Super-brainy teenager from creates her own language

A talented teenager has invented a brand new language with 1,500 unique words and a completely original script - at the age of 18. Multi-lingual Melissa May already speaks fluent German, French and Spanish and reads Portuguese, Norwegian, Italian, Swedish and Danish. She has dabbled in Latin and Old Norse, is learning Chinese and Dutch and has applied to study Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Cambridge University. But not content with that the brainy student decided to invent her own language with its own words and script, written 'backwards' like Arabic. Melissa has spent the past three years creating Skénavánns, which has a distinctive grammatical structure and a vocabulary of 1,500 original words. She has already built up a 50-page dictionary which she is constantly adding to, detailing the definitions, related terms and roots of each word she invents. Skénavánns, which literally means 'our speaking of the language', sounds a little like a Nordic language but isn't based on any other dialect.

[NappingWanderer]

This is actually a pretty common hobby now, I've made probably 5 now, if you include one I scrapped early on. You learn a lot creating fully functional languages, that's for sure

[thiccoatmeal]

I think it’s more cool that she can speak a bunch of languages. I’ve made languages with my friends before so we could talk shit about people lmao

[yupekosi]

You do realize pretty much anyone can do this, right?

[galileor.cuevas]

It's called conlanging.
Have you watched Game of Thrones,
Dothraki and Valiryan were created by just one guy, and they are actual conlangs (constructed languages).

Ye éve en conlang leam atam (I also have a conlang).

[callumbennett]

She is not super brainy I have done this and can speak my own language.

[pasteljelly]

This is a Conlang™. I made one and I called it Kosian and its a Romance/Slavic style language. Any one with commitment and time and knowledge of languages can make a Conlang™

[cifge_]

Why do people keep using the ™ symbol after the word conlang?

[nathnlturner]

It's not like I have created ten as of age fourteen. This isn't anything special

[thelanguagefantastic]

Hi everyone, so I'm the girl in the video. Had no idea this video was on YouTube but was shown it by a friend today. I wanted to address some of things that people have mentioned in the comments. First of all I want to apologise if the video (or more specifically the questions and the description) made it seem like I was doing something special or that my conlangs were any better than anyone else's - in fact they are definitely worse, since I wasn't studying linguistics at all then. I have learned a lot from very talented helpful people since I started and seen some honestly amazing conlangs that mine couldn't come close to. When I started working on the language in the video and the previous ones, I had no idea that it was 'a thing' that had a huge internet following and different groups on reddit, facebook etc. I didn't have any connection to any of that. I only found out after the videos / news on this were circulated and suddenly I was getting messages from everybody asking me why I thought I was so special, private messages telling me 'autistic kids like you should just get f**cked and then you'd get a life', messages telling me to stop being 'fake', who did I think I was, 'super brainy lmaaaao my arse' etc.

To be honest all of this was just a fluke and it just happened to be me that got the media attention through a series of coincidences rather than anyone else. And I am sorry that other people's work has not got the media exposure it deserves, and that mine did. There are so many amazing under-appreciated conlangers out there. I am very uncomfortable with people (usually not linguists) demanding how many languages you 'know'. But to get the data for this video (and other interviews) this was exactly what they kept demanding. Similarly they kept demanding a number of words for the dictionary. I kept saying I couldn't give a number and that reading Romance or Germanic languages when you already speak one or two really is not very difficult, or comparable to learning something like Mandarin from scratch. I was also interviewed on the radio and the questions were similarly uncomfortable - 'do you think you're special?' 'do you think it's a bEtTeR language than Esperanto?' 'do you think you are the next Tolkien?'??? and so on. Also please bear in mind that as ever, all of these videos are aimed at introducing things to a non-specialised and quite sensational audience - of course it is sensationalised, oversimplified and dramatic, it's never going to be an accurate representation, it's on the Daily Mail for god's sake.

And as for speaking different languages - I have been lucky enough to have met and seen people who are ACTUALLY amazing. Not just those like me who speak four or five to some degree and mess around with others, sometimes serious, sometimes not - but those who are professional translators and interpreters and whose abilities and stories are so inspiring.

Like most of you I just like languages and I was just having fun. I wasn't trying to prove anything or do anything. I love languages, I'm a third year uni student of linguistics now and I've learnt a lot - the conlangs I'm working on now are more definitely more developed. But if I saw a video of someone less experienced than myself, I would hope that I would encourage them rather than beat them down. I was so excited to find a community of people online that loved conlanging too, but many of them had the exact same reaction as this comment section, and I stopped conlanging after that because I got so much hate. It was only this year that I started again.

Let's encourage each other!! Hell it's not exactly a mainstream hobby, we should give each other support!

[guitarraccoon]

Lmao I just started making my own language cause I saw Artifexian's writing system. Just started last week.

[masksenpai]

Guys don't be so mean she probably doesn't know a lot of people do this you know. Just three years ago I didn't know it was a thing. So cut her some slack!

[anonymousmarv]

When the autistic kid invents his own language

The desks: *Ight, Imma head up*

[baneebyclovers]

why everyone gettin mad it's just a title

[arda]

lol im 10, i have made a conlang before, and i am making a new one called Thiakivim. My old conlang was called Kelanban. Anyone can do this. You dont need any particular talent.

[Deoogey]

I made an alphabet with 286 letters and memorized it.

[esperantogajnos]

super brainy? I am making a language called ronan, and i am not super brainy...

[xfreyax]

conlangs arent that hard to make, but the way she can speak multiple languages is impressive

[RaptorRapine]

This is actually a fun hobby, I made my own sign language with my sister and my parents dont know what I'm saying.

[senesterium]

There's nothind super brainy about that. We're like thousands to do it daily. I know of some people doing it for 30+ years.

[randomrhythm]

A bunch of people say she isn't special but the way she explains this like it is a part of her, not a hobby like what many people say they can do!