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Sep 17

A Holiday for Conlangers

Posted on Friday, September 17, 2010 in Conlanging, Rant

Hildegard of Bingen's Litterae ignotae

St. Hildegard von Bingen's Litterare Ignotae

The Irish (and those who want to be Irish) have St. Patrick‘s Day on March 17. The romantic have (St.) Valentine‘s Day on February 14. Both of these well-known holidays – now very secular – started out (and remain) the feast or memorial days of these two saints. (Check out Butler’s Lives of the Saints). If only conlangers had a holiday like these…

Right now, Esperanto enthusiasts have their Zamenhofa Tago. Klingon-speakers have their qepmey. And, of course, there are the Language Creation Conferences (which are lots of fun but also like work for organizers and presenters).

…but wait, conlangers do have their own unofficial saint – Hildegard von Bingen. Hildegard was also known as the Sibyl of the Rhine and would have been an incredible woman in any age, let alone the 12th century. One of the best print resources concerning Hildegard is Dr. Sarah Higley’s Hildegard of Bingen’s Unknown Language: An Edition, Translation, and Discussion. Hildegard’s feast day is commemorated each September 17.

So, my proposal is that we, as conlangers, celebrate the art, craft, and science of language construction each September 17. It would be an ecumenical holiday, able to be celebrated by conlangers of all kinds: artlangers, auxlangers, and engelangers.

First, there are several ways one could refer to the holiday. The full St. Hildegard’s Day, simply Hildegard’s Day, the abbreviated St. Hilde’s Day, or, if you like, Hildefest. My personal preference is St. Hilde’s Day. For me, it just falls more trippingly off the tongue. But that’s just me.

What are some St. Hilde’s Day greetings? St. Patrick’s Day has Erin go bragh! Christmas has the traditional “merry”. New Year’s has “happy.” Well, there’s always words from Hildegard’s Lingua Ignota like chorzta “sparkling”. Maybe someone who knows the vocabulary of Lingua Ignota could chime in. For the time being: “Happy Hilde’s Day!”.

How would one celebrate St. Hilde’s Day? That’s up to the community of conlangers. I posted something about this on both Twitter and CONLANG-L. Some suggestions include coffee (or tea) and grammar, finishing up a languishing conlang project (or starting a new one), composing conlang music or poetry (St. Hildegard did both!), buying a conlang/linguistics book you’ve been putting off, etc. There was also the first Concultural Card Exchange this past holiday season. What about exchanging these kinds of cards on September 17? What about choosing this date to share a conlanging program at your local library or writers’ circle. The possibilities are numerous. And Hildegard was German…so that means beer, right?

One comment from the illustrious David Peterson is absolutely priceless and has to be shared: “Shouldn’t we participate in rampant commercialism somehow, so that in years to come, we can say, ‘St. Hildegard’s Day used to be about the conlanging!'” 🙂

So, there’s my proposal. When September 17, 2011, rolls around, how will you celebrate St. Hilde’s Day?

Sep 7

ámman îar

Posted on Tuesday, September 7, 2010 in Award, Conlangers, Conlanging

As many of you may be aware, David J. Peterson has posthumously awarded his annual ~:D Smiley Award to David Bell’s Tolkien-inspired conlang ámman îar. Being that we just commemorated the anniversary of Prof. Tolkien’s death, it seemed appropriate on this blog to also highlight the work of David Bell.

I had been dimly aware of ámman îar for some time, but the Smiley Award got me to take another look at it. Evidently, previous looks were cursory at best. I had no idea of the depth of detail that had been included. One page that caught my eye this time was the script which David Bell created for his language. Many conlangers are familiar with Tengwar clones. Bell’s is definitely not a clone but rather a well-thought-out evolution of the scripts of Middle-earth into a cursive form. At first glance, his tal-eglar looks like cursive letters in any Roman-script alphabet. However, on closer inspection, they are firmly based in the tradition of the script of Feanor.

The Smiley Award write-up does a great job of highlighting some of the finer points of Bell’s creation, but to truly appreciate it, one needs to delve deeply into his web site, now preserved at graywizard.conlang.org. You will not be disappointed.

(For past Smiley Award winners, click here)

Aug 30

Worlds Collide

Posted on Monday, August 30, 2010 in Books, Conlangers, Conlanging

Arika OkrentI had the oddest experience today. I work at a large metropolitan library and was walking down the hall today when a patron saw me and said, “Saluton! I was reading about you in a book today.” This particular patron was vaguely familiar, but I hadn’t really had the opportunity to speak with him for a couple years. Not since I worked in a different department. Well, my brain started spinning, and I finally asked, “Do you mean Arika Okrent’s In the Land of Invented Languages? He said, “Yeah. Can you say hello in your chipmunk language?” Unfortunately, I’ve been away from Drytok for a while, so I couldn’t oblige him…the shock of being asked to speak it out-of-the-blue notwithstanding. We talked for a while; I told him about Arika’s new book I heard she was working on, and I encouraged him to check out the posting at the Language Creation Society page of the actual LCC presentation of Drytok’s first public appearance. All in all, a great way to brighten up a Monday! 🙂

May 4

LCK in Print!

Posted on Tuesday, May 4, 2010 in Books, Conlanging

Mark Rosenfelder, aka Zompist, has provided one of the most helpful and comprehensive introductions to conlanging on his web site for “more than a decade”: The Language Construction Kit (LCK). Now, Mark goes one better and has created a print version of the LCK which is “four times larger” than its online counterpart. The book’s Table of Contents and an FAQ can be viewed here and is available for purchase at Amazon.com. (For a previous post on Zompist here at The Conlanging Librarian blog, click here.)

Mar 26

Conlanging Educational Resources

Posted on Friday, March 26, 2010 in Conlanging, Library Additions, Presentations

School of Athens by Rafael

Have you ever wanted to share your love of conlanging with a group in a more-or-less formal classroom setting? Have you ever wanted to give a presentation on the art and science of conlanging? The Conlanger’s Library can now help! The Education page at the Library contains materials you can use to create a PowerPoint presentation, handouts, and also includes inspirational videos. Materials there have been created by Nathan Richardson, Sai Emrys, Sheri Beth Wells-Jensen, and yours truly. If you have any items from formal classes which you have taught or presentations which you have given and you’d like to share them with the community, email lcs (at) conlang (dot) org.

Mar 11

Great New York Times Column

Posted on Thursday, March 11, 2010 in Conlangers, Conlanging, Library Additions

A March 10, 2010, column from the New York Times has been posted to the Newspaper Articles in TCL. Arika Okrent and Paul Frommer have responded to readers’ questions about “invented languages” and provided some very in-depth answers. Enjoy!

Feb 21

Cthulhu fhtagn, Part II

Posted on Sunday, February 21, 2010 in Books, Conlanging, Fiction

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’ve been playing around with the Cthulhu invocation from H.P. Lovecraft:

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.
“In his house at R’leyh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”

Here is my personal interpretation of that phrase:

  1. Looking at Lovecraft’s translation, it appears to me that the sentence should be read “backwards” as in Fhtagn wgah’nagl R’lyeh, Cthulhu mglw’nafh ph’nglui. Stick a comma between R’lyeh and Cthulhu for good measure.
  2. fhtagn then becomes a participial construction meaning something like “waiting; lying in wait (as a predator)”
  3. wgah’nagl becomes “in (his) house/abode”
  4. R’lyeh, the proper name of the sunken city, modifies wgah’nagl, making the phrase R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn something like “Waiting in his R’lyeh abode”
  5. Cthulhu is, of course, Cthulhu, the agent of the sentence.
  6. Sticking to my idea of modifiers coming after their words, mglw’nafh should mean “dead”. But Cthulhu cannot actually die (at least in the human sense). Therefore, I’m making mglw’nafh mean something like “potentially active, physically inactive, dormant bodily manifestation”.
  7. ph’nglui on the other hand is translated by Lovecraft as “dreaming”. But we know that Cthulhu can influence humans with his mind. ph’nglui I am translating then as “active mental state” in contrast to mglw’nafh, “a dormant physical state”, but the word in some verbal state.
  8. Furthermore, take the words ph’nglui and wgah’nagl. Note the same consonant root in both nglui and nagl (n-g-l). Using this similarity, I’m saying that nagl refers to something “inside or within”, and nglui is an “interior mental state”. By this reasoning then, wgah’ should mean “house, abode”.

Using this reasoning then, we get:

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.
“dreaming” active mental state (verb) “dead” dormant physical state (participle) (agent) (proper name) “in (his) abode” waiting (participle)

Comments?

Sep 4

Major Announcement

Posted on Friday, September 4, 2009 in Conlanging

LCS is hiring a conlanger to create a new artisitic language for a major TV studio! For all the details go to conlang.org/jobs.

Aug 27

A Top Ten List

Posted on Thursday, August 27, 2009 in Conlanging, Library Additions

A new Wired article has been posted to the Magazine section of The Conlanger’s Library (to make up for the one from 1996 posted earlier). This one is entitled “Top Ten Geekiest Constructed Languages.” As with any top ten list, this one has some interesting comments about others’ nominations for geekiest. The consensus (by several) seems to be Lojban. That’s not my opinion…just the posters’ on Wired.

Jul 15

Palantir, but not that palantir?

Posted on Wednesday, July 15, 2009 in Conlanging

Conlanging intersected with “reality” the other day for me. In listening to National Public Radio, I heard about a company called Palantir Technologies. In the program, it was said explicitly that the company was “named for the all-seeing stones in the Lord of the Rings series, sells software that fuses vast amounts of disparate data together and then allows it to be searched for connections.” Curious about this use of one of Tolkien’s constructed words, I checked out Palantir Technologies website. Their legal notice actually contains this section:

7. TRADEMARKS AND TRADE NAMES
PALANTIR, graphics, logos, designs, page headers, button icons, scripts, and other service names are the
trademarks and trade names of Palantir. Palantir’s trademarks and trade names may not be used, including as part of trademarks and/or as part of domain names, in connection with any product or service in any manner that is likely to cause confusion. Palantir Technologies is in no way affiliated with, or endorsed or sponsored by, The Saul Zaentz Company d.b.a. Tolkien Enterprises or the Estate of J.R.R. Tolkien.

My question would be “Can they do this?” If PALANTIR is “in no way affiliated with, or endorsed or sponsored by, The Saul Zaentz Company d.b.a. Tolkien Enterprises or the Estate of J.R.R. Tolkien,” how can they get away with using one of Tolkien’s words?? Wouldn’t this be like someone naming a company QAPLA’ Technologies and then saying “We are in no way affiliated with, or endorsed or sponsored by Paramount Pictures”??

Just makes the Conlanging Librarian go…hmmmm.