Matthew Martin has proposed the creation of a new Stack Exchange site for conlangs.

For those of you are unfamiliar with Stack Exchange, it's an extension of Stack Overflow to other topics. Basically it's a very enhanced Q&A site.

Cf. Math Overflow as an example of a successful Stack Exchange project; browse around to see how it's used.

If you want this to happen, you should
1. visit the proposal
2. log in / create an account
3. 'follow' the proposal
4. submit more example on and off topic questions
5. rate others' example questions as on/off topic and contribute your opinion to the site-definition etc discussions

Today I resigned as president of the Language Creation Society, being replaced by dedalvs, who's been the effective second in command for a while now.

If the LCS is to survive long term, it'll need this… and if it doesn't, then so be it. I think that our new advisory committee and so forth should help to actually push the LCS forward as a community-based organization.

It'll be a relief to have it outgrow me. To be honest, I don't want it to be "my" thing, and I'm tired of doing it, and of having it being associated with me-personally. I never wanted that.

We'll see, I guess. In the meantime, I'll continue as chairman of the board, with the day to day work in good hands.

And just personally… one less thing to worry about is something I sorely need now.

I guess now I have to actually deliver on that promise to make a conlang with audience interaction in 18 minutes flat.

1. HOLY SHIT I MIGHT GET ON TEDTALKS.

… if I beat the other four finalists, AND the TEDTalks people think the live one is good enough to include in the ted.com TEDx feed. But still, that's like an actual viable shot.

2. Oh fuck I just set myself a pretty hard task didn't I. Slimming that down while keeping it having real audience interaction is going to be HARD.

3. Have you seen their speakers list? They're intimidating. Personally I think sharing a stage with Kevin Warwick - someone I've seriously considered applying for a PhDship with - would be just fucking brilliant.


tl;dr: OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG.

... with Alex.

Here's the document in progress:

http://saizai.com/nlws.shtml

http://conference.conlang.org
conference@conlang.org


The Language Creation Society (LCS) is currently accepting proposals for talks, workshops, and posters for the 4th Language Creation Conference (LCC4).

LCC4 will be held May 14-15 2011, in Groningen, the Netherlands, under the local direction of Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets, at the Infrahuis Noord.

Groningen is within easy travel of all of Europe, and we hope that all European conlangers will attend. More information will be forthcoming soon, on the LCC website and via email, on ticket prices/pre-sale, accommodations, travel suggestions, etc.

If you want to be informed of this and other LCS news, please join our very low-traffic news mailing list:

http://lists.conlang.org/listinfo.cgi/news-conlang.org


About the LCC:

The Language Creation Conference is the first and only international conference discussing issues related to the craft of language creation, or "conlanging". It includes both fairly technical linguistic discussions as well as more artistic, sociological, or philosophical ones; examples of craft in action; voices from many parts of the conlanging community; and people from all over the world. The conference is open to the public. Preregistration requested. Lunch, snacks, and opportunities to socialize with fellow conlangers will be provided. All proceeds go to the LCS.

All presentations are generally in English.

The Language Creation Society is a tax-exempt 501(c)3 California-based non-profit corporation with 13 international board members. Its goal is to promote conlangs and conlanging through offering platforms for conlangers to publish high-quality work of interest to the community, raising awareness about conlanging amongst the general public, organizing work for professional conlangers and people in the entertainment industry interested in adding more depth to their alternative worlds, and providing a central place for reliable contacts and information to those seeking to learn more.

( Presentation types & how to submit )

http://www.dothraki.org/
http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/44722-dothraki-dictionary-dothrakiorg/

SO. CUTE.

Now we just have to wait until HBO official production & advertising really gets into gear so we can release more info on a regular basis for the fans.

But still, we have at least one squeeful fanboy. And I think I just cutegasmed.

It's actually a very similar sensation to seeing http://thecutest.info/top.html - almost painful cuteness.

I hope the rest of our fans turn out this way. That'd be awesome.

... well, their guest blog. As a co-author. Close enough.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=dothraki-response-2010-06-02

Online version: http://conlang.org/fiat_lingua.php
CONTACT: publishing-editors@conlang.org

The upcoming Journal of the Language Creation Society (Fiat Lingua) is seeking papers and articles for publication, artwork, and referees.

The subject of the journal is language creation, constructed languages ("conlangs"), and other topics of special interest to language creators.

The journal will include both more formal academic papers and more informal contributions. All contributions, academic and nonacademic, should be of interest and value to a readership of people primarily interested in invented languages (artistic, auxiliary, and/or engineered).
( Read more... )

Narn!

So hopefully you all narn the narn "foo". It's a metasyntactic variable - a narn of arbitrary placeholder name.

I hereby narn another narn: "narn".

"Narn" is similar, but can narn any constituent - from unbound morpheme to a whole narn. Its value is the *clear pragmatic default* in any narn; e.g. "Narn!" on meeting someone may not mean *"I have a new car!", but rather a narny greeting.

Narn should not be used to confuse; e.g. "Narn." is a fine narn to a generic question with expected narn (e.g. "Are you still in the bathroom?", superficial "How are you today?"), but not to an actual unknown-answer narn (e.g. "Is this post missing anything?", friends' "How are you feeling?").

It should be narned with generic morphology (narn, narns, narned, narning, narny, etc) and original intonation.

I think that conversation is frequently low-narn enough that a stupendous narn can be narned. Here I am, narn, a bit overusing "narn" for narny effect (and to demonstrate the proper narn of "narn").

It is similar to Lojban "co'e", but much more narn of course.

Please narn this into your everyday vocabulary.

Narn,
Sai

HBO's official press release today.

See http://conlang.org/dothraki.php for more info.

EXPERT CREATES LANGUAGE FOR NEW HBO SERIES GAME OF THRONES

David J. Peterson, an expert language creator from the Language Creation Society (LCS), has been chosen to create the Dothraki language for HBO's upcoming fantasy series Game of Thrones, based on the book series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin.

When Game of Thrones executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss needed a language for the Dothraki, Martin's race of nomadic warriors, they turned to the Language Creation Society. The LCS solicited and vetted a number of proposals for the Dothraki language from its pool of experts, with Peterson's proposal ultimately being selected by the Game of Thrones production team.

Peterson drew inspiration from George R.R. Martin's description of the language, as well as from such languages as Russian, Turkish, Estonian, Inuktitut and Swahili. However, the Dothraki language is no mere hodgepodge, babble or pidgin. It has its own unique sound, an extensive vocabulary of more than 1,800 words and a complex grammatical structure.

"In designing Dothraki, I wanted to remain as faithful as possible to the extant material in George R.R. Martin's series," says Peterson. "Though there isn't a lot of data, there is evidence of a dominant word order [subject-verb-object], of adjectives appearing after nouns, and of the lack of a copula ['to be']. I've remained faithful to these elements, creating a sound aesthetic that will be familiar to readers, while giving the language depth and authenticity. My fondest desire is for fans of the series to look at a word from the Dothraki language and be unable to tell if it came from the books or from me—and for viewers not even to realize it's a constructed language."

"We're tremendously excited to be working with David and the LCS," says producer D.B. Weiss. "The language he's devised is phenomenal. It captures the essence of the Dothraki, and brings another level of richness to their world. We look forward to his first collection of Dothraki love sonnets."

Did you know? (Hash yer ray nesi?)

• The name for the Dothraki people—and their language—derives from the verb "dothralat" ("to ride").


• The Dothraki have four different words for "carry," three for "push," three for "pull" and at least eight for "horse," but no word that means "please" or "follow."


• The longest word in Dothraki is "athastokhdeveshizaroon," which means "from nonsense."


• The words for "related," "weighted net," "eclipse," "dispute," "redhead," "oath," "funeral pyre," "evidence," "omen," "fang" and "harvest moon" all have one element in common: "qoy," the Dothraki word for "blood."


• Dothraki for "to dream"—"thirat atthiraride"—literally means "to live a wooden life"; in Dothraki, "wooden" ("ido") is synonymous with "fake."


• The word for "pride"—"athjahakar"—is derived from "jahak," the traditional long braid worn by Dothraki warriors ("lajaki").

More information about the Dothraki language (and their love poems) will be released over the course of the series.