August 2005 Weblog

August 2005 Weblog	Advanced
This Month's Posts: Conlang of the Month Club · Pneumonour · Isogrammatical · Mining Occupations for Word Ideas · That Idea's History · Oðblgshezi Oaths Conlang of the Month Club - 8/23/05 - 11:23 pm I haven't been posting to the blog this month much, as besides being swamped at work, I've been taking BobbyO's Language of the Month Club advice. I've been spending 15 to 30 minutes each evening writing in Esperanto. It's been very rewarding, and I think I'll do this once or twice a year. I'll go into more detail in the next few days, but for now I want you to consider picking a constructed language to study and use in October for 15 minutes a day. (I realize that September is coming up quick and will be busy for many of you.) For reasons that will become clear, I want you to consider one of the following conlangs: Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua, Interlingue, Klingon, Lojban, Toki Pona or Volapük. And if you already speak one of these languages, I hope you will mentally reserve some time in October to help these new learners. Meanwhile, bonus points to anyone who can contact me in the next few days identifying what those conlangs have in common that the conlangs I've excluded lack. More to come! Pneumonour - 8/13/05 - 9:32 pm The thread Longest word without repeating a letter? segued into a discussion of the longest English word: pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis - "a lung disease caused by the inhalation of very fine silica dust, mostly found in volcanos". The story may have become an urban legend: Everett M. Smith, president of the National Puzzlers' League, allegedly invented the term to make a new longest word as part of a hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian pursuit. However, according to Wikipedia, Smith was just parodying trends in medical neologisms. The actual name of the disease is pneumoconiosis. Volcanoes such as Meneltarma are not a chief cause of the disease. In a strange coincidence, given my writing last week on coal mining and my reference to black lung disease, the official name of the condition is coal-miner's pneumoconious. Isogrammatical - 8/10/05 - 9:22 pm "Dad, what's a 16-letter word that doesn't repeat any of its letters?" I thought my son had an interesting question, but I could only find two 15-letter words: uncopyrightable and dermatoglyphics. (Thanks to Hitchhiker of EnglishForums.com for doing the research and putting it on the Web.) The 17-letter subdermatoglyphic does have a shot at being the longest isogram. Mining Occupations for Word Ideas - 8/08/05 - 9:14 pm The second half of the song "5:15 am" by Mark Knopfler has been haunting me for weeks now. I started to write a post about its use of archaic mining terms (hod boys, rolleyway men, etc.) as inspiration for you to look at old occupations for ideas for words for your conlangs. Unfortunately, the whole post took a much darker turn. If you're just looking for some ideas for occupational vocabulary, check out these: Old Occupation Names Mining Occupations Glossary Of The Technical Terms In Use In UK Collieries To see where I ended up, with some sad history about mining, check this new page on my personal web site: Analysis of "5:15 AM" Lyrics Relating to Mining. That Idea's History - 8/06/05 - 9:36 pm For a while I had been planning on writing an article examining the history of constructed languages. It had been some time since I had read the Wikipedia's constructed language article. Turns out that it has now been edited over 350 times and has an excellent overview of conlanging's history. I added a reference to Barsoomian, but the article could use references to Lingua Ignota and Gulliver's Travels as well. You might see other omissions. Check it out and improve it! Oðblgshezi Oaths - 8/04/05 - 6:30 pm Jordon Kalilich, in his blog The World of Stuff, writes: Calculators are an amazing tool, making possible such things as rapid, accurate mathematical calculations and spelling funny words when turning the calculator upside-down. Come on, who hasn't done that? Oðblgshezi is a "language" consisting only of the letters you can make with a calculator. Punch "1234567890" in a calculator and you get the name of the language ("ð" means "th"). I'd like to see somebody write a meaningful sentence in this calculator lingo. My response: HIS BLOG BOGGLES HIS SIS. Prior Month's Entries

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