STAR WARS LINGUISTIC ORIGINS
Star Wars began as a film trilogy in 1977-1983, and was later expanded with a prequel trilogy in 1999-2005. In 1991, the universe was further expanded with Star Wars novels; Timothy Zahn authored the first novel, Heir to the Empire, which was published by George Lucas’ publishing department at Lucas Licensing. The addition of literary works to the existing film saga and screen plays had the potential to contradict Lucas’ original plot-lines; to combat this potential issue, Lucas added the novels to the Star Wars canon, which ensured that no material in the literary wing would contradict the original saga, and would tie in to “a continuous and unified history of the Star Wars galaxy” (Sue Rostoni, Lucas Licensing managing editor). [1]
Ms. Rostoni further explained the canon in the twenty-third issue of Star Wars Insider. She says that the “Gospel, or canon as we refer to it, includes the screenplays, the films, the radio dramas and the novelizations. These works spin out of George Lucas' original stories, the rest are written by other writers. However, between us, we've read everything, and much of it is taken into account in the overall continuity. The entire catalog of published works comprises a vast history—with many off-shoots, variations and tangents—like any other well-developed mythology.” [1]
With the expansion of the Star Wars universe came a number of complications. The original films contain dozens of imagined alien languages, most of which were only spoken for a handful of sentences. Complications arose from the sheer number of languages sampled in the films, combined with the limited screen time that each language received. Most of them are only briefly exhibited, and consequently were created with limited scope and depth. They did not originally include number systems, for example, unless the character speaking the language was required to count in the film. The languages were limited to an accent, a lexicon encompassing only the content of the script, and rudimentary typology limited to word-order (I.E. Subject-verb-object).
George Lucas gave the job of creating alien languages to his sound director, Ben Burtt. Typically, sounds are created in post-production; Lucas, however, elected to have the sound designed before filming began. Burtt spoke on the subject during an interview with MTV news, saying “George Lucas’ vision always included the development of sound prior to shooting, which is very unusual. One of the reasons was that you wanted to know something about the language before filming, so that the performers playing the [parts], and the director as well, would have some idea how to conduct the scene.” [2]
In 1975, Burtt was attending a Masters program at USC’s School of Cinema-Television, and was approached by film producer Gary Kurtz. He asked Burtt if he was interest in “recording and making some sounds for a science-fiction film they were going to do” (Bill Burtt, interview with Filmsound Magazine [3]). This film turned out to be Star Wars, which culminated into a lifetime of work for Ben Burtt.
In order to understand the genesis of Star Wars languages, it is first necessary to understand Burtt’s role as lead Sound Designer for George Lucas. There are many sound related jobs in film. Burtt himself explains the major sound positions here in an interview with FilmSound Magazine:
"In the production of a film there's really three jobs that relate to what you hear in the final soundtrack, three creative jobs which ultimately result in what you hear and one of them is the production recordist, which is a person who is recording during the actual filming of the movie, they'll have a microphone on the set, and they will gather dialogue and some sound effects if they are available during the actual shooting.
Secondly, you'll have a sound editor and this is a person back in a studio who generally has a collection of sound and is able to go out with a portable tape recorder or something like that. And bring them back and edit them and fit them into and add them onto the soundtrack of the film itself.
The third person is a sound mixer. This is a person whose job is to blend together all the different sounds that come in to make up the soundtrack such as music, dialogue, and sound effects. These types of positions have really existed since sound films first came into being in one term or another.
The term sound designer has gotten usage in the last decade really since the Star Wars films began a new interest in creative soundtracks in motion pictures. I called myself a sound designer because I wasn't really functioning as a production recordist, or a sound editor, or just a sound mixer. I did some of the job that all three of those people might do. But I was able to follow through from the point of production of a film. That is I can go out and advise and make suggestions about things that could be recorded once I'd seen the script of the film. I was on hand during some of the filming of the motion picture to gather sounds or at least see what was going on so i could run off myself and begin to manufacture and make sounds that I'd know we'd need later on. I was also on hand during the editing of the film to function as a sound editor, that job would be to pick out sounds out of a library of our own making and edit them and synchronize them with the action on the screen. And also I'd be involved with the sound mixing and it's not often that one person gets to move through all those different jobs on a film." [3]
The job itself was created and classified only three years prior to Burtt’s introduction to Lucas, which consequently left the position somewhat open to Burtt’s interpretation. In an interview with NPR, J.W. Rinzler (author of The Sounds of Star Wars) spoke of Burtt’s creative process, as well as Lucas’s influence on it. "[Lucas}… wanted his universe to sound real, kind of used — ordinary, you might say, very natural. So his suggestion was, 'Well, don't go to your synthesizers first and generate echoing electronic tones for me, but rather, go out into the real world with your tape recorder and record motors and animals and bring back familiar sounds, which we can modify into something otherworldly.'" [4]
This method of research eventually resulted in the alien languages of Star Wars. Burtt spoke in concordance with Rinzler regarding his methodology in a Film Sound Today interview, recalling his first discussion with George Lucas about the film: "…[H]e said - and I concurred with him - that he wanted an 'organic', as opposed to the electronic and artificial soundtrack. Since we were going to design a visual world that had rust and dents and dirt, we wanted a sound which had Squeaks and motors that may not be the smooth-sounding or quiet. Therefore we wanted to draw upon raw material from the real world: real motors, real squeaky door, real insects; this sort of thing. The basic thing in all films is to create something that sounds believable to everyone, because it's composed of familiar things that you can not quite recognize immediately" [3]
This process of crafting something utterly foreign, but using strictly familiar and accessible components to do so, is what led Burtt to the roots of his Star Wars languages. Just as he created the sound of a space ship by using a slowed down recording of a motel air conditioner, Burtt built his alien languages from the pieces of previously established languages from around the world.
Sources:
"Star Wars Canon." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 06 Dec. 2014. Web. 13 June 2014. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_canon>.
"'Return Of The Jedi' Turns 30: Secrets Of Ewok Language Revealed!"News. Web. 13 June 2014. <http://www.mtv.com/news/1708006/star-wars-return-jedi-ewok-language-secrets/>.
"Ben Burtt - Sound Designer of Star Wars." Ben Burtt - Sound Designer of Star Wars. Web. 13 June 2014. <http://filmsound.org/starwars/burtt-interview.htm>.
"'The Sounds Of Star Wars,' Now At Fans' Fingertips." NPR. NPR. Web. 13 June 2014. <http://www.npr.org/2010/12/12/131968222/-the-sounds-of-star-wars-now-at-fans-fingertips>.
Ms. Rostoni further explained the canon in the twenty-third issue of Star Wars Insider. She says that the “Gospel, or canon as we refer to it, includes the screenplays, the films, the radio dramas and the novelizations. These works spin out of George Lucas' original stories, the rest are written by other writers. However, between us, we've read everything, and much of it is taken into account in the overall continuity. The entire catalog of published works comprises a vast history—with many off-shoots, variations and tangents—like any other well-developed mythology.” [1]
With the expansion of the Star Wars universe came a number of complications. The original films contain dozens of imagined alien languages, most of which were only spoken for a handful of sentences. Complications arose from the sheer number of languages sampled in the films, combined with the limited screen time that each language received. Most of them are only briefly exhibited, and consequently were created with limited scope and depth. They did not originally include number systems, for example, unless the character speaking the language was required to count in the film. The languages were limited to an accent, a lexicon encompassing only the content of the script, and rudimentary typology limited to word-order (I.E. Subject-verb-object).
George Lucas gave the job of creating alien languages to his sound director, Ben Burtt. Typically, sounds are created in post-production; Lucas, however, elected to have the sound designed before filming began. Burtt spoke on the subject during an interview with MTV news, saying “George Lucas’ vision always included the development of sound prior to shooting, which is very unusual. One of the reasons was that you wanted to know something about the language before filming, so that the performers playing the [parts], and the director as well, would have some idea how to conduct the scene.” [2]
In 1975, Burtt was attending a Masters program at USC’s School of Cinema-Television, and was approached by film producer Gary Kurtz. He asked Burtt if he was interest in “recording and making some sounds for a science-fiction film they were going to do” (Bill Burtt, interview with Filmsound Magazine [3]). This film turned out to be Star Wars, which culminated into a lifetime of work for Ben Burtt.
In order to understand the genesis of Star Wars languages, it is first necessary to understand Burtt’s role as lead Sound Designer for George Lucas. There are many sound related jobs in film. Burtt himself explains the major sound positions here in an interview with FilmSound Magazine:
"In the production of a film there's really three jobs that relate to what you hear in the final soundtrack, three creative jobs which ultimately result in what you hear and one of them is the production recordist, which is a person who is recording during the actual filming of the movie, they'll have a microphone on the set, and they will gather dialogue and some sound effects if they are available during the actual shooting.
Secondly, you'll have a sound editor and this is a person back in a studio who generally has a collection of sound and is able to go out with a portable tape recorder or something like that. And bring them back and edit them and fit them into and add them onto the soundtrack of the film itself.
The third person is a sound mixer. This is a person whose job is to blend together all the different sounds that come in to make up the soundtrack such as music, dialogue, and sound effects. These types of positions have really existed since sound films first came into being in one term or another.
The term sound designer has gotten usage in the last decade really since the Star Wars films began a new interest in creative soundtracks in motion pictures. I called myself a sound designer because I wasn't really functioning as a production recordist, or a sound editor, or just a sound mixer. I did some of the job that all three of those people might do. But I was able to follow through from the point of production of a film. That is I can go out and advise and make suggestions about things that could be recorded once I'd seen the script of the film. I was on hand during some of the filming of the motion picture to gather sounds or at least see what was going on so i could run off myself and begin to manufacture and make sounds that I'd know we'd need later on. I was also on hand during the editing of the film to function as a sound editor, that job would be to pick out sounds out of a library of our own making and edit them and synchronize them with the action on the screen. And also I'd be involved with the sound mixing and it's not often that one person gets to move through all those different jobs on a film." [3]
The job itself was created and classified only three years prior to Burtt’s introduction to Lucas, which consequently left the position somewhat open to Burtt’s interpretation. In an interview with NPR, J.W. Rinzler (author of The Sounds of Star Wars) spoke of Burtt’s creative process, as well as Lucas’s influence on it. "[Lucas}… wanted his universe to sound real, kind of used — ordinary, you might say, very natural. So his suggestion was, 'Well, don't go to your synthesizers first and generate echoing electronic tones for me, but rather, go out into the real world with your tape recorder and record motors and animals and bring back familiar sounds, which we can modify into something otherworldly.'" [4]
This method of research eventually resulted in the alien languages of Star Wars. Burtt spoke in concordance with Rinzler regarding his methodology in a Film Sound Today interview, recalling his first discussion with George Lucas about the film: "…[H]e said - and I concurred with him - that he wanted an 'organic', as opposed to the electronic and artificial soundtrack. Since we were going to design a visual world that had rust and dents and dirt, we wanted a sound which had Squeaks and motors that may not be the smooth-sounding or quiet. Therefore we wanted to draw upon raw material from the real world: real motors, real squeaky door, real insects; this sort of thing. The basic thing in all films is to create something that sounds believable to everyone, because it's composed of familiar things that you can not quite recognize immediately" [3]
This process of crafting something utterly foreign, but using strictly familiar and accessible components to do so, is what led Burtt to the roots of his Star Wars languages. Just as he created the sound of a space ship by using a slowed down recording of a motel air conditioner, Burtt built his alien languages from the pieces of previously established languages from around the world.
Sources:
"Star Wars Canon." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 06 Dec. 2014. Web. 13 June 2014. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_canon>.
"'Return Of The Jedi' Turns 30: Secrets Of Ewok Language Revealed!"News. Web. 13 June 2014. <http://www.mtv.com/news/1708006/star-wars-return-jedi-ewok-language-secrets/>.
"Ben Burtt - Sound Designer of Star Wars." Ben Burtt - Sound Designer of Star Wars. Web. 13 June 2014. <http://filmsound.org/starwars/burtt-interview.htm>.
"'The Sounds Of Star Wars,' Now At Fans' Fingertips." NPR. NPR. Web. 13 June 2014. <http://www.npr.org/2010/12/12/131968222/-the-sounds-of-star-wars-now-at-fans-fingertips>.
LORD OF THE RINGS LINGUISTIC ORIGINS
Born in South Africa in January of 1892, John Ronald Ruel Tolkien (referred to hereafter as "J.R.R. Tolkien") is a celebrated author best known for his writings of Middle Earth, explored in The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion. While these texts are primarily responsible for Tolkien's notoriety, his true passion lay in the study of linguistics, specifically philology.
After the death of his father, Tolkien was raised by his mother. She was fluent in English, French, Latin, and German, and introduced a young J.R.R. to language by instructing him in the mastery of her four languages. [1] He is attested to have first discovered "modern historical philology" [2] in 1808 by reading "A Primer of the Gothic Language" by Joseph Wright. Within the book, Tolkien found the exploration of "the sounds and inflections of Gothic... [and] traces [of] their ultimate descent from Proto-Indo-European, the shared ancestor of the Germanic languages, of Welsh and the other Celtic languages, and of Greek and Latin, among many others." [2] After study of this book, a passion was stoked within J.R.R. that would remain lit to his dying day. He said that this book showed him "for the the first time the study of a language out of mere love, for the acute aesthetic pleasure derived from a language for its own sake, not only free from being useful but free from being the 'vehicle of a literature"[2]
Tolkien credits his most significant moment in the genesis of his career to "the discovery in Exeter College library, when I was supposed to be studying for Honour Mods, of a Finnish Grammar..." Within the library he found a book entitled, "A Finnish Gramar" by Eliot. Of his experience, Tolkien said that "it was like discovering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me; and I gave up the attempt to invent an 'unrecorded' Germanic language, and my 'own language' -- or series of invented languages -- became heavily Finnicized in phonetic pattern and structure". [1]
His 'own language' later evolved into "Quenya", an Elvish language that to this day remains the most fully developed in J.R.R.'s literary universe. The first book in his soon to be epic series, "The Hobbit", was published in 1937, to be closely followed by what became "The Lord of the Rings" series. Despite a prolific career as an author, Tolkien remained a linguist first, and an author second. To him, fiction was merely a vehicle for language, and not the other way around.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sources:
"National Geographic Lord of the Rings -- Languages & Culture." National Geographic Lord of the Rings -- Languages & Culture. Web. 12 June 2014. <http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngbeyond/rings/language.html>.
"Resources for Tolkienian Linguistics." Resources for Tolkienian Linguistics. Web. 13 June 2014. <http://www.elvish.org/resources.html#GreekAndLatin_anchor>.
After the death of his father, Tolkien was raised by his mother. She was fluent in English, French, Latin, and German, and introduced a young J.R.R. to language by instructing him in the mastery of her four languages. [1] He is attested to have first discovered "modern historical philology" [2] in 1808 by reading "A Primer of the Gothic Language" by Joseph Wright. Within the book, Tolkien found the exploration of "the sounds and inflections of Gothic... [and] traces [of] their ultimate descent from Proto-Indo-European, the shared ancestor of the Germanic languages, of Welsh and the other Celtic languages, and of Greek and Latin, among many others." [2] After study of this book, a passion was stoked within J.R.R. that would remain lit to his dying day. He said that this book showed him "for the the first time the study of a language out of mere love, for the acute aesthetic pleasure derived from a language for its own sake, not only free from being useful but free from being the 'vehicle of a literature"[2]
Tolkien credits his most significant moment in the genesis of his career to "the discovery in Exeter College library, when I was supposed to be studying for Honour Mods, of a Finnish Grammar..." Within the library he found a book entitled, "A Finnish Gramar" by Eliot. Of his experience, Tolkien said that "it was like discovering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me; and I gave up the attempt to invent an 'unrecorded' Germanic language, and my 'own language' -- or series of invented languages -- became heavily Finnicized in phonetic pattern and structure". [1]
His 'own language' later evolved into "Quenya", an Elvish language that to this day remains the most fully developed in J.R.R.'s literary universe. The first book in his soon to be epic series, "The Hobbit", was published in 1937, to be closely followed by what became "The Lord of the Rings" series. Despite a prolific career as an author, Tolkien remained a linguist first, and an author second. To him, fiction was merely a vehicle for language, and not the other way around.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Sources:
"National Geographic Lord of the Rings -- Languages & Culture." National Geographic Lord of the Rings -- Languages & Culture. Web. 12 June 2014. <http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngbeyond/rings/language.html>.
"Resources for Tolkienian Linguistics." Resources for Tolkienian Linguistics. Web. 13 June 2014. <http://www.elvish.org/resources.html#GreekAndLatin_anchor>.