Lapine language
| Lapine | |
|---|---|
| Created by | Richard Adams |
| Date | 1972 |
| Setting and usage |
Watership Down Tales from Watership Down |
| Users | None |
| Purpose |
constructed language
|
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 |
None (mis) |
| Glottolog | None |
Lapine is a fictional language created by author Richard Adams for his 1972 novel Watership Down, where it is spoken by rabbit characters. The language was again used in Adams' 1996 sequel, Tales from Watership Down, and has appeared in both the film and television adaptations. The fragments of language presented by Adams consist of a few dozen distinct words, and are chiefly used for the naming of rabbits, their mythological characters, and objects in their world. The name "Lapine" comes from the French word for rabbit, lapin, and can also be used to describe rabbit society.
The words of the Lapine language were developed by Adams piecemeal and organically as required by the circumstances of the plot. In a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" interview, Adams noted that "I just constructed Lapine as I went - when the rabbits needed a word for something so did I." Reflecting on his inspirations for the words, Adams stated that "some of them are onomatopoeic like hrududu (which is a car), but overall they simply came from my subconscious". Adams commented that the motivation for the sound of Lapine was that it should sound "wuffy, fluffy" as in the word "Efrafa". Writing for The Guardian, Keren Levy described the Lapine language as "somehow easy to accept as [a language] we have always known. It is the language of the countryside, of its copses and beeches and of the weather."
The sound of Lapine has been ascribed to influence from Welsh, Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Arabic languages. Author Stephen Cain bolsters the Arabic connection by noting in particular that "Adams had occasion to study [Arabic] during his military service in the Middle East." The Lapine language has also been frequently compared to Sindarin (the language of the Elves in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth series) in terms of its effect on setting in the novels. Following the success of Watership Down, Richard Adams would go on to invent another constructed language for his Beklan novels, Shardik (1974) and Maia (1984).
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