League of Lost Languages

The League of Lost Languages (LLL) is a collaborative project about the survival of languages that existed or could have existed in the world we live in, but disappeared without leaving any living descendants. The idea is that in the LLL world, some languages survived that died out here, 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.

Examples 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.

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

1. It is naturalistic, i.e. it is plausible as a human language.
2. It is spoken by humans; non-human races (even Neanderthal survivals etc.) are out of bounds. (The Elves and Dwarves speaking Albic and Pictic 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.)

The LLL conducts its business on the lostlangs mailing list.

The languages of the LLL

Language	Location	Author
Albic family	British Isles	Jörg Rhiemeier
Channel Island Siouxan	Channel Islands	panchakahq
Continental English	Germany?	Angel
Føtisk	Denmark	Tristan McLeay
Germanech	Trier, Germany	Jörg Rhiemeier
Hairo	Rügen, Germany	Christian Thalmann
Hattic	Russia	Jan van Steenbergen
Hifahoshaj	Texas	Bob Thornton
Kuman Tyli	Russia/Ukraine	Isaac Penzev
li~Rumaninu	Congo	Patrick Dunn
Mærik	Sweden	Benct Philip Jonsson
Neo-Khitanese	Kamchatka Peninsula	panchakahq
Noric family	Austria	the group
Orinoco English	Venezuela	Rodlox R
Pictic family	British Isles	Jörg Rhiemeier
Thagojian	Egypt/Palestine/Israel	Paul Bennett

Seleted articles from the lostlangs list

Date	Author	Title
2004/07/03	Jörg Rhiemeier	Some thoughts about the linguistic landscape of Europe
2004/07/03	Christian Thalmann	Hairo Script Brainstorming
2004/07/05	Patrick Dunn	li~Rumaninu
2004/07/10	Jörg Rhiemeier	pre-Homo sapiens languages; Vinca script
2004/07/10	Bob Thornton	Hifahos^aj
2004/07/19	Jörg Rhiemeier	The British Isles Linguistic Area
2004/07/22	Isaac Penzev	First info about Kuman Tyli
2004/07/22	Jörg Rhiemeier	Some facts about Caucasian languages
2004/07/23	Christian Thalmann	Hairo Grammar Brainstorm
2004/09/04	Bob Thornton	Possessives within Hifahoshach
2004/09/12	Bob Thornton	Hifahoshach Verb Conjugation
2004/10/03	panchakahq	Turkish Loans in Neo-Khitanese
2004/10/05	Christian Thalmann	Hairo Page in Progress
2004/11/29	Jörg Rhiemeier	Degrees of volition in Old Albic
2004/12/29	Bob Thornton	Revised Hifahoshach phonology
2005/02/20	Jörg Rhiemeier	Some Old Albic calendar and mythology stuff
2005/03/27	Angel	Ynglesh Lawngwedg (Preview)