ecmarshall

Have you ever attempted to create your own language? I have, though, admittedly, in a desultory kind of way.

So, when I spotted [a:Arika Okrent|1587890|Arika Okrent|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/f_50x66-6a03a5c12233c941481992b82eea8d23.png]'s book at the used bookstore, I thought I'd see how other would-be creators had done. Turns out that plenty of others have worked much, much harder and for much, much longer than I ever did. And yet their languages never really amounted to much more than mine.

Okrent is a skilled storyteller and understands what it takes to keep a layman like myself engaged. If there were a such a thing as Popular Linguistics magazine, then [b:In the Land of Invented Languages|7420389|In the Land of Invented Languages Adventures in Linguistic Creativity, Madness, and Genius|Arika Okrent|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1320435729s/7420389.jpg|3773893] could easily form the basis for a successful feature.

However, there is more to the book than a series of factoids. Even the most successful of the invented languages is used by only a tiny fraction of humanity. Think what it would mean to have spent one's adult life toiling away at a language that no one uses, while billions of people have adopted emoji in a matter of a few years. There is plenty of failure and pathos in the land of invented languages and Okrent doesn't shy away from it.