BBC: Inventing languages-1

Sam is speaking English, just a very modern type of English, for example, 'my bad', instead of 'my fault' as a way of accepting that she's wrong. 

Or adding 'not' at the end of a sentence to show I really mean the opposite of what I said. Both are examples of small changes in English which have happened naturally over the last decade or two. 

Changes like these happen because, unlike say, Latin, which no-one speaks day-to-day, English is a liviing language- a language people speak and use in their ordinary lives. 

New bits of English are invented as people use the language in new ways, but what happens when a language comes from an entirely different galaxy- somewhere like Qo'noS, home planet of the Klingons?

Yes, when sci-fi TV show, Star Trek, introduced alien characters called Elingons, the makers needed to invent a whole new language- Klingon. 

Entirely made-up and unrelated to any human language, Klingon has developed a life of its own. Today, you can even study it at university. So, Neil, my quiz question is this: in 2010, Klingon became the first invented language to do what? Is it: a) have its own dictonary

b) have an opera written  or c) be recognized as an official language by the United Nations. 

Hmm, every language needs vocabulary, so I'll say a) Klingon was the first invented language to have its own dictionary.

OK, Neil, I'll reaveal the answer later in the programme. Klingon isn't the only made-up language invented for the movies. David Peterson is the creator of Dothraki, a langage used in the fantasy TV show, Game oif Thrones. 

From his home in Los Angeles, David spoke ot Michae Rosen, presenter of BBC Radio 4 programme, Word of Mouth. They discussed Saint Hildegard who created the very first made-up language in the 12th century:

What she had was an entire list of nouns, a whole list of nouns- many of them godly, many of them not, and she would drop them into songs using Latin grammar and other Latin words, so it's not a language proper in the way that we understand it now, becaue really when we talk about a language it's not just the vocabulary, it's the grammar- neverthless we still kind of look onn her as the patron saint of modern colanging. 

Saint Hildegard invented new nowns but used Latin grammar, so David doen't think her invention is a proper language. Neverthless, Saint Hildegard is considered the patron saint of language. 

The patron saint of something refers to a Christian saint who is belived to give special help to a particular activity. Here, the activity is inventing a conlang, short of constructed language- artificially invented languages, like Klingon and Dothraki.