Required text
Rosenfelder, Mark. 2010. The Language Construction Kit. Chicago: Yonagu Books.
Recommended texts and websites
Linguistics and language (general resources)
Comrie, Bernard. 2009. The World’s Major Languages. Routledge.
Crystal, David. 2008. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. ★
Crystal, David. 2007. How Language Works. Avery Trade.
Haspelmath, Martin, Matthew S. Dryer, David Gil, and Bernard Comrie (eds.). The World Atlas of Language Structures Online. Munich: Max Planck Digital Library. Available online at http://wals.info. ★
Matthews, P.H. 2007. Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sounds
International Phonetic Association. 1999. Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Cambridge University Press.
Ladefoged, Peter. A Course in Phonetics. Chapter 1. Available online at http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/chapter1/chapter1.html. ★
Pullum, Geoffrey K. and William A. Ladusaw. 1996. Phonetic Symbol Guide. University of Chicago Press.
SIL International. IPA Help. Available online at http://www.sil.org/computing/ipahelp/.
SIL International. IPA Unicode Keyboards. In NRSI: Computers and Writing Systems. Available online at http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=UniIPAKeyboard. ★
Writing systems
Ager, Simon. Omniglot: Writing systems and languages of the world. Available online at http://www.omniglot.com. ★
Gnanadesikan, Amalia E. 2009. The Writing Revolution: Cuneiform to the Internet. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
iFontMaker. An iPad app for creating your own fonts (or writing systems).
Grammar
Biber, Douglas, Susan Conrad, and Geoffrey Leech. 2002. Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Pearson.
Cases in Finnish. Available online at http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/finnish-cases.html. A description of the nominal cases found in one of the most case-heavy languages in the world. ★
Trask, R.L. 1996. A Dictionary of Grammatical Terms in Linguistics. Routledge.
Wikipedia. Grammatical case. Available online at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_case. Though I don’t usually recommend Wikipedia, this article has good information about case. ★
Meaning
Cruse, Alan. Meaning in Language: An introduction to semantics and pragmatics. Oxford University Press.
Invented languages
Conlang. Available online at http://conlang.wikia.com/wiki/Portal:Main. ★
Okrent, Arika. 2010. In the Land of Invented Languages: Adventures in linguistic creativity, madness, and genius. Spiegel & Grau.
Rosenfelder, Mark. Zompist. Available online at http://www.zompist.com/.
Atlantean
LangMaker.com. Atlantean: Language of the Lost Empire. Available online at http://www.langmaker.com/atlantean.htm.
Elvish & other Tolkien languages
Arwen-Undomiel.com. English to Elvish Dictionary. Available online at http://www.arwen-undomiel.com/elvish/eng_to_elv.html.
Fauskanger, Helge Kare. Ardalambion. Available online at http://folk.uib.no/hnohf/.
HubPages. Learn to Speak Elvish. Available online at http://hubpages.com/hub/Learn-to-Speak-Elvish. A collection of resources for learning Elvish.
Parma Tyelpelassiva. Available online at http://www.phy.duke.edu/~trenk/elvish/index.html. A collection of writings in Elvish.
Salo, David. 2004. A Gateway to Sindarin: A grammar of an Elvish language from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. University of Utah Press.
Tengwar Feanora. Available online at http://tengwar.art.pl/tengwar/ott/english.php. An online tool for changing Roman letters into Tengwar orthography.
Esperanto
Esperanto.net. Available online at http://www.esperanto.net/info/index_en.html. A list of articles about Esperanto.
Esperanto USA. Available online at http://esperanto-usa.org/. A central site for Esperanto resources.
Richardson, David. 2004. Esperanto: Learning and using the international language. Esperanto League for North America.
Klingon
Klingon Language Institute. Available online at http://www.kli.org/.
Okrand, Marc. 1992. The Klingon Dictionary. Star Trek.
Okrand, Marc. 1997. Klingon for the Galactic Traveler. Star Trek.
Shakespeare, William (author), Nick Nicholas, Andrew Strader, and Klingon Language Institute (translators). 2000. The Klingon Hamlet. Star Trek.
Na’vi
Learn Na’vi. Available online at http://www.learnnavi.org/. The site with downloads for learning Na’vi, including written grammars and worksheets to practice. (There is also a free app called Learn Na’vi that provides much of the same information if you have an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad.)
Na’viteri.org. Available online at http://naviteri.org/. A blog dedicated to the Na’vi language; some posts are partially written in Na’vi and include such things as Christmas carols sung in Na’vi, writing competitions, and grammatical discussions.
