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In 1996, Zompist, whose real name is Mark Rosenfelder, started a web site about constructed languages and various other things. As a 14 year old just starting to check out the internet, I was also interested in making my own codes, ciphers, and perhaps even languages... but where to start? How was one to make a pretend language as realistic as, say, French (which I had just started learning at the time)?
Searching for information on perhaps Lycos or Infoseek, I ran into Zompist and the Language Construction Kit, a primer on basic linguistic principles that was not too hard to understand, yet still accurate and not dumbed-down. I distinctly remember being very excited, thinking this is exactly what I need, and printing it out to read and refer to.
Well, I'm twice as old now (yikes) and I know far more than twice as much about linguistics as I did then. It's amazing and wonderful how much you can learn about something without studying it formally, just via readily available books and academic publications, but what's often missing is the beginning part, the Ling 101 stuff. The internet has become excellent for that, and Zompist was one of the pioneers of it in the linguistic field. He really has done a lot over the years to educate and bring together conlangers and language afficionados, who in past decades would have been left to figure out all this stuff on their own.
My point in bringing this up? Dude has a book!
The Language Construction Kit (book!) is longer and better and stronger and faster than the web version. (Well, it's at least three of those things.) It's still an excellent stepping stone between "I loved Spanish class but I haven't studied linguistics" and being able to tackle academic works. It's still easy to read and sprinkled with Mark's deadpan humor. It's still not dumbed-down. But now it has way, way more detail, topics, and resources. And if you were to buy it or mention it to a language-loving friend, you'd be supporting a pretty cool guy that I've known half my life.
Excuse me while I go feel old now.
Searching for information on perhaps Lycos or Infoseek, I ran into Zompist and the Language Construction Kit, a primer on basic linguistic principles that was not too hard to understand, yet still accurate and not dumbed-down. I distinctly remember being very excited, thinking this is exactly what I need, and printing it out to read and refer to.
Well, I'm twice as old now (yikes) and I know far more than twice as much about linguistics as I did then. It's amazing and wonderful how much you can learn about something without studying it formally, just via readily available books and academic publications, but what's often missing is the beginning part, the Ling 101 stuff. The internet has become excellent for that, and Zompist was one of the pioneers of it in the linguistic field. He really has done a lot over the years to educate and bring together conlangers and language afficionados, who in past decades would have been left to figure out all this stuff on their own.
My point in bringing this up? Dude has a book!
The Language Construction Kit (book!) is longer and better and stronger and faster than the web version. (Well, it's at least three of those things.) It's still an excellent stepping stone between "I loved Spanish class but I haven't studied linguistics" and being able to tackle academic works. It's still easy to read and sprinkled with Mark's deadpan humor. It's still not dumbed-down. But now it has way, way more detail, topics, and resources. And if you were to buy it or mention it to a language-loving friend, you'd be supporting a pretty cool guy that I've known half my life.
Excuse me while I go feel old now.
