This may in fact be the most pointless research I’ve ever conducted, but sometimes you just have to carpe diem and do pointless things instead of working on your real research.
If you have never and will never play The Sims (or you have no interest whatsoever in phonology), then this is not the post for you. That said, almost everybody I know has at least dabbled in the game once in their lives, and have at least commented in passing on the features of the Sims’ language. A very brief overview, just in case you forgot: in The Sims, you are essentially God (or your omnipotent deity of choice), creating and controlling the lives of little virtual people who live in an idealized version of suburban America. Some people play exclusively to build houses, others to live out their wildest dreams, and still others to release their inner psychopath. Regardless of the reason you play, it is more than likely that in your time as a Simmer, you’ve encountered the fictional language used in the game, known as Simlish.
Although it doesn’t actually have a complete syntax or lexicon, Simlish is still an impressive feat and an ode to the game’s creator’s attention to detail. According to a recently-published article on the evolution of Simlish, it was originally devised by the voice actors hired to provide the male and female vocalizations for the original edition of The Sims, released in 2000. The creator, Will Wright, had originally envisioned a ‘language’ that was a hodgepodge of features from languages such as Navajo, Ukrainian, and Latin; eventually, this idea was scrapped in favor of the actors’ ad-libbing using gibberish syllables that (mostly) conformed to English phonetics and phonotactics.
Simlish is not intended to be a ‘learnable’ language; its purpose is to make the game accessible for players around the world, regardless of their mother tongue. It allows players to superimpose their own details onto their Sims’ conversations and outbursts, resulting in a much more customizable and imaginative storyline than if the characters spoke a real language. However, Simlish does appear to follow a number of rules as far as its pronunciation is concerned, and that is what I’ve spent the better part of my evening looking at in detail.
The data for this post is taken from the following sources:
- The Simlish Dictionary
- Youtube videos (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
- My own, er, field research
Phonemic Inventories
| Bilabial | Labiodental | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
| Plosive | p b | t d | k g | |||
| Nasal | m | n | ŋ | |||
| Fricative | f v | s z | ʃ | h | ||
| Lateral | l | |||||
| Approximant | r | |||||
| Glides | w | j | ||||
| Affricate | t͡ɕ | tʃ dʒ |
| Front | Central | Back | |
| Close | i ɪ | u | |
| Close-Mid | e | ǝ | o |
| Open-Mid | æ | ʌ ɔ | |
| Open | ɑ |
If you’re at all familiar with the phonemes of English, you’ll probably notice several similarities. Unsurprisingly, considering both the original voice actors were American, the phonology of Simlish bares a striking resemblance to Mainstream American English. It is worth noting, however, that the Simlish in the original Sims game also sounds significantly different than later iterations – for example, in the first minute of this video, you can hear a flap/trill, a /ʒ/, a /ɣ/, and a /t/ that more closely resembles the Spanish /t/ than its English counterpart. Sometimes I suspect a bit of retroflex on some of the plosives, but it’s hard to say for sure. Regardless, this is an artificial example of the influence that language contact can have on sound shifts over time: in the past 20 years, Simlish phonology has taken on more English-like features as a result of extended contact with the English-speaking world, especially since most of its ‘users’ (i.e. actors and writers) are native English speakers.
Next, we’ll break down some of the phonotactics (= rules governing how individual phonemes are combined) of Simlish.
Phonotactics
- The most complex syllable is (C)(C)V(C)(C)
- Permissible simple onsets: /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/, /m/, /n/, /f/, /v/, /j/, /w/, /r/, /l/, /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /t͡ɕ/, /dʒ/, /tʃ/
- Permissible simple codas: /l/, /m/, /r/, /g/, /f/, /b/, /t/, /ʃ/, /ŋ/, /k/, /r/, /s/
- Permissible complex onsets: /bl/, /pl/, /sp/, /kl/, /gl/, /mj/, /sk/, /fl/, /fw/, /tw/, /bw/, /mw/,
- Permissible complex codas: /mg/, /nd/, /ps/, /bz/, /kt/, /lt/
- Allows syllabic /r/ e.g. [grb]
- Primary stress tends to fall on the last syllable
- Some of the canonical vowels are diphthongized similar to MAE: /e/ becomes [eɪ], and /o/ becomes /oʊ/ in an open syllable
- Other diphthongs include /aɪ/ (as in hi) and /au/ (how)
- /v/ sometimes seems to be in free variation with /b/, e.g. /’bʌdiʃ/ thank you can also be pronounced /’vʌdiʃ/
- Word-initial voiceless plosives (/p/, /t/, and /k/) are aspirated
- Word-final nasal + consonant clusters may delete the second consonant
- Light and dark /l/ are in complimentary distribution with one another, like in MAE
- Intervocalic /t/ and /d/ may become flaps, like in MAE
Comparison to English
Although the influence of American English on Simlish phonology is extremely evident, there are some minor differences between the two. First, Simlish lacks dental phonemes, particularly /θ/ and /δ/ (sounds at the beginning of thin and the, respectively) which are prevalent in many dialects of English. Simlish is also more conservative when it comes to syllable structure: English permits up to three sequential consonants in the onset of a word (e.g. strong) and four or five in the coda (e.g. sixths /siksθs/ or angsts /æŋksts/, depending on dialect); on the other hand, Simlish allows a maximum of two consonants in each position. There are some other, more minor differences as well regarding the distribution of phonemes in words/syllables. Simlish allows many, but not all, of the same phonemes in a simple coda as English: the /d/, /l/, and /z/ phonemes are unattested in the data I looked at, although /l/ and /t/ appear together in a complex coda.
Many English speakers have compared Simlish to ‘baby talk’ and, after examining the phonology of the language, the reason becomes clear: Simlish allows plenty of consonant + /w/ clusters that are typically associated with children’s early attempts to produce words containing a consonant + /l/ or /r/ (e.g. /bwu/ for blue), and don’t exist in adult English. It also seems to contain a greater number of words that begin with glides (don’t quote me on that – I haven’t actually run a formal analysis), which may also influence English-speaking listeners to perceive it as infantile.
Conclusion
There is an obvious influence of English phonology and syllable structure on the phonology of Simlish. The Simlish phonemic inventory consists almost exclusively of English vowels and consonants, and many of its rules governing stress assignment and allophonic variation are borrowed directly from English. However, there are some non-trivial differences between the languages: Simlish syllables are maximally CCVCC, whereas English allows up to three consonants in the onset and four/five consonants in the coda of a single syllable. The types of consonant clusters also differ, with Simlish allowing several more C + glide combinations as well as the /mg/ cluster in final position. These rather salient features of Simlish phonology may be to blame for English speakers’ assessment of the language as ‘baby talk.’
Of course, the above assessment has been made on the basis of limited acoustic data and without the input of native Simlish speakers (mostly because they don’t exist). And again, seeing as the language lacks a concrete syntax or morphology, it is rather difficult to postulate underlying forms for the surface forms of words and phrases presented in The Sims – rather, I have operated on the assumption that Simlish is a fully faithful language when it comes to mapping underlying forms onto surface forms. Future researchers of the language would do well to analyze sample utterances using a parsing software such as Praat, or otherwise contact potential informants for deeper insights as to its structure.
And with that, I’m off to finish some reading for my dissertation. Dag dag!
Words, Words, Words 