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I am an associate professor of English at an upstate New York University, and my nom-de-plume is Sally Caves. Teonaht, pronounced "TAY-oh-noth," is my life-long discovery and invention, which I began documenting in 1962 when I was nine years old and first introduced to Spanish. Originally I began setting it down to accompany my invented winged race of cats, feleonim, started when I was five and presented with my first kitten. The Teonim have since become human (although they have a rich history of feline deities and mythology), and Teonaht has seen me through the learning of Spanish, French, German, Old English, Middle and Modern Welsh, Latin, Old Irish, Old Norse, and dabblings in Hungarian, Hebrew, Basque, and Koine Greek. When I discovered as a teenager that Tolkien had indulged as well in his "secret vice," I was encouraged, but I still kept my activity secret from all but a few friends. When I started publishing fiction, well after I had begun my career as a professor of medieval literature, Teonaht and its tyrannies still remained private.
Well, not anymore, thanks to technology, the web, and a growing number of language inventors who share their inventions. The making of "auxilliary languages" is not new; ever since the language philosophers of the seventeenth century, scholars have sought to create an ideal language, one whose simplicity and practicality could make it the Lingua Franca of the world, and out of this endeavor we acquired Volapük, and eventually Esperanto and logical or engineered languages like Lojban. However, quite a number of people were and are inventing languages, which like those by Tolkien and Marc Okrand (Klingon) serve as entertainment or augment fiction. And then a great many of us invent private languages, or what we call "constructed" or "model" languages, just for the joy of it, the intellectual experimentation, the achievement, the knowledge. Tsorelai Mûndya, also my invention, has unscrolled below.
Those unbitten by this bug will undoubtedly want to know why we do it: why invent something so intricate, so involved, that only a few people, maybe even no one, could ever share in its entirety? To begin such a thing is whimsical at best, but to persist in it is surely madness. However, I'm not alone in my pursuit. The discovery of Conlang, a listserv devoted to glossopoeia or the artful construction of languages, introduced me to a world of compatriots who share my love of language--not just the natural languages, but the experiments one could make with syntax, morphology, typology, lexicology, historicity, and myth. Tolkien said that his invention of myth drew straight from his invention of language, so glossopoeia is like building a strange, new, mythical city. You start with the foundations and move up, stone by stone. Or sometimes you start with the roof and work down. Sometimes your paths are crooked, others straight; sometimes you erect cathedrals, canals, and bridges. Sometimes you tear everything down and start over. Gradually it takes on a character and populace of its own, and all its own rules, and you come to know its streets and houses and people as unique. You have relexified your world. Wittgenstein, quoted above, is describing the development, over time, of a real language, like that of a real city. Your invented language will never have the history of an actual one; it is more like an imaginary or model city, to which you can give the appearance of age and history.
So, you non-conlangers who might be reading this! Have you ever invented towns for your fictional worlds? Have you found yourselves mapping them out as you write, so that they have an internal coherence that your readers may only see the tops of, like the tips of icebergs? Ever build model railroads? Spend years collecting furniture for a miniature mansion? What we do is the same thing, only built in different materials. Even if Teonaht is only glimpsed in my stories about it, underneath is the submerged city of its language.
Sally Caves
Here is your entrance into TEONAHT; you can choose some menus from there. If you would like to know more about the language itself and its people, click HERE. If you click on the image of the city above you'll get a much clearer view of the dreaming girl's neighborhood, but it will take a while to load. Be patient; it has some secrets.
This Scattered Tongues Site belongs to Sally Caves
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Meanwhile, here are the names of some of my favorite constructed languages that have evolved a people and a history (some of its inventors I have exchanged papercopies of my grammar with--a document now hopelessly out of date):
- Aelya, by Aidan Gray, is still in progress, but his webpage is so gorgeous you have to see it. Aelya is designed to be the religious language for Clann Coire, "the People of the Cauldron."
- Amman-Iar, by David Bell, originally fashioned after one of Tolkien's language, but evolving an entirely different and complex structure. See also his Nathya and Forendar.
- Brithenig, by Andrew Smith; a language based on the premise that Brythonic, or P-Celtic, combined in an alternate history with vulgar Latin to produce something halfway between Welsh and Italian. See Kernu below.
- Czirehlat, Herman Miller's most recent language among many that he has developed for his world of Azir, complete with RealAudio samples and some delightful illustrations of music. Be sure to check out the Oninka porcupine orchestra, whose members sing and play music in a scale with 15 equally spaced notes within the octave.
- Denden, by Boudewijn Rempt, is one of the Charyan languages, spoken by a people with a complex history and literature. See the Andal world for information about the culture, and the page that Boudewijn shares with his conlanger wife, Irina, author of Valdyan (see below).
- Demuan, by Fabian. I know very little about Demuan, except that it has a prophetic tense in -lailai, and that the last poem of the FIRST CONLANG TRANSLATION RELAY GAME was written in this language by someone I know even less about, or his last name. See Irina's page on the Starling's Song.
- Doraya, by Adam Parrish, one of several languages, along with Saakha and Telyana. These are the peoples of Endra. I've given you Parrish's beautifully designed mainpage, where he makes another list of conlang faves. Be sure to click on "Doraya," and on the Talin script he's developed.
- Draseléq, by Pablo Flores, a highly inflected language and a site with a Traveler's Phrasebook.
- Elet Anta, by John Fisher, spoken by a mysterious group of people throughout Europe who keep their identities secret. Elet Anta features a very unique method of pronouns, and John even has a "Teach Yourself" page for learners.
- Fith, by Jeffrey Henning, intended to be almost unspeakable by and incomprehensible to humans.
- Kélen, by Sylvia Sotomeyer, a language spoken by non-humans whose most prominent feature, perhaps, lies in its use of "relationals" instead of a large class of open verbs. The script she has developed for this language is beautiful.
- Kernu, by Padraic Brown; similar in structure to Brithenig, and considered, among other conlangs based on Celtic or Anglo-Saxon models, to be part of an immense alternate British Isles that Brown has carefully constructed, with maps, drawings, histories, and a body of literature. Brown is busy writing a number of alternate Celtic romances in Kernu. He binds his own papercopy grammars.
- Liotan, by Geoff Eddy; the general term for a group of Goidelic or Q-Celtic model languages: Machren, Kadhrein, Ivriyen, Genistien, Astarien, and so forth.
- Nova, by Brad Coon. A very developed grammar and vocabulary. His newest language, Feorran, based on the Old English word "from afar," is set in Antarctica.
- Rokbeigalmki,, by Steg Belsky, who features a complex script and a series of audiotapes on his website.
- Talossa, by Robert Ben Madison; go and look at the Talossa homepage. WOW! This will take a while to load, but its genesis is well-worth reading about. Apparently, Madison has devised his own country, all thirteen square miles of it, with a constitution and a government, and a growing number of citizens--and his page boasts probably the largest number of hits for a privately invented language and culture.
- Tepa, a very admired language, by linguist Dirk Elzinga, the updated version of which is not yet committed to a website. You can find preliminary descriptions of this lost native-American pueblo people (whose remains have perhaps been obliterated by the present-day Lake Powell) in Jeffrey Henning's LangMaker pages, but Dirk assures me that this description is somewhat dated.
- Tokana, by Matt Pearson, another much admired, complex, and beautiful language written by a linguist influenced by languages as remote as Irish, Quechua, and Tagalog. The Tokana exist in an alternate, pre-modern west coast region of America.
- Valdyan, by Irina Rempt, a highly inflected language spoken by the Valdyan people, an immensely complicated culture that has served for many a role-playing game. Irina and Boudewijn Rempt, husband and wife and both conlangers, have a mutual page with links to their separate languages and cultures. Irina is the instigator of the FIRST CONLANG
RELAY TRANSLATION GAME OF 1999, wherein a number of us
passed around her poem, Hanleni Halsen, or "Starlings Song," from member to member until it transmogrified into a new poem in Fabian's Demuan (see above). This is worth looking at!
- Watakassí, by Nik Taylor, an ergative language and a member of the Kassí family. It has seven genders, and his site also has a Teach Yourself Section.
- And of course Tolkien's languages, for which I've chosen Helge Fauskanger's thorough webpage. David Bell is reportedly working to revamp a page on Tolkien's languages that he dismantled some months ago. I look forward to seeing them.
Also visit the following sites for more comprehensive information on "conlangs":
Richard Kennaway's Constructed Language Projects
Jeffrey Henning's LangMaker Homepage
Taliesin's Conlang Listserv homepage, with its instructions for subscription
Associate Professor Sarah Higley's article in M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture called "Audience, Uglossia, and CONLANG: Inventing Languages on the Internet."
Return to my homepage
Move on to The Teonaht Table of Contents.
Email me at scaves@frontiernet.net
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