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The Results Are In!

Posted on Tuesday, July 27, 2010 in Conlangers

Our twtpoll received 38 responses. The question, you might remember, was:

Who has had the most impact/influence/inspiration on you in your own conlanging?

The single person with the most votes was JRR Tolkien with 14; however, the “others” received more votes overall. Here is the raw data:

Other – 15 votes (39%)
JRR Tolkien (Quenya, Sindarin, etc) – 14 votes (37%)
LL Zamenhof (Esperanto) – 5 votes (13%)
John Quijada (Ithkuil) & Sonja Elen Kisa (Toki Pona) – 2 votes each (tie) (5% each)
Marc Okrand (Klingon) – 0 votes
I will admit I cast my one vote for Tolkien.

The comments left by those responding to “other” were the most interesting pieces of information to come out of the poll. There were 13 in all. Some were general:

  • No-one has had any significant impact
  • various fantasy novels with naming languages, but not Tolkien (haven’t read him)
  • No one, really. I just read somewhere that artificial languages existed, and I thought it was a neat thing to do.

Others named persons who were influential. One comment on the previous post said, “I think only to have conlangers here is a bit of an issue. I mean… my philosophy teacher was a big reason for me to start conlanging…” This is exactly why I was so glad we got the following responses to the “other” category:

The links are all my own, and the comments are typed here as they were at the poll. If any links point to the incorrect person, I sincerely apologize. That being said, I was fascinated to find that someone attached to MAD Magazine (Edward Nelson Bridwell) was instrumental in coming up with a “language” for Superman. I was glad to see our own David J. Peterson (or Mr. Dothraki as I like to call him) was mentioned. Suzette Haden Elgin is one conlanger that deserves more mention. All in all, a nice collection of esteemed names, both linguistically and conlanguistically.

Thanks for taking part in the poll! Head over to twtpoll.com/r/nl7r0j to see the colorful graph created by twtpoll from our data.