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...Klingon. (O.K., so she has only first-level certification in Star Trek-speak.) Okrent, a linguistics scholar, spent the better part of five years perusing library card catalogs and attending colorful conferences to learn about languages created by one person and, in some cases, adopted by thousands. Her new book, In the Land of Invented Languages, chronicles the scientists, idealists and eccentrics who tried - and failed - to create the perfect parlance from scratch. TIME spoke with Okrent about defending the cranks from the critics, ordering sandwiches in Esperanto and the art of speaking chipmunk. (See the 10 best Star Trek...
...Your book includes an index of more than 500 invented languages, though you're quick to point out that no one really knows how many there are. How did you decide which languages to explore? I knew more about the famous ones, like Esperanto and Klingon. But the others I discovered in libraries. Every library you go into will have these little pamphlets self-published by some dreamer with a plan. I got very curious about the lives of the people who devoted themselves to these doomed projects...
...imagine you were also taking a risk with the book that you might discover your faith isn't real, that science proves spirituality is all in your head...
...write of some of the stories in the book, "A skeptic would dismiss them and a believer would feel a shiver of recognition." Did you err on the side of skepticism or believing the people you interviewed...
...Some of the stories sounded so tenuous to me. What ended up in the book is just a fraction of my research. But I loved hearing their stories and I loved hearing what the critics said to debunk them. Here's the thing: nearly all of these people were transformed by their experiences. They were more generous, more other-thinking. They had had a transformation of character. Was it scientifically verifiable? No. But it was good for them. As one of them, a comedy writer named Jeff Schimmel, said to me: "It's sad to think that my love...