Product Description

Just about everyone has heard of Esperanto, which was nothing less than one man’s attempt to bring about world peace by means of linguistic solidarity. And every Star Trek fan knows about Klingon, which was nothing more than a television show’s attempt to create a tough-sounding language befitting a warrior race with ridged foreheads. But few people have heard of Babm, Blissymbolics, and the nearly nine hundred other invented languages that represent the hard work, high hopes, and full-blown delusions of so many misguided souls over the centuries.

In In The Land of Invented Languages, author Arika Okrent tells the fascinating and highly entertaining history of man’s enduring quest to build a better language. Peopled with charming eccentrics and exasperating megalomaniacs, the land of invented languages is a place where you can recite the Lord’s Prayer in John Wilkins’s Philosophical Language, say your wedding vows in Loglan, and read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in Lojban.

A truly original new addition to the booming category of language books, In The Land of Invented Languages will be a must-have on the shelves of all word freaks, grammar geeks, and plain old language lovers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9954 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-19
• Released on: 2009-05-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Efforts to make language simpler, clearer, less divisive and more truthful have backfired spectacularly, to judge by this delightful tour of linguistic hubris. Linguist Okrent explores some of the themes and shortcomings of 900 years worth of artificial languages. She surveys philosophical languages that order all knowledge into self-evident systems that turn out to be bizarrely idiosyncratic; symbol languages of supposedly crystalline pictographs that are actually bafflingly opaque; basic languages that throw out all the fancy words and complicated idioms; rigorously logical languages so rule-bound that it's impossible to utter a correct sentence; international languages, like Esperanto, that unite different cultures into a single idealistic counterculture; and whimsical constructed languages that assert the unique culture and worldview of women, Klingons or chipmunks. Okrent gamely translates to and from these languages, with unspeakably hilarious results, and riffs on the colorful eccentricities of their megalomaniacal creators. Fortunately, her own prose is a model of clarity and grace; through it, she conveys fascinating insights into why natural language, with its corruptions, ambiguities and arbitrary conventions, trips so fluently off our tongues. (May 19)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com One surefire way to become aware of the absurdity of the English language is to have a kid. My 5- year-old son's sensible linguistic assumptions are constantly butting up against the deep weirdness of our mother tongue. He tells me "I runned to the store." He should be right. He says "no more asparaguses." That should be correct. And what's the opposite of "upside down?" "Upside up," of course. As opposed to "right side up," which is peculiar and confusing. As Arika Okrent writes in her new book, "In the Land of Invented Languages," "from an engineering perspective, language is kind of a disaster." English in particular is choked with irregular words and anachronistic phrases that long ago stopped making intuitive sense. If it were a car, it would be a jalopy patched together from a bunch of spare parts. Such is the curse of the natural language. It's not as if French is much more logical. So it's easy to understand why thousands of people over hundreds of years have tried to create a better language from scratch. Okrent's book is a fascinating look at some of these attempts, from the well-known (Esperanto) to the obscure (Toki Pona, which "uses only positive words . . . to promote positive thinking.") As she notes, the efforts have been mostly failures. If they are spoken at all, these languages are spoken by fringe groups, few of whom get much more respect than those Trekkie Klingon speakers. But it's still worth learning about them, because they shed light both on the perils of idealism and on the evolution of natural language. Okrent -- a Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Chicago -- starts her tale with the 17th-century crusade by British intellectuals to come up with a universal math-based language. One method? Simply assign every word a number, as did the Ipswich man who decided 742 should mean "embroider" and r2654 is "loosenesse in the belly." A more sophisticated attempt came from scientist John Wilkins, whose language tried to categorize the world in a logical way. The problem? It devolved into hundreds of arbitrary categories such as "purgations, vaporous . . . from gut upwards" (e.g., belching) and "purgations, vaporous . . . from the guts downwards" (e.g., farting). Two centuries later, ophthalmologist Ludwik Zamenhof created Esperanto, the most famous artificial language. He hoped it would eliminate misunderstandings and foster peace. As they say in Esperanto, "La tot' homoze en familije konungiare so debà" (May the whole of humanity be united as one). The irony is that Esperanto advocates themselves split into warring factions. Esperanto has had some unlikely fans over the years, from Leo Tolstoy to the young George Soros, but the whole of humanity never adopted it. Estimates of Esperanto speakers range from 100,000 to 2 million. Okrent befriends several of them at an Esperanto conference, where she rocks out to some Esperanto pop music -- such as the classic "Tute Ne Gravas" ("No Big Deal") -- and watches Esperanto flag ceremonies. It's an amusing account -- Okrent is that rare linguist with a gift for lively language. The book also covers modern constructed languages, including a feminist one called Laadan, which has finely tuned words for emotions, as well as six words for six ways women can experience menstruation, such as joyfully, painfully or late. There's also Loglan, created in the 1960s by a science fiction author named James Cooke Brown, who believed that English fostered sloppy thinking. So could a more logical language make people think more clearly? Loglan speakers -- and there are still a few -- say yes. But it's not user-friendly. It's more like spoken computer code. The sentence "All Dogs are blue," for example, becomes "All-x-that x dog if-then x blue." Or as they say in Logland, "radaku da kangu u da blanu." Okrent ends the book at a Klingon convention, where she enjoys translations of Beatles songs, learns Klingon insults, such as "your mother has a smooth forehead," and feels sorry for the waitress who "patiently guessed at what my costumed tablemates were pointing to when they insisted on giving their orders in Klingon." My only gripe is that Okrent lets natural language off the hook too easily. She says her studies gave her a deeper appreciation for the messiness of language: "Ambiguity, or fuzziness of meaning, is not a flaw of natural language but a feature that gives it flexibility and that, for whatever reason, suits our minds and the way we think." True enough, but the way we think is pretty messy and illogical. Maybe a total language overhaul a la Esperanto is doomed to fail. But can't we at least try to tinker with it? Can't we make it a bit clearer? Can't we all start saying "upside up?"
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Review
-Hats off to Okrent, who expertly exposes the history, culture, and preoccupations of this insular tribe who live among us. She rescues language inventors, or conlangers, from the oddball bin-utopianists all, they're the first biotechnologists, trying to leapfrog evolution and improve human life. They'll thank her but everyone else will, too, for finally making sense of the conlangers' discontents.- -Michael Erard, author of Um-: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean

-A lively, informative, insightful examination of artificial languages-who invents them, why, and why most of them fail. I loved this book.--Will Shortz, Crossword Editor, New York Times

-Linguist Okrent explores some of the themes and shortcomings of 900 years worth of artificial languages. -Okrent gamely translates these languages with unspeakably hilarious results, and riffs on the colorful eccentricities of their megalomaniacal creators. Fortunately, her own prose is a model of clarity and grace; through it, she conveys fascinating insights into why natural language, with its corruptions, ambiguities and arbitrary conventions, trips so fluently off our tongues.- - Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Arika Okrent is a linguist whose fascination with the "faded plastic flowers" in the "lush orchid garden of languages" is recounted to delightful, often comic effect in "In the Land of Invented Languages."...Okrent's style is eminently suited to her approach, which is at once serious and playful, exemplified by her marvelous, snappy opening sentence: "Klingon speakers ... inhabit the lowest possible rung on the geek ladder."- Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"The author...examines a variety of would-be languages and related philosophical tenets (there are no pure ideas, all signs depend on conventions) in ...

Customer Reviews

Excellent book about constructed languages and their users
As someone who is interested in constructed languages (I have a reasonable knowledge of Esperanto, Volapuk, and Ido, and have looked at others such as Lojban and Glosa) I can't overstate how much I enjoyed this book.

Most books on constructed languages just give a historical overview of the subject, mentioning highlights such as Wilkins' Real Character, Volapuk, and Esperanto, and then end with the conclusion (comforting to anglophones) that the global success of English in the 20th century makes the whole issue of international communication moot (I wonder what the anglophones will think when Chinese or whatever displaces English?).

Okrent's book is somewhat different. While she does give the standard historical overview, her focus is on modern conlangs that have user communities and hold conferences. She has apparently learned at least the basics of Esperanto, Lojban, and Klingon and has attended relevant conferences. She dispells the stereotype of conlangers being "weirdos" -- even the Klingon speakers seem less geeky than one would expect.

Interesting, if a little geeky.
Initially this book was fairly amusing, but somewhere around the half-way mark its charms began to fade, and by the end it was just plain exhausting. This was certainly not the fault of the author, who was an engaged and enthusiastic tour guide throughout. But ultimately the cumulative craziness of the various language inventors takes its toll.

Okrent's tour of the "land of invented languages" covers a lot of ground, making five major stops, each of which considers a particular example in depth:

John Wilkins's "philosophical language" (1668)
Ludwik Zamenhof's Esperanto (1887)
Charles Bliss's symbolic language, "Semantography" (1949)
James Cooke Brown's language of logic, "Loglan" (1960)
Marc Okrand's Klingon (1985)

A major strength of the book is Okrent's ability to place each of these particular invented languages within its historical context. She also manages to convey the essential flavor of each language in a style which is not overburdened with linguistic technicalities, and with a refreshing sense of humor throughout.

Her tolerance for the sheer weirdness that permeates the various personalities she encounters along the way ultimately exceeds mine. I had a certain grudging admiration for John Wilkins's noble attempt to categorize everything in the universe, as well as for the idealism displayed by proponents of Esperanto. But the monomania of Bliss and Brown, their protracted legal wranglings in defence of their weirdly idosyncratic creations made for depressing reading. And, though I share a certain geekiness where language is concerned, it doesn't really extend far enough to make me find the development of Klingon and the antics of those who "speak" it anything other than tedious.

So, I think this book would have 5-star appeal only to someone far geekier than I. Nonetheless, it is an impressive and entertaining accomplishment. The author is to be congratulated.

What a Trip
In the Land of Invented Languages is an amazing work of linguistic lore, representing the very best of popular science, packaged as erudite travel writing. True to its title, In the Land takes us around the globe in a quest for the perfect language. Not only is one invited (even if, like me, you are not a linguistics scholar and only speak one language...) to actually participate in the theory, math and utter zaniness of communication, but we're privileged by way of Okrent's deft hand to explore each language land through the eyes of a native. Therein lies the true joy of this journey - Okrent is a great wit and intellect; the very best of travel companions. My bags are packed for the next trip.

(I originally purchased the Kindle edition only to discover that another delight of Okrent's work is the design of the book itself. It offers time-lines, language symbols and even a `tree of the universe' that cannot be fully appreciated with the electronic version. I recommend buying the hardback - which I did half way through.)