When I found out that David J. Peterson was working on the new Disney film Raya and the Last Dragon (as usual, note that links to media are affiliate links, so I make some money if you go buy that film), I thought "I am definitely going to have to watch that to see how much conlangy content ends up in the final cut!"
And then it came out. And I saw it. And I could not think of of a single interesting thing to say about it until I realized that the linguistic content of Raya has to be evaluated in the context of Disney's previous foray into conlangery: Atlantis: The Lost Empire.
Atlantis
Atlantis was one of my favorite Disney movies as a tweenager because it has a frickin' linguist as a main character! And there are giant submarines! How cool is that! And it actually has decent representation of the Atlantean language, constructed by Marc Okrand of Klingon fame. In fact, the opening sequence of the movie, showing the sinking of Atlantis, is entirely in subtitled Atlantean--a thing that you can do in a movie, which is much harder to pull off in literature!
In retrospect, however, this is a little surprising, because it is, after all, a Disney movie, largely targeted at kids, and a significant portion of the audience for this movie would be pre-literate--i.e., not helped by subtitles. Thus, it is useful to note that, in every case where subtitling is used for Atlantean, the actual semantic content of the speech is completely unnecessary to understand what is going on (i.e., it's an Easter egg for literate viewers), or the meaning is made obvious in other ways. "Making it Obvious" is in fact used at the end of that opening sequence when young Kida calls out to her mother with the word "mahtim"--it's a child speaking, the word kinda sounds similar to "mother", she is calling to her mother, it's not hard to infer that "mahtim" means "mother". And that will actually become relevant later in the movie--so they focused on that specific word in isolation at the end of the scene in a very rudimentary instance of Teaching the Reader (or viewer, in this case). Specifically, we hear the word "mahtim" again (and again, in isolation, and again, spoken by Kida--the film makers really maximized the parallels between usages to trigger the viewers' memory) when Kida sees the Heart of Atlantis.
In all other instance of extended Atlantean, the important narrative content is conveyed entirely by emotional inflection, or the important concepts are re-explained later; e.g., the king's conversation with Kida in which he makes his dislike of the expedition obvious is in Atlantean... but then he talks with the expedition in English, and gets across the same plot-relevant points. Additionally, that whole sequence is summed up by Milo after the fact.
Another particularly interesting use of subtitled Atlantean comes up just before Kida goes to merge with the Heart, and says "All will be well Milo. Be not afraid." The (literate) audience understands this, via subtitles, because Milo understands it--but Rourke asks Milo what she said (and Milo lies about it) in order to make it clear to that same audience that the rest of the characters do not understand, thus setting up some dramatic irony.
Elsewhere, however, the movie also makes use of Narrative Translation--which fits in because Milo's whole reason for being on the expedition is to act as a translator! So, it is quite natural that we should see (and hear) him actually doing some translating. E.g., Milo reads haltingly from the Shepherd's Journal, and then immediately provides the English translation "Enter the lair of the Leviathan, there you will find the path to the gateway." for his Anglophone companions.
Unfortunately, we don't get nearly as much of this as we could have, because the writers quickly establish that the Atlanteans can magically speak English (or French) whenever they feel like it, due to Atlantean being a "root dialect". This is a fantastical bit of linguistic science fiction, the idea of which could probably be entertainingly explored by a sufficiently skilled writer... but Atlantis's writers end up just using at nothing more than a cheap excuse to not have the Atlanteans actually speaking Atlantean all the time.
Later on, we get some somewhat clumsier instances of Narrative Translation with Kida code-switching to Atlantean for one word ("...since the time of the Mehbelmok."), which Milo translates for the audience ("Oh, the Great Flood."), and then Milo again reading from the Shepherd's Journal while Kida translates into English ("Follow the narrow passage for another league. There, you will find the fifth marker.")
Interestingly, we also get one instance earlier in the movie of Audrey code-switching into Spanish with "No toques nada! I'll be right back." And there're a few lines in French.
The sequel movie Milo's Return is incredibly disappointing, and we can probably all just agree to act like it never happened, but it does open with subtitled Norwegian.
Atlantis also makes fairly extensive use of the constructed Atlantean alphabet in its graphic design (a feature which also shows up in the TV series Defiance, which I suppose I shall have to analyze at some point now), although in retrospect the alphabet itself is really not that great; it is an even closer cipher for the English Latin alphabet than Star Wars's aurebesh script; there are three extra characters for common English digraphs, but they are more complex than the basic 26 Latin-equivalent characters, obviously setting them apart. Why would Atlanteans who have no idea what sounds English would later decide to use digraphs for arrange their writing system that way?
Raya
Raya's use of a conlang is a stark contrast. Unlike Atlantis, in which the languages the audience hears are the languages which the characters are speaking within the fictional world, Raya is more similar to Kill the Beast (or The Lord of the Rings, for that matter) in that it appears to use a consistent translation convention in which the primary language of the characters is represented as English for the audience, except when key phrases are allowed to show through for worldbuilding flavor. Also unlike Atlantean in Atlantis, there is only one extended text in Kumandran featured in Raya, which is left untranslated in subtitles, giving the linguistically-interested audience no inroads to analyzing it. Specifically, it's Raya's song / prayer when she is trying to summon Sisu at the end of the river:
Suvaa de draa sim
Mandra de draa lim
Bavaa de draa Tomben
Every other usage of Kumandran is in the form of single words (or a two-word phrase), used in Making it Obvious contexts--and there really aren't very many of them. Leaving out proper names, I'm pretty sure this is a complete list:
"And it's either 'Father' or 'Ba' to you." (This could be considered Narrative Translation. Remaining usages of "Ba" omitted.)
"Come with me, dep la. I wanna show you something."
"Thank you, dep la. You've been very helpful."
"What's drippin', dep la?"
"Did you need that, dep la?"
The phrase "dep la" is always used in a vocative context, so it's obviously a term of address--the first usage is friendly and the remainder are all obviously sarcastic, so probably a term of endearment for a friend.
"The rest of them are being held by a bunch of no-good binturis."
"Binturi? That's not a very nice way to describe an old friend."
This exchange is almost beating you over the head with the fact that "binturi" is an insult. And then it gets used a lot more in rapid succession, just to drive that home, and make sure you remember it for the rest of the movie.
"Toi, that's a lot of jade!"
"Congees have 9 stomachs!" -- "Oh, toi..."
"Of course you love mango! Only a tongueless cretin wouldn't!" -- "Oh, toi!"
And that is every usage of "toi", which is fairly obviously a generic interjection.
Compared to Atlantis, it seems that Raya is trying to discard the subtitling convention that works so well for adult-targeted films in order to level the viewing experience across age levels; not merely do children get to enjoy the story fully, but adults don't get any extra Easter eggs. That's a fine approach to take, but I would have really liked to see better deployment of Narrative Translation or other techniques to better showcase the language that they paid someone to make! The language also does not really significantly impact the movie's graphic design--Kumandra is clearly a literate society (the plot relies on a scroll to direct Raya to Sisu, after all), and it would've been nice to see more evidence of that.
One thing that Raya does considerably better than Atlantis, however, is presenting a unified naming culture. Atlantis probably could've done the same, but didn't really get a chance to, since we only meet a very limited cast of named Atlantean characters. Every character in Raya, however, comes from a single ancestral culture speaking a common language, and the design of the names is consistent within themselves and with what little is shown of the sound of that language. And that alone is enough to justify hiring a language consultant to produce a simple naming language.
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