In the Land of Invented Languages - Arika Okrent [110]
None of this happens without good child care. For that I'd like to thank the entire staff of the Canaan Baptist Church day care, especially Ms. Linda Dubose, who was there from the beginning. Thanks also to Joey Dziomba and Arianna Neromiliotis at the community preschool of the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf for doing great things with small people.
And thank you, Derrick, Leo, and Louisa, for making life sweet.
PUBLISHED BY SPIEGEL & GRAU
Copyright © 2009 by Arika Okrent
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of The Random House
Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
SPIEGEL & GRAU is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Chapters 22 and 23 were originally published as “Among the Klingons” in Tin House magazine, Summer 2007, and subsequently appeared in The Week magazine in both the U.S. and the U.K.
Chapters 6 and 8 were originally published as “Letter from Esperantoland” in The American Scholar, Winter 2006. Copyright © 2006 by Arika Okrent. By permission of the publishers.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Okrent, Arika.
In the land of invented languages: Esperanto rock stars, Klingon poets,
Loglan lovers, and the mad dreamers who tried to build a perfect language /
Arika Okrent.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN: 978-0-385-52971-6
1. Languages, Artificial. I. Title.
PM8008.O37 2009
499′.99—dc22 2008038732
www.spiegelandgrau.com
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
v3.0
Table of Contents
Nine Hundred Languages, Nine Hundred Years
Scaring the Mundanes
A History of Failure
John Wilkins and the Language of Truth
The Six-Hundred-Page Rewrite
A Calculus of Thought
A Hierarchy of the Universe
The Word for “Shit”
Knowing What You Mean to Say
Ludwik Zamenhof and the Language of Peace
A Linguistic Handshake
Un Nuov Glot
Trouble in Volapükland
A Nudist, a Gay Ornithologist, a Railroad Enthusiast, and a Punk Cannabis Smoker Walk into a Bar …
Crank Pride
Charles Bliss and the Language of Symbols
Word Magic
Hit by a Personality Tornado
Those Queer and Mysterious Chinese Characters
The Spacemen Speak
The Catastrophic Results of Her Ignorance
James Cooke Brown and the Language of Logic
The Whorfian Hypothesis
A Formula for Success
Suitable Apologies
Meaning Quicksand
To Menstruate Joyfully
The Klingons, the Conlangers, and the Art of Language
Flaws or Features?
The Go-To Linguist
What Are They Doing?
The Secret Vice
Appendix A: The List of Languages
Appendix B: Language Samples
Notes
Acknowledgments
*