Geekfest

We had a fun and interesting weekend. BYU holds an annual sci-fi and fantasy symposium called "Life, the Universe, and Everything."
It's a three-day event with classes from morning until evening about every topic under the sun: creating realistic monsters, how to write a strong female character in a medieval setting, incorporating romance into your plot, how to build a culture, etc.
Some of the past presenters have been Orson Scott Card and Brandon Sanderson (author of the final book in the Wheel of Time series). So it's pretty much every sci-fi/fantasy fan's dream: three days of swapping ideas and learning ways to improve your writing from people who really know what they are talking about.

For the past four years, Nathan has taught a class entitled "How to create a realistic fictional language." This year he taught two one-hour classes with a linguistics professor, Dirk Elzinga.

Caption: "How many of you have ever wanted to kiss Galadriel or Arwen?"

Every year we go, I feel a little out-of-place for two reasons: (1) I have never read a sci-fi or fantasy book (let's be honest—I've never even seen Star Wars), and (2) I don't wear capes. There were lots of ... interesting (that's the most diplomatic word I can think of) people attending, as there have been every year we've gone.

When we broke up into groups during Nathan's class to fill out a worksheet together, I got a pic of the group I worked with. The guy wearing the hat in the picture below had memorized the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet), filled our the worksheet in the characters of the IPA, and had already made up most of his own language. He said it sounded like Tolkein's elvish. Wow.

What does the International Phonetic Alphabet look like? Glad you asked. I wasn't sure myself, so I had to Google it. It's basically a way of writing every sound your mouth can make. Each distinctive sound has its own character. Here's a sample of what it looks like (click on it to see it in its full glory):


We asked Avery what she thought of of all the people dressed in their costumes (heck, maybe they're not costumes; maybe they wear it every day). Here was her non-verbal reply:


Speaking of Avery, for a couple weeks she did this funny thing with her leg. When she was in her car seat, her leg would inevitably lift up. And stay there ... for the entire time she would be in the car seat!! It was so funny, so of course we couldn't resist taking a pic.
Important update: I never did win the Valentine's Day drawing. Bummer. I really thought I felt some good chi, or karma, or whatever. :) Oh well, that won't stop me from entering more drawings! Our next project is getting Nathan's website finished so we can go man a booth at the St. George Family History Expo in a couple of weeks!

Oh, and Nathan just reminded me that I have read two sci-fi/fantasy books: Twilight and Ender's Game. Oops. *Blush*

I learned so much at the symposium this past weekend that I've decided that my next post will be written in my new fictional language. I was thinking of writing about spincy wouncers, but I might not because snorgle glakket chumble spuzz.