What is "simlish"

Simlish is a fictional language featured in EA Games' Sim series of games. It debuted in SimCopter, and has been especially prominent in The Sims franchise. Simlish can also be heard in SimCity 4, SimCity Societies and SimCity (2013), but far less frequently. Civilized Creatures in Spore can also be taught to speak Simlish. It is also featured to an extent in Firaxis Games' Sid Meier's SimGolf. Simlish was created because Will Wright, creator of The Sims, knew that the game needed dialogue, but thought that using real life languages such as English would cause the dialogue to be repetitive and would be expensive translating the entire dialog Sims may say.

Initially, inspired by the Navajo code talkers of World War II, Sims creator Will Wright and language expert Marc Gimbel suggested experimenting with the Navajo language to create Simlish. However, they ultimately decided against this because of the difficulty in finding Navajo voice actors. They also decided that Simlish worked best as a "language" made up of gibberish words that could not be translated, so that its meaning would be left open to the imagination of the player. Wright later commented that using "nonsense language" turned out to be the right development choice, as people were capable of imagining it more realistically than a computer could simulate a real one. The actual sound of Simlish was created improvisationally by voice actors Stephen Kearin and Gerri Lawlor.