tuurona [< tuw, "hair-do" & -ro-, "professional" & -na-, "female".] n. Hairdresser, female hairdresser.

machorab [< mab, "beard" & -cho-, "collection" & -ra-, "doctrine".] n. Barbarism.

• An amnesiac Opus tests the applicability of "penguin" against the prototypical meaning of "bird".
• Opus takes euphemism to a new level: "sanitation engineer" is now "waste management artisan".

• Opus makes fun of the lyrics of "Every Breath You Take". Sting later gets so disheartened by couples who call it their song (ignoring the meaning of its lyrics) that he makes fun of it in several other songs ("every cake you bake", clearly inspired by Opus' "every herring you bake").
• Opus wants a restaurant without smokers; who could have imagined in the 1980s that by 2004 in America it would be illegal to smoke in restaurants in many states?

I shall never forget a little man - smaller than myself - whose name I have forgotten, revealing himself by accident as a devotee, in a moment of extreme ennui, in a dirty wet marquee filled with trestle tables smelling of stale mutton fat, crowded with (mostly) depressed and wet creatures. We were listening to somebody lecturing on map-reading, or camp-hygiene, or the art of sticking a fellow through without (in defiance of Kipling) bothering who God sent the bill to; rather we were trying to avoid listening, though the Guards' English, and voice, is penetrating. The man next to me said suddenly in a dreamy voice: 'Yes, I think I shall express the accusative case by a prefix!' A memorable remark! Of course by repeating it I have let the cat, so carefully hidden, out of its bag, or at least revealed the whiskers. But we won't bother about that for a moment. Just consider the splendour of the words! 'I shall express the accusative case.' Magnificent! Not 'it is expressed', nor even the more shambling 'it is sometimes expressed', nor the grim 'you must learn how it is expressed'. What a pondering of alternatives within one's choice before the final decision in favour of the daring and unusual prefix, so personal, so attractive; the final solution of some element in a design that had hitherto proved refractory. Here were no base considerations of the 'practical', the easiest for the 'modern mind', or for the million - only a question of taste, a satisfaction of a personal pleasure, a private sense of fitness. As he said his words the little man's smile was full of a great delight, as of a poet or painter seeing suddenly the solution of a hitherto clumsy passage. Yet he proved as close as an oyster. I never gathered any further details of his secret grammar; and military arrangements soon separated us never to meet again (up to now at any rate). But I gathered that this queer creature -ever afterwards a little bashful after inadvertently revealing his secret - cheered and comforted himself in the tedium and squalors of 'training under canvas' by composing a language, a personal system and symphony that no else was to study or to hear. Whether he did this in his head (as only the great masters can), or on paper, I never knew. It is incidentally one of the attractions of this hobby that it needs so little apparatus! How far he ever proceeded in his composition, I never heard. Probably he was blown to bits in the very moment of deciding upon some ravishing method of indicating the subjunctive. Wars are not favourable to delicate pleasures.

Can you find someone who knows Hebrew pretty well (maybe you could put an ad out on the site) and have them translate the Babel Text from the Hebrew version word for word - i.e. they write a comment for every word explaining each word's specific meaning and also comment on grammar and idioms. This would be more useful than using English translations, which would be like conlang telephone, but using a holy text. How would you feel if your native language only had a Biblical translation based on an English translation? Remember - English only uses half as many words in its translation than the Biblical languages use, so it's obviously missing more specific details!

Ka boo toh-dye: ka boo noh-lah, ka boo wee-tee, wah!
me no done, me no dance, me no sing, yeah
I'm not done: I haven't danced, I haven't sung!

orean [< *orian.] n. Eagle.
oreagin [< orean, "eagle" & -gi-, "place".] n. Eyrie.
orealen [< orean, "eagle" & -le-, "offspring".] n. Eaglet.

• St. Hildegard de Bingen - patron saint of conlanging - first known conlanger (Ignota) and a Catholic Saint to boot!
• Aule - guardian spirit of conlanging - suggested by Benct Philip Jonsson
• Glossapoeia - Muse of conlanging - suggested by Ray Brown, Greek for "language maker".

• "Share the Secret Vice -- invent a language!"
• "Creative linguistics -- indulge your language instinct!"
• "Conlangers speak their own language!"

• The evolution of Latin ille into definite articles in the Romance languages
• The loss of irregular forms for infrequently used words (e.g., kine is the obsolete plural for cow; brethren for brother)
• The fusion of postpositions with their preceding nouns giving rise to inflections.

Come on everyone
Come on everyone
Come on
Speak speak
your native tongue

You've got so much
You've got so much
You've got so much
So much to say
So much to say

Don't you rename it
You might as well claim it

Would you explain a little more about this text, from today's Soundbite (Aug 19th):

"The Atlantean A is a shape developed by John Emerson. It is a miniature
map of the city of Atlantis (i.e., the outside of the swirl is the cave, the inside shape is the silhouette of the city, and the dot is the location of the crystal). It's a treasure map." - Kirk Wise

It is the part inside the parentheses that I would like to get explained a little more. Of course, it is because I have not seen the film that I do not understand. Why would Atlantis be in a cave? (Except that it is sunken now...) To me, Atlantis is a country, rather then just a city. I imagine the city as rather similar to ancient Athens, but with a wall. What is so special about this crystal? Does it have any special powers, or...? Who is Kirk Wise?