Smiley Award

The Smiley Award curly smiley.

The Smiley Award was created by David J. Peterson in June 2006 and is awarded to a created language that has caught his eye within the past year. It carries no reward or physical prize, only being mentioned at his homepage.

Origin

The award was created by David J. Peterson after realizing there were no awards for language creation, in spite of all the effort that goes into creating a language. Arguing the hard-work that people put into their creations should be admired he decided to create this award.

Peterson has always had a penchant for giving out awards since at least his time at Berkeley. The idea began in 2006 upon the successful conclusion of the First Language Creation Conference. In it he decided to present Doug Ball, who had been the only presenter not to exceed the alotted time for his talk, with the humorously named "Thank You For Following the Rules" award. Shortly thereafter he decided to create an award for conlangs, as a pat on the back.

Criteria

The first official Smiley Award was announced on the first Monday of June in 2006. Although the intention was to present the award every year on the first Monday of June, unanticipated events made the date less definite. As of approximately 2011 it is stated that: "the Smiley award will be given out some time during the calendar year in which it's supposed to be awarded".

The criteria stated by David Peterson are as follows:

1. Smileys are given out to languages, families of languages, or language projects (not language creators).
2. The language must be current (i.e. being invented/used during the year of the award).
3. The language must be detailed to some degree on the internet (I need something to look at and link to).
4. Smileys are given out exclusively to amateur languages (i.e. not Esperanto, Klingon, Atlantean, etc.).
5. The language must be a language, or something similar.
6. One language cannot win more than one Smiley (though one language creator may).
7. The winner will be a language that, for one reason or another, makes [him] smile.

It must be noted that all varieties of conlangs are acceptable as candidates for the award. Peterson will accept nominations for Smiley Awards, self-nomination is discouraged. The best way to bring a language to his attention would be to post it in the Conlang listserv or to wait for him to find it on the web.

Winners

Below is a list of the winners of the Smiley Award, listed in inverse chronological order:

• 2020: Verdurian, by Mark Rosenfelder.
• 2019: Fith, by Jeffrey Henning.
• 2018: Tapissary, by Steven Travis.
• 2017: Idrani, by Trent Pehrson.
• 2016: Ilaini, by Irina Rempt.
• 2015: Kash, by Roger Mills.
• 2014: Skerre, by Doug Ball.
• 2013: Brithenig, by Andrew Smith.
• 2012: Rikchik, by Denis Moskowitz.
• 2011: Okuna, by Matt Pearson.
• 2010: ámman îar, by David Bell.
• 2009: Kēlen, by Sylvia Sotomayor.
• 2008: Ithkuil, by John Quijada.
• 2007: Teonaht, by Sally Caves.
• 2006: Kalusa, by Gary Shannon.

Remarks by language

Kalusa

Kalusa is probably the single most entertaining language creation game that exists. Translation relays are fantastic, but they require a lot of effort, and take a lot of time.[...] Most of all, it's fun to sit down at the computer every few hours to discover that the Kalusa language has changed in some significant way. In my opinion, it's been an incredibly successful collaborative language experiment thus far, and I hope to see it grow far into the future. —David J. Peterson, Smiley Award

Teonaht

Early Teonaht could easily have been written off as a phase, and no one would have thought twice about it. In fact, Sally herself could have written off Teonaht each time her knowledge of language expanded, as I did with my first language, but she didn't. Teonaht not only survived, it flourished. And consider that Sally grew up well before the days of the internet. Someone like me (and anyone from here on out) will never know what it's like to be a language creator in a bubble.[...] it would have been absurdly easy and understandable if Sally had abandoned Teonaht at pretty much any point in time in her life. But she didn't. Not college, not grad. school, not a career, nothing kept Sally from living her life with Teonaht. In my eyes, it's nothing short of inspiring. —David J. Peterson, Smiley Award

Ithkuil

Ithkuil isn't so much a language as it is a monument to human ingenuity and design. Over a quarter century in the making, Ithkuil is a complete language (a daunting task, as any conlanger knows), and a remarkable achievement. It's the outcome of a specific set of design goals that have been satisfactorily realized. I mean, wow! That's pretty incredible in and of itself. [...] The website that John has created for Ithkuil is a model for all language creators to follow, and a gift to the language creation community. It's clear, readable, organized well, filled with examples (each with an orthographic, romanized, schematic and translated variant—and many with an audio file attached. It's funny: when you tell someone else that you've created a language, the first thing they want to hear is what it sounds like, and yet many of us create, essentially, written languages that sound alien to their creators when spoken with gusto!), and is appropriately redundant. It really allows the uninitiated to fully grasp what Ithkuil is, which is something that many of our websites (I can think of an example or two) fail to do. —David J. Peterson, Smiley Award

Kēlen

Kēlen has the life and vibrancy of a full-fledged artlang. Take the relational se, for example. In fact, go here right now, scroll down a little more than halfway, and take a look at the conjugation (for lack of a better word) of se. That's not something a typical engelang does. [...] Sylvia's got a ton of information on Kēleni culture and society, a description of the Kēlen calendar, this crazy divination thing that I don't really get but really like to look at (it has a button you can press, and stuff happens when you press it!), not one, not two, but three scripts, a translation of an utterly intolerable prose passage, an online dictionary that immediately makes me want to stop using it and do something else because I'm so jealous of how well the freaking thing works and so frustrated with my feeble attempts to try to create something that's even half as good as it, and tons more! —David J. Peterson, Smiley Award

ámman îar

[W]ith ámman îar [...], David then goes on to create something unique and intricate—and the result is wholly original. [...] Conlangs that otherwise appear quite naturalistic tend to tip their hand with an ergative system that's far more pristine than any natural language would ever allow. David Bell's ámman îar, far from falling into the trap of artificiality, features a wonderfully balanced split ergative system that a linguist wouldn't be surprised to find in the wild. —David J. Peterson, Smiley Award

External Links

• David J. Peterson's Homepage
• The Smiley Award Homepage