WingColors

Other than the whole theme around a utopian society that is met with many conflicts challenging it to create the basis for plot I'm not sure. I'm not THAT familar with all of them, but I'm pretty sure they all follow some sort of progression involving what a "perfect" society could be like.

Good answer, and pretty accurate actually, but not right.

I think the genre of most of the examples given invites that sort of story line really. That is to say, science fiction, or fantasy of some description. It's always save the world this, great danger that.

But nay, keep guessing.

This is tough, there's a lot of similarities between most of them, but I'm having trouble finding something that applies to them all. Classical Mythology Storytelling? Western Religious overtones? That's probably a lot more vague than what you're looking for.

They are all rather similar. But I'm struggling to think of any examples a little further outside the few central genres represented with the current titles.

The only other good examples I can think of would make the answer rather obvious, I suspect. I'll give them if no one gets it in the next few hours though.

I'll make it a little less vague. The answer is something that plays a pretty prominent part in all the novels/movies names (except Star Trek; there are many years of material there). A specific part; it's not something vague like utopian ideals or religious overtones.

Well, all the titles are pretty explicit in conveying what they're about.

Clockwork Orange: speaking of man as an automaton
1984: the era it takes place
Star Trek: Completely explicit, movie titles also fall in line with that.
Watership Down: the location/Setting
Lord of the Rings: explicit follows the ring and it's bearers
Dune: Location/Setting

Nope. Nice guess though. Think more about the movies themselves.

Is it that they all have a fabricated or "invented" language?

Clockwork Orange: Nadsat
1984: Newspeak
Star Trek: Klingon, etc.
Watership Down: Lapine
Lord Of The Rings: Elvish, etc.
Dune: Chakobsa, etc.

Do I win?

Yes it is! You may have the full 60 for naming all the languages, too.

Constructed language, is the term, FYI.

Also: Can anyone name any other novels, movies, TV shows, etc. that have characters using constructed languages? As I mentioned above, I'm doing a little research on the subject (just because it interests me) and I'm trying to find as many examples as I can. Novels, in particular, would be nice.

World of Warcraft has a basic constructed language for both Alliance and Horde factions. It's imprecise, several english words all translate to one orcish, etc... But there's some basic dictionaries out there that allow you to get the basic idea.

Always thought it was a clever idea to generate a language barrier in the game!

Huzzah!

Thanks for the full 60, Rich. In the future, I'll know to refer to them as constructed languages. ;)

BTW, Mark Okrand is a fascinating guy.

Conlangs are awesome. I first started fiddling with them in the early 90s, and have built a number over the years, just for fun. (I've always loved linguistics, so it's a fun exercise from the perspective of understanding what really makes language work.)

@JamesArcher:

I spent about 4 months as a high schooler trying to construct a language - even a rudimentary one. Most of that time was spent trying to build an alphabet and phoneme set.

But even after I got a "working" set of building blocks, trying to create a basic translation model and conjugation rules did me in. Of course, I'm no linguist, and my motivation was primarily to create a secret code language...not exactly high-brow.

I admire your success in building more than one over the years. Any of your work shareable?

Yeah, if you have anything you can share, I'd love to see it too.

Congratulations, cechols, well deserved points! :)

I'm not a Star-anything aficionado, but the video of Marc Okrand is fascinating.

The Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan (pretty huge / good fantasy series) has an alternate language called "Old Tounge". There's a lot of references available at this wiki-type thing: http://www.wotmud.org/directory/oldtongue.php

I got to this party too late but I had to figure it had something to do with language. :)

Thank you, LorriM.

I'm still surprised that I got to it in time. I was pretty sure somebody else (peroty?) was poised with the same answer, waiting to pounce. As I typed, I kept thinking, "Man...somebody's posting the answer RIGHT NOW! Type FASTER!"

I had no less than 5 typos in my original answer.

The lust for 60 points will do that to you. ;)

Good job on the answer. I was over thinking things.

I would have answered that they're all a special type of science fiction movie ( as opposed to "fantasy") that investigates something that we couldn't observe or experience in real life or in our world, but that we can truly imagine being advanced by popular culture. This frightens us to no end, thus making them more like science horror films than anything else.