page_title: Atlantis: The Lost Empire
section_title: Language
hierarchical_section_title: Atlantis: The Lost Empire / Production / Development / Language
caption_attribution_description: English: The letter "A" from the Atlantean alphabet created for the film, Atlantis: The Lost Empire.
context_page_description: Atlantis: The Lost Empire is a 2001 American animated science-fantasy action-adventure film created by Walt Disney Feature Animation, marking the 41st entry in Disney's animated features canon and its first science-fiction film. Written by Tab Murphy, directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, and produced by Don Hahn, the film features an ensemble cast with the voices of Michael J. Fox, Cree Summer, James Garner, Leonard Nimoy, Don Novello, Phil Morris, Claudia Christian, Jacqueline Obradors, Jim Varney, Florence Stanley, John Mahoney, David Ogden Stiers and Corey Burton. Set in 1914, the film tells the story of a young man who gains possession of a sacred book, which he believes will guide him and a crew of mercenaries to the lost city of Atlantis.
  Development of the film began after production had finished on The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Instead of another musical, the production team decided to do an action-adventure film inspired by the works of Jules Verne. Atlantis was notable for adopting the distinctive visual style of comic book creator Mike Mignola.
context_section_description: Marc Okrand, who developed the Klingon language for the Star Trek television and theatrical productions, was hired to devise the Atlantean language for Atlantis: The Lost Empire. Guided by the directors' initial concept for it to be a "mother-language", Okrand employed an Indo-European word stock with its own grammatical structure. He would change the words if they began to sound too much like an actual, spoken language. John Emerson designed the written component, making hundreds of random sketches of individual letters from among which the directors chose the best to represent the Atlantean alphabet. The written language was boustrophedon: designed to be read left-to-right on the first line, then right-to-left on the second, continuing in a zigzag pattern to simulate the flow of water.
  The Atlantean [A] is a shape developed by John Emerson. It is a miniature map of the city of Atlantis (i.e., the outside of the swirl is the cave, the inside shape is the silhouette of the city, and the dot is the location of the crystal). It's a treasure map.
  — Kirk Wise, director
caption: The Atlantean letter A, created by artist John Emerson. Kirk Wise noted that its design was a treasure map showing the path to the crystal, "The Heart of Atlantis".
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