{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\cocoartf1138\cocoasubrtf230 {\fonttbl\f0\fswiss\fcharset0 Helvetica;} {\colortbl;\red255\green255\blue255;} \margl1440\margr1440\vieww10800\viewh8400\viewkind0 \pard\tx720\tx1440\tx2160\tx2880\tx3600\tx4320\tx5040\tx5760\tx6480\tx7200\tx7920\tx8640\pardirnatural \f0\fs24 \cf0 It's been a couple days since the New York Times article on Dothraki came out (and, in case you missed that, an article on Dothraki came out in The New York Times), and in case viewers of that article have found their way to this blog, I wanted to add some commentary. While it would have been ideal for this to have been written before the article came out, real life got in the way, as it's wont to do (especially around the holidays), so this will have to suffice.\ \ As there's only so much space in a newspaper article, this one was bound to leave a lot unsaid. Of course, as it's just an article, not an archive or a history, that's its job, and I think it did its job very well. As I see it, then, it's my job to fill in the gaps, and that's what I intend to do here\'97specifically, one gap: the status of conlanging itself.\ \ Most of the modern professional conlangers one hears about (Marc Okrand, Victoria Fromkin, Paul Frommer, Wolf Wikeley...) kind of emerged out of the ether. They were discovered by chance, asked to invent a language (something they'd never done before), and when they were finished, they returned to their lives. All would be asked again to create a language for some new project (and some of them did), but otherwise, they remained solitary in their achievement. They garnered success by dint of their own efforts, and owe nothing to anyone\'97and more power to them! Without Na'vi, without Pakuni, without Klingon, I wouldn't be writing this. Klingon itself has done more to popularize conlanging than even Tolkien\'97and the effect that Na'vi has had can't even be measured at this point.\ \ That said, this is not my story, and I think that's one thing the article fails to make clear. I owe a lot to many different people\'97and I don't mean my parents, or my supportive wife, or even my linguistics professors, or anything like that (though I certainly owe a great deal to them): I mean to conlangers whose work has inspired me, and whose examples I've followed.\ \ If I may back up a bit, language creation has a long and colorful history (see Arika Okrent's In the Land of Invented Languages for a fair summary). It basically went in four waves. First, there were the philosophical language creators (guys who created languages in order to "perfect" human cognition). Next came the auxlangers: Idealists who created languages to facilitate international communication, and thereby realize world peace (this was primarily in the late 19th and early 20th century, though it's continued steadily into the 21st). After that came the solitary artists\'97those who created languages to embellish their fictional worlds (or created worlds where their languages could be spoken, as the case may be). Primary among them is, of course, J. R. R. Tolkien, but another big name that's oft ignored is M. A. R. Barker, whose work is just incredible. And then, with the advent of the internet, came the modern conlangers, and it's these I'd like to talk about.\ \ Back when Tolkien was creating his languages, he was alone. He knew other philologists, sure, and he knew other writers (and influenced them linguistically. C. S. Lewis tried his hand at a little conlanging under Tolkien's influence), but there was no one else like him that he knew of (in fact, the one instance in his life where he believes he overheard someone he thought might be a conlanger is treated like a divine miracle). Even now, I think this is something that conlangers are quite familiar with. Yes, conlanging has gotten a lot of press recently, and it's getting to be common knowledge, but how many conlangers have physically met a conlanger whom they haven't first "met" online? It's never happened to me. As far as I know, there are no other conlangers in Orange County (though OC conlangers: this is your chance to speak up!). The closest conlanger I know lives 160 miles away, and I'm grateful to know one who lives so close!\ \ Given such a situation, a conlanger like Tolkien didn't have the benefit of a community. It's easy to set up a writers' group; nearly impossible to set up a conlangers' group. It's a rare calling, and one that's often far more private than even fiction, or poetry. As a result, someone like Tolkien didn't have anyone to bounce ideas off of (for me, someone like Doug Ball, the creator of Skerre, whose insight, general linguistic brilliance and friendship have been invaluable to me over the years). It's a source of constant wonder to me not that Tolkien was such a good conlanger (talent is talent), but that he didn't simply give it up. I'm sure there were hundreds\'97if not thousands\'97of others in similar circumstances who did, dismissing their work as "childish" or even "crazy" (as many today still do). Without anyone else to say, at the very least, "Hey, that's neat!", how does one persist?\ \ Myself, I'm sure I wouldn't have. Fortunately, thanks to the internet, there was an entire community of conlangers who basically did exactly that. This was back in 2000 (which, for the uninitiated, makes me a "newcomer"), and the community was an online listerv called the Conlang-List (and it's still there. If you're interested, you can join up!). I've been on the Conlang-List since 2000, and it's from there, and from the conlangers there, that I've learned the art of conlanging\'97from hundreds of conlangers. I could probably rattle off more than 100 names right now (Padraic Brown, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets, Amanda Babcock Furrow, Andrew Smith, Rik Roots, J\'f6rg Rhiemeier, Ray Brown, Gary Shannon Jan van Steenbergen, Benct Philip Jonsson, Carsten Becker\'97literally, I could go on), all of whom have done fantastic work. And collectively, we've gotten better at what we do. If you want to see some concrete evidence, you can take a look at my first conlang (most of which was constructed before I came into contact with any other conlanger). It's awful!\ \ Anyway, little by little I got better, mainly by looking at the fantastic work of others. And that's what's so wonderful about community, in general\'97and it's what's transforming conlanging from a hobby (or a "neurosis", as the uncharitable used to say) into an artform, albeit slowly.\ \ And what's been amazing for me has been to watch how quickly the community has grown over the years. Back when I joined the online conlanging community, everyone knew each other. Even as late as 2004, I'd say, if there was someone creating a language somewhere, someone in the community had probably heard of them or knew them. By 2008, that was no longer possible\'97and now it's not even possible to keep track of the communities themselves! For example, though the Conlang-Listserv has been around since the mid-90s, the Zompist Bulletin Board (ZBB) has been around for more than ten years, if I'm counting right, and may be the largest conlanging community not dedicated to a single conlang. And after awhile it gave birth to another bulletin board, the Conlangers Bulletin Board (CBB), focused more on international conlangers. And there were other splinter communities\'97and then still others. Omniglot, a site dedicated to writing systems, now has its own forum, with an active subforum dedicated to conlanging. There are (at least?) three different Facebook groups, innumerable fora dedicated to conlanging in languages other than English, and a number of communities dedicated to specific languages (shout out to the lajaki over at the Dothraki forum!)\'97and while there's some overlap in membership, the percentage is surprisingly small. In short, I don't think we can even call it a community anymore. It's huge!\ \ I wanted to make the above clear, because I wanted to at least mention some of the work that I find incredible, but I don't want anyone to feel slighted. There was a time where we could actually list everyone's conlang website in one blog post. Those days are long gone. But anyway, if you've come to this blog post from a google search because you read the article in the Times, or because you've heard of Dothraki on Game of Thrones, I wanted you to know there's more out there than Dothraki, than Na'vi, than Klingon\'97even than Tolkien (though if you want more information on Tolkien's languages, the place to go is Ardalambion). Here are some links to get you started:\ \