#Aidan Aannestad

[dedalvs]

Fiat Lingua Top 10 for 2023

It's time for the annual Fiat Lingua rewind!

Background: I created Fiat Lingua over ten years ago with the idea that it could be something like the Rutgers Optimality Archive: A place where conlangers could post work that they wanted to showcase, or work that was in progress. We've had tons of contributions over the years, and some standout work I'm really proud of.

Using our fancy statistics program (you know, the free version) we're able to determine the top 10 visited posts for this year (though, note, the numbers for the current year's December post will always be down a little bit, since it didn't have a full month. If you'd like to take a look at it, Carsten Becker did a version of "Silent Night" in his conlang Ayeri!). Here they are!

NUMBER 10

"Road Trip Conlanging with Kids" (August, 2023) by Mia DeSanzo: Fiat Lingua is supposed to be an archive of long, detailed conlang articles, and also short, breezy conlang ideas, and this is one of the latter! It's less than a page long, but a fun idea, and it was quite well-received!

NUMBER 9

"Art & Anxiety: Conlanging through impostor syndrome" (February, 2023) by Jessie Sams (now Jessie Peterson): This is a personal reflection by @quothalinguist on how she has dealt with impostor syndrome, and how it's impacted her conlanging.

NUMBER 8

"Taadži Linguistics" (March, 2023) by Lauren Kuffler: This is a wonderful introduction to the Taadži language, which features a writing system reminiscent of Mayan epigraphs.

NUMBER 7

"Tone for Conlangers: A Basic Introduction" (April, 2018) by Aidan Aannestad: Making a second consecutive appearance in the top ten, Aidan Aannestad's introduction to tone has been an invaluable resource for conlangers producing tonal conlangs for just over five years now!

NUMBER 6

"Afrihili: An African Interlanguage" (April, 2014) by William S. Annis: Afrihili is an a posteriori auxlang from the late 60s that uses Bantu languages as its source, and it is fascinating! One of my all-time favorite auxlangs, and William provides a wonderful introduction. Of interest, this article was number 6 in the top ten last year, as well!

NUMBER 5

"Names Aren’t Neutral: David J. Peterson on Creating a Fantasy Language" (March, 2019) by David J. Peterson: Up four spots from last year, this is my article on best practices when coming up with names in a fantasy setting—even when no conlang is present.

NUMBER 4

"Grambank & Language Documentation: Zhwadi and Its Features" (June, 2023) by Jessie Sams (now Jessie Peterson): The first of the game-changing mega-resources for conlanging Jessie created in 2023, this is a short description of how to use Grambank in conlanging with a link to a fillable Google spreadsheet any conlanger can copy and use to introduce their conlang to others.

NUMBER 3

"Patterns of Allophony" (April, 2015) by William S. Annis: Definitely one of the most popular papers on Fiat Lingua, William illustrates graphically a number of very common sound changes. This article once again occupies the third spot of our top ten!

NUMBER 2

"A Conlanger's Thesaurus" (September, 2014) by William S. Annis: We have a new number 1 for this year! This has, historically, been the most accessed article on Fiat Lingua, and it's obvious to see why. The article is relatively short, compared to the information and use you can get out of it. William Annis details ways in which languages relate words to other similar words. For conlangers who struggle either with coming up with words that are different from English in meaning, or who struggle with coming up with words at all, this reference article should prove very useful. Using the word maps in this article, you might be able to come up with words you never dreamt of before, but words which could exist in some language. A great resource for conlangers who are desperately trying to break out of the influence of their L1 or L2!

And now for the top viewed article for 2023 on Fiat Lingua...

NUMBER 1

"A Surreal Conlang" (January, 2023) by David J. Peterson: Quite the surprise! Late 2022 I wrote an article about how one might go about creating a surreal conlang—neither naturalistic nor regular and artificial like an auxlang or engelang—and it went up on Fiat Lingua on January 1st. I think (or hope) it served as a useful jumping off point for conlangers who are looking to try something really different from what they've seen done elsewhere.

* * * * *

And that's it for 2023! I'm looking forward to posting more conlang articles next year. If you are a conlanger, a conlang-researcher, or conlang fan who has something to say in .pdf format about a specific conlang or conlanging in general, please consider submitting something to Fiat Lingua! We take any and all articles related to conlanging in whatever form you have them. I'm also happy to help you think up ideas, or refine those ideas you have. There is no strong review like in a fancy journal: I just want to get what you have up. I'm especially in interested in hosting personal conlang stories—stories about how or why you started to create a language, or your experience creating your own language—personal stories that are often lost, but are so vital, as there is an absolute dearth of literature about conlangers! If you think you have even the seed of an idea, please get a hold of me! I want to share as many stories and ideas as I can.

[conlangery]

Aidan Aannestad comes on the show to talk about information structure, which included discussions on topic and focus and how they can be realized in language. Shownotes

[dedalvs]

Fiat Lingua Top 10 for 2022

It's been a good year over at Fiat Lingua, the once-monthly conlang journal that's been posting steadily since September, 2011. I created Fiat Lingua over ten years ago with the idea that it could be something like the Rutgers Optimality Archive: A place where conlangers could post work that either they wanted to showcase, or work that was in progress. We've had tons of contributors over the years, and some standout work I'm really proud of.

Behind the scenes, we have a number of metrics available to us, and one of them allows us to know what the top posts are over a given amount of time. So, for fun, here are the top 10 visited posts for this year (though, note, the numbers for the December post will be down a little bit, since it didn't have a full month. Still, though, it's incredible, so if you get a chance, take a look at this full novel Jim Hopkins wrote in his language Itlani).

NUMBER 10

We have a tie...

"Moya Abugida" (June, 2022) by Carl Buck: A detailed description of how to write the unique abugida of the Moya language.

"Die Wichtigkeit von Conlangs in Medien" (November, 2021) by Jonah Behring: A German language article on the importance of using authentically created conlangs in films and television shows.

NUMBER 9

"Wóxtjanato: A grammar" (January, 2022) by Jessie Sams: A conlang by the amazing @quothalinguist about a culture whose planet has suddenly and unexpectedly acquired a second moon.

NUMBER 7

We have a tie...

"Names Aren't Neutral: David J. Peterson on Creating a Fantasy Language" (March, 2019) by David J. Peterson: This was an article I wrote for an online magazine, but then the magazine went under, so I reclaimed it and put it up on Fiat Lingua. It's about why coming with "random" names for sff can often prove problematic.

"Tone for Conlangers: A Basic Introduction" (April, 2018) by Aidan Aannestad: A lot of conlangers are interested in having tone in their language, but don't really know how to go about it, and this is a great introduction.

NUMBER 6

"Afrihili: An African Interlanguage" (April, 2014) by William S. Annis: Afrihili is an a posteriori auxlang from the late 60s that uses Bantu languages as its source, and it is fascinating! One of my all-time favorite auxlangs, and William provides a wonderful introduction.

NUMBER 5

"An Itlani Wedding Blessing" (August, 2014) by James E. Hopkins: A lovely wedding blessing Jim wrote for, if I remember right, a friend's daughter who was getting married.

NUMBER 4

"Dothraki & the Nostratic Super Family" (February, 2015) by Charlotte Peak: For her MA thesis, Charlotte wrote a paper on how Dothraki could fit into the theoretical Nostratic super family. A fun read!

NUMBER 3

"Patterns of Allophony" (April, 2015) by William S. Annis: Definitely one of the most popular papers on Fiat Lingua, William illustrates graphically a number of very common sound changes.

NUMBER 2

"Slides for Linguistics 183: The Linguistics of Game of Thrones and the Art of Language Invention" (September, 2018) by David J. Peterson: In the summer of 2017 I taught a class on language creation at UC Berkeley. I uploaded all the slides I used in that course as one massive .pdf to Fiat Lingua.

And now for the top viewed article for 2022 on Fiat Lingua...

NUMBER 1

"A Conlanger's Thesaurus" (September, 2014) by William S. Annis: This is consistently the most accessed article on Fiat Lingua, and I don't expect that to change. The article is relatively short, compared to the information and use you can get out of it. William Annis details ways in which languages relate words to other similar words. For conlangers who struggle either with coming up with words that are different from English in meaning, or who struggle with coming up with words at all, this reference article should prove very useful. Using the word maps in this article, you might be able to come up with words you never dreamt of before, but words which could exist in some language. A great resource for conlangers who are desperately trying to break out of the influence of their L1 or L2!

* * * * *

And that's it for 2022! I'm looking forward to posting more conlang articles next year. If you are a conlanger, a conlang-researcher, or conlang fan who has something to say in .pdf format about a conlang or conlanging in general, please consider submitting something to Fiat Lingua! We take any and all articles related to conlanging in whatever form you have them. I'm also happy to help you think up ideas, or refine those ideas you have. There is no strong review like in a fancy journal: I just want to get what you have up. I'm especially in interested in hosting personal conlang stories—stories about how or why you started to create a language, or your experience creating your own language—personal stories that are often lost, but are so vital, as there is an absolute dearth of literature about conlangers! If you think you have even the seed of an idea, please get a hold of me! I want to share as many stories and ideas as I can.

[dedalvs]

There’s a new Fiat Lingua article for April for conlangers interested in adding tone to their conlang. Here’s the abstract:

Despite being present in a huge number of the world’s languages, phonemic tone is perhaps the most misunderstood linguistic system there is. Probably because of this, conlangs with phonemic tone are next to unheard of. This paper aims to solve those problems, by providing a basic description of how to think about tone through the framework of autosegmental phonology. It also gives an overview of variation among tone systems and how tones arise and change over time, and discusses some problems unique to conlanging with tones. The author hopes that readers will be encouraged to try creating tone systems themselves, and expand their palette of conlanging tools with one more system to play with.

The article is by Aidan Aannestad:

Aidan Aannestad is one more name on the long list of people who discovered linguistics through Tolkien, and he’s been conlanging ever since that seventh grade discovery. He’s learned a lot about linguistics since then, though, and now holds a BA in it from the University of Texas and is partway through a graduate degree. He holds himself (and sometimes others) to a very high standard of realism in his work, and he’s always striving to get a more complete perspective on the enormous variety found in the world’s natlangs. His creative output is so far mostly limited to the minimally-documented, though fairly well fleshed-out Emihtazuu language and its ancestors, but he hopes to someday increase his productivity and make a full linguistic area with multiple interacting families. He also speaks Japanese, and will happily discuss its history and mechanics for hours with anyone interested. He’s been on-and-off a member of a number of conlanging communities, and these days is most likely to be found on one of the relevant Facebook groups or lurking in the conlang mailing list.