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This how-to guide is based on a newsletter I wrote in 1995 and 1996. This is the original introduction. -- Jeffrey, 6/30/01
 One of the reasons I've started the newsletter is to increase awareness of the hobby of model languages and to provide a banner for language enthusiasts to rally around. There is little awareness about model languages as a hobby; in fact, no one is quite sure what to call it, with Tolkien referring to it as private languages; and others calling it constructed languages or imaginary languages. I've chosen to call it model languages because models are not intended to be full-scale replicas, but miniaturized versions that provide the essence of something, even if certain details have to be skipped over; in the same way, no one can construct a complete language, but a model of a language can be very useful. Additionally, as much of the joy is in building the languages as in actually using them; one of my colleagues is into model airplanes, and he and his son spend more time building them than flying them, a passion I understand completely.
Language modelers do not gather together in local clubs or display the results of their craft. Many look at their model languages as private experiments that they would be too self-conscious to discuss with others. Inventing model languages is an unusual hobby, though really it is no different than hobbies of those who write poems or short stories.
The hobby has a disparate group of adherants that do not communicate with one another. Model languagers or language modelers can be found among writers, game players, computer game designers, science-fiction and fantasy fans, professional linguists and teachers. The community of hobbyists is a large one, with approximately 40,000 people in the United States having invented their own languages and some 250,000 having used model languages such as Esperanto, Quenya and Klingon.
It is my personal goal to increase public awareness of model languages as a legitimate hobby. One day, when somebody asks me what my interests are, I'd like to be able to say model languages and have them know what I'm talking about. I also have this fantasy where there is enough interest in the topic to be able to publish a small monthly magazine dedicated to it.
To help achieve these goals, I encourage you to spread the word about model languages. Please feel free to post sample issues of Model Languages to groups, forums or mailing lists that you think would be interested; myself, I've posted the newsletter to the TOLKLANG and CONLANG Internet mailing lists and to RPGAMES, WRITERS, FLEFO, SFMEDI and SFLIT on Compuserve. Please forward issues to friends, and mention this newsletter to writers, gamers, linguists, science fiction lovers, and anyone else you think might share your interest in model languages.
Feel free to drop me a note at any time to discuss questions you might have or issues you might like to see covered, or stories or knowledge you would like to share with other subscribers. If you want to start general discussions for others to join in on, I suggest you join CONLANG (CONstructed LANGuages).
Best regards,
Jeffrey
What range of accomplishment there is among these hidden craftsmen, I can only surmise - and I surmise the range runs, if one only knew, from the crude chalk-scrawl of the village schoolboy to the heights of palaeolithic or bushman art (or beyond). Its development to perfection must none the less certainly be prevented by its solitariness, the lack of interchange, open rivalry, study or imitation of others' technique.
from the essay "A Secret Vice", J.R.R. Tolkien
We were listening to somebody lecturing on map-reading, or camp-hygeine, 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!'
from the essay "A Secret Vice", J.R.R. Tolkien
Contents copyright 1995 Jeffrey Henning. All rights reserved.
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