Sunday, May 1, 2016

     Now, if you are not an H.P. Lovecraft fan you title of this post might look like absolute gibberish, however, it is in fact, an actual language, albeit a constructed one. The strange and very much unpronounceable language called R'lyehian was created by the esteemed American, horror author H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft was well known for his very unique genre of Gothic horror, the eventual evolve into its own genre, Lovecraftian horror. Through his many works, Lovecraft often wrote many different stories that all belong within the fiction. So the R'lyehian language appears in many of his works, the most notable of which would be the short story, "The Call of Cthulhu". And yes, i'm spelling that correctly.

   You see, unlike many other constructed languages that exist, R'lyehian was not created for the intended use of human speech. In Lovecrafts stories, the R'lyehian language was spoken by ancient godlike monsters, who did not have traditional means of vocalization. In place of mouths and vocal chords these monster morally had an olfactory opening hidden by tentacles. As disgusting as this sounds, it brings to light a very interesting topic concerning constructed languages, and linguistics in general. What would a language sound like if it where spoken by creatures who had non traditional vocal arrangements? 

(Cathulhu, pronounced "Kathooloo" is an elder god within Lovecrafts fiction, and is an example of the type of creature that would speak R'lyehian.)


    While its easy to think of hundreds of different sounds we can make with our mouths to construct and language with, it becomes infinitely more complicated when we consider adding sounds that we cannot produce. This happens to be the case with R'lyehian. It is a language that no human could speak because we do not posses that physical anatomy to produce the sounds that a required to speak it. And reversely, any of Lovecrafts monsters, while possessing the ability to speak and comprehend language, would be unable to speak English, for they to lack the anatomy to produce the sounds it requires. 

(The Xenomorph from the movie "Alien" has very unique anatomy and is a prime example of non traditional alien vocal anatomy.)  


    As food for thought this is a very interesting topic. It brings to light a topic, those  of which who would seek to create languages should be aware of, as well as the idea of what it would be like for us to learn an alien language or vise versa. If in the vast expanse of the cosmos there is alien life and we where to meet it, there is a very slight chance we would be able to communicate through spoken language because of this reason, however unlikely this situation actually is. But within the context of constructed languages, it can be used as a powerful tool, to help one create a realistic and vibrant alien language.