User:Thirty7

User:Thirty7/Userboxes

About Me

Hey there! I figure you stumbled onto this page at least mostly on purpose, so I guess I should introduce myself. I am a self described conlanger and student of language and linguistics. Ever since I was first able to take a course in a foreign language in school I have been interested in languages. I'm interested in psychology and sociology as well.

If you want to know anything else, say my social security number, where I work, my mother's maiden name or some more specific identifying information, I'm probably most definitely not going to tell you. I mean, unless, all you want to know is my gender and approximate age... because that I'll tell ya: male, and I was born in the early 80s.

Conlanging

I've been conlanging since probably the Eighth Grade, or thereabouts. My first conlang, Lexen was a horrid and uninspired re-lexicalization of English that borrowed heavily from the Spanish and German vocabulary I knew at the time. I made endless lists of words, and verb conjugations and such. I mean, I loved that thing, but in retrospect, it just wasn't very good.

Since then, I have made probably hundreds of different short-lived projects over the years. I've also since learned of the fact that there is actually a conlanging community and I am not, in fact, the only human outside of Tolkein to do this sort of thing (not that there are many humans inside of Tolkien, that is... or at least I should hope not). It wasn't until a few years ago that I went looking for a new forum community to spend time perusing after the shut-down of the MMO City of Heroes (trust me, there is a tie-in to that, I'll get back to it) that I found the CBB. From there, I eventually made my way here.

In terms of conlanging, the part that I find myself most drawn to is in creating conscripts (or on occasion neographies for existing languages). It was this, actually, that drew me in to beginning to learn written Chinese. I am fascinated by the different ways in which cultures begin to express themselves in writing. What I think is perhaps the most interesting aspect, is how cultures come to acquire a written language after getting along for, in some cases, thousands of years without one.

My first conlangs always had an alphabet, but as I went along, I discovered that my favorite type of script is the abugida. While it isn't well suited for all languages, I find it to be a pretty awesome method for those with which it works well.

Wiki-ing

When I played CoH, I became active in the ParagonWiki which was the unofficial wiki for the game. I eventually became an Admin over there, and it taught me some of the really cool things about being involved in a collaborative project like that. Not to mention, that it kind of forced me to learn the wiki markup language.

As such, I see myself enjoying my time here.

Also, if you, o' traveler of these wiki pages, happen to find yourself in need of assistance in crafting tables, templates or other such things, I may be able to help you out. Maybe. I am still learning stuff too, and CSS always seems to trip me up. Drop me a line on my talk page, though, if you think I may be able to help.

To Do List

• Document conlangs better
• Document conworld

Useful Links

• Thirty7 Images: A link to my image category
• Flag Orbs: For making further Userboxes related to spoken languages.
• Perseus Dictionary: A very nice Latin/English dictionary using macrons!