Unilang.org , a site dedicated to the study and teaching of natlangs, has recently started a "learn-a-language-a-month". They pick one or two languages, and challenge people to learn as much as they can in one month. I think this would be a fun exercise for the conlang community.

Natlangs require a few years of study in most situations to become proficient enough to do anything but say hello and order food...but many conlangs are designed for ease of use, and could be better candidates for this type of exercise.

Choose some languages with a good web presence, good lessons, and see who can do what with it in one month. Some recommendations: Toki Pona, Romana, Somish, Mondlango, Esperanto, Kali-sise, Meriate et Darae or Lojban.

Anybody can make a language: it's teaching and spreading the language that makes it more than just a secret vice.

I am attempting to construct an artlang that would be exclusively sung. The (musical) intervals used would be a part of each vowel and approximate, and be an integral part of each phoneme and word meaning.

I'm stumped on the writing system for it, though. It seems like I'd need to invent a script, but I'd also like to be able to type said language without using a different diacritic for each vowel-tone.

Also, do you know of any other conlangs (or, heck, natlangs) that are exclusively sung?

This is in response to Abjad Abracadabra.

"In Latheb, the vowel diacritics are completely independent, and not joined to their consonants, and the mark for one vowel is always the same, independent of with what consonant it is used. Also the consonants do not change their shapes depending on which vowel they are used with."

If that's the case, then aren't most of the Indic scripts considered abjads then? The vowel diacritics are completely independent (for the most part, in many of the insular scripts they are such as in the Tagalog script) of what consonant they are used with, and the consonants don't change their shapes either.

I thought that abjads were consonantal alphabets that had optional vowel marking, and anything that required vowel marks was classed as an abugida? So, if Latheb has optional vowel marking, then yes, I can agree with Matthias. But if it's used and needed, then I agree with Ethan Dickey's assertion that it's an abugida.

Q. Do you publish everything that is submitted?
A. We publish almost all new submissions, but only about two-thirds of submitted neologisms.

Q. How long until my submission is posted?
A. It can take up to eight weeks. We're all volunteers with jobs, schoolwork, families, conlangs of our own and plans for world domination (conworld domination, that is). We do eventually get to all submissions. The Langmaker.com Directory Statistics page shows, among other items, the last time we updated a specific directory. Feel free to contact me with questions about a specific submission. And if you are really bothered by our slowness, volunteer!

Q. How long until my submission is shown on the home page?
A. Once it is uploaded to the directory, it can take up to 31 days before your item is featured on the home page, if it is shown on the home page at all. Repeated changes within a month aren't published on the home page, nor are what I consider to be minor submissions (perhaps you've just started your language page, and it doesn't have much detail yet).

The Klingon dialogue in Star Trek: The Motion Picture was devised by James Doohan and spoken by Mark Lenard, who, of course, played the Klingon commander in that film. My understanding is that Doohan recorded the dialogue on tape and Lenard then listened to the tape and wrote down what he heard in a way that would help him learn the lines. To the best of my knowledge, Lenard's handwritten transcription of this tape is the only written version of what Doohan made up. (There was more made up than actually ended up in the film. Some of this additional dialogue can be heard -- though without benefit of subtitles -- in a scene where we see the Klingon commander on a viewscreen on a Federation monitoring station. But the Federation folks are talking though all of this, so the Klingon dialogue can't be heard very clearly.) I don't know whether at the time Doohan made the recording he or Lenard or anybody else knew which phrases would go with which subtitles or whether subtitles were changed after the filming was done. (Having said that, the command meaning "fire [a torpedo]!" -- which I transcribed as {baH} but which sounds kind of like {maH} -- must have always had that meaning, since it's there a couple of times. [The {H} is pronounced like the final {ch} in the name of the composer Bach.])

I saw that Ethan Dickey had changed the script type of my Latheb. He had chosen Abugida, but Latheb is an Abjad, which is almost always fully pointed, though (which might render it to be called an alphabet, but it is definitely not an abugida!).

For me, an abugida is a script like the Ethiopic script , in which the characters contain both consonants and vowels, but in a visible liaison, so the two parts can easily be identified (in contrast to a full syllabary, in which the characters can not be analyzed in their constituent parts, as in Japanese Katakana for example).

In Latheb, the vowel diacritics are completely independent, and not joined to their consonants, and the mark for one vowel is always the same, independent of with what consonant it is used. Also the consonants do not change their shapes depending on which vowel they are used with.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

J.K. Rowling's languages, which appear in the Harry Potter books, are not particularly detailed to our knowledge — indeed, it is highly possible that she has thought very little of them beyond what actually appears in the books. Nonetheless, what facts are available can still be collected for the interest of conlangers and general fans of Rowling's work.

• First, to get you to visit the site each day :-) or better yet to subscribe to the RSS feed.
• Second, to showcase a conlang for the day so that you would spend some time looking at it. With over 1,400 conlangs in the directory now, it's important to me to direct your attention to noteworthy languages.
• Finally, so that the site would constantly appear fresh (which is also the reason for the random elements on right pane of the home page), especially during those times when I'm too busy to update it.

Awhile back I mentioned that I thought of an idea about creating a kind of tag image file that could be added to someone's website to indicate that they were listed on the Top 200. Well, I went about creating some example tags. First, though, I did an edit of the Langmaker logo. The letters were kind of blocky, so I touched them up a little. I'm no expert at that kind of stuff, but I think it's an improvement. I created images for the Top 10, Top 100, and Top 200.

Regarding Rosa By Any Other Name, you know, I really think that's a neat idea, and it's something I've been working on for awhile now. I have a page for Kamakawi that lists Kamakawi baby names. Eventually, there will be a lot of names, and I also want to devote a small section to last names and how they're used. Anyway, though such a thing would be too big for Langmaker (I mean, if every language was going to do it, yeesh!), but you might blog it as an example. If people can get an idea for what a page like this can look like, maybe more people will do it, and I think that'd be neat!

• Plosives: /t_j c k k_h k_w g q G\ ?/
• Fricatives: /h_t\ T D s z S Z s` s\ C j\ x x_j x_w x\ G x_- X R X\ ?\ h h\/
• Affricates: /ts ts_> dz tS dZ ts` J\j\ kx/
• Clusters: /ks gz kS xs/
• Nasals: /n` J N/
• Rhotics: /4 R\/
• Laterals: /K\/
• Implosives: /G\_
• Clicks: /t_! t_7 t`_!/
• Vowels: /i @ 7/
• Syllables: /kI/
• Zero phoneme: /0/

When things get so balled up that the people of a country have to cut loose from some other country, and go it on their own hook, without asking no permission from nobody, excepting maybe God Almighty, then they ought to let everybody know why they done it, so that everybody can see they are on the level, and not trying to put nothing over on nobody.

All we got to say on this proposition is this: first, you and me is as good as anybody else, and maybe a damn sight better; second, nobody ain’t got no right to take away none of our rights; third, every man has got a right to live, to come and go as he pleases, and to have a good time however he likes, so long as he don’t interfere with nobody else. That any government that don’t give a man these rights ain’t worth a damn; also, people ought to choose the kind of goverment they want themselves, and nobody else ought to have no say in the matter. That whenever any goverment don’t do this, then the people have got a right to can it and put in one that will take care of their interests. Of course, that don’t mean having a revolution every day like them South American coons and yellow-bellies and Bolsheviki, or every time some job-holder does something he ain’t got no business to do. It is better to stand a little graft, etc., than to have revolutions all the time, like them coons and Bolsheviki, and any man that wasn’t a anarchist or one of them I. W. W.’s would say the same. But when things get so bad that a man ain’t hardly got no rights at all no more, but you might almost call him a slave, then everybody ought to get together and throw the grafters out, and put in new ones who won’t carry on so high and steal so much, and then watch them. This is the proposition the people of these Colonies is up against, and they have got tired of it, and won’t stand it no more. The administration of the present King, George III, has been rotten from the start, and when anybody kicked about it he always tried to get away with it by strong-arm work. Here is some of the rough stuff he has pulled... (continued)