League of Lost Languages

Welcome to the home page of the League of Lost Languages!

The League of Lost Languages (LLL) is a kind of collaborative fiction-writing project in which the participants describe 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 is 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 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 Coric 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	Family	Location	Author
Albic family	Hesperic  Albic	British Isles	Jörg Rhiemeier
Alpic	Danubian	Switzerland	Taylor Selseth
Attidian	Hesperic	Italy	Jörg Rhiemeier
Channel Island Siouxan	Siouxan	Channel Islands	Kuroda
Continental English	Indo-European  Germanic	Unknown (Europe)	Jashan A'al
Coric	isolate	Scotland	Jörg Rhiemeier
Føtisk	Indo-European  Germanic	Denmark	Tristan McLeay
Fusangese	Sino-Tibetan  Chinese	Mexico	Kuroda
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
Noric family	Noric	Austria	the group
Orinoco English	Indo-European  Germanic	Venezuela	Rodlox R
Roman Germanech	Indo-European  Romance	Trier, Germany	Jörg Rhiemeier
Rugian	Indo-European  Slavic	Rügen, Germany	Piotr Gepfert
Thagojian	Indo-European	Egypt/Palestine/Israel	Paul Bennett
Tseeyo	Niger-Congo	Guinea	Wycoval

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)