Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2017 November 4

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November 4

Creating fictional languages in the entertainment industry

In books and movies, there are a myriad of fictional languages. How do authors and film crews make up languages? Do they ever to consider the actors’ native language? I mean, what if the film crew is located in an area with a lot of Hindi speakers, and when they speak English, most of them pronounce with an Indian accent with British terminology, while the fictional language includes a clicking sound, a r-colored vowel, and some guttural sounds? 50.4.236.254 (talk) 14:07, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure it happens as often as you seem to think. For just a few words in an ordinary movie, probably the main thing is actor ad-libbing, or something from a real language (like the fragments of broken Russian in the Borat movie). Alien languages in science-fiction movies often rely on sound effects. Only a few movies develop something remotely approaching a real consistent constructed language, and most of them are cinematic adaptations of established literary properties (Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones etc.) -- with a few exceptions such as Avatar and the Klingon in Star Trek. It's a safe bet that if the responsible person doesn't know about clicks, then there won't be clicks in the movie language... AnonMoos (talk) 14:37, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

As per Anon, constructed languages are used fairly infrequently. The obvious reason: Nobody understands it, anyway. Of course, a linguist composing a novel may want to add some academic private enjoyment (Tolkien), a team of script writers for a space opera of cult status can invest time in pleasing the Klingon groupies and the producers of the Simpsons will have accrued sufficient capital to pay for the odd maths joke. See our article on List of constructed languages for references. --Cookatoo.ergo.ZooM (talk) 16:30, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

For Game of Thrones specifically, see David J. Peterson. I thought he was a Wikipedian and we could ask him directly, but maybe not...anyway, George R.R. Martin made up some words and phrases in different languages in the books, and Peterson expanded on that to create languages for the TV series. For Klingon, the language created by Marc Okrand is usually used in Star Trek, but not always, depending on the whims of the producers. Adam Bishop (talk) 02:35, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

• Just watch this. When I showed it to my Nephew, he couldn't wait to learn it in high school. Klingon Hamlet taH pagh taHbe' (To be or not to be) μηδείς (talk) 02:34, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

German wievielte

Hello, how would you translate the following question (as faithful as possible please): "Der wievielte US-Präsident ist Donald Trump?"--Bloro (talk) 16:45, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

"What number president is Donald Trump?" other variations, like "Donald Trump is which number president?" might sound more natural, but the firt translation is as close to literal word-for-word as you can get and still be idiomatically acceptable in English. μηδείς (talk) 17:16, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

And for the 'feel' of what it means, think "Which-th". הסרפד (call me Hasirpad) 01:08, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Literally, howmanyeth? μηδείς (talk) 02:33, 6 November 2017 (UTC)