television. Linguist Marc Okrand is credited with creating the language. Hired on by Paramount Pictures, he sought to make Klingon as complicated as possible to make it seem believably “alien.”
A Record-Setting Language
Currently, an organization called the Klingon Language Institute has fully cataloged the language on its website, also hosting meetings to speak in person, and publishing books full of translations and original stories. According to Guinness World Records, it is the most widely spoken fictional language in the world.
For those curious about or interested in fully diving into either of these fictional languages, we recommend visiting the above sources to begin your journey. Though worlds apart in almost every aspect, The Lord of the Rings and Star Trek will forever be pillars in the community of epic world-building through fictional language.
