Last weekend I went to the 6th Language Creation Conference in Horsham, near London. Although I haven’t created any languages, yet, I have invented a few alphabets, and I was invited to attend the conference by one of the people involved.

The conference took place over two days, and there were about 50 or 60 people there – about half of the total membership of the Language Creation Society, who organised it. There were talks about conlangs and conworlds that people had invented, and about linguistic aspects of conlangs and conlanging. One of the speakers, David J. Peterson, who invented the Dothraki language for Game of Thrones, and other languages and scripts for other TV shows and films, explained how he can make a living from inventing languages and scripts, and how other people might do the same. At the moment he is the world’s only professional conlanger.

The attendees ranged in age from late teens to sixty or seventy something. There were more men than women, and the level of linguistic knowledge and geekiness / nerditude was high, so I fitted in well. Everybody I talked to knew Omniglot and said they visit it regularly and find it very useful – it’s always nice to meet fans 🙂

Tomorrow my journey to Berlin for the Polyglot Gathering begins. I’ll take a train from Bangor to London, then from London to Brussels, stay in Brussels tomorrow night, and continue to Berlin, via Cologne, the next day. I’m looking forward to it.