Conlangs: Na'vi, Dothraki, and Llárriésh 1/5

This was a talk given by me (Richard Littauer, Taronyu, Lajaki) on October 6th, 2010 at the University of Edinburgh Linguistics and English Language Society Soap Vox Lecture Series. Around 75 people were in attendance, as I covered my role as the lexicographer of the Na'vi Language (created for the film Avatar by Paul Frommer) on http://www.learnnavi.org, as the cofounder of http://www.dothraki.org, a site dedicated to the Dothraki language created by David Peterson for the HBO adaptation of George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, and as the creator of the language Llárriésh for a One Month, One Language challenge, documented on http://llama.conlang.org. I also covered conlangs, in general, and the justification for this obscure and arcane hobby.

The Edinburgh University Linguistics and English Language Society has lectures fortnightly. More information can be found on http://langsoc.eusa.ed.ac.uk

I apologise for the very annoying noise in this video, as well as the dark room. The noise goes away in the second half of the third instalment, however.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Na'vi
• Dothraki
• Llárriésh
• Llama
• Taronyu
• Learn Na'vi
• Lajaki
• Littauer
• Conlangs

[esperantofeig]

Nice, it's good to see introductions to conlanging popping up!

But, check your sources, not much of what you said about Esperanto is true. I say that not as an esperantist, but as a lover of good research. :-P

There are up to 2'000'000 esperantists in the world. Esperantism is _not_ about replacing all languages with Esperanto (it's quite the opposite). There are certainly not 100'000 esperantists in southern France, and so on.

Bahá'í is not a moslim sect, btw :)

[Rich0Fenn]

@esperantofeig Yeah, my bad about Esperanto. I added an annotation about it. As far as the implication that I'm a bad researcher: well. I don't claim to be an expert on everything. I know Na'vi, and that's about it. This talk wasn't really given with complete accuracy in mind, anyway, merely a way of telling people about what I've sort of learned and picked up about conlangs. Some of that is wrong. It happens. As for the Baha'i - I know. I didn't want to get into it.

[DarkenVise]

Not bad mate, Quenya is specifically used for ceremony in Middle Earth and primarily used in Aman aka Valinor. Sindarin is the common Elvish spoken in Middle Earth. It was adopted by the migrant Noldor when they arrived thousands of years ago back from Valinor. This is ShadowedSin

[Rich0Fenn]

@DarkenVise Yeah man. Thanks for the clarification. That comment was just a hest though: I've read Lord of the Rings a dozen times (no, really, 12 times). I was pandering to a non-nerdy community. :)

[saizai]

Engelang = engineered language (usually a priori, boundary pushing, and/or philosophical) - not English-based a posteriori conlang. ><

FWIW, Klingon's an artlang too. Obviously has a very different aesthetic than Quenya, but both *are* aesthetically motivated, which is what makes 'em artlangs.

[Rich0Fenn]

@saizai I knew I'd mess up. :P Will annotate. Thanks. :D

[nactan]

study ilaksh

[saizai]

@Rich0Fenn The rest is actually reasonably good. ;-)

It gets a lot better w/ practice. If you've not yet, you should definitely read Okrent & Payne's books

[TK421storm1]

(Tskalepa Tsamsiyu) This is really cool ma Taronyu. :D