Fiat Lingua Top 10 for 2022
It's been a good year over at Fiat Lingua, the once-monthly conlang journal that's been posting steadily since September, 2011. I created Fiat Lingua over ten years ago with the idea that it could be something like the Rutgers Optimality Archive: A place where conlangers could post work that either they wanted to showcase, or work that was in progress. We've had tons of contributors over the years, and some standout work I'm really proud of.
Behind the scenes, we have a number of metrics available to us, and one of them allows us to know what the top posts are over a given amount of time. So, for fun, here are the top 10 visited posts for this year (though, note, the numbers for the December post will be down a little bit, since it didn't have a full month. Still, though, it's incredible, so if you get a chance, take a look at this full novel Jim Hopkins wrote in his language Itlani).
NUMBER 10
We have a tie...
"Moya Abugida" (June, 2022) by Carl Buck: A detailed description of how to write the unique abugida of the Moya language.
"Die Wichtigkeit von Conlangs in Medien" (November, 2021) by Jonah Behring: A German language article on the importance of using authentically created conlangs in films and television shows.
NUMBER 9
"Wóxtjanato: A grammar" (January, 2022) by Jessie Sams: A conlang by the amazing @quothalinguist about a culture whose planet has suddenly and unexpectedly acquired a second moon.
NUMBER 7
We have a tie...
"Names Aren't Neutral: David J. Peterson on Creating a Fantasy Language" (March, 2019) by David J. Peterson: This was an article I wrote for an online magazine, but then the magazine went under, so I reclaimed it and put it up on Fiat Lingua. It's about why coming with "random" names for sff can often prove problematic.
"Tone for Conlangers: A Basic Introduction" (April, 2018) by Aidan Aannestad: A lot of conlangers are interested in having tone in their language, but don't really know how to go about it, and this is a great introduction.
NUMBER 6
"Afrihili: An African Interlanguage" (April, 2014) by William S. Annis: Afrihili is an a posteriori auxlang from the late 60s that uses Bantu languages as its source, and it is fascinating! One of my all-time favorite auxlangs, and William provides a wonderful introduction.
NUMBER 5
"An Itlani Wedding Blessing" (August, 2014) by James E. Hopkins: A lovely wedding blessing Jim wrote for, if I remember right, a friend's daughter who was getting married.
NUMBER 4
"Dothraki & the Nostratic Super Family" (February, 2015) by Charlotte Peak: For her MA thesis, Charlotte wrote a paper on how Dothraki could fit into the theoretical Nostratic super family. A fun read!
NUMBER 3
"Patterns of Allophony" (April, 2015) by William S. Annis: Definitely one of the most popular papers on Fiat Lingua, William illustrates graphically a number of very common sound changes.
NUMBER 2
"Slides for Linguistics 183: The Linguistics of Game of Thrones and the Art of Language Invention" (September, 2018) by David J. Peterson: In the summer of 2017 I taught a class on language creation at UC Berkeley. I uploaded all the slides I used in that course as one massive .pdf to Fiat Lingua.
And now for the top viewed article for 2022 on Fiat Lingua...
NUMBER 1
"A Conlanger's Thesaurus" (September, 2014) by William S. Annis: This is consistently the most accessed article on Fiat Lingua, and I don't expect that to change. The article is relatively short, compared to the information and use you can get out of it. William Annis details ways in which languages relate words to other similar words. For conlangers who struggle either with coming up with words that are different from English in meaning, or who struggle with coming up with words at all, this reference article should prove very useful. Using the word maps in this article, you might be able to come up with words you never dreamt of before, but words which could exist in some language. A great resource for conlangers who are desperately trying to break out of the influence of their L1 or L2!
* * * * *
And that's it for 2022! I'm looking forward to posting more conlang articles next year. If you are a conlanger, a conlang-researcher, or conlang fan who has something to say in .pdf format about a conlang or conlanging in general, please consider submitting something to Fiat Lingua! We take any and all articles related to conlanging in whatever form you have them. I'm also happy to help you think up ideas, or refine those ideas you have. There is no strong review like in a fancy journal: I just want to get what you have up. I'm especially in interested in hosting personal conlang stories—stories about how or why you started to create a language, or your experience creating your own language—personal stories that are often lost, but are so vital, as there is an absolute dearth of literature about conlangers! If you think you have even the seed of an idea, please get a hold of me! I want to share as many stories and ideas as I can.
