Dothraki
Firstly, I'm a huge fan of George R R Martin and I love his series: A Song of Ice and Fire. I remember thinking a long long time ago, wouldn't it be great if this were made into a series. And that's just what happened.
That's NOT what this thread is about.
It's about Dothraki. Or rather, the creation of a new language. Which isn't itself all that novel. However, the creators MAY attempt to build an unlearnable language (or, at least see if one may exist [note: is unlearnable a word?]).
For example:
Firstly, I'm a huge fan of George R R Martin and I love his series: A Song of Ice and Fire. I remember thinking a long long time ago, wouldn't it be great if this were made into a series. And that's just what happened.
That's NOT what this thread is about.
It's about Dothraki. Or rather, the creation of a new language. Which isn't itself all that novel. However, the creators MAY attempt to build an unlearnable language (or, at least see if one may exist [note: is unlearnable a word?]).
For example:
Action verbs. For action verbs in English and possibly all languages, the subject is the doer and the object the do-ee ("Mary broke/kicked/threw the vase"). Though again there are a few more complicated languages, prominent theorists posit this pattern is an innate part of our linguistic minds. However, others argue the dominance of this pattern is an historical accident and verbs where the doer is the object and the do-ee is the subject should be perfectly learnable. Numerous studies have shown that both adults and preschoolers find it very difficult to learn subject-do-ee verbs ("The vase shbroke Mary" = "Mary broke the vase"), but again these studies are short, so perhaps the participants simply didn't spend enough time learning and using the new verbs. Use this pattern for Dothraki—or, even better, have some verbs follow one pattern ("break") and other verbs the other (shbroke)—and we'll see how well students can do given more time.