Your Langmaker site is a treasure trove of information. Congratulations! My interest in creating a language is old (since I was a child, in fact) but it was rekindled when I came across your site.

Since you're the expert in conlangs, I'd like to ask you two questions:

1. Do you know of anybody who's made a language, invented its writing system, wrote texts with it and then published these texts on a web-page offering a challenge for anyone interested to try their hand at deciphering the language? Obviously I'm not talking about mere code-breaking stuff, but a real, developed conlang.
2. This is not directly related with conlangs but with my previous question: Which are the ancient scripts that remain undeciphered? I know a few, but I wonder if you know a source with a complete list. It would also be wonderful if you can direct me to a web site with sample texts written in unknown scripts (except for the Voynich manuscript).

I read with interest the article "Logjam", which is in part a response to my own article, "Critical Path", where I offered fellow conlangers a chance to comment, via a wiki site, on Khangaþyagon. Nobody has yet taken me up on this offer, and the article goes some way as to explaining why this is. Matt Arnold states that unlike auxlangs, there are no objective standards against which artlangs can be judged. This may be so, but I don't believe it's the complete story. Any artistic endeavour sets some goals for itself, and an artist potentially has more to learn from his peers' opinions as to whether he has succeeded in his goals than his own.

Here are some of the goals of Khangaþyagon.

1. To be naturalistic. Does Khangaþyagon seem enough like a real language to convince? If so, why? If not, why not? What would have improved it?
2. To be a magical language. In its fictional setting, Khangaþyagon is used by wizards for magical purposes. Does it seem magical to you? Discuss.
3. To be aesthetically pleasing in a Germanic sort of way. Khangaþyagon isn't a Germanic language, but I was in part inspired by Germanic languages. What do you find pleasing or displeasing about the results?

• It meets my pet peeve of using all 26 Latin letters in an auxlang.
• Sulky has 134 numbered examples of Kon'ya sentences , each illustrating a principle, like #27, konlena lenyu wi xinlena wixa konhunlena, "The student learns the lesson from the teacher".
• He presents an amusing forecast for the future: answering the question, "But do you honestly think that, with English already so widespread, there is any support for an international language other than English?", Sulky says, "English speakers have a lot of company and don't have a lot of incentive to learn other languages, no matter how easy they may be. This will continue for many more decades. I reckon that by 2040, when Mandarin is the language of commerce and technology, the English speakers of the world will heartily (and tardily) endorse the idea of a simple international language. Of course, the Mandarin speakers of the world won't see much need for one."

The following comment in your editorial on Esperanto -- "but also with pockets of speakers in Japan and China" -- does it a grave injustice and is arguably incorrect. There are pockets of speakers globally. South America and Africa in particular have vibrant pockets of speakers, and they exist almost everywhere. Your selection of China and Japan is interesting only because these two countries in Asia have significant "pockets" of speakers. I would have said they have comparatively strong populations of speakers myself.

I'd refer you to this site as just one very pessimistic (arguably realistic) estimate for Esperanto speakers globally. Alas (unless you are conversant with it), it is in Esperanto, but all the columns containing numbers are someone's estimate for the number of speakers in each country. Bearing in mind that estimates are hard, and at the far right you have the most pessimistic and at the far left the most optimistic.

I studied Spanish for four years and French for three. I've also taught myself Italian and Latin. Among my hobbies is inventing foreign equivalents to obscure American or otherwise English names that have no historically standard equivalents. For example, we all know that Charles becomes Carlos in Spanish, so there's no reason Bruce can't become Bruzo. My philosophy is to re-formulate the name to fit the phonotactics of the target language, while allowing it to retain enough orthographic resemblance to the original that it can be easily recognized.

More examples:

• Brooke = Broca or Bruca (Sp.), Brocca or Brucca (It.), and Broque or Brouque (Fr.)
• Clark = Clarco (Sp. & It.) and Clarques (Fr.)
• Jessica = Chésica or Jésica (Sp.), Jessique (Fr.), and Gessica (It.)

I have also created name equivalents for my conlang, which brings me to the point of this correspondence. I would like to suggest the idea of a section of the LangMaker site that allows conlangers to submit one or more of the following data:

1. A list of common names unique to their language both in form and in origin
2. A list or selection of the conlang's versions of the common Biblical or otherwise traditional first names often used throughout Europe and America in some form or other (i.e. John, Charles, James, Robert, Mary, Isabel, etc.). A list of these names in English could be available on the site for reference in a way analogous to the Babel text.
3. A selection of name equivalents in the conlang of non-traditional or even fictional names

What are your thoughts?

Divided in 11 chapters, it starts from Imperial times and ends with the Internet. Chapter 1 also contains the original Latin alphabet (and the V -U discussion that has caused much misunderstanding in modern times), and a phonetic reconstruction of classical Latin. Chapter 4 shows the phonological changes from Latin to Italian as mediated by Sicilian. It's quite a bit, so if you see something that is wrong, or have any suggestions, let me know.

If you are also interested in present-day conversational Italian (it's a how-to) please go to What is Italian?

Thanks for your interest and I hope it may be of use for your readers!

In fact nake is the opposite of a neologism (paleologism?)-- it's the original form of the word. It meant 'strip' or 'peel', and 'naked' is simply the past participle. You could use it of fruits as well as people.

The OED reports that nake goes back to Old English nacian, and beyond that to Indo-European. It seems to have died out in the 1600s as a verb, though they do have a citation from 1887.

• The aliens from Area 51
• The cute furry marsupials of Planet X
• The psychic cyborgs rescued from the tsunami of Serebraal VII [hey, five /s/ sounds, each written differently!]

Out of these ten, I'd place Tepa higher - if not number one - because it's not just exotic for the sake of being exotic. Tepa seems to be designed very consistently, and it's a very natural-looking language. Besides, it fits in nicely as a native North-American language in general, although it does differ from [natural] languages more or less surrounding it (thus making its existence a bit unlikely).

Just for the record: I'm not saying any of the above is necessary for a language in order to deserve a high ranking, but I do think all of the above together does earn it a high ranking.

• First, this is based on a corpus of United Nations translations, some 200 billion words: by far the largest corpus ever used for this purpose.
• Second, since Google has said that automation translation is part of their core business of search, they are investing heavily in this area, so that people will be able to search and read documents originally written in other languages. They bring resources traditional MT firms have lacked.