The actor dressed as his character from the Star Trek television franchise spoke at the 18th annual Official Star Trek Convention at the Rio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas on July 31, 2019.
Groups of people use languages for centuries. Some have a different origin: They were invented from scratch. The international language Esperanto, the Klingon language from Star Trek and the Elvish tongues from The Lord of the Rings are examples of familiar examples.
The earliest recorded invented language was by a medieval nun named Hildegard von Bingen, and the Internet now allows much wider sharing of such languages among the small communities of people who speak and create them.
Christine Schreyer, a linguistic anthropologist at the University of British Columbia's Okanagan campus in Kelowna, Canada, has studied invented languages and the people who speak them. She has invented several languages for the movie industry, including the Kryptonian language for Man of Steel, the Eltarian language for Power Rangers, and the Atlantean language for Alpha.
The practical lessons that it provides for people trying to revitalizing natural languages were discussed by Schreyer in the interview with Knowable Magazine. The interview has been edited to make it clearer.
How did you end up studying a language like invented languages?
I teach a course on linguistic anthropology in which I give my students the task of creating new languages as they learn about the parts of languages. I started doing that around the time of the movie. The Na'vi language from that movie was very popular at the time and had made its way into many news stories about people learning the language quickly.
My other research focuses on language revitalization with indigenous or minority communities. It takes people a long time to learn a language. I wanted to know if the fan communities could help the communities learn languages faster. I wanted to know who the speakers of Na'vi were and how they were learning the language.
A linguist explains how invented languages show the characteristics of real languages in a five-minute video.
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And?
Many Na'vi speakers said they joined because they were fans of the film and stayed for the community. They are very welcoming and inclusive. It doesn't matter what race or gender you are, many of these fandoms are more male.
One of the things I saw in the Na'vi case was that people joined the fan community because of the environmental and indigenous rights of the film. The ideals of environmentalism are part of the language. Some of them were learning the language because of that.
What about other languages?
The ones that are learned most widely are the ones that are meant to be shared by people around the world to promote unity and world peace. It is easy to learn, and it is supposed to be a neutral language. Millions of people around the world have learned it. You can learn it on the internet.
The other fan languages include Na'vi, Dothraki, and Klingon. When I surveyed the 300 Na'vi speakers in 2011, they all considered themselves part of the community. The speakers of the Dothraki were not as large as they were at the time. There are about 20 advanced Klingon speakers in the world. It depends on the show's popularity. If another season of Star Trek: Discovery comes out, you will have more people learning.
We can see that with Na'vi. It was very popular early on, and there are still core members who are learning Na'vi. We will likely see an increase in speakers with the release of the sequel to Avatar.
