Friday 25 August 2017

The Conlang Sources Wiki

J.R.R. Tolkien famously called conlanging A Secret Vice. It was the sort of thing where, if you had to do it, you certainly weren't expected to tell anybody about it - they'd think you were at least mad.

The Internet changed all that. For the first time conlangers were able to form communities where they could share and discuss their work. At first, of course, this discussion centred around the descriptions of conlangs posted by their own creators, and conlanging still wasn't taken seriously by many people outside the community, but over time things began to change. There was a feeling among some conlangers that to develop the craft would require us to make constructive criticisms of each others work. Academics realised that making a language was an excellent way to learn linguistics, and that constructed languages were worthy of study in their own right. And as more and more media franchises began using conlangs, journalists became interested in the art.

So now, there's more scholarship, journalism, criticism and other third party discussion about conlangs available than ever before. I felt a need for a site that would easy to find it all, and encourage more of it. Therefore, I've used my LCS webspace to create The Conlang Sources Wiki, and I'd like to invite my fellow conlangers to join in. Please take a look. Links to new sources are welcome, as are original articles about other people's conlangs.

Thanks to Jan Strasser for being the first person besides myself to contribute.