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Kiliki language
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| Kiliki | |
|---|---|
| Pronunciation | [kɪɫɪkɪ] |
| Created by | Madhan Karky |
| Date | 2015 |
| Setting and usage | Baahubali |
| Purpose | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | qkk (local use) |
| Glottolog | None |
| IETF | art-x-kiliki (local use) |
Kiliki or Kilikili is a fictional language originally created by Madhan Karky for the 2015 Indian epic action film Baahubali: The Beginning.[1][2] It has 3000 words[3] and is written using 22 symbols.[4][5] In February 2020 on International Mother Language Day, the film's director SS Rajamouli launched the official website of Kiliki.[6] It reportedly has 40 grammar rules but the grammar section of the website is empty.
Usage
[edit]In the film Baahubali: The Beginning, the Kalakeya tribe speak Kiliki.[7] After the success of the film in December 2015, singer Smita released "Baha Kiliki", the first song in Kiliki language, onto YouTube.[8] It has over 108 million views. In 2017, it was used in the film Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, the sequel of Baahubali: The Beginning.[9]
The fictional language Kiliki (also referred to as Kilikili) spoken by the Kalakeyas, a ferocious warrior tribe, was created by Madhan Karky for the film. It is said to be the first fictional language to be created for Indian film.[10]
While Karky was pursuing a PhD in Australia, he took up a part-time job of teaching and baby-sitting children. During one such interaction, he thought it would be fun to create a new language that could be easily grasped. Basic words were first made up and opposites were represented by word reversals – me was min and you was nim. The language, with 100 words, was called "Click" to highlight its simplicity. This formed the foundation for Kiliki.[11]
- Kilikili consists of at least 750 words and more than 40 concrete grammar rules.
- It was designed to be an intuitive language: Karky said he used hard consonants and soft consonants depending on the nature of the words' meanings.
- The language was created keeping in mind that the Kalakeya warriors had to be portrayed as terrifying brutes.
On 21 February 2020, on the occasion of International Mother Language Day, Rajamouli launched the official website of Kiliki language. He called the language as "world's youngest and easiest language."[12]
References
[edit]- ^ "'Baahubali' fans rejoice! Now you can officially learn the 'KiLiKi' language online". The News Minute. 22 February 2020. Retrieved 22 February 2020.
- ^ "Hey, do you speak Kiliki?". Deccan Chronicle. 19 February 2020. Retrieved 19 February 2020.
- ^ "SS Rajamouli launches "KiLiKi" website; calls it the world's youngest and easiest language". The Times of India. 21 February 2020. Retrieved 21 February 2020.
- ^ Ramanujam, Srinivasa (21 February 2020). "Baahubali's Kiliki language evolves online". The Hindu. Retrieved 22 February 2020.
- ^ "Will Kilikki from the Baahubali franchise become our very own Klingon?". The Indian Express. 17 February 2020. Retrieved 18 February 2020.
- ^ "WHATTT??!! S.S RAJAMOULI TO BRING KALAKEYA'S LANGUAGE INTO PRACTICE? WHAT IS IT NAMED?". behindwoods.com. 19 February 2020. Retrieved 19 February 2020.
- ^ "Baahubali does a Lord of the Rings! The film establishes a new language called Kilikili". Firstpost. 14 July 2015. Retrieved 14 July 2015.
- ^ "Video: Singer Smita releases new song in 'Kiliki', Bahubali's fictional language". The News Minute. 24 December 2015. Retrieved 24 December 2015.
- ^ "Released as the sequel to the 2015 blockbuster 'Baahubali: The Beginning'". newstracklive.com. 27 January 2020. Retrieved 27 January 2020.
- ^ "Baahubali does a Lord of the Rings! The film establishes a new language called Kilikili". Firstpost. 14 July 2015. Archived from the original on 20 December 2016.
- ^ "5 Sentences And Their Translations in Kiliki, The Fictitious Language Used In 'Baahubali'". Huffington Post India. Archived from the original on 14 November 2016. Retrieved 21 April 2017.
- ^ "SS Rajamouli launches 'KiLiKi' website; calls it the world's youngest and easiest language". The Times of India. Archived from the original on 10 March 2020. Retrieved 12 June 2020.
External links
[edit]Kiliki language
View on GrokipediaHistory
Origins in Baahubali
The Kiliki language was conceived by lyricist and language inventor Madhan Karky in 2013 specifically for the Kalakeya tribe, a fictional group of barbaric warriors depicted in the Indian epic films Baahubali: The Beginning (2015) and Baahubali 2: The Conclusion (2017), directed by S.S. Rajamouli.[4][6] Rajamouli sought a unique, invented tongue to avoid associating the antagonists with any real-world ethnicity, emphasizing their raw and fearsome nature through phonetic design.[7] Kiliki's development drew from Karky's earlier Cliq project, a simple constructed language he created around 2007 while teaching Tamil to children in Australia, starting with an initial vocabulary of 50 words aimed at ease of learning and pronunciation.[1][7] For the films, this evolved over 2013–2015 into a more robust system with 750 words and 40 grammar rules, incorporating hard consonants for aggression and soft ones for contrast to evoke the tribe's brutal persona.[6][8] A key innovation was the phonetic reversal principle, where antonyms are derived by inverting the sounds of base words (e.g., "nim" for "you" becomes "min" for "I"), enhancing the language's alien and intuitive feel.[7] The language's first public exposure came through the song "Baha Kiliki," a tribute composed with lyrics by Karky and performed by singer Smita, featuring Kalakeya actor Prabhakar; uploaded to YouTube in December 2015, it has amassed over 165 million views.[9][10] This musical debut highlighted Kiliki's rhythmic potential while aligning with the films' tribal chants and dialogues, solidifying its role in immersing audiences in the Baahubali universe.Post-film development
Following the release of the Baahubali films in 2015 and 2017, the Kiliki language underwent significant expansion beyond its cinematic origins, evolving into a fully developed constructed language suitable for everyday use. By 2020, its vocabulary had grown to over 3,000 words, supported by a complete grammar system and an orthographic script comprising 22 symbols. This development was spearheaded by lyricist Madhan Karky, who aimed to make Kiliki accessible for public communication, emphasizing simplicity and universality.[11][12] On February 21, 2020, coinciding with International Mother Language Day, filmmaker S.S. Rajamouli launched the official website kiliki.in to promote and teach the language. Rajamouli described Kiliki as the "world’s youngest and easiest language," highlighting its design principle of one word per meaning to eliminate ambiguity and ensure clarity in expression. The site provides comprehensive resources, including downloadable fonts, an online converter for text translation between Kiliki and other languages, interactive games for practice, and a dictionary for vocabulary lookup. These tools facilitate self-paced learning and encourage adoption for casual interactions.[13][14][5] To further support learners, a series of educational videos was released on YouTube starting in February 2020 by the channel KarefoIndia, covering foundational elements such as numerals, basic words, and typography. These short tutorials, often under two minutes for topics like numbers, demonstrate the language's phonetic simplicity and combo-based symbol formation. Complementing this, the official blog on kiliki.in began publishing articles in 2020, detailing grammatical expansions, common phrases (e.g., greetings and expressions of emotion), and practical applications, marking Kiliki's transition to a viable tool for real-world communication.[15][16][17]Phonology
Vowels and consonants
The Kiliki language features a vowel system consisting of six basic vowels in short form—a, i, u, e, o, ù—each of which can be extended into long forms (A, I, U, E, O, Á) to create distinctions in meaning and tone.[18] Vowel length plays a key role in emotional expression; for instance, the long ee in meekeelu-ja conveys happiness, while shortening the vowels to form kimilu shifts the meaning to sadness.[19] Kiliki's consonant inventory comprises 22 symbols, categorized into 14 dual consonants (with distinct soft and hard pronunciations) and 8 mono consonants. The dual consonants include soft/hard pairs for b/g, s/sh, d/dh, l/L, p/k, z/ch, t/th, while the mono consonants are m, h, r, j, v, n, f, y.[18] Hard consonants, such as guttural k and g, are employed for words evoking fierceness or aggression to reflect the primal nature of the Kalakeya tribe, whereas soft consonants like b and m are used for gentler concepts.[7] This division aligns with the language's design principle of matching phonetic intensity to semantic content, as articulated by its creator, Madhan Karky.[7] Phonotactics in Kiliki emphasize simple combinations to ensure intuitive pronunciation, often pairing vowels with consonants in basic clusters; representative examples include bi (meaning "letter") and babi (meaning "consonant").[20] A unique aspect of the language is its alteration of familiar word pronunciations through emphatic hard consonants, lending an alien, aggressive quality suited to its fictional origins, while clicks are integrated as special phonetic elements for added expressiveness.[7]Clicks and phonetic features
The Kiliki language features a set of click consonants, known as "KiLik" clicks, which function as non-pulmonic sounds distinct from the pulmonic airstream mechanism typical in most languages. These include dental, lateral, and other click types represented orthographically as *kle, *tta, *the, *rrr, and *kve, totaling five primary clicks. Clicks are employed for emphasis in utterances or to convey specific semantic nuances, such as urgency or affirmation, and are integrated into everyday words, including greetings like those used in tribal interactions. Mastering these clicks is noted as one of the most challenging aspects of the language, as they occur in only about 1% of the world's living languages, rendering them alien and unintuitive to non-native speakers.[18][21] A hallmark of Kiliki phonetics is the use of reversal patterns, where conceptual pairs are formed by phonetically inverting root sounds to create intuitive associations. For instance, "footh" denotes "front" while its reversal "thoof" means "back"; similarly, "laar" signifies "left" and "raal" indicates "right." Other examples include "meek" for "up" and "keem" for "down," as well as "rae" for "sun" and its reversal "nae" for "star," which extend into directional compounds like "meekee" (north) and "keemeee" (south). This reversal system extends to emotions, such as "meekeelu" for happiness and "kimilu" for sadness, facilitating memorable word pairs that aid intuitive learning among speakers. Directional verbs also incorporate these patterns, as in "yoateni" for "go" modified with tense markers like "-de" for present continuous, emphasizing forward motion through phonetic mirroring.[22][19] Guttural sounds, produced with constriction in the throat, combine with other consonants to form complex clusters that support word-building in Kiliki. Consonants such as g, k, and ch contribute to these guttural qualities, often appearing in "ababi" formations—compounds derived from roots like "abi" (vowel) and "babi" (consonant) to yield "ababi" (combo or syllable). These combos enable expansive vocabulary creation, as seen in derivations like "yee" (wood) becoming "yeeti" (tree) through suffixation. When including tonal variations and click accompaniments, Kiliki encompasses over 40 distinct sounds in total, building on foundational vowels and consonants to produce a rich, layered phonetic inventory. This design prioritizes ease of acquisition for native users while maintaining an exotic profile for outsiders.[18][20][23]Orthography
Alphabet and symbols
The Kiliki orthography is based on a set of 22 symbols collectively referred to as the "bibit," which serves as the alphabet of the language. These symbols are divided into basic letters known as "bi," encompassing vowels designated as "abi" and consonants as "babi," along with combinations called "ababi" that are created by overlaying a vowel symbol onto a consonant base. This structure allows for efficient representation of sounds through modular assembly, with the "ababi" enabling the formation of diphthongs and complex phonemes without additional markers.[20] The symbols themselves are crafted for simplicity, featuring straightforward geometric shapes and strokes that avoid diacritics entirely, promoting ease of learning and recall for users. Key terms within the language describe these elements: "leelaa" denotes the language as a whole, while "thu" refers to a word, highlighting the foundational role of the bibit in building linguistic units. The design emphasizes minimalism, with each symbol tied to core phonetic values that map to the language's vowel, consonant, and click inventory.[20][24] Originally conceived as visual props for the 2015 film Baahubali: The Beginning, the Kiliki script evolved from rudimentary film-specific designs into a fully standardized system launched on February 21, 2020, coinciding with International Mother Language Day. This standardization, facilitated through an official website and learning resources, enables the encoding of more than 3000 words, expanding the script's utility beyond cinematic use.[12][5]Writing and typography
The Kiliki language is written from left to right, following standard conventions for readability in its constructed script.[25] Punctuation in Kiliki includes specific terms for common marks, such as findaat for the full stop and shùdaat for the comma, which are used to structure sentences clearly.[20] Hyphens play a key role in Kiliki writing, particularly for attaching case markers to nouns; for instance, the genitive case is indicated as noun-ta to denote possession.[20][26] The question marker kve is appended with an asterisk to form interrogatives, as in kakve* meaning "what," allowing straightforward conversion of statements into questions.[17] Typography in Kiliki emphasizes simplicity and accessibility, with dedicated fonts like KiLiKi Maa and KiLiKi Thithibin available for download to enable typing in standard applications; these support ligatures for combining symbols fluidly, such as in words like maemae (evening), without requiring additional software.[27][28] Bold formatting is employed for emphasis, while simple, sans-serif-inspired designs promote learnability for new users.[29] Kiliki orthography avoids capitalization entirely, treating all symbols uniformly regardless of context, and maintains consistent spacing in symbol combinations to ensure phonetic clarity.[30] YouTube tutorials, such as those in the official KiLiKi playlist, demonstrate rendering names and words by inputting phonetic approximations into font tools for accurate script output.[31][16]Grammar
Parts of speech and morphology
The KiLiKi language classifies words into eight distinct parts of speech, each with a dedicated term and systematic morphological markers to ensure clarity and simplicity, particularly for young learners and non-native speakers. These categories are nouns (kathu), which denote objects without specific endings; verbs (nithu), which uniformly end in -ni; adjectives (jathu), ending in -ja; adverbs (vathu), ending in -va; pronouns (thaakathu), such as thaa for "he/she" or living beings; conjunctions (nethu), like ne meaning "and"; prepositions (finkathu), attached to nouns via a hyphen (e.g., noun + -fin); and interjections (yaathu), expressing exclamations such as greetings.[20] This structure adheres to over 40 grammar rules designed for intuitiveness, drawing from principles that assign one primary role per word to avoid ambiguity.[32] Morphology in KiLiKi emphasizes derivation from phonetic roots through affixation and sound manipulation, promoting a one-word-one-role principle inspired by isolating languages like Mandarin, where each morpheme carries a single function. For instance, verbs derive from base roots by adding the -ni suffix, as in hoofaani ("come") and baahaani ("speak"), while antonyms often form via phonetic reversal, such as fahuni ("go") from hoofaani. Adjectives and adverbs similarly tag roots with their respective endings, e.g., a descriptive term like pinyu-ja for "blue," without altering the core form for intensification. Nouns and other categories build from combinatory roots, like kathu from ka (object) + thu (word), ensuring derivational transparency.[7][33][20] These morphological features extend to basic inflectional systems for nouns and verbs, such as case markers and tense indicators, but prioritize derivational simplicity to facilitate learning. Overall, the system's 40 rules focus on phonetic consistency and minimal complexity, making KiLiKi accessible for children through its root-based tagging and avoidance of overloaded forms.[32][7]Noun cases and verb tenses
The Kiliki language features a rich inflectional system for nouns, utilizing case markers inspired by Dravidian languages like Tamil for their agglutinative nature.[7] Official documentation describes nine types of cases, marked by suffixes appended to the noun root, including distinctions for subtypes like ablative, dative, and locative.[26] The cases include the nominative (no marker), used for the subject; accusative (-ya), for the direct object; genitive (-ta), indicating possession; ablative for separation (-fae) and origin (-chafae), expressing motion away from or source; instrumental (-jo), for means or instrument; dative for destination (-chatae) and beneficiary (-fatae), marking indirect object; locative for place (-chae) and time (-tikae), denoting location or time; and vocative (-hoa), for direct address. For example, the noun "bavgari" (dog) in the nominative is "bavgari," and in accusative "nim-ya" (you, as object).[26] Kilikili nouns lack grammatical gender and handle plurality through the click marker kle added to the noun, such as "thukle" (words) from "thu" (word), which applies before adding case suffixes. Adjectives precede nouns but do not inflect for case.[26] Verbs in Kiliki are conjugated for tense by adding suffixes to a base form ending in -ni, reflecting a simplified temporal system influenced by both Dravidian and isolating language structures. The three primary tenses are past (-ga), present (-de), and future (-fu). For instance, the verb root "hoofaan" (to come) yields "hoofaani-ga" (came) in the past, "hoofaani-de" (coming or comes) in the present, and "hoofaani-fu" (will come) in the future. These tenses are consistent across persons and numbers, with no inflection for plurality.[7][33] Question formation integrates the interrogative particle *kve attached to words or at the end of statements. For wh-questions, kve combines with roots like "ka" (object) to form "kakve" (what). For yes/no questions, kve is added at the end, e.g., "nimvaasoakve" (How are you?). Adverbs, including politeness markers like "liz-va" (please), are typically uninflected and placed before the verb.[17]| Case | Suffix | Function | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nominative | (no marker) | Subject | bavgari (dog) |
| Accusative | -ya | Direct object | nim-ya (you, object) |
| Genitive | -ta | Possession | pamaa-ta (grandmother's) |
| Ablative (Separation) | -fae | Separation from | hee-fae (from air) |
| Ablative (Origin) | -chafae | Origin from | delhi-chafae (from Delhi) |
| Instrumental | -jo | Means/instrument | japijoo-jo (with knife) |
| Dative (To) | -chatae | Destination | brisbaen-chatae (to Brisbane) |
| Dative (For) | -fatae | Beneficiary | nim-fatae (for you) |
| Locative (Place) | -chae | Location | nyuyaark-chae (in New York) |
| Locative (Time) | -tikae | Time | maemae-tikae (in evening) |
| Vocative | -hoa | Direct address | fen-hoa (Hey friend!) |
