2012: The Year in Conlanging

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 síla 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.