League of Lost Languages

The League of Lost Languages (LLL) was a kind of collaborative fiction-writing project in which the participants described fictional languages that could exist or could once have existed in a world otherwise the same as the real world we all live in. The idea was that in the LLL world, some languages survived that died out in our world, without changing the world more than necessary to accomodate the languages in question. The LLL world is essentially our world with the same history and geography, just with a few extra languages.

This is a kind of "what-if" conworld, i.e. a fictional version of our world in which the change from reality is limited to the existence of a few extra languages. Examples of such "lost" languages include European languages of pre-Indo-European origin, modern East Germanic languages, fictional branches of Indo-European, sister groups of real-world families and isolates, etc. Of course, this is not limited to Europe. An LLL language could be yet another of the many diverse languages of the North American Pacific coast, a modern-day descendant of Sumerian or a pre-Bantu language in the Congo basin. It is also not ultimately necessary that the languages are spoken today; they might be extinct but having left written records.

The participants would contribute their conlangs, say where and when they are spoken, and write fake scholarly papers and similar stuff about them.

This is not a research project about actually existing languages! The languages described by our members are entirely fictional. We all do this just for fun; we just love messing around with fictional languages.

A language contributed to the LLL had to fulfill the following criteria:

1. It is naturalistic, i.e. it is plausible as a human language. (Or it represents a constructed language, e.g. an auxlang, within the fictional setting.)
2. It is spoken by humans; non-human races (even Neanderthal survivals etc.) are out of bounds. (The Elves and Dwarves speaking Albic and Razaric are no exception to this: they are humans, not the usual fantasy races.)
3. Its history is consistent with the known history of the real world. This means that all the major events are the same as in our world. This rule puts limits on conculturing, but it also helps avoiding awkward political and religious debates, and concentrating on the languages.
4. It is either extinct (having left behind written records) or spoken by a community small enough not to make a difference. (This is pretty much an implication of the criterion above.)

Unfortunately, the LLL is now defunct.

Languages of the LLL

This list is out of date and incomplete!

Language	Family	Location	Author
Albic family	Hesperic  Albic	British Isles	Jörg Rhiemeier
Alpianic family	Hesperic	Switzerland	The group
Alpic	Danubian	Switzerland	Taylor Selseth
Attidian	Hesperic	Italy	Jörg Rhiemeier
Continental English	Indo-European  Germanic	Unknown (Europe)	Jashan A'al
Çomyopregi	Indo-European	Europe	Damátir Ando
Eteonoric family	Eteonoric	Austria	The group
Føtisk	Indo-European  Germanic	Denmark	Tristan McLeay
Hairo	isolate	Rügen, Germany	Christian Thalmann
Hattic	Indo-European	Russia	Jan van Steenbergen
Hifahoshaj	isolate	Texas	Bob Thornton
Kilda Kelen	Tungusic	Kamchatka Peninsula	Kuroda
Kuman Tyli	Turkic	Russia/Ukraine	Isaac Penzev
li~Rumaninu	Indo-European  Romance	Congo	Patrick Dunn
Lu	Indo-European	Southern France and Northern Italy	Schwhatever
Mærik	isolate	Sweden	Benct Philip Jonsson
Orinoco English	Indo-European  Germanic	Venezuela	Rodlox R
Outidic	auxlang		Raymond A. Brown
Razaric family	isolate	Scotland	Jörg Rhiemeier
Roman Germanech	Indo-European  Romance	Odenwald, Germany	Jörg Rhiemeier
Rugian	Indo-European  Slavic	Rügen, Germany	Piotr Gepfert
Tallarmen	Turkic	Siberia	Kiwipedia
Thagojian	Indo-European	Egypt/Palestine/Israel	Paul Bennett
Tseeyo	Niger-Congo	Guinea	Wycoval