Languages
Other than comics, languages and language-learning are my number one passion. I love thinking about how grammar fits together, how languages influence each other, how our brains somehow take in some garbled sounds or symbols and turn it into something understandable. Before getting started in comics, I studied linguistics with the vague intention of possibly going into translating or maybe even forensic linguistics. I eventually decided that linguistics really was just an interest rather than a career path, though I still have an extensive collection of language books and am constantly working on expanding it.
I also love conlangs. A conlang is a constructed language, meaning someone actively made it up instead of it developing naturally like pretty much every language we use. The most famous conlangs are probably Klingon from Star Trek and Quenya/Elvish from Tolkien's works, but there are so many interesting ones. You could argue that modern Hebrew is a conlang that became a natlang. Esperanto is the most well-known conlang that wasn't created for a fictional setting and there are people who raise their children speaking Esperanto as a mother tongue. For my linguistics dissertation, I wrote about how conlangs take on a life of their own once they become established; people become a fan of the community surrounding the language rather than learning that language because they like the media it came from. There are people who learn Na'vi and Klingon who don't give a shit about Avatar or Star Trek. God languages are so cool.
Anyway, that's a huge ramble - I make conlangs and conscripts, check 'em out! I am available for hire if you want a conlang of your own for your project. If you're interested in conlanging yourself, The Art of Language Invention by David J. Peterson is my number one recommended resource. Another good starting point is to read through The Language Construction Kit by Mark Rosenfelder and Omniglot for writing system inspiration. Check out the conlang resources on the language links page for more helpful reading!
For pretty much my entire time conlanging, my go-to thing to translate to test a language out has been "First Fig" by Edna St. Vincent Millay:
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--
It gives a lovely light!
If you hover over the conlang links in the sidebar, you'll see a sample sentence in each language translating the first line of this poem. Hovering over conscript links will show you the name of that langauge/script!
As of early 2025, my favourite conlangs I've done are the Language of the Lords, Lioç, and Vuwcid. Xema and Rac,mamoqei have a special place in my heart too.