#thestelmer

I’m going to hold back on that because it basically didn’t even get used in fullest form in the show, it was just one sentence, and it was a fairly irregular one (i.e. insults can always be something on the grammatical fringes of the language). Since the Old Tongue is an important language in the universe and the giants’ language is a bastardization of the Old Tongue, I’m basically going to wait to see if there’s a time where I or someone else might actually create a full version of the Old Tongue. When that time comes, will see what if anything we want to keep from my giants’ version of Old Tongue Mag Nuk—and if there are drastic changes, then I’ll change the giants’ version.

And since you didn’t ask, the easiest one to pronounce is Övüsi. Interesting ask! Wonder if my answers will change years from now…

Most of the time when creating words, though, I just go with what comes to mind (for roots) so long as they’re phonotactically valid. If I feel like something’s a little too on the nose, I’ll assign the root to something totally different from what I was planning to mix it up (after all, if you just go with what you think sounds good, it’ll be biased towards your personal sense of phonaesthetics). Easter eggs are probably like 0.1% of any language’s vocabulary (except maybe Trigedasleng, but then it’s a part of the design).

Thanks for the ask!

No official word yet, but it’s looking like no, with that answer coming from the department. :( Don’t know for sure yet, though.

I haven’t ranked all the sentences I’ve ever translated for television shows and/or films—by difficult or any other metric. The translations that proved most challenging, though, are the song translations I did for Defiance, and the witch spell translations I did for Emerald City. Other than that the challenge was simply getting a translation done by the deadline that was set.

I did not, because this is not my project: I do what I’m hired to do. Thus far there hasn’t been a call for a new language. That may change should we see future seasons, but while I can make suggestions, it’s up to the producers and the show runner to decide what’s worthwhile (after all, new languages are new expenditures, just like new sets, new characters, etc.). Also, it’s very important to remember that neither the show runner nor the producers on a TV show are like the owner of a baseball team. The show runner decides what they want to do with a show. The producers figure out how much it will cost. The network says yea or nay (or, in this case, says “This is the budget. If you can make it work, fine, but this is the number”). Sometimes it’s not possible to do everything that a show runner wants to do—or even that a show runner thinks should absolutely be done—simply because there’s not enough money available for it. Everyone working on a TV show has to compromise. That’s the nature of the business.

Enjoy!