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Some images from facebook posts about recent work with these languages:
Land of the Lost's Pakuni Language:
Okrand Atlantean Language:
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Since about New Year's Day, I've had been working on a big series of projects involving the Pakuni or Paku language from the big hit American 1970s kids sci fi tv show "Land of the Lost". I'm the first language scientist to do decipherment work on the language and make it available publically.
A few weeks ago, I set those aside to work for hopefully a month focusing on the Atlantean language from Disney's 2001 "Atlantis: The Lost Empire" ATLE. I did most of the decipherment work for this language back in 2006 and around then was made top leader of its largest online community, then the Yahoo Group "The Atlantean Language Group". The last 10 years, I revisit the language about twice a year for 5 hours each.
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I'm not only the head decipherer of these languages, these are also by far the largest translation works ever done into these languages. Of course, the fans are thrilled, especially the c 50 year old Land of the Lost fans who have waited their lifetimes for this and now see some 30 year old doing it, like a magical cackling leprechaun.
It's fun doing the posts on the big fan facebook groups for these works and watching the fans' jaws drop and show's of appreciation. But it's all a bit (boring) and (over the head) for almost all of them. I try to make the posts interesting and accessible but often what I want to post about is not so much the language but the theory going into the text selection and translation and all this. And I usually ramble on and on and on like TLDR and Cool Story Bro. But it's still hard work and it's amazing that anyone has done this. And I think I reach people and enough people, so it's well worth it.
And, in some ways, it's the best season to be a scientist and to promote science because so many people are "dying to believe in science" and even more seem to be coming up in about 7 days or less, on average. Alas, some of the victims are themselves pro-science but must suffer due to the anti-science beliefs of others. And I am a believer in belief and other tolerance, even in a perhaps intolerant age, state, and country. So I should be happy to have all along been apart of the solution that NOBODY wants, anywhere.
Pete Hamill in his 1995 "A Drinking Life: A Memoir" says that when he was a child, he thought that the bigots of which his mother spoke went around dressed in black like 1800s melodrama villains, lampooned in Snidely Whiplash. They had small capes about their shoulders and wore huge black top hats, and probably long noses, pale skin, and the slight French mustache of pure evil. And this book was written 15 years or more before the Babadook.
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Pakuni is based on the very analytic West African Kwa and similar branches of the Niger-Congo Family. It's like a simplified version of them with some words reminiscent of English words or other European languages. It notably dispenses with the tones of the original languages but without altering the language's phonology to realistically compensate for this. We have about 100 words of this language, which I have supplemented with words based on the phonology of the original words, both hand-crafted, computer-generated, and made up off the top of my head.
There's several "pseudo- writing systems" in the Land of the Lost franchise but I haven't made much use of them. One is clearly an alphabet.
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Atlantean is grammatically most like Latin but with Japanese clause order, an Austronesian phonology, and a noun case system like Finnish. Its words are supposedly mostly based on Proto-Indo-European with some based on ancient and modern languages from all over the world. We have about 448 words of this language, which I have supplemented with words based on the phonology of the original words, both hand-crafted, computer-generated, and made up off the top of my head.
The basic concept of the language from the movie is that all languages on Earth came from this language. Which Okrand apparently approached somewhat loosely, as most of the words are based on PIE. I think he either wanted something more useful or thought the language might not take off.
Most intriguing of all, whereas Klingon was supposedly designed to go against all Linguistic Universals, Atlantean was stated as going with them. And instead of sounding gutteral like Klingon, sound mellifluous.
( But I've studied many of these invented languages from famous books, tv, and movies, and most of their scholars and users are also fans of the works: Maybe 5% of total or even far less. Though the news that there's an actual language in the works does seem to reach, on average, 75% of fans, and does seem to be an actual draw for those people and the rest. I would compare it to special effects, which are also demonstrations of cutting-edge scientific and technical know-how. )
I did a large project for it about a year ago. I mostly use the books I have onhand to approximate Okrand's supposed word and grammar invention methods. Though recently I deviated from them to use less PIE and more "earliest civilization languages" that I'd like to study. About a year ago, I computer generated about 200,000 words for Atlantean that anyone can use to invent new Atlantean words whenever they want, in keeping with whatever knowledge they have of multiple ancient and exotic languages. My historical linguistics is not really that good, so I just think of what I know and try to approximate it and use the whole experience to further my scholarship and scholarly skills. Two notable books I've been working away at for these projects are Schuessler's ABC Etymological Dictionary of Old Chinese and The World Lexicon of Grammaticalization.
It has a very nice alphabet whose "visual forms" are mostly based on Phoenician with some references to Elder Futhark Runes, and then in a visual style like Bronze Script Chinese (or is it Large Seal Script Chinese?). Its numerals are like Roman Numerals written using the Mayan numerals. It's notably written boustrophedon: left to right, right to left, then left to right.
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For Pakuni, I chose a series of texts mostly from myths from around the world. I also chose many texts from "The Art of War" in Classical Chinese. We'll see how many I get around to translating, though.
Then I also have been working on making words for a huge number of prehistoric plants and animals from throughout all time.
Posts have a "Land of the Lost" franchise and a modern paleontology art theme.
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For Atlantean, I've selected mostly texts from "The Epic of Son-Jara" from the c 1200s to 1600s West African Empire of Old Mali. Which notably included the famous and proverbial city of Timbuktu! Something which just delights me endlessly due to its occurrence in "I'd Do Anything" from the musical "Oliver!".
I chose it because I own it but have not spent much time with it yet. Also, the fans on the major ATLE facebook group seem mostly American, so I thought it would be a fitting choice. I've also been working on Niger-Congo languages for Pakuni and am stuck with books surveying all African languages from a university library because of the dreadful on-going global coronavirus plague (RIP my inspiring uncle in law, a good facebook friend of mine who was elderly, and another facebook friend of mine's elderly brother). "Alas, poor Yorick! - I knew him well, Horatio."
I also made an "imitation ancient Bantu" conlang and translated the first text into it. Its words are mostly straight Swahili, with often meanings adjusted in an approximation of historic semantic shift, and then with a grammar based on Swahili but also West African Niger-Congo languages, especially Bantu ones. So I looked up some words in Swahili and used them but other words I just found by looking around the dictionary for words of a sufficent possible semantic relation.
Posts have art themes of: "Atlantis The Lost Empire", medieval west African Benin bronzes, ancient art, Bronze Script Chinese inscriptions, and silent film text frames. I always wanted to get more into the Benin bronzes and have seen them all over. I haven't quite done that yet but I've taken a few small steps toward that end. And the season is young.
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Here's my facebook group for the Pakuni language:
The Land of the Lost Language Pakuni by Dr. Victoria Fromkin
https://www.facebook.com/groups/pakuni/
Here's the largest facebook group about Land of the Lost that I also post on:
Land of the Lost 1974-76 TV Series
https://www.facebook.com/groups/120883895197744/
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Here's the largest and oldest facebook group for the Atlantean language. It was previously a Yahoo Group, before 2015 or so.
Atlantis the Lost Empire Atlantean Language by Dr. Marc Okrand
https://www.facebook.com/groups/350664428925254/
Here's the largest group for Atlantis the Lost Empire fans. It's got a very "grown up" concept going on it, though. The last month has seen a lot of the creative team of the movie join the group and post many draft scripts, do posts, and give away signed posters. So the excitement has me inspired.
Atlantis: The Lost Empireposting
https://www.facebook.com/groups/350664428925254/
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On those lines, actually, you know what? 
