Canadian linguist creates language for upcoming Hollywood flick
Posted Aug 23, 2018 04:24:16 PM.
Last Updated Aug 23, 2018 04:32:54 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A University of British Colombia professor has helped create an entirely new language for a new Hollywood movie.
Christine Schreyer, an associate professor of anthropology at UBC Okanagan, had to figure out what words sounded like 20,000 years ago when producers of the movie “Alpha” approached her to create a new language for the film, which is set during the Upper Paleolithic Period.
“I had to create a new language based on our understanding of how languages have evolved since that time period,” she explained. “I looked at proto-languages, which are estimates languages that go back in time for this time period, and picked pieces of those languages – the sound, some of the structures, a few of the words that were recorded as estimates, I used those.”
It’s not the first time Schreyer’s been picked to develop ways of speaking for Hollywood blockbusters. She helped develop the Kryptonian language for 2013’s “Man of Steel”, and she made up Eltarian, which is used in the 2017 Power Rangers movie.