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In The Land Of Invented Languages Publisher: Spiegel & Grau (2000)

by Arika Okrent(Favorite Author)

4.06 of 5 Votes: 5

languge

English

genre

review 1: I picked this up after listening to a fascinating feature on it on Patrick Cox's The World in Words podcast on PRI. The book doesn't disappoint. A few sections can get a little technical, but, for someone like me who studied language acquisition at the graduate level, it's clear and relevant. The writing is fun and the jokes (especially all the puke jokes at the expense of the invented Volapuk language) are legitimately pretty funny. The best moments are where Okrent exposes anecdotes of the madness of many language inventors, especially Charles Bliss of Blissymbols and James Cooke Brown of Loglan. The anecdotes of these inventors' craziness are intriguing and readable. And of course the real highlight is the story of Okrent's immersing into Klingon language subculture tha... moret bookends the work. It's a fun popular work on historical and contemporary linguistics that is well written, interesting and very entertaining.
review 2: I loved this book so much, I didn't want it to end. This book is for lovers of language, of quirkiness, eccentricity, geekery and unabashed creativity. It tells the history of invented languages, which appear almost as characters. It is a history running roughly from the time that the printing press was widely available, and allows us to look backwards from around 1600 to 2007, although it does mention Hildegarde of Bingen, so one can only surmise that there have been other attempts to create language before the printing press was invented. My only critique is that it was published before Na'vi and that I hope she writes another book. less

Download links for: In the Land of Invented Languages Publisher: Spiegel & Grau

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