History Main / IndoEuropeanAlienLanguage

** "Dovahzuul", the language of the [[OurDragonsAreDifferent Dragons]], is basically a relexification of English—except without tenses, since the dragons who speak it are [[DragonsAreDivine timeless beings]]; what look like tense-constructions are usually either aspect or voice. Its script was invented [[JustForPun from scratch]] — it's cuneiform-esque, based on scratches made with dragon-claws.

** While Klingon was initially created in the same way in ''The Motion Picture'', it was given a deliberate and elaborate non-English-like makeover when it was brought back in ''Film/StarTrekIIITheSearchForSpock''. Mark Okrand designed Klingon with features very uncommon in natural langauges (though he admits to unconsciously using some attributes found in many Native American and Southeast Asian languages). This, combined with the high number of harsh-sounding consonants, makes it challenging to learn.

Most alien (or non-human of any kind) languages in media are simplistic and based on the language of the creators of the media. Provided the languages have some form of grammar established, be it languages from fantasy creatures or aliens, they will always look more like English than even Welsh looks like English. It seems that even when aliens aren't [[AliensSpeakingEnglish speaking English]], they're speaking something like it. In the conlang community, these alien languages would be described as a [[ReLex "relexification"]] of English, or relex for short--many of these may count as [[{{Fictionary}} fictionaries]].

Some {{conlang}}s, however, go beyond that, and the author actually [[ShownTheirWork shows their work]] to some extent and creates a language with grammar that is different from that of English. Unfortunately, the result often still shows the [[UsefulNotes/GrammarInForeignLanguages typical features of Indo-European languages]]--similar inflection or conjugation patterns, similar use of copulae and auxiliary verbs, and so on.

As most writers [[ArtisticLicenseLinguistics are not linguists]], this trope crops up unsurprisingly often across fiction. Of course, you would have to be [[ShownTheirWork extremely dedicated]] to create an entire language not based on your own at all--and even if you did, only the particularly dedicated would try to learn it. Thus, it follows that most fictional languages look like English, particularly from the perspective of native speakers of Basque, Turkish or Hebrew, for instance. [[Administrivia/TropesAreTools Not that that's necessarily a bad thing though]].

Another issue is writing systems. On our own planet there are many forms of writing systems. Some are logographic (Chinese being the most famous), while others are essentially phonetic; of the phonetic ones, some are syllabaries (i.e. each symbol represents a syllable), others are abjads (each symbol represents a consonant, e.g. Arabic and Hebrew), others are abugidas (a cross between abjad and syllabary, e.g. Hindi and the Ethiopic scripts), and some are "true" alphabets (each symbol represents a phoneme, whether consonant or vowel, e.g. Greek and Latin). Some are even a combination of logographic and phonetic (Japanese,[[note]]A combination logography+syllabary[[/note]] ancient Egyptian[[note]]A combination logography+abjad[[/note]]). And there's more: some are made up of separate letters (Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Armenian,... ), some have connected letters (Hindi), a mix of the two (Arabic), or even fuse symbols together into composite glyphs representing entire words or phrases (Mayan, certain Hanzi-family characters) . Some are left to right, some are right to left (Phoenician, Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic,...), some alternate between left to right and right to left (some varieties of archaic Greek), some are top to bottom (the traditional orientation of both the Chinese and Mongol scripts[[note]]Chinese being a logography with characters running top-to-bottom and columns running right-to-left, while Mongol is a mostly-connected alphabet written in top-to-bottom columns arrayed left-to-right[[/note]]), bottom to top (ancient Berber), or even in pairs of columns read in a zig-zag (Maya, at least for monumental inscriptions). So when it comes to writing systems outside of our own planet, God knows what we should expect. However many aliens in fictional works use writing systems that correlate exactly to the 26 letters of the English alphabet except for the shape of the letters (some even have upper case and lower case).

* The [[http://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/world/index.php/Tainish Tainish]] language in ''Webcomic/{{Unsounded}}'' has many similarities to Japanese, especially the combination of a phonetic alphabet and pictograms (analogous to kana and kanji), the [[{{Keigo}} complicated politeness system that makes speakers seem overly formal to foreigners]], and regular conjugations (Japanese has very few irregular verbs). The only major divergences are that Tainish [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branching_%28linguistics%29 branches]] in the opposite direction, and that it appears to use a lot of compound consonants that don't exist in Japanese.

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** At times when the UniversalTranslator fails, all alien languages sound as if they obey English phonology, but their transliteration to the Latin Alphabet seems extremely implausible, using c and k interchangeably and the obligatory [[PunctuationShaker useless apostrophes]].

* In ''Literature/ArtemisFowl'', the fairy language, including its writing system, amounts to a direct cipher of English, despite the fact that it's out right stated that the (very different from English) ancient Egyptians derived their language from the fairy language.

Another issue is writing systems. On our own planet there are many forms of writing systems. Some are logographic (Chinese being the most famous), while others are essentially phonetic; of the phonetic ones, some are syllabaries (i.e. each symbol represents a syllable), others are abjads (each symbol represents a consonant, e.g. Arabic and Hebrew), others are abugidas (a cross between abjad and syllabary, e.g. Hindi and the Ethiopic scripts), and some are "true" alphabets (each symbol represents a phoneme, whether consonant or vowel, e.g. Greek and Latin). Some are even a combination of logographic and phonetic (Japanese,[[note]]A combination logography+syllabary[[/note]] ancient Egyptian[[note]]A combination logography+abjad[[/note]]). And there's more: some are made up of separate letters (Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Armenian,... ), some have connected letters (Hindi) or even a combination (Arabic), some are left to right, some are right to left (Phoenician, Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic,...), some alternate between left to right and right to left (some varieties of archaic Greek), some are top to bottom (the traditional orientation of both the Chinese and Mongol scripts[[note]]Chinese being a logography with characters running top-to-bottom and columns running right-to-left, while Mongol is a mostly-connected alphabet written in top-to-bottom columns arrayed left-to-right[[/note]]), bottom to top (ancient Berber), or even in pairs of columns read in a zig-zag (Maya, at least for monumental inscriptions). So when it comes to writing systems outside of our own planet, God knows what we should expect. However many aliens in fictional works use writing systems that correlate exactly to the 26 letters of the English alphabet except for the shape of the letters (some even have upper case and lower case).

* In the Franchise/StargateVerse, the Ancient language is literally this trope. It's a close ancestor of Latin. Since the Ancients are humanity's NeglectfulPrecursors, it makes sense that their language would be similar to what in RealLife is known as Proto-Indo-European.

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* ''VideoGame/FarCryPrimal'''s prehistoric {{conlang}}s are based on Proto-Indo-European.

* Even Creator/JRRTolkien fell into this despite his [[ShownTheirWork incredible dedication]] to his [[ConLang languages]] (he himself was a philologist). To be fair, unlike some of the other examples on this page, he had no intention of making his languages as alien as possible, and since Middle-earth was implied to be Europe in the distant past, hypothetical connections with real European languages would make sense.

Another issue is writing systems. On our own planet there are many forms of writing systems. Some are logographic (Chinese being the most famous), while others are essentially phonetic; of the phonetic ones, some are syllabaries (i.e. each symbol represents a syllable), others are abjads (each symbol represents a consonant, e.g. Arabic and Hebrew), others are abugidas (a cross between abjad and syllabary, e.g. Hindi and the Ethiopic scripts), and some are "true" alphabets (each symbol represents a phoneme, whether consonant or vowel, e.g. Greek and Latin). Some are even a combination of logographic and phonetic (Japanese,[[note]]A combination logography+syllabary[[/note]] ancient Egyptian[[note]]A combination logography+abjad[[/note]]). And there's more: some are made up of separate letters (Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Armenian,... ), some have connected letters (Hindi) or even a combination (Arabic), some are left to right, some are right to left (Phoenician, Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic,...), some are top to bottom (the traditional orientation of both the Chinese and Mongol scripts[[note]]Chinese being a logography with characters running top-to-bottom and columns running right-to-left, while Mongol is a mostly-connected alphabet written in top-to-bottom columns arrayed left-to-right[[/note]]), bottom to top (ancient Berber), or even in pairs of columns read in a zig-zag (Maya, at least for monumental inscriptions). So when it comes to writing systems outside of our own planet, God knows what we should expect. However many aliens in fictional works use writing systems that correlate exactly to the 26 letters of the English alphabet except for the shape of the letters (some even have upper case and lower case).