One of the most interesting elements of almost any fantasy work is its language. While it is true that many video games and books use real languages or do not give importance to the language, many others do. A good example of this is The Simlish of the Sims, a language that Will Wright, the original designer, created for his life simulator.
From the beginning, Will Wright was very clear that he wanted his game to have its own language. This is why he began studying various ideas, such as using musical instruments. He gathered his team: Claire Curtin, voice director, Robi Kauker, audio director, Kent Jolly, sound designer, and Jerry Martin, composer. However, their first experiment failed. They did not like the final result, so they continued to consider other possibilities, one of them being to mix different languages.
The confusion about the origin of the Simlish was born at this point, since the legend has a real part. At the moment, legend tells that Simlish is the result of joining several languages in one. However, the reality is very different, although it has its real part. One day they invited Stephen Kearin, an improvisation actor who lived in San Francisco. For this test, the team gave him several documents with phrases formed by two languages: Ukrainian and Navajo. They were not the only ones they experienced.
Michael Adams, in his book from Elvish to Klingon: Exploring Invented Languages (Oxford University Press, 2011), explored the Simlish background. According to Maxis, Maxis also worked with Tagalo and Estonio, as well as other languages. However, their experiments did not go well. Besides having many difficulties when finding dubbing actors capable of properly pronouncing the texts they had created, they failed to really feel unique.
They tested a Pidgin version of the Suajili and the Cherokee, but there was no way. At that time, the atmosphere was not good, since they failed to find the key. Who knows if to lower the tension, Kearin made a suggestion: he asked if he could try the Foreign Poet game. He was part of one of his numbers and mechanics was simple: he recited a classic poem passionately, but with a totally incomprehensible gallimatism. Then the public had to try to guess which poem was.
The team’s dynamics changed when Claire Curtin, “by pure joke,” decided to accept Kearin’s suggestion, because she thought nothing could go worse. Luckily, that joke became just what they were looking for. Kearin began to recite any poem with a very exaggerated and practically intelligible English accent. As Kearin related years later, after the first shot they repeated the process again and again. The study atmosphere began to change to the point where Wright, project director, asked Stephen if he had a female counterpart.
The actor called Gerri Lawlor, a friend and collaborator with whom he had already worked and who had several years of improvisation experience. And so the Simlish was born: with Kearin and Gerri they began to record long sessions of meaningless gallimatisms. They spoke with each other with invented and meaningless words; it is said that they recorded between 3,000 and 4,000 voice events. For 2004, with the Sims 2, there were already 50,000 lines of dialogue thanks to their team of 11 people.
Little by little, the Simlish evolved, and although today it is not possible, the community was able to create even dictionaries of terms and some other phonological rule. Currently, it is so famous that there are even terms, concepts, and words that all Sims players recognize. The mythical Sul Sul (“Hello” in Spanish) is unmistakable, while the funny Wabadebadoo is still one of the most curious ways to say “I’m burning” … literally.
