So I finally got around to beating Never Alone!! It was a good game overall, but as I was thinking how to review it, I had a hard time deciding whether to review it as a Native American, as a Linguist, or as a Gamer. So why not all three? (Warning: Spoilers in the “gamer” section) More »

In case you haven’t heard, Never Alone is a video game based on Alaskan Native mythology. So many video games are loosely based on Arthurian legends (don’t try to tell me there’s no resemblance between The Master Sword and Excalibur), Western history (there are several franchises dedicated to games about the World Wars), or modern Western life (GTA, anyone?). So I’m pretty excited that we’re getting some new storylines in video games, and these people have an international platform to share their culture and language! I plan to buy it on release day, and hopefully post a review here shortly thereafter! :)

In the meantime, watch the trailer here:

A few months ago, I created a bot on Twitter. @AllTheLanguages tweets a new language from the Ethnologue database once every hour or so, and will do so for about a year. Give or take. Sometimes the bot goes down and I have to reboot it. And there are some other bugs too. But more on that in another post…

When I tell people that I made a twitter bot, the first thing they ask (after “why?”) is “how?” Well, today, I’m going to answer that! Why? Because it was fun! How? Well, it’s complicated… More »