ahah! yeah..as I posted, I agree that some words would actually mean something, like nooboo, or sule-sule...but this would be just to add some consistency.
But this is not a complete language..you could not learn it. It lacks verbs and such. EA actually hire someone who does decoding languages, old forgotten ones and etc..as a living. Probably to make sure, Simlish would be proper and non-offensive to anyone.
Another thing is, if it would be a real language..then the same sentences, words, would then be using by all, regardless of their gender/age. Besides nooboo, maybe dag-dag..sule-sule ?..and even then, teen female uses "bloo bagoo", or "cuh-teek-a-loo" when they run into someone, or such, and this is only used by them. Of course, even in English, there are many ways to say HI, or How are you?..but still. We'd hear more of the same sentences and words, if they were all using a real language.

Simlish is a word-by-word cipher; it replaces real words with invented alternatives. However, its grammar is essentially English, with case-by-case modifications to make it easier to mould the language to the gameplay. This is why Simlish looks like a language but isn't really one.

Ram sheep ne vunch - Everybody to the pool!

Wish I could remember the movie (two angels come to Earth and have arguments); one of the characters was trying to catch up to another one, and clearly said "clarm woofum!" - it's what the animal trainer says when teaching "come here" - blew me away!

I suspect that someone involved in the creation of the Sim language was familiar with Russian- of course, that may be a case of everything looking like a nail to a hammer, but there are some pretty striking moments. For example, when a male sim is doing the attraction animation, he says something like "ooooooh, be-linka!" That "ka" ending sounds like a Russian diminuative form, i.e. the form of a name or word used to express affection. When parents are playing with toddlers, they sometimes say "boshinki, boshinki!" Again, the "shinki" sound is very similar to Russian diminutive forms. Again, I may be hearing what I want to hear, but there definitely seems to be a hint of Russian in there.

I believe there is some such systematic process when English-language song lyrics are Simlified.
But the spoken Simlish in the game is, I believe, completely ad-libbed by the voice actors, except for a very few words that do have pinned-down meanings, such as nooboo. Except for those words, it's not clear the actors had any specific English words in mind. There are videos of them doing it, and it looks like it flows pretty freely & isn't read from a script.

Even for the song lyrics, I'll bet the translations are not stable from one song to the next -- except, again, for a small set of pinned-down words like voo.



Let me be clear that I love Simlish, even while I'm letting air out of the notion that EA has created a language or even a cipher. The Sims are my people, I dream in Simlish and I sing Simlish in the shower. I believe the processes that create Simlish, even ad-libbing by voice actors, are still basically human linguistic processes. I also believe that Sim culture, like that of humans, is capable of growing beyond its original story.

Project page for quantitative analysis of spoken Simlish
(disclosure: I'm the webmaster, so I'm not citing that page as authority for this post, which would amount to sock-puppeting.)

I've often thought of translating Simlish - you've saved me the trouble