In the Land of INVENTED LANGUAGES (41 page)

The languages captured my interest; the people behind the languages reeled me in. If someone could figure out how to carve this amazing mountain of raw material into a story, I thought, what a great story it would be. I was foolhardy enough to think I was up to the task.

I was certainly not up to it when I began, but I was fortunate enough to have people who knew what they were doing on my side: my uncle Danny, who gave me the straight truth about my feeble early attempts, and my agent, Chuck Verrill, who knew exactly how to turn an
idea into a book
. Those early attempts benefited greatly from the editing pencils of Michele Mortimer at Darhansoff, Verrill, and Feldman; Allen Freeman and Jean Stipicivic at the
American Scholar
; and Michelle Wildgen at
Tin House
.

I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my editor, Tina Pohl-man, who is both a sharp-eyed professional
and
a cool chick. I am also lucky to count among my friends Dara Moskowitz and Dennis Cass, fabulous writers who are unnecessarily generous with their time and advice. I thank Cindy Spiegel and Julie Grau for taking me on and Mike Mezzo and Mya Spalter for seeing me through.

I received invaluable feedback and encouragement from
Amanda Pollak, Michael Silverstein, and Nicole Juday. And the book would not have been possible without the many people who answered my questions and shared their stories with me: Shirley McNaughton, Ann Running, Paul Marshall, Douglas Everingham, Richard Ure, Ann Weilgart, Andrea Patten, John Clifford, Bob LeChevalier, Nora Tansky, Jennifer Brown, Joy Barnes, Evy Anderson, Hazel Morgan, Bob Mclvor, Joseph Vandiver, Charles Robbins, Mark Shoulson, Marc Okrand, Lawrence Schoen, Louise Whitty, Humphrey Tonkin, Normand Fleury, Suzette Haden Elgin, Sarah Higley, and all the participants at the Esperanto, Lojban, Klingon, and Conlang conferences I attended.

None of this happens without good child care. For that I'd like to thank the entire staff of the Canaan Baptist Church day care, especially Ms. Linda Dubose, who was there from the beginning. Thanks also to Joey Dziomba and Arianna Neromiliotis at the community preschool of the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf for doing great things with small people.

And thank you, Derrick, Leo, and Louisa, for making life sweet.

PUBLISHED BY SPIEGEL & GRAU

Copyright © 2009 by Arika Okrent

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of The Random House
Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

SPIEGEL & GRAU
is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Chapters 22 and 23 were originally published as “Among the Klingons” in
Tin House
magazine, Summer 2007, and subsequently appeared in
The Week
magazine in both the U.S. and the U.K.

Chapters 6 and 8 were originally published as “Letter from Esperantoland” in
The American Scholar
, Winter 2006. Copyright © 2006 by Arika Okrent. By permission of the publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Okrent, Arika.
In the land of invented languages: Esperanto rock stars, Klingon poets,
Loglan lovers, and the mad dreamers who tried to build a perfect language /
Arika Okrent.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN: 978-0-385-52971-6
1. Languages, Artificial. I. Title.
PM8008.O37 2009
499′.99—dc22  2008038732

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