Re: Alphabets on Langmaker.com

Lo David Peterson sgibebal:

>You can now upload orthographies to Langmaker.com.   The actual submission
>form isn't up yet, but if you're interested, e-mail Jeffrey Henning (or
wait for
>the submission form to go up.   Shouldn't take long: He's been on an updating
>tear, of late).
Because they had to tear out my gallbladder on short notice after my first
ambulance ride!  The nice thing about being exhausted, drugged and propped
in bed for a week was that I got to play around with the site on my laptop:
- redid the logo
- calculated the most popular languages of the last year
- added the alphabet section
- searched for fresh conlang links to push the total number of languages
indexed over a 1000
- updated profiles of quite a few languages
- added a random, rotating sound bite to the home page

It was a shame when I finally felt well enough to go back to work and had to
abandon the imaginary occupation of full-time webmaster of Langmaker.com.

I think I did everything but actually work on any of my own languages.  Oops.


>I recommend poking around the alphabetical listing, though.   Has anyone
>heard of Mattias Persson?   This feature hasn't been on Langmaker.com for more
>than a day or two, and he's already got like 20 scripts up--and their
fantastic!

Mattias reminds me of this Tolkien quote:

"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

I had never heard of Mattias, and he had only published a few alphabets to
his site:
http://www.algonet.se/~lamperss/

Turns out he's invented nearly 60 alphabets!  It's a unique take on our mad
hobby -- he doesn't seem to invent many languages or language sketches, just
these alphabets, some of which are quite creative:
- Breloom: http://www.langmaker.com/db/alp_breloom.htm
- Mannaci: http://www.langmaker.com/db/alp_mannaci.htm

He'll often be inspired by real-world scripts.  (Yes, Hanuman, he's even
done a Fraser: http://www.langmaker.com/db/alp_mathasianfraser.htm .)  I
also see he's done derivatives of some conlangers' scripts:  Valdyan,
Adelic, etc.

Best regards,

Jeffrey