Simlish Explained: What Language Do the Sims Actually Speak?

If you have ever wondered what language do the Sims speak, the answer is Simlish, a made-up language created by Maxis for the Sims games. It is mostly improvised gibberish performed by voice actors, so it has no real grammar or dictionary. Only a handful of words, such as “sul sul,” carry a widely accepted meaning.

That simple answer hides a surprisingly good story. Simlish began with failed experiments in Ukrainian and Navajo, was shaped by two improv comedians in a recording booth, and ended up being sung by Katy Perry. Below you will find where it came from, which phrases fans agree on, and why you will never be fluent in it. Explore our translation services for details.

Key Takeaways

• Sims speak Simlish, a fictional language that debuted in SimCopter in 1996 and became famous with The Sims in 2000.
• Designer Will Wright wanted speech that players could not understand, so the dialogue would never feel repetitive.
• Voice actors Stephen Kearin and Gerri Lawlor improvised the original Simlish, guided by emotion instead of a script.
• A few words, including “sul sul,” “dag dag” and “nooboo,” have meanings that fans widely accept.
• Real artists, from Katy Perry to LeAnn Rimes, have re-recorded their songs in Simlish for the games.

What Language Do the Sims Speak?

Sims speak Simlish in every main game in the series, from The Sims (2000) through The Sims 4 (2014). It also pops up in other Maxis titles, including several SimCity games and Spore. The language made its first appearance even earlier, in the 1996 helicopter game SimCopter.

Simlish is not a full constructed language like Klingon or Dothraki, which have grammar rules and long vocabulary lists. It is closer to expressive nonsense. The sounds are designed to feel like speech, with rhythm, pauses and plenty of emotion, while meaning almost nothing.

That is why two Sims can flirt, argue or gossip and you still follow the scene. You read the tone of voice, the body language and the little picture bubbles above their heads. Your brain fills in the rest.

Who Created Simlish, and Why Is It Gibberish?

Simlish came from Will Wright, the Maxis co-founder who created The Sims, and his audio team. Wright had a practical problem. A game where characters chat for hundreds of hours would need an impossible amount of written dialogue, and players would quickly notice every repeated line. Explore our fictional languages and real linguistics for details.

Nonsense solved it. If nobody understands the words, nobody notices that a Sim just said the same thing twice. Players also project their own story onto the sounds, which suits a game about imagination.

The real languages that almost made it

Gibberish was not the first plan. According to the documented history of Simlish, Wright experimented with real languages that would sound unfamiliar to most American players, including Ukrainian, Navajo, Tagalog and Estonian. The Navajo idea was inspired by the Navajo code talkers of World War II.

None of them worked. A real language still carries real words, and speakers of that language would understand, or mishear, everything. Voice actor Stephen Kearin suggested dropping real languages altogether and simply making up the sounds. Wright agreed.

The voices behind the babble

The original voices of The Sims were Stephen Kearin and Gerri Lawlor, both improv performers. They were not handed a script. As Vice explains in its look at learning Simlish, the actors got situational prompts, such as a Sim feeling flirty, hungry or annoyed, and were free to respond with whatever nonsense came out.

The sound design podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz, in its episode on Simlish, describes the two actors watching rough animations and trading take after take, with voice director Claire Curtin drawing on improv theater games. The result was thousands of ad-libbed recordings. Lawlor, who voiced Sims until 2006, died in 2019, and players still hear her work in the older games. Explore our how languages evolve over time for details.

The cast grew with the series. The Sims 2 reportedly used 11 voice actors and more than 50,000 recorded lines. Each new performer has to learn the same odd skill: sounding completely sincere while saying nothing at all.

What Do Common Simlish Words Mean?

Here is the honest caveat first. Maxis has never published an official Simlish dictionary, and most of what Sims say is pure improvisation. The phrases below are the ones that repeat often enough, in the same situations, that players and writers broadly agree on their meanings. Spellings are phonetic, so you will see variations such as “neeb” and “neib.”

The first handful of rows, especially “sul sul,” “dag dag” and “nooboo,” are about as close to official as Simlish gets. The rest are fan interpretations that have been repeated so often they have become the accepted reading. Treat the list as a phrasebook for fun, not a grammar.

Can You Actually Learn Simlish?

Not in the way you could learn Spanish or Japanese. Simlish has no defined parts of speech, no verb tenses and no stable vocabulary beyond a few dozen recurring sounds. Without that structure, there is nothing to study and no way to build a new sentence that another “speaker” would understand. Explore our understanding language variation and dialects for details.

It does have a recognizable sound, though. Simlish words tend to avoid long consonant clusters, using no more than two consonants in a row, and the vowels are stretched and bouncy. That consistency is why a new line of Simlish instantly sounds right, even though it means nothing.

Written Simlish follows the same logic. Signs, books and screens in the games use invented symbols and dingbat-style characters that look like text without spelling anything. The currency, the Simoleon, even has its own symbol: §.

Why Do Real Artists Re-Record Their Songs in Simlish?

Because the radios in a Sim’s house would break the illusion if they played English. Since the mid-2000s, Electronic Arts has invited real musicians to sing Simlish versions of their own songs. Katy Perry recorded “Hot n Cold” for The Sims 2: Apartment Life and later “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)” for a Sims 3 pack.

The guest list is long. An EA announcement for The Sims 3 World Adventures in 2009 named LeAnn Rimes, Nelly Furtado, Pixie Lott and Matt & Kim among the performers. For The Sims 4 Get to Work in 2015, the band Echosmith re-recorded a track, and one member rated the difficulty eight out of ten.

How do you translate lyrics into a language with no words? You don’t, exactly. As Kotaku reported in its piece on Simlish songs, the Maxis audio team takes the original lyrics and writes new nonsense syllables that fit the melody and rhyme scheme. The goal is to keep the feeling of the song, not its literal meaning. Explore our professional document translation services for details.

What Simlish Teaches Us About Real Translation

Simlish works because meaning is never only in the words. Tone, timing and context carry a huge share of any message, which is why a Sim’s grumble needs no subtitles. Real translation runs on the same principle, with one big difference: the words matter too, and so does the culture behind them.

A skilled human translator carries over what a text means and how it feels, whether that is a playful marketing line, a game script or a family letter. That is the thinking behind our translation services, where human translators work across more than 100 languages. If you enjoy invented tongues, our look at the Minions language is a fun next read, and so is our guide to the advantages of gaming translation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Simlish a real language?

No. Simlish is a fictional language made for the Sims games, and most of it is improvised gibberish with no grammar or fixed vocabulary. A small set of sounds, such as “sul sul” for hello and “nooboo” for baby, are used consistently enough that fans treat them as real words, but you cannot hold a true conversation in it.

What does “sul sul” mean in Simlish?

“Sul sul” is the Simlish greeting, generally understood as “hello,” and it is sometimes used for “goodbye” as well. It is the most famous phrase in the language and has become a friendly catchphrase among players. Its usual partner is “dag dag,” which Sims say when they are leaving or wrapping up a conversation. Explore our audio translation and voice services for details.

Is Simlish based on a real language?

Not directly. Early in development, Will Wright’s team experimented with real languages, including Ukrainian, Navajo, Tagalog and Estonian, hoping for something unfamiliar to most players. None of them fit, so the team switched to improvised nonsense. Any resemblance to English, French or other languages comes from the voice actors’ instincts, not from a deliberate design.

Who are the voices of the Sims?

The original voices were improv performers Stephen Kearin and Gerri Lawlor, who recorded the male and female Sims for the first game in 2000 and continued with the series until 2006. Later games added many more actors. The Sims 2 alone reportedly used 11 voice actors, who together recorded more than 50,000 lines of Simlish.

Do singers really record songs in Simlish?

Yes. Many well-known artists have re-recorded their own songs in Simlish for the in-game radio, including Katy Perry, LeAnn Rimes, Nelly Furtado and Echosmith. The Maxis audio team rewrites the lyrics as nonsense syllables that match the melody and rhymes, and the artist then sings the new version in the studio.

Need a Translation That Says More Than “Sul Sul”?

Simlish gets by on feeling alone, but your documents, scripts and messages need the words to be right too. Tell us what you need translated and our human translators will take it from there: chat with our team for a quote or call 1-800-230-7918.