What do Dothraki from “Game of Thrones” and Klingon from “Star Trek” have in common? They are both con- languages, artificial languages purposefully designed for fictional universes.
Constructing a language is akin to any act of science and requires the right mixture of skill and creativity. In case some aliens wanted to communicate with us, one cannot simply turn themselves into a language expert out of the blue. This is the main topic of the last episode before summer break of the podcast “Prof fantastici e dove trovarli” (Fantastic professors and where to find them), featuring three linguists from Università di Torino.

The podcast is hosted by FridA (the Academic Forum for Research of Università di Torino) and follows the lives of professors and researchers from Unito beyond lecture time, combining research, personal interests and curiosities. In particular, the guests of podcast episode “Lingue a merenda” (A multilingual snack) are Ms Elsa Corino, Professor of Modern Languages, Mr Roberto Merlo, Professor of Romanian Language & Literature, and Mr Simone Bettega, Professor of Arabic Language and Literature, all teaching at the Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Modern Cultures.