M'ath, Hash Yer Dothrae Chek? Wellesley Course Teaches Dothraki, Na'vi

WELLESLEY, MA - A class at Wellesley College breaks down languages to instill the art of linguistics in students - sounds like a typical language course, right?

Wrong.

This course doesn't examine Latin, Spanish or Italian; instead it deconstructs Elvish, Dothraki and Na'vi.

Invented Languages: From Wilkins' Real Character to Avatar's Na'vi teaches students how to build a language from the ground up based on fictional speech.

"Our own research is in artificial languages, so we can make up miniature artificial languages to teach people different systems to learn them," Dr. Angela Carpenter told Patch.

Carpenter, an associate professor in the college's Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences program, started teaching the class in 2010, right after the sci-fi blockbuster "Avatar" was released.

"That caught students' attention," Carpenter said. "At the time invented languages were not at the forefront of media."

Over the course of the class, Carpenter asks students to create their own languages from scratch. Each unit covers a different component of human communication, from the culture of their language to its grammar.

The semester culminates in a number of rigorous assignments, reflective of the requirements the course fulfills as a capstone.

Students must teach part of their languages to the class and write a research paper and work of fiction in their dialects. Each student must then record the story in her language to give the rest of the class an idea of how it sounds.

While the course load is heavy, it gives students the chance to flex their imaginations. Carpenter said some incredibly inventive languages have come out of the class, including one for animals in Narnia when they aren't communicating with humans, and another that was sung instead of spoken.

"It’s a terrific course mainly because the students are so creative," Carpenter said. "At first they don't think they can do it, but in the end it's really all quite brilliant."

Photo Credit: Angela Carpenter, Ph.D