News

[26 Jan 2006] I still don't feel like the language is developed enough for me to be able to make a tutorial for it. If the site does get a major update, it shall be heralded by a posting on CONLANG-L.

"Heralded." Heh.

[15 Jul 2004] New site design. But be forewarned, it will still take some time to get real content in here.

What it is

Harpelan is a language and a hobby of mine, developed off and on for a number of years. I consider it an artlang, meant to be something unique and beautiful.

Unlike most languages, Harpelan is purely written. People are more visual than auditory animals, but we write only transliterations of auditory languages. I wanted to unburden a language from speech and see what it could do. Harpelan has surprised me with its flexibility and fluidity as a written medium, developing features that human languages don't have.

There are a few other nonverbal conlangs. You might want to check out Rikchik, The Elephant's Memory, and Piktok. There are also programming languages, which are not intended to be spoken although that doesn't stop people from trying... but those don't really count, because their function is totally different.

The culture

I know little of the world of its origin, or of its speakers, and much of this has been inferred from the language itself. Harpelan has a rich history. It has been a ritual language, a ceremonial language, an international auxiliary language, and an artistic language.

The people (aliens, rather) who use Harpelan have never known a spoken language. They use several different sign languages. Their sign languages also have their own orthographies, which are not covered here. Sadly, the number of truly fluent speakers of Harpelan is diminishing; but most people have a Harpelan vocabulary of several hundred words, and it is commonly used to name commercial products or title books, for example. To put it another way, they use it the way the Japanese use English ;).

Harpelan began between 1300 and 1500 years ago, their time. In its inception, it was a tool of magic, used to ask favors of gods. This proto-language combined pictures and mathematical shapes that were thought to have magical power. Very little is known about it, because all writings were, as a rule, destroyed after the ritual was complete.

(More to come...)

Samples

Tutorial Begin

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