The fragments of language presented by Adams consist of a few dozen distinct words, and are chiefly used for the naming of rabbits, their mythological characters, and objects in their world.
Some fans of the book, including authors and academics, have written about the words and phrases extant in the corpus of Watership Down and have analyzed the language and its variations on a linguistic level.
[11] Albert Valdman notes that inter-rabbit Lapine is alternately formal and colloquial "marked by hesitations, interruptions, interjections, incomplete sentences, and false starts".
Notable traits include the plural marker -il (which replaces a final vowel if it is present in the singular: hrududu, "automobile", pl.
[11] Valdman further notes differences between the Lapine Foreigner Talk used to facilitate discussion as with Kehaar the gull, and that used to signal the depreciated status of the unnamed mouse (a less powerful animal in the rabbit world).
In a survey Murray found that the term was in use (meaning "the act of rabbits eating above-ground") primarily in the Midwest and North Central United States.
Murray also claims that the Lapine word "Crixa" (meaning "The center of Efrafa, at the crossing point of two bridle paths"[13]) has also gained usage outside the novel: it is used by students to refer to the residential dormitories within Ohio State University.
[10] Lapine has been described as easy to learn due to its emphasis on nouns,[14] and it has been praised as a didactic tool for budding linguists and learners of English as a second language.
[7][14] Authors, such as Patrick Jemmer (who corresponded briefly with Adams regarding Lapine), have made large-scale "recreations" of various possible historical stages of the language.