History Main / IndoEuropeanAlienLanguage

** Mando'a, the Mandalorian Language, gets a lot of flak for being pretty much a re-lex of English. Most of the criticism is deserved,[[note]]It's got the exact same phonemes (except for the voiced and unvoiced Th's, Z, and the sound in "vi'''s'''ion") and the same rules for where they can occur (no "ng" initially, for instance); its whole structure is "analytic with a few fusional elements", just like English, e.g. it lacks cases and mostly just inflects verbs for tense (like English); and even the particular details are similar, like how its adjectival suffixes are "-yc" and "-la", which are respectively the MyNaymeIs version of "-ic" and "-al" backwards.[[/note]] but the vehemence—the same can be said of almost every fictional language in almost every franchise's Expanded Universe—is probably part of the backlash against Creator/KarenTraviss and her WriterOnBoard treatment of the Mandalorians.

* ''TabletopGame/WarhammerFantasy'':

** Bretonnian is a mixture of English and French. The Common dialect is inspired by Old English while the High dialect is Norman French since it is the language of the nobility much like how the aristocracy of Norman and Plantagenet England spoke French while the common folk spoke English until 1399.

** Bretonnian is a mixture of English and French. The Common dialect is inspired by Old English while the High dialect is Norman French since it is the language of the nobility much like how the aristocracy of Plantagenet England spoke French while the common folk spoke English until 1399.

** Bretonnian is a mixture of English and French. The Common dialect is inspired by Old English while the High dialect is Norman French since it is the language of the nobility similar much like how the aristocracy of Plantagenet England spoke French while the common folk spoke English.

** Reikspiel is based on the German language which makes sense since the Empire of Man is the ''Warhammer'' equivalent of the UsefulNotes/HolyRomanEmpire.

** Reikspiel is based on the German language which makes sense since the Empire of Man is the ''Warhammer'' equivalent of the Holy Roman Empire.

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 (Mayan). 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).

Another issue is writing systems. On our own planet there are many forms of writing systems: 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 columns of some are not even alphabets, but are logograms (Chinese) or even a combination of logographic and phonetic (Japanese, ancient Egyptian). 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).

Another issue is alphabets. On our own planet there are many forms of writing systems: 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 (East Asian languages), bottom to top (ancient Berber), some are not even alphabets, but are logograms (Chinese) or even a combination of logographic and phonetic (Japanese). 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).

---> ''"So interreta Kvako (retletera kaj verjheauw) ahkstas unufsonke alternativaj kanasouw por distribui so enhavon so papera Kva! Kvak!"''

*** Jel, the language of the [[LizardFolk Argonians]]. Unlike the other languages of Men and [[OurElvesAreBetter Mer]], it does not descend from Ehlnofex (the language of the [[{{Precursors}} Ehlnofey]]), but rather comes from the [[WiseTree Hist]]. It is unique in that it has no past tense or future tense verbs, only present tense. As such, Argonians tend to [[LanguageEqualsThought live "in the now"]], easily [[EasilyForgiven forgetting and forgiving]] past offenses while paying little mind to the future. (The possibly {{Omniscient}} Hist seem to do that for them, as seen with them foretelling and preparing the Argonians for the [[LegionsOfHell Oblivion Crisis]] and turmoils of the 4th Era.)

* Even Creator/JRRTolkien fell into this despite his [[ShownTheirWork incredible dedication]] to his [[ConLang languages]] (he himself was a philologist).

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. [[TropesAreTools Not that that's necessarily a bad thing though]].

** The languages of the series' {{Beast|Man}}Races tend to sound quite alien and may have some unusual rules, but are actually not all that far off from an Indo-European language. To note:

** The languages of the series' {{Beast |Man}}Races tend to sound quite alien and may have some unusual rules, but are actually not all that far off from an Indo-European language. To note:

* This was a criticism made of the "Martian" language of the "messages" produced by 19th-century medium Hélène Smith via automatic writing -- it bore a considerable resemblance to her native language, French.
* The "Enochian" language which the literal & proverbial renaissance man John Dee and his scryer Edward kelly allegedly received from angels in 1580s Prague and Poland is written in an alphabet which is essentially a substitution for the 16th century Latin alphabet, and the consonant combinations have much of the same values as they do in English. The language itself has a similar phonological inventory to English, though the way they are used in a word are often downright unpronounceable for an untrained English-speaker. Word-formation may possibly revolve around a vague and more unsystematic echo of Hebrew triconsonantal roots, while the syntax is largely that of English.

** According to Wookieepedia, the language of High Galactic was the original language of the Republic and Jedi Order before Basic. Some of the words, like "fi" for son, or "pera" for father, suggest that it is a Latin/Romance language expy. Which makes sense, since the Republic lives and breaths the SpaceRomans trope.

** The languages of the series' [[PettingZooPeople Beast Races]] tend to sound quite alien and may have some unusual rules, but are actually not all that far off from an Indo-European language. To note:

* The ''Series/TwilightZone'' episode "To Serve Man" runs into this a bit, first because the Kanamit alphabet has uppercase and lowercase letters (other languages have multiple variants—e.g. Japanese hiragana and katakana—but use them differently; hiragana is for normal writing and katakana is basically italics, used for writing foreign words), and second because most languages [[spoiler:don't have an idiom where "serve" means "[[ImAHumanitarian prepare as a dish]]"]].

As most writers [[YouFailLinguisticsForever 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. [[TropesAreTools Not that that's necessarily a bad thing though]].

* The "Enochian" language which the literal & proverbial renaissance man John Dee and his scryer Edward kelly allegedly received from angels in 1580s Prague and Poland is written in an alphabet which is essentially a substitution for the 16th century Latin alphabet, and the consonant combinations have much of the same values as they do in English. The language itself has a similar phonological inventory to English, though the way they are used in a word are often downright unpronounceable for an untrained English-speaker. Word-formation may possibly revolve around a vague and more unsystematic echo of Hebrew triconsonantal roots, while the syntax is largely that of english.

* In the WebVideo/{{Numberphile}} video "58 and Other Confusing Numbers", linguist Tom Scott discusses a closely related trend. He points out that fictional languages, even those that otherwise try to avert this trope, tend to use decimal numbers and have number naming conventions more similar to English than even other European languages have.

** 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 the Franchise/StargateVerse, the Ancient language is literally this trope. It's a close ancestor of Latin. Which means that somehow (time travel?) it must be descended from Proto-Indo-European.

* The Dragon language in ''VideoGame/TheElderScrolls'' is basically a relexification of English—except without tenses, since the dragons who speak it are 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. The [[OurDemonsAreDifferent daedric]] language is simply English spelled with a unique script.