Thursday, May 24, 2018

Aklo

"However this idea (of a fictional language) only really began to take proper shape as a literary motif in Gulliver’s Travels and the 1899 short story “The White People” in which the fictitious Aklo was introduced proving so popular, that it was subsequently borrowed by other novelists such as H.P Lovecraft in his two books “The Dunwich Horror” and “The Haunter of the Dark”. It also made a more contemporary appearance in Alan Moore’s “The Courtyard”.
- The Rise of Fictitious Languages by Anantha Anilkumar
in Olavian Duolingo Magazine Volume I Summer 2015

"I must not write down the real names of the days and months which I found out a year ago, nor the way to make the Aklo letters, or the Chian language, or the great beautiful Circles, nor the Mao Games, nor the chief songs."
Mentioning of Aklo in The White People by Arthur Machen 

On the evening of September 2nd the last major barrier gave way, and Dr. Armitage read for the first time a continuous passage of Wilbur Whateley’s annals. It was in truth a diary, as all had thought; and it was couched in a style clearly shewing the mixed occult erudition and general illiteracy of the strange being who wrote it. Almost the first long passage that Armitage deciphered, an entry dated November 26, 1916, proved highly startling and disquieting. It was written, he remembered, by a child of three and a half who looked like a lad of twelve or thirteen.

    “Today learned the Aklo for the Sabaoth,” it ran, “which did not like, it being answerable from the hill and not from the air. That upstairs more ahead of me than I had thought it would be, and is not like to have much earth brain. Shot Elam Hutchins’ collie Jack when he went to bite me, and Elam says he would kill me if he dast. I guess he won’t. Grandfather kept me saying the Dho formula last night, and I think I saw the inner city at the 2 magnetic poles. I shall go to those poles when the earth is cleared off, if I can’t break through with the Dho-Hna formula when I commit it. They from the air told me at Sabbat that it will be years before I can clear off the earth, and I guess grandfather will be dead then, so I shall have to learn all the angles of the planes and all the formulas between the Yr and the Nhhngr. They from outside will help, but they cannot take body without human blood. That upstairs looks it will have the right cast. I can see it a little when I make the Voorish sign or blow the powder of Ibn Ghazi at it, and it is near like them at May-Eve on the Hill. The other face may wear off some. I wonder how I shall look when the earth is cleared and there are no earth beings on it. He that came with the Aklo Sabaoth said I may be transfigured, there being much of outside to work on.”


Aklo in The Dunwich Horror by H.P.Lovecraft

"It was in June that Blake’s diary told of his victory over the cryptogram. The text was, he found, in the dark Aklo language used by certain cults of evil antiquity, and known to him in a halting way through previous researches."

Mention of Aklo in The Haunter of the Dark by H. P. Lovecraft

Wikipedia article about Aklo

H.P.Lovecraft Wiki's article about Aklo

luis-gonza asked:
Hi David! What do you think about Aklo conlang? Do you know where I can learn it?

You know, I did a brief search, and I don’t think there’s one answer to this. For example, I thought you meant the Aklo language created by friend Britton Watkins for Marx Pyle’s Cthulhu series, but I don’t think it ever came into existence, so I don’t think there’s any info about the language on the web. So if it wasn’t that, I’m not sure what you could be after.
If you’re talking about the original stuff in the Cthulhu story, that’s just gibberish; not a conlang.
I’m sure there have been others who have tried to turn it into a conlang, though I haven’t heard of any projects other than Marx and Britton’s.

David J. Peterson's Tumblr
So... how ever intriguing this is, it doesn't exist, and I'm not accepting the idea of someone creating Aklo. There's bound to be people, but you will know they are lying. ;-)

P.S. "Upon discovering Finnish, Tolkien felt a sensation he described later as  "like discovering a complete wine-cellar filled with bottles of an amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me."
Yes. Exactly. That's the feeling. So go learn languages.

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