Mark Rosenfelder Livres

Create plausible and realistic languages for RPGs, fantasy and science fiction, movies or video games, or international communication... or just learn about how languages work from an unusual, light-hearted perspective. The Language Construction Kit on zompist.com has helped a generation of conlangers to understand and create languages. It's expanded here with coverage of semantics and pragmatics, language families, writing systems, and sample wordlists, as well as an annotated sample grammar.

The sequel to the Language Construction Kit: learn more about constructed languages and about linguistics: logic, pidgins and creoles, sign languages, the linguistic life cycle, and a meaty step-by-step survey of morphosyntax. Create detailed and plausible languages for RPGs, fantasy and science fiction, movies, or video games ... or just learn more about how languages work with the same accurate yet fun approach as the original LCK. -- back cover

A very readable introduction to the ancient Middle East, for conlangers and anyone interested in history and languages. The regions covered are Egypt, Canaan/Israel, Mesopotamia, and Persia, from prehistory to the Greek conquest. The book covers literature, history, religion, and everyday life, and contains meaty grammatical sketches of Sumerian, Akkadian, and Biblical Hebrew, including an explanation of how cuneiform evolved and how it worked.This part of history is of particular interest because it's full of firsts— the first agriculturalists, the first cities, the first writing systems. It's also full of colorful characters, from Gilgamesh and Enkidu, to the first named poet Enheduana, to the female pharaoh Hatshepsut, to the surprisingly anti-royalist prophet Samuel.

Focusing on the art of word creation, this book offers essential insights into building a lexicon, starting with a comprehensive collection of etymologies from diverse languages. It encourages creativity beyond one's native language and provides strategies to avoid linguistic coding. Featuring a list of the 1500 most common words in fantasy and science fiction, it also includes relevant knowledge in biology, physics, and culture. With discussions on categories, metaphors, and derivation, this resource is valuable for conlangers and word enthusiasts alike.

A companion volume to the Language Construction Kit, this book explains everything you need to know about creating your own world with its own geology, creatures, cultures, religions, technology, and styles of war- plus how to create maps, illustrations and 3-D models. An essential whether you're writing science fiction or fantasy, designing RPGs, creating movies or video games, or remodeling a spare asteroid.