The Atlantean language is a
constructed language
A constructed language (shortened to conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, orthography, and vocabulary, instead of having developed natural language, naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devise ...
created by
Marc Okrand
Marc Okrand (; born July 3, 1948) is an American linguist. His professional work is in Native American languages, and he is well known as the creator of the Klingon language in the ''Star Trek'' science fiction franchise.
Career
As a linguist, ...
specially for the
Walt Disney Feature Animation
Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS), sometimes shortened to Disney Animation, is an American animation studio that produces animated feature films and short films for the Walt Disney Company. The studio's current production logo features a s ...
film ''
Atlantis: The Lost Empire''. The language was intended by the script-writers to be a possible mother language, and Okrand crafted it to include a vast
Indo-European
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the northern Indian subcontinent, most of Europe, and the Iranian plateau with additional native branches found in regions such as Sri Lanka, the Maldives, parts of Central Asia (e. ...
word stock with its very own grammar, which is at times described as highly
agglutinative
In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes (word parts), each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglu ...
, inspired by
Sumerian and
North American Indigenous languages.
Creation

The Atlantean language (''Dig Adlantisag'') is a historically
constructed,
artistic language
An artistic language, or artlang, is a constructed language designed for aesthetic and phonetic pleasure. Constructed languages can be artistic to the extent that artists use it as a source of creativity in art, poetry, calligraphy or as a metapho ...
put together by Marc Okrand for Disney's 2001 film ''Atlantis: The Lost Empire'' and associated media.
["Production Notes." Atlantis-The Lost Empire. Ed. Tim Montgomery, 1996–2007. The Unofficial Disney Animation Archive. 13 January 2007]
Animationarchive.net
/ref> The Atlantean language is therefore based both on historic reconstructions as well as on the elaborate fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction that involves supernatural or Magic (supernatural), magical elements, often including Fictional universe, imaginary places and Legendary creature, creatures.
The genre's roots lie in oral traditions, ...
/science fiction
Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...
of the ''Atlantis: The Lost Empire'' mythos. The fictional principles upon which the Atlantean language was created are: Atlantean is the “Tower of Babel
The Tower of Babel is an origin myth and parable in the Book of Genesis (chapter 11) meant to explain the existence of different languages and cultures.
According to the story, a united human race speaking a single language migrates to Shin ...
language”, the “ root dialect” from which all languages descended; it has existed without change since sometime before 100,000 B.C., in the First or Second Age of Atlantis until the present.
To accomplish this, Okrand looked for common characteristics from various world languages and was also heavily inspired by the Proto-Indo-European language
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Eu ...
. His main source of words (roots
A root is the part of a plant, generally underground, that anchors the plant body, and absorbs and stores water and nutrients.
Root or roots may also refer to:
Art, entertainment, and media
* ''The Root'' (magazine), an online magazine focusin ...
and stems) for the language is Proto-Indo-European,[ but Okrand combines this with ]Biblical Hebrew
Biblical Hebrew ( or ), also called Classical Hebrew, is an archaic form of the Hebrew language, a language in the Canaanite languages, Canaanitic branch of the Semitic languages spoken by the Israelites in the area known as the Land of Isra ...
, later Indo-European languages such as Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
and Greek
Greek may refer to:
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
, and a variety of other known or reconstructed ancient languages.
Writing systems
Atlantean has its own script created expressly for the movie by John Emerson with the help of Marc Okrand, and inspired by ancient alphabetical scripts, most notably Semitic. There are, however, different kinds of transliteration
Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one script to another that involves swapping letters (thus '' trans-'' + '' liter-'') in predictable ways, such as Greek → and → the digraph , Cyrillic → , Armenian → or L ...
into the Roman script.
Atlantean Script
There is no punctuation or capitalization in the native Atlantean Writing System. Okrand based this on ancient writing systems. The Atlantean Script is normally in boustrophedon
Boustrophedon () is a style of writing in which alternate lines of writing are reversed, with letters also written in reverse, mirror-style. This is in contrast to modern European languages, where lines always begin on the same side, usually the l ...
, that is to say it is written left to right for the first line, right to left the second, and left to right again the third, to continue the pattern. This order was also suggested by Okrand, based on ancient writing systems, and it was accepted because, as he explained, "It's a back-and-forth movement, like water, so that worked."[Wloszczyna, Susan. “New movie trek for wordsmith.” USA Today Online. 24 May 2001. 12 Jan. 2007]
USA Today
/ref>
The Atlantean script includes more characters than are actually employed in the language itself. These letters being c, f, j, q, v, x, z, ch, or th, they were created so that Atlantean might be used as a simple cipher
In cryptography, a cipher (or cypher) is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption—a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is ''encipherment''. To encipher or encode i ...
code in the media and for promotional purposes. They are all also based on diverse ancient characters, just like the rest of the alphabet.[
]
Roman Script
Apart from the native Atlantean script created for the show, the language can be transcribed using the Roman script. There are two versions for doing so:
# Standard Transcription,[Anderson, Matt. “Parlez-vous Atlantean?” Movie Habit. 12 January 2006]
Moviehabit.com
/ref> how the language is transliterated by Marc Okrand himself.
# Reader's Script,[ a Berlitz-style notation devised by Okrand, which he hoped would make the Atlantean easier to read for the actors.
Example sentence, broken down:
The following is a table that shows the correspondences between the different modes of transcription and also provides the probable IPA values.][
]
Numerals
John Emerson, Marc Okrand, and the filmmakers also created numerals for 0–9. They are stacked horizontally, however, and hold place values of 1, 20, and 400. Their components are based on Mayan numerals and internally composed for the font (example above) like Roman numerals
Roman numerals are a numeral system that originated in ancient Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into the Late Middle Ages. Numbers are written with combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet, eac ...
. If used according to the now-offline Official Website's directions, they are used, alternatively, like Arabic numerals
The ten Arabic numerals (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9) are the most commonly used symbols for writing numbers. The term often also implies a positional notation number with a decimal base, in particular when contrasted with Roman numera ...
.[
]
Numeral suffixes
Ordinals are formed adding the suffix -''(d)lag'': ''sey'' 'three', ''seydlag'' 'third'. The ''d'' is omitted if the root ends with an obstruent
An obstruent ( ) is a speech sound such as , , or that is formed by ''obstructing'' airflow. Obstruents contrast with sonorants, which have no such obstruction and so resonate. All obstruents are consonants, but sonorants include vowels as well ...
or nasal consonant
In phonetics, a nasal, also called a nasal occlusive or nasal stop in contrast with an oral stop or nasalized consonant, is an occlusive consonant produced with a lowered velum, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The vast majo ...
: ''dut'' 'two', ''dutlag'' 'second'.[Ehrbar, Greg. Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Milwaukee: Dark Horse Comics: June 2001.] Fractions are formed with the suffix -''(d)lop'': ''kut'' 'four', ''kutlop'' 'quarter', ''sha'' 'five', ''shadlop'' 'fifth (part)'. And finally, distributives are formed with the suffix ''noh'': ''din'' 'one', ''dinnoh'' 'one at a time, one each'.
Phonology
Consonants
Vowels
Atlantean's phonetic inventory includes a vowel system with five phoneme
A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word fr ...
s. Most vowels have two prominent allophonic
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is one of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, the voiceless plosi ...
realizations, depending on whether it occurs in a stressed or unstressed syllable.
Vowels in stressed syllables tend to be tense, and likewise unstressed ones tend to be more lax. Thus, for example, is realized as or in stressed and unstressed syllables, respectively. Likewise, is realized as or , and so on. There are three diphthongs, namely ''ay, ey, oy''.
Aside from the stressed-syllable-based vowel system, the only other example of prominent phonological phenomenon seems to be a special kind of sandhi
Sandhi ( ; , ) is any of a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on nearby sounds or the grammatical function o ...
occurring in verbs, when the pronoun is combined with the aspect marker.
When the suffix for the first person singular -''ik'' combines with tenses that employ -i, -o (Past and Future tenses), it becomes -''mik''.
:bernot-o-ik → bernot-o-mik
But when combined with suffixes that feature -e (Present tenses), the same suffix becomes -''kik''.
:bernot-e-ik → bernot-e-kik
Grammar
Atlantean has a very strict subject–object–verb word order, with no deviations from this pattern attested. Adjectives and nouns in the genitive case follow the nouns they modify, adpositions appear only in the form of postpositions, and modal verbs follow the verbs that they modify and subsequently take all personal and aspectual suffixes. However, adverbs precede verbs. The language includes the use of an interrogative particle to form questions with no variation in word order.[
Some sentences appear to employ some kind of particles sometimes termed "sentence connectors". These particles are of obscure meaning but are theorized to relate two clauses in a logical yet idiomatic manner.][ The exact meaning and usage of these particles is not known, but without them sentences are difficult to reconcile with their translations.
In the example above there is no actual mention of the consequences for outsiders, yet the subtitle in the movie translates it as a warning even without any mention of living or dying. A possibility exists that, in order to match the lip movement of the characters in the movie and the time of the dialogue, the language had to be shortened, often leaving out key parts of the sentence. It is known that the Atlantean lines in the movie were ad-libbed afterwards.
In this example the sentences seem to be better connected, and the particle is rendered as almost "but, yet". It is difficult to reconcile the two, however.
]
Nouns
Atlantean has seven cases for nouns, five for pronouns and two for numbers
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The most basic examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...
.
Grammatical cases
Notes:
Other suffixes
Nouns are marked as plural with the suffix ''-en''. Case suffixes never precede the ''-en'' plural suffix. "-Mok" occurs after it.
Pronouns
There are five cases for pronouns.
Grammatical cases
Notes:
Verbs
Verbs are inflected with two suffixes, one for tense/aspect and the next for person/number.[
]
Tense/aspect suffixes
OBLG:obligatory mood
POSB:possible
Mood and Voice suffixes
In other media
Apart from its use in the ''Atlantis'' franchise, the Atlantean language is used in the video game '' Disney Dreamlight Valley'', mainly in the notes written in the diary of the valley's ruler (the player).
See also
* Languages in Star Wars - Another Disney property with constructed languages
Notes
References
*Cynthia, Benjamin. "Atlantis: The Lost Empire : Welcome to my World." New York: Random House: 2001.
*Ehrbar, Greg. "Atlantis: The Lost Empire." Milwaukee: Dark Horse Comics: June 2001.
*Hahn, Don; Wise, Kirk; Trousdale, Gary et al. "2-Disc Collector’s Edition: Atlantis: The Lost Empire."
*"Disney Adventures" magazine, Summer Issue 2001.
*Howard, James N. "Atlantis: The Lost Empire An Original Walt Disney Records Soundtrack" : Limited Taiwanese Edition. Taiwan and Hong Kong: Walt Disney Records: Represented by Avex: 2001.
*Kurtti, Jeff. "Atlantis Subterranean Tours: A Traveler’s Guide to the Lost City (Atlantis the Lost Empire)." New York: Disney Editions: 2001.
*Kurtti, Jeff. "The Journal of Milo Thatch." New York: Disney Editions: 2001.
*Murphy, Tab et al. "Atlantis, the Lost Empire : The Illustrated Script." New York : Disney Editions: 2001.
External links
Atlantean Language Institute (archive)
– Provides a dictionary, grammar guide, and corpus
Henning's 2001 Introduction to the Language
{{DEFAULTSORT:Atlantean Language
1996 introductions
Language
Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...
Constructed languages
Constructed languages introduced in the 1990s
Fictional Atlanteans
Fictional languages
Subject–object–verb languages