“Sul Sul!” If you’ve ever guided a tiny virtual person to the bathroom or watched them set the kitchen on fire, you know this greeting. It’s the sound of The Sims, a charming, nonsensical phrase from a language we all seem to understand, yet no one can actually speak. This is Simlish, and while it might sound like playful gibberish, it’s one of the most brilliant and effective examples of language creation in modern media.
Most constructed languages, or “conlangs,” from Star Trek’s Klingon to Game of Thrones’ Dothraki, are built on intricate grammar, syntax, and expansive vocabularies. They strive for realism and internal consistency. Simlish, however, throws out the rulebook. It was designed from the ground up to be an emotive language, not a semantic one. Its genius lies not in what it says, but in how it makes you feel.
The Problem of Babble: Why Invent a Language?
When Will Wright and his team at Maxis were developing the first installment of The Sims in the late 1990s, they faced a significant linguistic hurdle. A life simulation game requires constant chatter. But what should the Sims say?
Using a real language like English was immediately problematic. Hearing the same scripted lines—”I’m hungry”, “I need to go to the bathroom”, “This TV show is boring”—over and over would become gratingly repetitive. More importantly, it would be creatively restrictive. If a Sim said, “I’m so upset my boss fired me,” it would lock the player into a specific narrative. The magic of The Sims is that the player projects their own stories onto the characters. The game provides the framework; the player provides the meaning.
The alternative, hiring voice actors to record thousands of lines in dozens of languages for international release, was logistically and financially impossible. The solution had to be universal, endlessly listenable, and creatively liberating. The solution was to invent a language that meant absolutely nothing.
Deconstructing the Gibberish: The Birth of Simlish
To create this unique language, Maxis brought in professional voice actors, most notably Stephen Kearin and Gerri Lawlor. They were not handed a script or a dictionary. Instead, they were given scenarios and told to improvise sounds that conveyed the corresponding emotion. The process was less about linguistics and more about pure, unadulterated performance.
Inspired by a diverse and eclectic range of sources—including the improvisational comedy of his own troupe, the complex phonetics of Ukrainian and Tagalog, and even the coded language of Navajo Code Talkers from World War II—Kearin began experimenting. He and his fellow actors would be shown an animation or given a prompt, like “You’re flirting successfully” or “You’re furious about a clogged toilet”, and they would let loose a stream of emotive, but meaningless, sounds. This improvised babble was then edited and categorized to create the vocal library of the game.
The core directive was to avoid any recognizable words from real-world languages. If a sound accidentally resembled an English word, it was scrapped. This ensured the language remained a blank slate, free from any unintended meaning.
The Linguistics of Emotion: How it Works
So, if Simlish has no vocabulary, how do we understand it? The answer lies in a core component of human communication that transcends words: prosody. Prosody refers to the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech. It’s the “music” of a language—the high-pitched excitement in a child’s voice, the low, slow cadence of sadness, or the sharp, clipped tones of anger.
Simlish is essentially a language of pure prosody. The actors weren’t speaking words; they were performing emotions. When a Sim is happy, their Simlish is melodic, fast-paced, and trends towards a higher pitch. When they’re angry, their speech becomes guttural, sharp, and punctuated. We understand this intuitively because these are universal cues hardwired into our own social cognition. We can tell when someone is upset, even if they’re speaking a language we’ve never heard before, simply by the sound of their voice.
Over time, some sounds became iconic and semi-standardized through repetition, leading to a small, fan-compiled lexicon:
- Sul Sul: Hello / Goodbye
- Dag Dag: Hello / Goodbye
- Nooboo: Baby
- Yibs/Yibbs: Yes
- Neh/Na: No
- Litzergam: Thank you
- Wabadebadoo: I’m on fire! (usually accompanied by flailing)
Crucially, these words gained their “meaning” organically, assigned by developers and the community after they were recorded, not before. The vast majority of Simlish spoken in the game remains pure, spontaneous improvisation.
A Universal Language for a Global Audience
The design of Simlish was not just a creative triumph; it was a practical masterstroke. By removing semantic meaning, Maxis created a single audio track that worked for every player in the world. A gamer in South Korea, Brazil, Russia, and the United States all hear the exact same “dialogue”. This not only saved an immense amount of money on localization but also fostered a truly global community. Online, players from different cultures can share stories and videos of their Sims, and the emotional context is instantly understood by all.
Furthermore, this approach gives the game incredible longevity. Because our brains don’t try to parse Simlish for literal meaning, the dialogue never feels repetitive. It fades into the background as ambient emotional noise, coloring the scene without dominating it. It’s a perfect auditory canvas on which players can paint their own narratives.
From In-Game Babble to Cultural Phenomenon
The genius of Simlish is so potent that it has transcended the game itself. Dozens of real-world artists, from Katy Perry and Florence + The Machine to My Chemical Romance and Lily Allen, have re-recorded their hit songs in Simlish for inclusion in the games’ radio stations. The fact that these songs are still recognizable and emotionally resonant, even with their lyrics replaced by phonetic babble, is a testament to the power of melody and vocal performance—the very principles on which Simlish is built.
Ultimately, Simlish is a beautiful paradox. It is a language with no meaning that conveys everything. It’s a solution to a technical problem that became a beloved and iconic feature. It reminds us that communication is about so much more than just words; it’s about connection, emotion, and the shared stories we create. So next time you hear a Sim chatter away, listen a little closer. You might not understand what they’re saying, but you’ll know exactly how they feel. Dag Dag!