Langmaker is a website run by Jeffrey Henning that acts as a database of
conlang
A constructed language (shortened to conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, orthography, and vocabulary, instead of having developed natural language, naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devise ...
s,
neographies, and other resources related to conlanging and
conworlding.
[ ]
paid version
an
PDF version
Prominent articles and the conlang directory were collected published by Yannia Press as ''Langmaker: Celebrating Conlangs'', with an introduction by
David J. Peterson. As of June 4, 2009, the site was offline. An unknown source took control of the website, hosting malware. After the takeover of the website, the owner regained control in 2022 making the site available through a
Tor network endpoint until 2023.
As of 2025 a copy of the site is hosted as a
GitHub Pages site.
History
Langmaker began as ''Model Languages'', a
newsletter
A newsletter is a printed or electronic report containing news concerning the activities of a business or an organization that is sent to its members, customers, employees or other subscribers.
Newsletters generally contain one main topic of ...
published by Henning between 1995 and 1996, in which he attempted to better publicize the hobby of conlanging and to explore various issues and questions related to conlanging. Shortly, Henning moved to a
website
A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...
format. He began not only discussing and commenting on
conlangs but also cataloguing them in a comprehensive database, with overviews of the languages and links to their respective websites. Henning ultimately began adding
neologisms
In linguistics, a neologism (; also known as a coinage) is any newly formed word, term, or phrase that has achieved popular or institutional recognition and is becoming accepted into mainstream language. Most definitively, a word can be considered ...
; babel texts;
neographies; books on
languages
Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing. Human language is ch ...
,
linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
, and conlanging; and other general resources to his database. Langmaker has been viewed by many as an information and activity hub in the online conlanging world.
In April 2007, Langmaker was converted to
wiki
A wiki ( ) is a form of hypertext publication on the internet which is collaboratively edited and managed by its audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages that can either be edited by the public or l ...
format, allowing its many readers to themselves make contributions to the website. Henning has since left the maintenance of the site primarily to its casual contributors and administrators, who continued to contribute up until January 4, 2008, when the site was locked.
Mark Rosenfelder writes, "Jeffrey Henning writes and posts regularly on the process of creating model languages and reviews a number of projects."
The Language Construction Kit
Accessed October 30, 2007. As of November 11, 2015, the domain name has been bought.
References
Inline
General
*
External links
Archive.org mirror of Homepage
(18 June 2008)
{{Constructed languages
Constructed languages resources
Defunct websites
Free-content websites