Building Words in the Complicated Language of Ithkuil

Sam Denby from Half as Interesting, in his distinctively frantic manner, did his very best to explain the grammatical contents of the experimental constructed language of Ithkuil. The language, which was developed by John Quijada, builds words through “informationally dense”, economical roots. The sounds known as phenomes are added as need. Tone is indicated through which syllable of the word is stressed.

It’s called Ithkuil, and it’s a conlang—a non-natural, engineered language—developed by genius-slash-madman-who-stole-a-week-of-my-life John Quijada, and if you want to learn it and have your mind collapse into itself like mine, you can read this comically long online guide. How long is it? Well, I don’t know. I tried to find out by pasting it into a word document, but that crashed my computer. Anyways, ironically, Ithkuil is intended to be maximally precise, while using the fewest letters possible.

Lori Dorn
Lori Dorn

Lori is a Laughing Squid Contributing Editor based in New York City who has been writing blog posts for over a decade. She also enjoys making jewelry, playing guitar, taking photos and mixing craft cocktails.