Conlang

Conlangs & computer games, part 1: The gaming giants

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Splatoon screenshot 1 1

Conlangs, or constructed languages, is a category of languages deliberately created by individuals or groups – as opposed to the seven or eight thousand natural languages on this planet. My interest in conlangs is already well-documented here on Lingoblog, but I also have an interest in games: Board games, word games, video games, and the mechanisms which make all of them work.

For the next couple of Wednesdays, I will be discussing a few video games which use conlangs in interesting ways.

I’ve been wanting to write this mini-serial after I noticed a small trend. It seems to me that game developers in recent years have been experimenting with the interactive potential of unique language systems, and this has

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On Conlanging, Action Figures & Te Reo Māori

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bionicle

Conlanging is the art of designing your own languages.

Bionicle is a franchise of buildable action figures produced by the Lego company from 2001 to 2010.

Te Reo Māori is a language in the Austronesian language family, and is spoken by approximately 186.000 people in New Zealand.

This is a story at the intersection of those three topics.

Part 1: Action Figures

I was born in 1995, so 2001 was the year I turned six. That places me just at the younger end of the intended demographic for Bionicle, the then-new line of action figures from the toy company Lego. In the years to come, these figures would take up a good deal of my attention, and several of my … ↪

Book Review: ‘In the Land of Invented Languages’ by Arika Okrent

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inventedcover

Not so long ago, I was a stranger in a particularly strange land. The land was that of invented languages, and my guide was Arika Okrent, linguist and professional writer. My ticket was a bright red paperback with zany white lettering on the front. The journey lasted just over 800 years – the length of the recorded history of invented languages. Or perhaps that was the destination rather than the journey? I seem to have reached the outer border of this metaphor, so let’s cross over to a more tangible overview of Okrent’s book.

In the Land of Invented Languages was released in 2009 and is 293 pages long. The book is the result of five years of research into … ↪

Conlang-week in Aarhus

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Increasing numbers of films and television series incorporate fictional languages to create authentic fantasy settings. But who makes these languages? Meet two language creators and hear about their work. There will be a workshop and two talks at Aarhus University. The events are free, and everyone is welcome, students and non-students alike!

Wednesday 14th september, 4-6 pm, 1441-112:

SOLIA-workshop with David J. Peterson and Jessie Sams: “From beginning to translation – a historical approach”

Thursday 15th september, 4-8 pm, 1482-105 (Nobel auditorium):

Talk by David J. Peterson & Jessie Sams

Friday 16th september, ViGør, 2-4 pm, 1481-264:

Talk by David J. Peterson & Jessie Sams

 

Read more about David J. Peterson (in Danish)

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LingoLit: A Linguist’s Quarantine Reading Guide

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The Wug Test 1

Blogger’s note:
I originally wrote this blog entry with the intention of asking the editors of Lingoblog to release it shortly before the summer holidays. However, since then another situation has arisen, which to an even higher degree seems to leave people needing something good to read, so I’ve decided instead to submit this entry now, as a guide to quarantine rather than summer reading. I urge you to consider it a bit of tragic irony when I refer to the holidays below, rather than to the current situation.
The libraries here in Denmark may be closed, but there’s still audio- and e-books as well as online bookstores that are accessible without venturing into the public and risking contamination. I … ↪