Bpnjohnson

BenJamin P. Johnson (“Jamin” - /ʤəˈmɪn/) was born in upstate New York some decades ago, and studied many various languages before focusing on linguistics more broadly. He currently resides in Halifax, Nova Scotia with his husband Terrence. He has been a member of the Language Creation Society’s Board of Directors since 2015 (with a brief hiatus from 2019-2021), and the LCS’s Minister of Memberships from 2016‒2019. He made a brief appearance in the 2017 film ''[http://conlangingfilm.com/ Conlanging: The Art of Crafting Tongues]'', right around the 44-minute mark.

<div style="margin-left: 13px;">[[Ox-Yew|Adzaay]], also know as [[Ox-Yew]], is an [[:Category: A priori|a priori]] language that is still very much under construction, without much to look at yet. It has a fairly limited but unconventional phonology (involving several types of affricates and liquids), and most of its infrastructure can be broken down into groups of three. (E.g. 3 vowels, 3 stops, 3 nasals, 3 liquids, 3 genders, 3 moods, 3 types of cases (9 cases), nonal number system (based on an earlier trinary base), tripartite morphosyntactic alignment… you get the idea.)</div>

<div style="margin-left: 13px;">Brooding (ISO-639-3:qbd; BRCL:brdg) is an [[:Category: A priori|a priori]] language originally created by Veronica Hamilton for the [https://www.riddlesbrood.com/ Riddlesbrood Touring Theater Company]. Brooding is used in the company's theme song and logo, and was used in their 2012 production of ''The Dark Side Show'', the 2015 and 2017 productions of ''Harken'', and 2016 book ''[http://a.co/a99TS0G Riddlesbrood: The Greatest Brochure in the World]''. Jamin has been curating and expanding the language on behalf of Riddlesbrood since the fall of 2014.</div>

<div style="margin-left: 13px;">Building off of the original idea of what [[Valthungian]] was supposed to be, before it became what it is instead, [[Gothic Romance]] is actually a collection of three languages in several stages. It starts with the idea that the Goths who sacked Rome in 410ᴀᴅ continued to speak Gothic (or a close relative thereof) in parallel with Latin, rather than just switching to Latin completely as they did. This gave way to [[Old Valthungian]], much as described, but from there, the development changes course from what eventually leads to [[Middle Valthungian]], and by around 1200ᴀᴅ we find ourselves in a remote northern Italian town where the locals all speak both a form of Gothic and a form of [[Extemplar Latin]] which come to have a roughly equivalent phonology. From this point, the two languages exist in tandem, borrowing words back and forth between them until eventually we end up with [[Gothic Romance]]. Is it a [[w:Romance_languages|Romance language]] with a lot of [[w:Gothic_language|Gothic]] vocabulary? Maybe. Is it a [[w:Germanic_languages|Germanic language]] with a lot of [[w:Latin|Latin]] vocabulary? Maybe. Is it a creole? Probably not, but also maybe. Is it dark and spooky and probably something that vampires would speak if they were feeling particularly poetic? Definitely.

<div style="margin-left: 13px;">Grayis is an [[:Category: A priori|a priori]] language commissioned by [https://www.infinitemind.pictures/ Infinite Mind Pictures, Inc.], spoken by a race of aliens called the Grayis Kin. It is featured in the board-game ''Pilots of Gallaxia'', released in January of 2020.</div>

<div style="margin-left: 13px;">Maltcégj (BRCL:mltj) (that’s [malˈʧɛɡʒ], in case you’re wondering) is an [[:Category: A priori|a priori]] language created out of boredom and full of vicious puns. Maltcégj started as a sort of blog, before there were blogs, and has been subsequently transferred to https://blog.benjaminpauljohnson.com (keyword Maltcégj).</div>

<div style="margin-left: 13px;">Northeadish (BRCL:nthd) is an [[:Category: A posteriori|a posteriori]] [[:Category: Germanic languages|Germanic language]] with some medievalist flair. Work on the language has ceased, and it is gradually being subsumed into [[Middle Valthungian]].</div>

<div style="margin-left: 13px;">Nymeran is an [[:Category: A priori|a priori]] language originally created by Niamh NíDhúill for Mythopoeia's comic ''[https://www.mythopoeia.us/glow.html Glow]''. Jamin has been curating and expanding the language on behalf of Mythopoeia since the spring of 2021.</div>

<div style="margin-left: 13px;">Valthungian, or the Grey Tongue (ISO-639-3:qgt, BRCL:grey), another [[:Category: Germanic languages|Germanic]] [[:Category: A posteriori|a posteriori]], this time a close relative of Gothic. Not directly descended from Gothic, as such, but maybe a great-great-nephew. Jamin aspired to maintain a blog about it as it developed, but as you know, he’s seriously bad at that: https://blog.benjaminpauljohnson.com (keyword Valthungian). Jamin formally presented Valthungian as a theoretical descendant of Gothic at the 53rd International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo in 2018, which was attended by twos or even threes of people.

 

In the process of creating Valthungian, it became necessary to create some intermediate steps as well. These aren't fully-fledged conlangs, but more like synchronic snapshots of a two millennia long diachronic process.

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