Translation: âWe speak Wenja here!â
Wenja?
Newswise — It isnât surprising that only a small, but growing, number of people recognize âWenjaâ as a language spoken in Ubisoftâs new Far Cry Primal video game. Of those, only two people speak Wenja as if it were their native tongue â the two who created it. But after a language immersion session this week, the University of Kentucky campus could harbor the single largest concentration of Wenja speakers in the world.
The two people intimately familiar with Wenja are University of Kentucky assistant professors of linguistics, Andrew and Brenna Byrd. They imagined and brought to life Wenja and other prehistoric-sounding languages for the new video game, Far Cry PrimalŠ by Ubisoft, released Feb. 23. People are talking because Far Cry Primal is a rarity in the gaming world. Its Stone Age world focuses on primitive survival -- violence, yes, but without guns, without cars.
Designing a realistic world, not just a game, was the goal of Far Cry Primal engineers. They wanted to create a world that could have conceivably existed in our dim past, 12,000 years ago to be exact. Ubisoftâs team consulted paleontologists, who helped the artists fill their imaginary world with the plants and animals that actually existed in 10,000 BCE. They populated their world with wooly mammoths and saber tooth tigers â and three tribes of interacting prehistoric Homo sapiens. But to interact, the humans had to communicate.
Unless they wanted the game restricted to grunts, communication obviously required some sort of language, but everything the designers tried sounded trite or just plain wrong, either too much like modern man or too much like science fiction. Thatâs when they discovered UK linguist Andrew Byrd and his research into ancient languages, including his online reading of fables in Proto-Indo-European, a language that hasnât been heard in 5,000 years or more. Then, they discovered Byrdâs wife Brenna was also a linguist, but one who focused more on teaching foreign languages. Ubisoft designers rejoiced. They had found what they needed, an expert to create an ancient-sounding language and a second expert to teach the Stone Age languages to the actors who would bring their Primal world to life.
Andrew and Brenna Byrd did not create Wenja as an imaginary alien language of grunts and snarls, as heard in countless television shows and movies. They created Wenja based on two lifetimes of researching ancient languages, including Proto-Indo-European (PIE).
âScholars have known for some time that a number of languages spoken in Europe and Asia derive from a common source, which was likely spoken in the Russian Steppes 6 to 8,000 years ago,â said Andrew Byrd, an assistant professor in English and linguistics.
But Andrew and Brenna Byrd needed something even older, a language spoken with a mammoth trumpeting in the background.
âWe had to âtranslateâ backwards in time. We needed to create a proto-PIE language, a language that may have been spoken about 7,000 years before PIE existed. Brenna and I used what we knew about PIE to imagine what an earlier version of that word may have been,â said Andrew Byrd.
âThe hardest, but probably most fun, part,â he said, âwas coming up with appropriate war cries, celebratory chants, curse words. More often than not, it was the (Far Cry Primal) actors who created these phrases like Nuha! or Hasa!.
Working together, the couple created a true â though imagined â ancient language of more than 40,000 words with established grammar, syntax and structure. Then, it was Brennaâs job to teach that language to the Far Cry Primal actors. She immersed them in the language immediately, encouraging them to live the language to breathe life into it again. And suddenly, it just was.
âThey began speaking to each other in Wenja off the set, in their spare time. Or bringing me the script and asking if that was what the character would really say. They werenât just memorizing the lines. They were speaking the language,â said Brenna Byrd. âThatâs when this hypothetical ancient language â just a jumble of sounds, really -- began to feel tangible, natural, a living language.â
Andrew pointed out two things that makes Far Cry Primal so important to even the academic world -- the first time PIE has been used since it was spoken thousands of year ago and the first time a video game has been created in a constructed, prehistoric language.
âBesides,â he said, âitâs just plain fun, more primal to scream as you attack an enemy âu mi-gwaru hadaâ instead of âeat my spearâ.â
UK students can enjoy a taste of that same experience. From 4 to 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 2, in White Hall Classroom Building, room 114, Andrew and Brenna Byrd will explain in more detail their incredible journey back in time with Far Cry Primal. Along with a few surprises here and there, there will be an abbreviated lesson in Wenja.
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