( This is a quote from maybe some other forum here on Conlangs Bulletin Board.Dormouse559 wrote: ↑15 Apr 2020 00:17I have to admit I was hoping you'd found documentation of Marc Okrand's Atlantean. Ah well Why can't we live in the universe where "Atlantis" was a smash hit and there are whole wikis about the conlang?Khemehekis wrote: ↑09 Apr 2020 05:21"Weird and wonderful" is a great way to put it. And I agree that the lexicon disappointingly veers little from English.
All of the fans of Okrand Atlantean from the 2001 Disney movie "Atlantis: The Lost Empire" are on the 20 year old, 500 member facebook group:
Atlantis the Lost Empire Atlantean Language by Dr. Marc Okrand
https://www.facebook.com/groups/377768309042171/
Here's the poster from the movie, to jog people's memories. You can find other posts by googling them.
It was like a close derivative of "Star Gate" that failed in the theaters because it was up against the live-action "Tomb Raider" movie which probably already had quite a following thanks to the popular video games. Only 90s kids will remember. This was 20 years ago, now, so me doing any work on the language at this point is somewhat funny. But about once every year, I'll put 5 minutes into it, in general. For propriety and posterity.
I have been the leader of the group since 2007 when I was made thus by Group Founder Paul Sherrill Jr. of Okemos, Michigan. I move it to Facebook from Yahoo Groups about 2015. I am also the leader decipherer and promoter of the language. I have a BA Linguistics from Michigan State University from back in 2009. I'm an independent scholar of all 50 or so known hieroglyphic writing systems ( aka logographic writing systems). So my linguistics is not that good because logographic writing systems are very complex. The major families of these are Egyptian, Chinese, Mayan, and Cuneiform. Then I otherwise study lots of ancient languages and have a secondary focus on the 20 or so ancient languages of the Bible.
I just joined this website today, too. I don't think I ever joined it before. I have visited Zompist Bboard for a month or two about 5 times in my life but never the Brown.Edu conlang mailing list. Or maybe once.
I have been posting about Atlantean the last few months to Zompist Bboard:
https://www.verduria.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=651
But most of my posts about it are to that facebook group or to a group I joined a few months ago, the 20,000 member Atlantis: The Lost Empireposting facebook group.
...
We've gotten 100-200 new member from that group the past 3 months on the facebook group. 500 total now. I forget how many total members the Yahoo Group ever had. The last 15 years, there hasn't been much interest in the language. Back around 2006 when I started working on it, there was one other member who would write to me in it. And then the last 2 years, there's been my co-admin "Titus" and we've written to eachother in Atlantean a few times. Otherwise, a few of the people who have written me told me they talked to their friends and family in the language.
And then we get decipherment contributions every few years but people don't do much with the language. It's mostly a fan art sort of thing, you look up the words and letters and put it on your fan art and wait a few months for other fans to notice and show appreciation.
I've been working on it the last few months but I generally only work on the language for a few hours once or twice a year.
I've translated some smaller texts into Atlantean over the years. In 2018, I did the largest translation I had ever done. And then the last few months, I've been putting online an even bigger one. So in some ways, it's mostly just me into the language. But there's some people out there interested in it, so I'm there for them and recently have been searching them out on YouTube and telling them about the facebook group.
A couple years ago, Okrand finally started writing me back. So if you got any questions, please ask. He's been telling me really amazing stuff the past month or so, I hope to put it on the facebook group and in a website.
Here's the links to my webpages on Atlantean, in case anyone doesn't want to go to my Zompist Bboard post or join the facebook group:
2
Okrand's Atlantean: 10.29.2010 Complete Corpus
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard
39
New Quick Atlantean Grammar 10 14 2018
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2018/1 ... w=flipcard
"200k Atlantean Word Dictionary"
https://200katlantean.blogspot.com/
5
Okrand's Atlantean: 9.7.2010 Grammar
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard
7
Okrand's Atlantean: Atlantean Root Etymology
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard
3
Okrand's Atlantean: 9.7.2010 A - E Canonical
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard
4
Okrand's Atlantean: 9.7.2010 E/A - A\ E Canonical Dictionary
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard
26
Okrand's Atlantean: 9.7.2010 E/A - A\ E Canonical Dictionary
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard
6
Okrand's Atlantean: A Reader
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard
8
Okrand's Atlantean: Deciphered Shepherd's Journal
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard
9
Okrand's Atlantean: Deciphering the Shepherd's Journal
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard
10
Okrand's Atlantean: Fanonical Dictionary E to A
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard
11
Okrand's Atlantean: Home / Image / Reader
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard
12
Okrand's Atlantean: Links
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard
13
Okrand's Atlantean: Numbers in Atlantean and New Atlantean
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard
14
Okrand's Atlantean: Old Wikipedia Article
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard
15
Okrand's Atlantean: The Tomb Raider - ATLE Connection
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2015/0 ... w=flipcard
41
Atlantean Translation of 2 James Bateman Stories
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2018/1 ... w=flipcard
42
Study of Subordinate Clause Markers from the Atlantean Corpus
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2018/1 ... w=flipcard
...
Then here's what I'm working on now:
New Texts in Okrand Atlantean with an Ancient African Conlang: Medieval West Africa Texts
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2020/0 ... w=flipcard
Images for Previous Post:
New Texts in Okrand Atlantean with an Ancient Africa Conlang: Medieval West Africa Texts
https://naviklingon.blogspot.com/2020/0 ... w=flipcard
...
To top it all off, I also specialize in the comparative anthropology of beliefs and ideas (comparative religion), but it's after logographic writing systems and the 20 or ancient Biblical languages. And then I've also spent more effort than anyone else, it seems, in documenting and deciphering conlangs and pseudo-conlangs from famous books, tv, and movies. I've also studied those documented and deciphered by others. I also make my own conlangs, though not very big ones usually, and have studied many conlangs of others over the years.
I'm not on the largest facebook conlang groups at all. About 5 years ago, one of the largest groups had me as admin and I wouldn't do bad things, so all the largest facebook conlang groups sent me into permanent exile. I think the admin of one of the largest groups got jealous because I made a conlang written in Chinese characters. Seriously. And I don't do much outside of facebook groups and my own conlang facebook group has never been popular.
Other conlangers, maybe mostly those on Zompist Bboard, never seem to like my conlangs and conscripts. But I only have gone on there 5 or so times in my life. I've been conlanging also since about 2006. I usually don't put a lot of time into my conlangs but just make a quick grammar sketch and focus on a few grammar things I want to explore and translate a few sentences. I also do weird stuff. When I do conscripts, I focus on things in logographic writing systems that no one has ever heard of, so no one is interested. I've tried to explain what I've done.
I conlang about once a month but only for 2 hours. And it's only once a year or two years that I get on Zompist Bboard or one of the smallest facebook groups to share my conlangs. People don't appreciate that I specialize in the linguistics of logographic writing systems, so what I want to do with conlangs is different from the mainstream. I also find that there's a lot of discouragement around the internet for conlangs or natural languages which are based on non-Indo-European languages.