Lexember
#Lexember is a social media event in the conlanging community where the participating conlangers put in an effort to create at least one new word per day for the duration of a whole month. The idea was developed by Pete Bleackley and Mia Soderquist in November 2012, and the first #Lexember event took place on Twitter and Google+ in December 2012 (hence the name of the hashtag). At least 25 conlangers joined the game, and at least Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets and Jan Strasser published a summary of all their #Lexember words on their blogs.
#Lexember is meant to be repeated yearly, so a new round started on December 1, 2013, and the latest ran from December 1 to December 31, 2022. In addition, some conlangers have proposed extending the game to all months ending in -ember, so that daily word-creation would take place in September and November too (see e.g. this blogpost for some results from Sept 2013). (Though, let's not forget the month of Octember!)
The rules of the game are simple: For the duration of one month, every participant will create and publish one word per day, ideally with some short notes about etymology, semantics, or usage, possibly augmented by a glossed example sentence. The #Lexember event of December 2013 (played on Twitter, Google+, on the ZBB and on the CBB) will have a Topic of the Week (usually a fairly broad semantic domain) in order to encourage the creation of several semantically related words at a time; however, this topic is optional and participants can always choose to create words of a different semantic domain instead. Whether or not players adhere to the current topic, everyone is of course encouraged to comment on other participants' words, or to let oneself be inspired by them.
Since 2019, Khemehekis has posted the relevant categories from the Landau Core Vocabulary for each week's theme on the CBB for its Lexember.
Topics of the week in #Lexember 2013
- Dec 1-7: Categories, Structures, Relationships
- Dec 8-14: Social Interactions
| This article is part of a series on Conlanging Culture. Conlanging culture: Conlang flag * Conlang terminology * Language Creation Conference * Smiley Award |
