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Also by Arika Okrent:

In the Land of Invented Languages, May 2009
Hardcover

In the Land of Invented Languages
Arika Okrent

Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build A Perfect Language

Spiegel & Grau
May 2009
On Sale: May 19, 2009
352 pages
ISBN: 0385527888
EAN: 9780385527880
Hardcover
Add to Wish List

Non-Fiction

Just about everyone has heard of Esperanto, which was nothing less than one man’s attempt to bring about world peace by means of linguistic solidarity. And every Star Trek fan knows about Klingon, which was nothing more than a television show’s attempt to create a tough-sounding language befitting a warrior race with ridged foreheads. But few people have heard of Babm, Blissymbolics, and the nearly nine hundred other invented languages that represent the hard work, high hopes, and full-blown delusions of so many misguided souls over the centuries.

In In The Land of Invented Languages, author Arika Okrent tells the fascinating and highly entertaining history of man’s enduring quest to build a better language. Peopled with charming eccentrics and exasperating megalomaniacs, the land of invented languages is a place where you can recite the Lord’s Prayer in John Wilkins’s Philosophical Language, say your wedding vows in Loglan, and read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in Lojban.

A truly original new addition to the booming category of language books, In The Land of Invented Languages will be a must-have on the shelves of all word freaks, grammar geeks, and plain old language lovers.

Comments

1 comment posted.

Re: In the Land of Invented Languages

Esperanto, which I learned 40 years ago when I was 16, has allowed me to have friends in dozens of countries and travel to 35 countries, during summer vacations as a public school teacher. I dear say that the experience of a tourist would have been twice as expensive and a total bore. Esperanto is nearly my raison d'etre. I write at EsperantoFriends.blogspot.
(Neil Blonstein 10:04pm August 23, 2011)