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That in turn meant that producers of sci-fi movies and TV series knew where to turn when they wanted a now obligatory alien-sounding conlang built, and some conlangers—like David Peterson, the inventor of Game of Thrones’ Dothraki—have turned professional.

A few years ago, with Jenny Culbertson of the University of Edinburgh and others, he tested the choices that speakers of English and Thai made when asked to build sentences in a conlang called Nápíjò.

Using a conlang allowed the researchers to alter the word order they presented to study participants, while keeping the words the same, to see how they responded to that order—knowing that their responses had to be pure guesswork.

"You can't Google Translate a conlang that no-one else knows."

Some even create proto-languages as precursors to their conlang in an effort to help it seem more naturalistic.