LANGUAGE TAG REGISTRATION FORM

John Cowan cowan at ccil.org
Sat Nov 12 15:34:30 CET 2005


Dave Hodder scripsit:

> Aklo is generally considered to be an artificial language, created by
> author H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) for use in horror fiction.  Since his
> passing, many other writers have contributed to his so-called Cthulhu
> Mythos, including Brian Lumley and Stephen King.

As a Lovecraft enthusiast *and* a constructed-language enthusiast, I'd
like to support this; but really, it's rubbish.  Lovecraft did no such
thing.  In *one* of his stories, he refers to a book written in
Aklo, but he quotes none of it in the original.  If this counts as
a language, so does Lapine in _Watership Down_ -- at least there are
a few words of Lapine in the book.

Furthermore, Lovecraft took the term "Aklo" from Arthur Machen, as he
did so many of his terms; but in Machen it is not a language but a
script.

Is there a single text in Aklo, or a single person who claims to speak it?
Is there any conceivable practical purpose which can be served by registering
this tag?  No.  We should reject it.

-- 
John Cowan  cowan at ccil.org  www.ccil.org/~cowan  www.reutershealth.com
In the sciences, we are now uniquely privileged to sit side by side
with the giants on whose shoulders we stand.
        --Gerald Holton


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