Dec 26
2013: The Year in Conlanging
Posted on Thursday, December 26, 2013 in Books, Film, television
This past year had some great conlanging activity. Here’s a round-up of some of the highlights:
- Games of Thrones, Season 3, premiered in March. With this season, we got a little less Dothraki but also go to hear High Valyrian thanks to David J. Peterson. Especially with the awe-inspiring episode And Now His Watch is Ended! Dracarys!
- Also, thanks to David, we got conlangs in the new Syfy TV series Defiance which premiered in April. Castithan and Irathient got a following rather quickly!
- Man of Steel, released in June, featured Kryptonian created by Christine Schreyer.
- The opening of the LCS Lending Library in September (Edit: added 12/27/2013)
- In November, Thor: The Dark World was released which featured extensive dialogue from Malekith and Algrim/Kurse in David’s Dark Elvish (or Shiväisith).
- Also in November, Mark Rosenfelder (aka Zompist) published his follow-up to the LCK and Advanced LCK: The Conlanger’s Lexipedia.
- In 2013, Zompist also worked on the the conlang for Serpent’s Tongue, Sehimu Thinara. His blog post includes a link to a grammatical sketch of the language.
- The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug was released in December with quite a bit of dialogue in Elvish and Orkish.
- It was also announced that David would be doing the alien language for the CW TV series Star-Crossed.
Have I missed one? (Undoubtedly.) Feel free to add a comment to this post!
Happy conlanging in 2014!
Dec 31
2012: The Year in Conlanging
Posted on Monday, December 31, 2012 in Books, Conlangers, Conlanging, Film
It seemed to me that there was a flurry of conlang-related activity during the latter part of 2012, so I decided to take a look back and see if any other significant events in conlangs and conlanging took place this past year. Turns out, there were quite a few. I’m sure I forgot any number. Feel free to add others as comments to this post.
Enjoy the list and happy conlanging in 2013!
- John Carter, based (loosely) on the Edgar Rice Burrough’s series of novels, premiered on March 9, and featured a Barsoomian (Martian) language created by Na’vi creator, Paul Frommer. The film touched off a series of posts on this blog on the Barsoomian language.
- Also back in March, David Peterson (creator of Dothraki, LCS President, and all-around good guy) did an AMA (Ask Me Anything) on reddit.
- Mark Rosenfelder (aka Zompist) published his Advanced Language Construction Kit in July. Zompist’s online Language Construction Kit continues to be a good first stop for budding conlangers.
- Dr. Christine Schreyer’s ANTH474 class (Pidgins, Creoles, and Created Language) at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan Campus, was offered in the Spring 2012 semester. Yours truly had the honor of speaking (via Skype) to the class on November 1 about the LCS, the Esperanto, Elvish, and Beyond exhibit, and my own conlanging efforts. Through her active twitter feed and the hashtag #ANTH474, we were all able to interact with the class.
- On October 4, Dothraki gets a shout-out on Season 9, Episode 3 (Andy’s Ancesry), of NBC’s The Office (video). David Peterson himself blogged about the epidose and even canonized the noun-verb compound concept for the language using Dwight’s example.
- Also in October, the first Klingon wedding to occur in the UK took place. Neatorama has posted video coverage (along with some tlhIngan Hol).
- On Novemer 10, 2012, Pete Bleackley started the Conlang Tip Exchange over on Google+.
- Registration for the 5th Language Creation Conference opened. LCC5 will take place on May 4 & 5, 2013, in Austin, Texas, and presentation proposals are still being accepted.
- A Klingon Christmas Carol was performed during the month of December in Chicago at the Raven Theatre by Commedia Beauregard. According to its Wikipedia entry, the play “was written by Christopher O. Kidder and Sasha Walloch and was originally translated by Laura Thurston, Bill Hedrick and Christopher O. Kidder. Additional content and translations were provided by Chris Lipscombe.” The 2012 production received positive reviews like this and this. Qapla’!
- On December 3, Stephen Colbert kicks off Hobbit Week on The Colbert Report with “Elen sÃla lumenn’ omentielvo.”
- The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the first of Peter Jackson’s planned prequel trilogy, opened on December 14. The film featured dialogue in Sindarin and an Orcish dialect. As of December 31, the film has grossed $360,903,000.
- The idea of creating a new word for your conlang on every day of December was inaugurated by Mia Soderquist on Twitter with the following tweet on November 21: “I am suddenly inspired to create a common word for each day in December, just to start filling more obvious gaps.” Leland Paul Kusmer suggested “Lexicon December = Lexcember, perhaps?” and thus #lexember was born.
- On December 24, Joshua Foer‘s article (Utopian for Beginners) on John Quijada and Ithkuil was posted online at The New Yorker. Subsequently, a podast with Foer was posted (Out Loud: Unspeakable Language) that touched on aspects of the original article.