I Love Library Booksales
I have the good fortune to work in a major public library, and our booksales always have a linguistic treasure or two. This season’s booksale just finished, and I picked up two books on Swahili (one a dictionary, one a “Teach Yourself” title) and a dictionary of German synonyms.
At other booksales, I’ve picked up books on learning languages and, a number of years ago, one outlining all the similarities between Scandinavian languages and Native American ones (trying to “prove” that Eastern Native American languages were directly related to the Viking settlers of North America, if I remember correctly).
There have been some ones I’ve kicked myself for not buying. I’m thinking especially of last year when I saw a complete set of The Lord of the Rings in a Russian translation. Saw it lying on a table and thought, “Oh, I need to stop back around and pick that up.” By the time I came back, they were gone. I even remember looking through them a the time and thinking, “Ah, no translation of the Appendices.”
Oh, well, I can curl up with my German synonyms, and see how I can create some vocabulary. Sure, I could have used a Roget’s, but synonyms in another language than English seemed a more interesting way to go.
Anyone willing to share any finds they’ve come across at library booksales?
New Articles Posted
I finally got around to posting the three (fairly) recent articles that were tweeted (@FiatLingua) in the Magazine section of the Library. Namely, the one on ROILA (the spoken robot language), the one on “how to write the next great alien language” from io9, and one from Crossed Genres. Á harya alassë!
Catching up…
It’s been awhile since anything new has been posted to the blog (or the library). Mea culpa. I’ve had some enhancements and improvements planned for The Conlanger’s Library and have slowly been working on them, but they’re still not ready for prime-time. Stay tuned. Some of the proposed additions include new navigation, some back-end coding, and a Contact page. As anyone can see, these have not been implemented…yet. I had intended on doing those and making announcements here on the blog, but “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley”. Those things are still in-the-works, but I wanted to post something to keep the blog and the Library at least marginally up-to-date.
First, several new postings have been made to the Library. Check out the “Most Recent Updates” box at the home page of the Library. These include a new paperback edition of Arika Okrent’s book and two Dothraki postings to the Scientific American online Guest Blog (one by Sai Emrys and David J. Peterson (Mr. Dothraki himself!)).
For those who haven’t followed the blog closely, we’ve had a very interesting conversation between David J. Peterson, myself, and several other posters on the topic of “Fantasy” literature, its past and present.
The Conlanging Librarian is also the official “twitterer” (or is that “tweeter”?) of the Language Creation Society (LCS) at Fiat Lingua, also the title of the upcoming journal the LCS.
So, enjoy the Library, and look forward to a few enhancements in the (hopefully) not-too-distant future.
Fiat lingua!!
Happy Birthday to Me!
This month, The Conlanging Librarian blog is one year old! In some ways, this is very surprising. I didn’t necessarily think it would keep going…but I’m glad to say it’s kept going on a fairly regular basis. (Insert cheering crowds here.) We’re still working on increasing the traffic to the blog and the Library. A year ago, the Library had 418 unique visitors to the Library who had 2,199 page views. As of today, 485 unique visitors with 2,744 page views. So, in a year, we’ve had 67 new visitors and 545 page views…not bad, but with the new LCS Twitter account (Fiat Lingua), we should see some more traffic as well. In any case, here’s to another year of postings. A elea ei!
Change to TCL Homepage
A box for Most Recent Updates has been made to the homepage of The Library. The idea is to provide a quick and easy way of looking at “new stuff” on the homepage, while at the same time providing some context within this blog for those items. The current “Updates” include:
- New quotation from L. Sprague de Camp
- New page dedicated to David J. Peterson’s Dothraki for HBO
- New educational materials page
- Parkvall’s Limits of Language added to Books
…plus, we’re coming up on the one year anniversary of this blog. Hmmm…we’ll have to think of some way to celebrate.
Limits of Language
A new Book has been added to The Library:
Limits of Language by Mikael Parkvall of Stockholm University. The book is an entertaining collection of trivia, facts, and information on language, linguistics, and languages. The calendar is also an interesting collection of important dates for the field. Enjoy!
Conlanging Educational Resources
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.
Recent Additions
The Conlanging Librarian has been busy adding new items to the Library:
- A new book has been added to Books (Science Fiction): Years in the Making: The Time-Travel Stories of L. Sprague de Camp.
- Several new articles and a video (from Arika’s appearance at Geeking Out) have been added to the Press Coverage of Arika Okrent and her popular book.
- And, finally, a new article by Arika Okrent herself that appeared at Slate.com about Paul Frommer’s Na’vi. Find this one in the Press Coverage of Dr. Frommer and his language of Pandora.
Enjoy!
New Book Added to Sci-Fi
I came across a new “old” book recently and have added it’s Google Books page to the Sci-Fi section of TCL. The book is by Frederick Spencer Oliver and was published originally in 1894. The Atlantean or Poseid language is featured in it. For more details:
Frederick Spencer Oliver
A Dweller on Two Planets or, The Dividing of the Way
[Atlantean or Poseid language]
This novel, first published in 1894, purports to be the biography of the author’s past live as an Atlantean names Phylos.
New Movie Added to TCL
From some recent posts on CONLANG-L and the LCS, a new movie with a conlang in it has surfaced and been posted at Films:
Youth Without Youth (2007)
starring Tim Roth, directed by Francis Ford Coppola
[unnamed artificial language]
This film was based on the book by Mircea Eliade. To get more information about the artificial language (created by Dr. David Shulman) check out the official site under the “Languages” section of The Production.