Questão de Língua Inglesa

The complex linguistic universe of Game of Thrones 01. Game of Thrones has garnered 38 Emmy 02. awards for its portrayal of a world of sex, 03. violence and politics so real that some viewers 04. could imagine moving there. Part of that detail 05. has been the creation of the richest linguistic 06. universe since J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth. 07. In the field of language-creation for fictional 08. worlds, there is Tolkien, and there is everybody 09. else. But David Peterson, the language-smith 10. of Game of Thrones, comes a close second for 11. the amount of thought put into its two 12. languages, Dothraki and Valyrian. The interest 13. in these tongues is such that a textbook for 14. learning Dothraki has been published, while 15. Duolingo, a popular online language-learning 16. platform, now offers a course in High Valyrian. 17. Inspired by fictional languages such as those 18. in the Star Wars films and with a master’s 19. degree in linguistics, Peterson made Dothraki 20. and Valyrian as rich and realistic as possible. 21. Creating words is the easy part; anyone can 22. string together nonsense syllables. But 23. Peterson, like Tolkien, took the trouble to give 24. his words etymologies and cousins, so that 25. the word for “feud” is related to the words 26. “blood” and “fight”. To make the languages 27. pronounceable but clearly foreign, he put 28. non-English sounds in high-frequency words 29. (like khaleesi, or queen), put the stress in 30. typically non-English places, and had words 31. begin with combinations of sounds that are 32. impossible in English, like hr. 33. Armed with a knowledge of common linguistic 34. sound changes, he gives his languages the 35. kinds of irregularities and disorder that arise in 36. the real world: High Valyrian’s obar 37. (“curve”) becomes Astapori Valyrian’s uvor. 38. Words’ meanings—as in real life—drift, too, 39. giving the system more realistic messiness. 40. Languages also play a prominent role in the 41. storyline. Dothraki is the guttural language of 42. a horse-borne warrior nation, but high-born 43. Daenerys Targaryen does not look down on it; 44. methodically learning it is key to her rise. 45. Tyrion Lannister is left to administer the city 46. of Mereen despite his ropy command of 47. Valyrian, leading to some comic moments. 48. And a prophecy of a future hero acquires new 49. meaning when an interpreter explains that the 50. word in question is ambiguous in Valyrian—it 51. could be “prince” or “princess”. 52. It might seem odd that a highly sexist society 53. like the one of Game of Thrones would have 54. languages where sex roles were not clearly 55. marked, but languages are not always perfect 56. vehicles for a culture. Random change can 57. leave them with too many words for one 58. concept, and not enough for another. In this 59. way, the flawed nature of language reflects 60. the foibles of flawed humans and the 61. imperfect worlds they strive to create. Adaptado de: <https://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21725752-dothraki-and-valyrian-are-most-convincing-fictional-tongues-elvish>. Acesso em: 21 nov. 2017.

UFRGS – CV 2018 – ING