Wahlgren’s own passion is rooted in an Italian cartoon series of the early ’70s. All silhouette, La Linea traces a man walking a pencilled line, meeting obstacles or animals en route, constantly mumbling his cranky grammelot, the conlang forged by Renaissance jesters, a non-verbal vocab made to engage a foreign audience.

Compare that simplicity with the Fremen commentary we hear in the Dune franchise, Frank Herbert’s cocktail of Arabic, Serbian and a spell book of Romani sorcery. While Wahlgren’s conlang census isn’t a page-turner, it turns your head to the human talent for building worlds via words, the verse behind a universe.

Just to learn, Avatar director James Cameron had selected te reo Maori to underpin Na’vi, only to need a conlang expert to extend the glossary. Linguist Paul Fromm stepped in, building syntax, idiom, plus a base-eight numbering system to honour the Na’vi’s four-fingered paws. Shazam! Or zazam at least, Na’vi for 4096.

Whichever your epic, from Smurfs to Sims, from Asterix to Arrival, from Star Wars to Star Trek, a conlang is often the key ingredient to make the make-believe believable.

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