User:Culmaer
| Birth: | Cape Town, South Africa |
| Profession: | Student |
| Natural languages: | |
| Created conlangs: |
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| Other conlangs: | |
| Interests: | Jorge Luis Borges; Art; Typogrophy; Pokémon |
| More information: | langblr |
Iuhan Culmærija (Srn: Yuħann h-Culmeryya) is a sketchlanger, primarily in the artlang and altlang orDiachronic conlang genres, as well as conscript-enthusiast.
Conlanging
Beginings
I have always been exposed to languages. I was raised bilingually (Afrikaans and English), and at the primary school I attended, “Xhosa as third language” was compulsory from Grades 1 to 7, though I was never really interested. In Grade 5 a few friends and I used Tolkien’s Cirth runes to write notes to each other. Although I did not discover Tolkien's languages, this did spark my interest in codes and conscripts. Manga later introduced me to Japanese, and while my attempts at learning the language bore no fruits, I “caught the language bug.” So in high school, I started studing foreign languages seriously, and developed an interest in comparative/historical linguistics ... Eventually, I started conlanging.
Involvement
- I was a member of the CONLANG mailing list from 2009 to 2013.
- And was active on the Conlang Facebook Group from 2012 to 2014. Although I am a member of the new Facebook group, I am not an active participant or contributor.
Projects
- Culmærÿn : the thankfully-short-lived first attempt at language construction
- Culmærian : an a priori artlang, an experiment in æsthetics
- Syrunian : a Levantine-Romance language which originated in the Roman Province of Syria
- Fox Latin : a language game based on Pig latin with Latinate grammar
Relays
- Conlang Relay 20 — Ring 1
- Juus — skipped → Syrunian — skipped, though I'm not sure why. So many participants were skipped in Ring 1
Ars glossopoetica
- Conlanging is an art-form, and in my personal work (ie. Culmærian), the aesthetic is of primary importance.
- I really like well-made Indo-European alt- and lostlangs, especially if the grammar is interesting or somewhat unusual (within reason). I enjoy the "vaguely familiar" flavour of a posteriori conlangs, and hope that my romlang, Syrunian, strikes that balance of realism and originality.
- I am also a con-script enthusiast. The perfect writing system has a balance between beauty, legibility and ease of writing (practicality). I have not yet been able to achieve this ideal with my own creations. My absolute favourite writing system is Cursive Hebrew, even though it is not a con-script.
