Fantasist's Scroll

Freshly added to the conlang word generator.

Yep, that’s right, now you can generate words, and names, based on languge files torn from the pages of Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melnibone series. I’ve very carefully entered in loads of words and proper names from the series by hand from several different sources. The beauty of it is, no one could tell if I’d made any spelling errors! These are some seriously crazy names.
Oh, that reminds me, they’re also available in the proper name generator, too. And, just because it strikes me as funny, I’ve also added Melnibonean combined with Latin to both of these. And, I have to admit, it really works fairly well! (Though, the straight Melnibonean occasionally coughs up a little too much data in the name generator. There must be a hidden character somewhere in the file that’s messing things up. Oh, well, no one’s perfect!)

So, go have fun with them!

For pity’s sake, READ THE POST!

Okay, now I’ve gotten a whole bunch of people asking me to help them write out Elvish words or phrases in one of Tolkien’s various Elvish scripts. I’m going to say this one more time for you all: I do not know how to write in any elvish script whatsoever! I only care about Tolkien’s languages for the fact that he made them himself and used them to create an amazing world about which he wrote wonderful stories. I do not know how to speak or write in any form of Sindarin, Quenya, Tengwar or any other of his langauges. What’s more, I have no desire to do so. I will not write them in a box. I will not speak them for a fox!

However, if you do want help, the fine purveyor of many things Elvish at Gildor’s Page seems fairly willing to help. You can see some of the work done already at this page: Tengwar in Reality. So, go ask them!

And, that’s all I’m going to mention on that subject again. (I hope!)

I’ve always been fascinated with Japanese.

Mainly due to a fascination with the martial arts, but that’s a whole other kettle of fish. In any case, I have several links for you fellow Japanophiles. First, there’s Japanese for the Western Mind. It looks like a good place to start. Of course, I’m biased, I have a Western Mind! And, also there’s The Japanese Language, which is not quite as comprehesnive as it sounds! Though it does look like an excellent second stop for the amateur linguist.
And, lastly, I have a vocabulary builder: the Philippi Martial Arts Glossary page. It’s actually got more than Japanese terms on it, so it might be usefull to conlangers, as well.

In any case, these looked like fun sites to me, but then I’ve been sick, so, what the hell, it’s Friday! Go check them out!

Well, I’m making a bit.

After a couple of exchanges on the Conlang List this week, I realized that I’m growing as a person, and a writer. As the reference to conlanging suggests, I’ve been thinking about created languages again. I was originall inspired by an article in the Dragon Magazine in the days of my youth. It was a very simplistic article aimed at a simple person, namely me and my kind. It was followed by another article which was much more linguistically challenging and completely over my head. That was almost 20 years ago. Just three years ago, that second article was still over my head.
But, then I started reading. I read the conlang list and several groups on Yahoo. I read LangMaker.com and The Metaverse. More importantly, I got several books on linguistics and read them, too. I reread that article which had flummoxed me so many years ago this weekend and the whole damn thing made sense. I’m finally ready to start conlanging again after 20 years.

Look out, Johnny, here I come!

Well, there’s more than one way to age a conlang!

And, now Jamie Norrish, the webmaster at artefact.org.nz, has that other way. As you three readers of this sad, little blog know, I have a handy, online Conlang Dialect Maker, which is based on a CPAN module that is based on the Zompist Sound Changer. Well, Mr. Norrish has created a whole different set of libraries for doing the same thing, only in Python! Unfortunately, I don’t know Python and don’t have the time to learn it right now, but if you do, the IPA Zounds application is for you.

Good luck!

Wondered where we’ve been this Summer?

Well, besides changing jobs, I’ve been reading. One of the books I read was The Chanur Saga, though I didn’t read it all at once. This is actually an “omnibus” of the first three books in the Chanur series. There are, to my knowlege, two more. Now, I have to admit, this is not my “usual” kind of book. I like science-fiction, but I often have trouble with female writers because they focus on things that don’t often interest me. (In otherwords, they write romance novels in space or fantasy settings!) But, my wife read these and really liked them, so I gave it a shot. Boy, am I glad I did!
More along the lines of a “space opera” in the fact that the author, C. J. Cherryh, didn’t focus on the hard-science aspects of the Chanur universe, but instead on the “people”, mainly aliens, who live there. The story through out the three books in the “omnibus” follow the discovery of humanity by the Compact, which include a lionlike race called the hani. The Chanur are a clan of hani who have a trading spaceship who take in a castaway human, who’s lost in Compact space. Along the way, we meet the mahendo’sat, the stsho, the chi, the t’cha, the knnn, and the kif, who are all members of the Compact and have their own ideas about what to do with humanity. The kif are the bad guys, generally, but each race has their own goals regarding this newly discovered race. All in all it’s fairly interesting and entertaining.
One of the things I like the best is that Ms. Cherryh uses language and language barriers effectively and realisticlly in her work. We’ve got a bunch of races with various languages among them all trying to work together, and take advantage of each other, without having too many misunderstandings. At times, it makes for very entertaining reading! And, it provides quite a bit of food for thought for my own work in this regard.
Very well done and I look forward to reading the next two in the series!

You can help save endangered languages.

Okay, so this isn’t exactlly a conlang thing, but most of us who are into conlangs are into unusual languages and language issues. So, toward that end, I give you The Endangered Language Fund and The Endangered Language Query Rooms . Two great resources for languages on the edge of extinction. And, possibly, inspiration for a conlang or two.

Is it the most elaborate hoax ever?

Well, according to this article from Scientific American, it very well could be. In fact, it might be the most famous con, too. Experts have analyzed this manuscript, found by Wilfrid Voynich, an American rare-book dealer, in 1912, but haven’t been able to come up with either the code or language in which the book is written. One theory is that English adventurer Edward Kelley may have created the document to defraud the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolph II who reportedly paid a sum of 600 ducats (about $50,000 today) for the manuscript.)
The article goes into the details, but it seems quite plausable. So, I guess conlanging can be profitable after all!