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 Conlanging: The Art of Crafting Tongues, right around the 44-minute mark.
Conlangs
Adzaay, also know as
Ox-Yew, is an
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, stops, nasals, liquids, 3 genders, moods, types of cases, nonal number system (based on an earlier trinary base), tripartite morphosyntactic alignment… you get the idea.)
The
Aterran Languages are a group of languages created for Anthony Gutierrez for his upcoming graphic novel series
The Lost Children.
Alderxmanuvgöm, also known as Dhënuvgöm or simply Northern, is a language spoken in Aterra.
Arbulian is alone among the Aterran languages in that it is not presently spoken on the planet, nor indeed even from the planet. It is highly fusional, and is spoken by an extra-aterrestrial race of deities.
Modern Standard Imperial is the official language of much of Aterra. Descended from a very formal fusional language, modern Imperial is very analytic, and is arguably moderately creolized, though not to the extent that would rise to the definition of a true creole. It retains a somewhat deep orthography harkening back to its ancient predecessor.
Hakdor is a dialect continuum spoken by the Hakdor, a non-human, engineered race on Aterra (also know as The Blighted).
Ashian is an ancient language spoken in Aterra with some influence from some pesky space-faring Old Norse speakers called the Orka.
Western is a language spoken on the western continent on Aterra.
Dlatci is an
a priori language that Jamin has been working on since 1994. It has undergone some massive changes over the years, though, and barely resembles its former self.
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
Romance language with a lot of
Gothic vocabulary? Maybe. Is it a
Germanic language with a lot of
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.
Gothic Romance is the result of the evolution and gradual merging of two historic languages, Italian Gothic (a 13ᵗʰ-century descendant of Old Valthungian) and Bad Romance (a 13ᵗʰ-century descendant of Extemplar Latin):
Maltcégj (BRCL:mltj) (that’s [malˈʧɛɡʒ], in case you’re wondering) is an
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).
Nymeran is an
a priori language originally created by Niamh NíDhúill for Mythopoeia's comic
Glow. Jamin has been curating and expanding the language on behalf of Mythopoeia since the spring of 2021.
Valthungian, or the Grey Tongue (ISO-639-3:qgt, BRCL:grey), another
Germanic 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.
Like
Italian Gothic and
Bad Romance,
Middle Valthungian isn’t so much a conlang as a snapshot in the development of
Valthungian, though it is actually fairly well-developed and could be coerced into a functional conlang in a pinch.
Middle Valthungian represents a period in the development of
Valthungian lasting from around 1200‒1600
ad marked mainly by palatalization of a great many consonants as well as some minor reduction to unstressed vowels. Though this is a range which experienced many changes, the most representative example of “Middle Valthungian” is the language as captured by the suddenly-prolific Valthungian writers at the beginning of the Renaissance, circa 1450‒1500
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Like
Middle Valthungian,
Old Valthungian isn’t so much a conlang as a snapshot in the development of
Valthungian. To the casual observer it probably looks like a Roman spelling Gothic badly, which would not be entirely inaccurate.
Old Valthungian represents a period in the development of
Valthungian lasting from around 800‒1200
ad marked mainly by changes to geminates and intervocalic consonants, as well as the introduction of Germanic ī/j-umlaut and some small but important changes to all of the vowels. Though this is a range which experienced many changes, the most representative example of “Old Valthungian” is the language as captured in a few surviving texts believed to date to around 950‒975
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Griutungi is the theoretical ancestor of
Valthungian which was likely a dialect of, or at least mutually intelligible with,
Gothic. Griutungi isn’t so much a conlang as it is just Gothic, but not so much how Gothic really was as how I wish Gothic had been.
Others
Over the years Jamin has invented dozens of other languages to various states of completion ranging from a few scribbled notes to monstrosities like Latinovesa, his first and only Aux-Rom-Lang, de quo nui ne parlaramu ĵamai plui. Most of them didn't have names. Some of them had ridiculous names, like ɮaxu or Baraqesh or Iatu Nukta Amat. Still others have been created for authors and can’t be discussed publicly yet: The latter will appear here at such time as that is feasible; the former will likely not!
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