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Great story. Wilkins and his language also feature in Stephenson’s “System of the World” books. The excellent book “In the land of invented languages” by Arika
by johngossman 2y ago
Great story. Wilkins and his language also feature in Stephenson’s “System of the World” books. The excellent book “In the land of invented languages” by Arika Okrent dedicates chapter 2 to Wilkins. I should point out, I didn’t go seeking information about Wilkins, but his language just seems to come up randomly for me.
Okrent’s book also has excellent introductions to Esperanto and Lojban. Lojban is a modern attempt to create a language without ambiguity. That turns out to be hard…speaking takes on some of the characteristics of writing a mathematical proof.
- KineticLensman 2y ago> Stephenson’s “System of the World” books Minor nit: “System of the World” is the third novel in the Baroque Cycle, after Quicksilver and The Confusion. I really enjoyed these books for the SF world-building perspective on the emergence in the 17th Century of modern science and finance, global trade, communications, etc. Many of the normal comments on Stephenson’s writing style apply, YMMV.
- senkora 2y ago+1 to "In the land of invented languages". We read it in a conlang'ing class that I took in college and it was a solid read.