Keats in SoundSpel

Mi hart aeks, and a drouzy numnes paens
Mi sens, as tho of hemlok I had drunk,
Or emptyd sum dul oepiaet to the draens
Wun minit past, and Lethe-wards had sunk. ...

The opening lines of Keats's 'Ode on a Nightingale' in SoundSpel, the simplified spelling system promoted by Ed Rondthaler, who just died at the age of 104.

building the perfect language. or not.

I enjoy most of the books I read — I admire many of them — I adore some of them — but it is not often that I think “I have no words to express how desperately I wish I had written that.” But just such a longing consumed me as I read Arika Okrent’s scholarly yet delightful In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build A Perfect Language. You must buy it, or at least borrow it from your library.

However, you should not get the Kindle version: the book has a number of fascinating charts that are reproduced on the Kindle screen at a size too small and resolution to low to be read. Publishers need to be more responsible about this kind of thing, and Amazon too: if images can't be seen clearly, they should be left out of the Kindle editions, and perhaps made available on a website. Very annoying.

Speaking of websites, the one for the book features a shockingly long list of invented languages, from Lingua Ignota to Proto-Central Mountain, most of which are accompanied by brief translation samples and random tidbits of endlessly fascinating trivia. Consider yourself warned.