ozarque (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} ozarque) wrote,@ 2006-05-06 13:02:00 |
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From the April 23, 2006 conlanging conference ...
1. Press release from organizer Sai Emrys
May 5, 2006 - UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
The results are in, and the First Language Creation Conference was a great success. You may ask, here, what is the LCC? For that matter, what is language creation?
Language creation - or "conlanging" (short for "constructed language"), is the art, science, and hobby of creating new languages. People do it for a wide variety of reasons -- everything from fleshing out a fictional work, aiming towards world peace and mutual communication, trying to create an ideal language, testing linguistic theories, having a secret language to use in their diary or share with a close friend or sibling, testing out the boundaries of what language can do, or simply as good fun!
While conlanging has been a famously closeted hobby for centuries now, it is beginning to emerge into the mainstream. There are several hundred conlangers who talk together online on various mailing lists and bulletin boards, hundreds or thousands more who don't know that they're not the only ones in the world who do this, and many thousands of languages that have been created since the first was made in 1150 A.D.
The First Language Creation Conference, held April 23, 2006 on the UC Berkeley campus, was the very first serious conference ever to be held on the subject, drawing conlangers from all over the United States, and with hundreds more watching both nationally and internationally, through the recorded videos available online. It was also the largest gathering of conlangers to have ever been held - three times larger than the next largest known.
Conlanging has been increasingly featured in the media and popular culture. It has been featured prominently in interviews on NPR with linguists Mark Okrand (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/sto
Next year's conference is already being planned, and is expected to be yet bigger and to draw more people, this time internationally.
For more info, videos, audio interviews, reviews, photos, supplements, and other material, please visit http://conlangs.berkeley.edu
Fiat lingua.
2. Typical comments, from the conference feedback
"Some great speakers and great attendees! I was amazed to see people coming from across the country and listen to professors speak on the topic. I left feeling enthused and enlightened about my conlanging, and eager to think about and explore a few new directions. If I was organizing the next conference... I would get two rooms
or have one room for two days, and in one room or on one day I would have speakers explore or go over the basics of creating a language, perhaps even collaboratively creating a rudimentary language in the process, a step at a time, each talk covering a different step in the process. I think this would help a lot of beginning conlangers, and also give experienced conlangers opportunities to share their wisdom."
"Great food, great venue, great speakers. Excellent to be there for the start of this new tradition."
=========
Note
If you have any trouble accessing the videos, a link that works even on my elderly browser is http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=l
1. Press release from organizer Sai Emrys
May 5, 2006 - UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
The results are in, and the First Language Creation Conference was a great success. You may ask, here, what is the LCC? For that matter, what is language creation?
Language creation - or "conlanging" (short for "constructed language"), is the art, science, and hobby of creating new languages. People do it for a wide variety of reasons -- everything from fleshing out a fictional work, aiming towards world peace and mutual communication, trying to create an ideal language, testing linguistic theories, having a secret language to use in their diary or share with a close friend or sibling, testing out the boundaries of what language can do, or simply as good fun!
While conlanging has been a famously closeted hobby for centuries now, it is beginning to emerge into the mainstream. There are several hundred conlangers who talk together online on various mailing lists and bulletin boards, hundreds or thousands more who don't know that they're not the only ones in the world who do this, and many thousands of languages that have been created since the first was made in 1150 A.D.
The First Language Creation Conference, held April 23, 2006 on the UC Berkeley campus, was the very first serious conference ever to be held on the subject, drawing conlangers from all over the United States, and with hundreds more watching both nationally and internationally, through the recorded videos available online. It was also the largest gathering of conlangers to have ever been held - three times larger than the next largest known.
Conlanging has been increasingly featured in the media and popular culture. It has been featured prominently in interviews on NPR with linguists Mark Okrand (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/sto
Next year's conference is already being planned, and is expected to be yet bigger and to draw more people, this time internationally.
For more info, videos, audio interviews, reviews, photos, supplements, and other material, please visit http://conlangs.berkeley.edu
Fiat lingua.
2. Typical comments, from the conference feedback
"Some great speakers and great attendees! I was amazed to see people coming from across the country and listen to professors speak on the topic. I left feeling enthused and enlightened about my conlanging, and eager to think about and explore a few new directions. If I was organizing the next conference... I would get two rooms
or have one room for two days, and in one room or on one day I would have speakers explore or go over the basics of creating a language, perhaps even collaboratively creating a rudimentary language in the process, a step at a time, each talk covering a different step in the process. I think this would help a lot of beginning conlangers, and also give experienced conlangers opportunities to share their wisdom."
"Great food, great venue, great speakers. Excellent to be there for the start of this new tradition."
=========
Note
If you have any trouble accessing the videos, a link that works even on my elderly browser is http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=l
