Conlanging and phonetics

In this post I’m merging two topics - conlanging and phonetics/phonology - into one, because if I split them it would be hard to know where to put the information relevant to both. This post contains website recommendations on both subjects.

My interest in linguistics developed largely as an offshoot of the hobby of conlanging - the creative endeavour in which practitioners invent a fictional language (or part thereof). My introduction to the online conlanging scene was a process rather than a single event, so there is no one person I can thank for it all, but it was Irena Rempt who introduced me to the Conlang mailing list and quite a lot followed on from there.

Ode to a computer game

In 1993, I was in eleventh grade at school, and the theme for that year’s Come Out festival was Medieval.

At these festivals (which are sort of fairs for schools that take place every two years) students take part in costume parades and perform other activities for an audience based around that year’s theme. Every class also runs a food stall.

In 1993 my grade eleven class all dressed up as monks, and read Elizabethan poetry that we had composed in preparation for the event. The poetry was to be a sonnet, but we were not taught the proper rhyming scheme for Shakespearian sonnets. It had to be in Elizabethan English, and it had to be a love poem for an inanimate object. Here’s mine.