John McWhorter on conlangs

 John McWhorter is a linguist specializing in creole languages and a political reactionary focused on problems of race. In more recent years he has been addressing the public also on matters of language. In this video, he turns his attention to conlangs:

Are Elvish, Klingon, Dothraki and Na'vi real languages?


McWhorter affirms that these conlangs exhibit all the features of real languages including fully elaborated grammars, speech communities, and linguistic change over time.

Note also that the development of these languages is tied to, and most importantly originated in,  science fictional world-building. 

As I indicated in a previous post, McWhorter has confessed to knowing Esperanto. If these hobby languages can be justified as real languages, then Esperanto deserves linguistic legitimation all the more. I would like to see McWhorter do a video or podcast on this infinitely more important constructed language, Esperanto, which builds on the real world, has a speech community that functions in the real world (with unfortunate exceptions), serves a useful purpose, and can profit far more from validation from linguists.