Speaking of Esperanto, the Los Angeles Times has a long article today about conlangs. No real news hook, though of course they have to peg it as a pseudo-trend: "Once the private arena of J.R.R. Tolkien, Esperanto speakers and grunting Klingon fanatics, invented languages have flourished on the Internet and begun creeping into the public domain." I wonder where this "public domain" is exactly...

Not particularly relevant to this post, but I thought you would get a kick out of an anecdote I read today about Colt Brennan, the quarterback for the University of Hawai'i football team. Evidently this young man, who has had brushes with the law involving unseemly behavior in the past, transferred to UH for a fresh start, and one of the first things he did was to take three semesters of Samoan so he could bond more closely with his offensive linemen. Now from time to time he'll call audibles from the line of scrimmage in Samoan, which must well and truly fuck with the heads of opposing defenses....

Great story, and relevance is never a concern here at the Languagehat House of Random!

It's nice to see Norfuk being showcased, but what about Pitkern? It's a very similar language but has far fewer speakers. There are only 48 people on Pitcairn Island, and I sincerely doubt there are many outsiders who are familiar with the tongue.

Norfuk and Pitkern have long been fascinating to me.

I sincerely doubt there are many outsiders who are familiar with the tongue.

With such romantic origins, as endangered languages go, it is relatively well documented. For instance, there is a whole book on various aspects of it.

Efforts to preserve it as a living language are another matter, of course.

Klingon? Grunting? Come on.