Tepa
From Langmaker
| Conlang | Tepa |
| Author | Dirk Elzinga |
| Year Began | 1990 |
| Language Type | personal language |
| Lexicon Size | N/A |
| Etymologies | No |
| Grammar | No |
| Sample Texts | No |
| Primer | No |
Tepa, the language of an extinct Native American tribe, was designed by Dirk Elzinga.
Uniqueness
A unique personal language, professionally designed and presented, and rightfully highly regarded among the Internet community of language modelers. It is simply the most professional treatment of an artlang on the Internet. Dirk has two annotated texts well worth reading: Coyote Eats Rocks and Two Otters. His frame story about his sources is an excellent one; because of it, some innocent web surfers probably think Tepa is a real language. By the time you finish reading about Tepa, you may think it's a real language too!
Interest of others
Erik writes in:Out of these ten, I'd place Tepa higher - if not number one - because it's not just exotic for the sake of being exotic. Tepa seems to be designed very consistently, and it's a very natural-looking language. Besides, it fits in nicely as a native North-American language in general, although it does differ from [natural] languages more or less surrounding it (thus making its existence a bit unlikely). Just for the record: I'm not saying any of the above is necessary for a language in order to deserve a high ranking, but I do think all of the above together does earn it a high ranking.
