Spec Fiction Southeast 2015

This is a science fiction and fantasy con for the general market, so prepare for maximum weirdness. (If you’ve seen GalaxyQuest … that ain’t the half of it.) I will be teaching Unventing Language: How real languages inspire fiction, which is all about how you can give the impression of characters speaking foreign (or alien) languages without having to invent a language for them, like Tolkien and Okrand did. We’ll look at the following: how culture shapes language and vocabulary, how features of real languages can be used to “unvent” a fictional language, and how to give the impression that multiple languages are being spoken in a manuscript written entirely in English.