Linguists Marc Okrand, who created the Klingon language for Star Trek, and Paul Frommer, who created Na’vi for Avatar, will speak at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 9. in the Special Events Center in the Student Union Building.
The event, titled “Linguists in Hollywood,” will feature an on-stage interview with Okrand and Frommer about how they came to work in the entertainment industry, their experiences in filmmaking and the process of creating languages for the silver screen.
Constructed languages like Klingon and Na’vi are fixtures in many popular pieces of media. They give life to fantastical worlds, but creating them requires a deep understanding of linguistics. Both Okrand and Frommer have doctoral degrees in the discipline.
“Creating a whole language is no small task. Language creators have to think about everything from the smallest unit to the largest, and consider how the world the speakers live in may affect these units, and the way that speakers interact” said Michal Temkin Martinez, professor and chair of the Department of Linguistics. “There is also a need to consider the speakers’ anatomy — What are the sounds that are possible to make in the language? What if the speakers don’t have noses, for example? Then there are sounds in human languages that they can’t make.”
Constructing languages, or conlanging, gives linguists a chance to deploy the full range of their knowledge and skills. “You can really get creative,” Temkin Martinez said. “What are the tenses? What if they have short-term memory and the past doesn’t matter to them? Or do they only live in the future or something like that?”
Attendees will be treated to a rare peek behind the curtain for both Hollywood and linguistics. This is an opportunity to hear from two exceptional linguists about their contributions to some of the most memorable pieces of media in our time.