Much of ‘Predator: Badlands’ is in an alien language. We asked a Yautja expert to break it down

by

When asked if he can speak the language used by the Predators in the films, director Dan Trachtenberg immediately replied, “Not a word.”

Trachtenberg says the language created for his film is so complex he can’t even pronounce a single sound from it, and he’s impressed his actors were able to learn it. Linguist Britton Watkins designed the language to feel like a natural evolution of sounds from previous ‘Predator’ films, specifically tailored to the biology of the Yautja creatures. Trachtenberg adds that he personally finds it impossible to speak.

I was so excited to see “Predator: Badlands,” and it definitely delivered! It opened huge, making a record $40 million domestically. What’s really cool is that this is the first “Predator” movie where we actually follow a Predator who’s the good guy. The story centers around Dek, a young Yautja who’s a bit of an outcast. He’s determined to prove himself to his clan, so he takes on this incredible challenge: hunting a truly massive and almost indestructible creature on a really dangerous planet. It’s a really compelling story!

Awards

This movie blends science fiction with historical elements, telling a coming-of-age story that also features a space monster. It’s a prequel that surpasses the earlier films in the series, but what really stands out is that it’s a fun, action-packed movie starring an Indigenous cast.

While tracking his prey, Dek comes across Thia (Elle Fanning), an android who’s lost both her legs and her research team. Despite her condition, she’s eager to share valuable information about the planet’s dangerous plants and animals.

Trachtenberg, the director who successfully revived the “Predator” series with the 2022 film “Prey,” wanted to portray the Yautja aliens and their culture with the same level of realism and historical depth as the human cultures shown in his other “Predator” projects, including the recent animated anthology “Predator: Killer of Killers.”

The filmmaker explains they wanted to portray the Yautja with respect and avoid making them seem like simple villains. They aimed to encourage audiences to connect with and understand a creature that was once seen as a classic movie monster.

As a huge Predator fan, I was so fascinated to learn how much work went into building the Yautja language! Apparently, the team behind ‘Predator: Badlands’ really wanted to make it authentic, so they brought in an expert. They actually got the recommendation from Paul Frommer – you know, the guy who invented the Na’vi language for ‘Avatar’! He was in charge of creating both how the Yautja speak and how they write, starting with the language we first heard in ‘Killer of Killers’. It’s amazing how detailed they got!

Television

When creating ‘Alien: Earth,’ Noah Hawley drew inspiration from the classic ‘Alien’ films’ vintage futuristic style, blending it with elements of the Peter Pan story and including hidden references for fans.

Watkins knew that “Badlands” needed to deliver the action fans expect from a “Predator” film, but also include calmer scenes with dialogue. This required developing a language that closely resembled the sounds—like growls and screeches—from earlier “Predator” movies, while also blending seamlessly with English during conversations when both languages were used, creating a consistent mood and atmosphere.

Watkins explains that instead of creating a full language from the start, he developed a basic structure that could evolve alongside the production. This involved establishing rules for both pronunciation and grammar. He aimed to create a language that wouldn’t have any unnatural sounds, but could grow in vocabulary and complexity to meet the film’s changing needs over time.

He anticipated that once the Yautja language was released, fans would enthusiastically analyze and study it, similar to how they’ve done with other fictional languages from science fiction and fantasy media.

Watkins anticipated viewers would want to revisit and analyze scenes, so he aimed for simplicity without sacrificing substance. He wanted the film to be culturally relevant yet accessible for anyone interested in learning from it.

Here are a few tips from Watkins for those interested in learning Yautja.

The alphabet includes complex consonant clusters

As a movie fan, I always appreciate attention to detail, and the sound design of the Yautja (the Predators!) is a great example. Apparently, when creating the language, the sound designer, Watkins, really thought about how these aliens would physically make sounds – their mouths, throats, everything. It wasn’t just random alien noises; he built the language around their actual physiology, which is pretty cool!

Watkins explains that because these people lack lips, they can’t produce sounds like ‘ma,’ ‘ba,’ or ‘fa.’ To compensate for not being able to make ‘F,’ ‘V,’ ‘Th,’ and ‘M’ sounds, they use unique combinations of consonants – like ‘jl’ and ‘cht’ – which aren’t found in English, but are created further back in the throat.

Although these sound combinations are written with several letters in English, they’re represented by a single letter in the Yautja language. For instance, the Yautja word for ‘prey’ begins with the letter hrr.

According to Watkins, the Yautja alphabet is designed to be easily read with their unique way of communicating. Examples of their writing appear on weapons and other items in the ‘Badlands’ setting.

Basic sentence structure is the reverse of English

Yautja sentences that state facts or provide explanations are structured in the opposite way compared to English sentences.

According to Watkins, a sentence typically starts with either the thing being discussed or what’s being said about it, followed by the action, and then who or what is performing the action. Once you set a sentence structure like this, it’s best to stick to it, similar to how we generally write in English, unless there’s a good reason to change it.

Listen for recurring words

The Yautja language is very precise, avoiding unnecessary variations of words. Unlike some languages, there aren’t multiple ways to say the same thing. For example, the Yautja word for ‘I’ is ‘chish’.

Watkins explains that the word remains consistent – it’s pronounced ‘chish’ whether it refers to ‘me’ at the beginning of a sentence or ‘I’ at the end. The pronunciation doesn’t change based on its position.

Another sound to listen for is ‘nga’. In the Yautja language, ‘ngai’ means ‘no’, so ‘nga’ will appear in any word that expresses a negative idea, such as ‘nobody’.

You can tell how Yautja feel about you by what they call you

Unlike the Chish, the Yautja have a complex way of speaking, changing their language to show how much respect or affection they feel for the person they’re talking to or about.

Watkins points out that Yautja use different language when referring to themselves versus others. It’s considered normal within their culture to speak negatively about those outside of their group.

The Yautja have different ways of addressing people, similar to how Spanish uses ‘tú’ or ‘usted’. They use ‘wul’ when speaking to someone they disrespect, ‘dau’ for those they respect, and ‘kai’ for close friends.

Yautja isn’t a gendered language (for the most part)

Yautja, the language, doesn’t use grammatical gender like French or Spanish. This means nouns aren’t classified as masculine or feminine.

Like English, the Yautja language differentiates pronouns based on gender, using ‘he’ and ‘she’ equivalents. Interestingly, all Yautja—regardless of gender—use the same word, chish, to mean ‘I’ and ‘me’.

One of the reasons Yautja has no grammatical gender is because that was most practical.

According to Watkins, they didn’t have much time to develop the Yautja characters, and giving them a gender would have complicated the language used in the script. This extra complexity would have made it harder to make quick changes to the script during filming.

That it also helps keeps the language accessible for Yautja learners is a bonus.

Read More

2025-11-10 17:02