#kopikon

Kopikon II is about three months away, so I'm presenting each speaker in the order they’ll be presenting on October 10th at the University of Edinburgh. This year our headliner is none other than Jessie Peterson.

Jessie's been conlanging her whole life, and now makes a living as a professional conlanger. Working with me she's created languages for Freeform's Motherland: Fort Salem, Peacock's Vampire Academy, Pixar's Elemental, Legendary's Dune, and, premiering today, the Kryptonian language Suh Ankripton in Warner Bros.' Suerpman!

Additionally, Jessie has always been invested in putting together resources for conlangers. She created the Conlang Year project, to help conlangers build a language by doing a small piece of work each day; the massive Conlang-Venture .pdf, which is a choose-your-own-adventure that guides you through naturalistic conlanging; and the conlang GramBank spreadsheet, to help conlangers share their work more effectively. This year, though, she's come out with her biggest and best resource to date.

Coming out this October, Cambridge University is publishing Jessie's brand new conlang textbook How to Create a Language: The Conlang Guide:

If you ever wanted to read a book that went into more depth than The Art of Language Invention and with greater clarity, this is that book. Weighing in at nearly 500 pages, you can pre-order the book now, or wait until Kopikon when we'll have copies on hand for sale!

Jessie will be closing things up at Kopikon II at 4:10 p.m. at the University of Edinburgh (George Square), October 10th, 2025. To register, go here. The full schedule is listed below:

1:00 p.m. Opening remarks by David & Jessie

1:10 p.m. Keras Saryan

1:50 p.m. Jake Penny

2:30 p.m. Biblaridion

3:10 p.m. Intermission (20 minutes)

3:30 p.m. David Peterson

4:10 p.m. Jessie Peterson

4:50 p.m. Closing remarks by David & Jessie

Earlier this week I posted a short poem in T’owal that I wrote last August in anticipation of the conlang conference/convention Kopikon. A few days before the event, I wrote a Sdefa text on the same subject. I recorded it to share with friends but I wasn’t satisfied with that recording, so I recently made a new one!

Here’s an English translation:

We’ll travel to gather together and talk about languages. We’ll talk about our conlangs, We’ll talk about others’ conlangs, And we might even talk about natural languages, too!

At the time Sdefa didn’t have a writing system but now it has two, so here it is in both:

George has David and Jesse on to talk about Kopikon!

Links:

Kopikon

 @LangTimeStudio 

LangTime Engine

This month's Fiat Lingua is a write up of the beautiful song @levunalangs (Jonathan Kane) wrote in anticipation of the first Kopikon at Georgetown in their musical conlang Sdefa. It's honestly wonderful! You can read the description or listen to it here:

And as a reminder Kopikon II is just around the corner! On October 10th at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland we're all getting together again, and we'd love to see you there! You can register here:

We're at it again! Kopikon II is happening at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland on October 10th, 2025! Come for some more conlang fun, and to celebrate the publication of Jessie Peterson's new book How to Create a Language: The Conlang Guide. We'll have the following speakers:

Jessie Peterson

David Peterson

Biblaridion

Jake Penny

Keras Saryan

Kopikon II is about three months away, so I'm presenting each speaker in the order they’ll be presenting on October 10th at the University of Edinburgh. Batting cleanup: Me. (I.e. David Peterson.)

If you're on Tumblr, you probably know me as the famous reblogger of the 99 Life Hacks post, but I also create languages. Some of the languages I've created include Dothraki and High Valyrian for Game of Thrones; the various langauges of Defiance; Chakobsa for Dune; the languages of Shadow and Bone and The Witcher, etc. I also cohost LangTime Studio with my wife Jessie Peterson (every Thursday at 2 p.m. Pacific—including today!), and together we're hosting Kopikon II with friends from the University of Edinburgh. At the first Kopikon I made a language out of jellybeans. This time... :)

I'll be speaking first after the break at Kopikon II at 3:30 p.m. at the University of Edinburgh (George Square), October 10th, 2025. To register, go here. The full schedule is listed below:

1:00 p.m. Opening remarks by David & Jessie

1:10 p.m. Keras Saryan

1:50 p.m. Jake Penny

2:30 p.m. Biblaridion

3:10 p.m. Intermission (20 minutes)

3:30 p.m. David Peterson

4:10 p.m. Jessie Peterson