Ask HN: How to make a living designing human languages? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to make a living designing human languages?

4 pointsDougN76 comments

I have a son that is bit of a savant. He learned to read on his own at 3, started learning Greek on his own at 5, took French and German simultaneously in school, etc. He loves creating his own languages - I guess it's the syntax and other stuff that is fun??

Anyway, although he's very good at it, it seems to me to be a complete waste of time. There are small groups on the Internet that also do this, but I can't see any way for him to make a living. Currently he is suffering in college going after a science degree, but his heart isn't in it.

Are there any jobs out there that could use skills like this that I can't think of?

View on HN

Your son might really enjoy programming language theory and construction. There's a lot of active research into programming languages, and even full-time jobs creating new programming languages!

One of my first jobs out-of-college involved making a small language for loan origination. And a few years ago, I got an offer to design a language for a quantum computing company!

Even if your son doesn't get a job designing languages, programming really scratches the reading/writing/lexical itch. I suspect that he would be a very happy developer :)

If you have any questions about learning programming or career stuff, feel free to email me at hello@taylor.town or schedule a 30-minute chat.

[1] https://taylor.town/tpbsl-guide

[2] email: hello@taylor.town

[3] https://calendly.com/taylor-town/30min

I used to do this all the time as a kid! I was way more interested in the scifi/fantasy aspect and the social sciences aspect, and I really didn't want to get into tech at all. Either way, the sad truth is that for most of us language nuts it will always be a hobby. The real linguistics related careers are more about analyzing current active languages, or social sciencey things about language.

I guess the only lucrative thing I can think of would be marketing, but getting high enough on the marketing ladder to be in charge of naming stuff and making choices about how to describe products is a career nightmare imo.

I agree with the potential for programming research stuff, but if he's like me he probably won't really feel like learning enough programming to make it useful until he's like 30. I think a big thing for me was thinking about all the different interests I have, and the fact that my biggest interests aren't going to be my career... and then learning that my career is only part of my identity, and it's actually ok to identify more strongly with your hobbies (I'm a guitarist/writer/conlanger) than your career. Growing up academically gifted and then putting so much into college really pushes people into making their career their whole personality, and I think that's something that stresses a lot of people in education and entry-level situations.

This sounds exactly like myself. I was multilingual very early as well, and took French, Spanish, German, and Latin concurrently in school. I also enjoy creating human languages (conlanging). My main bit of advice is that he join the Language Creation Society (conlang.org).

The only conlanger I know of who makes a decent living creating languages is David J Peterson. He created the GoT languages, the grounder language in The 100, the various languages of Defiance, and the Dark Elf language in Thor the dark world among others. As this is the most financially successful conlanger whom I know, I am not too certain how much call there really is for language construction. Still, joing the Language Creation Society will at least put him in the running the next time there's a contest to create a language for HBO.

EDIT: I keep building languages as a hobby, and learning human languages when time allows, but ultimately as I grew older it became necessary to pour my efforts into my other love: technology. Life is expensive.

There are people who design ‘alien’ languages for movies, and you can get paid for it, but I don’t think that’s a full-time career and if it is, it’s only for a select few.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictional_language#Commercial_...:

“While some languages are created purely from the desire of the creator, language creation can be a profession. In 1974, Victoria Fromkin was the first person hired to create a language (Land of the Lost's Paku). Since then, notable professional language creators have included Marc Okrand (Klingon), David Peterson (Dothraki and others in Game of Thrones), and Paul Frommer (Na'vi).”

No. Not in and of its self.

However, it's a small tool in a larger tool set.

Let him have some fun. Instead maybe try to find famous people that made their own languages. You know, support your child.

Cryptographer. Linguist. NLP research. AI.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com