Glossotechnia, the language invention card game

Glossotechnia is a card game in which the players collaboratively create a new language, and attempt to translate certain challenge sentences into this game-language. It combines competitive and cooperative elements, and probably has potential for use in teaching certain concepts in linguistics, though this aspect hasn't been tested yet.

• The rules
• The composition of the deck
• The outline of a talk I gave about Glossotechnia at the 2007 Language Creation Conference
• A PDF version of the slides illustrating my talk: several cards from the main deck and the translation challenge deck, and a copy of the lexicon from the first-ever Glossotechnia game
• Mailing list, weblog and message board posts about Glossotechnia:
  • First tentative discussion of the deck and rules, CONLANG list, January 2007
  • A report on the first game played, CONLANG list, March 2007
  • Make A Lang, Matthew Haupt's variant of Glossotechnia
  • A Zompist Bulletin Board thread about Glossotechnia and variants, November 2007
  • A possible Glossotechnia variant using Natural Semantic Metalanguage, February 2008

Thanks to all the people who have playtested Glossotechnia, especially those who gave me feedback on improving the game: Parker Bohn, Brian Henry, Ryan Crenshaw, Mark Watson, Kathryn Kovarik, Jack Logan, Dan Segal, Greg Koeser, Alex Fink, Matthew Haupt, Kelly Drinkwater, David J. Peterson, Peter Ara Guekguezian, Sai Emrys, Lila Sadkin, Jeff Burke, David Salo, Clinton Gordon, Raleigh Johnson, Philip, Joseph, Juliette and Margaret Henry, Michael Bohn, and Valeria Jones. I've probably forgotten some people.

If you make your own Glossotechnia deck and play, please let me know how your games turn out, and any problems you see with the flow of the game. Especially let me know if you try out new rule variations or new types of cards, and how well they work.

Jim Henry
jimhenry at pobox dot com

My home page
My conlang page
Another language-evolution game, a board game based on Indo-European sound changes
Last updated March 2008