| abstract | - So you have an alien species or a fantasy nation in your work of Speculative Fiction. For some reason you need to invent a language for them, for names or some ritual phrases if for nothing else. You realize that it makes no sense if they just spoke English, so you make up some words for the language you are inventing, and then just take an English phrase and substitute your made-up words for the English ones. Voilà! Here you have a phrase in your very own Con Lang! Right? Well, it may indeed be considered a Con Lang, but only the most primitive kind, called a "relexification", or a "relex" for short, and hardly any more realistic than if your fictional people just spoke English. What you just created is a simple cipher for English. Substitute English words back for your made-up words, and again you have an English phrase that makes perfect sense. In the real world, that wouldn't be possible even for very closely related languages. Indo-European Alien Language is a step above this, when the author actually invents a language with its own unique grammar, but which still follows the typical patterns of Indo-European languages. Truly original creations fall under Starfish Language. Conveniently Precise Translation is a direct result of this trope (or, at least, implies it). Cypher Language is when this happens to the language's writing system. Remember though, Tropes Are Not Bad. The easier a language is to translate, the more fun can be had with hidden messages and wordplay. Examples of Re Lex include:
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