Aklo

{{Short description|Fictional Language}}

Aklo is the name of a fictional language that has been used by many authors from its first reference in 1899.[https://books.google.com/books?id=fA5NhKLOxdYC&dq=Aklo&pg=PA5 The Dictionary of Made-Up Languages] By Stephen D. Rogers {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131011112157/http://books.google.com/books?id=fA5NhKLOxdYC&pg=PA5&dq=Aklo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=j4NGUoSKFMKmyQGY-4GoBw&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Aklo&f=false |date=2013-10-11 }} The language is said to have mystical powers.[http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/2/47806ff8-66e1-11e0-8d88-00144feab49a.html#axzz2gAj1QfW7 The List: Five fictional languages] James Lovegrove Financial Times April 15, 2011

Aklo was first mentioned by Arthur Machen in his 1899 story "The White People".[https://books.google.com/books?id=cQhke8K9G60C&dq=Aklo&pg=PA83 Encyclopedia of Fictional and Fantastic Languages] By Stephen Cain. Greenwood Aklo was mentioned but not described in detail by Machen, being noted in passing by the story's narrator as part of a secretive game or ritual.

H. P. Lovecraft admired the Machen story, and used Aklo[https://www.amazon.com/Lovecraft-Lexicon-Readers-Persons-Places/dp/1561841293#reader_1561841293 Lovecraft Lexicon] Anthony Pearsall. New Falcon Publications in his Cthulhu Mythos stories "The Dunwich Horror" and "The Haunter of the Dark". The authors who have used Aklo have played into the fiction that the language has magical powers, and so have not included much detail to prevent "some careless reader from incant[ing] a spell capable of calling forth evil".

In The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, Aklo appears as a language used in Black Masses and by the Illuminati.

Alan Moore later used Aklo in his Lovecraft tribute short story and 2003 comic The Courtyard, in his 2010 comic Neonomicon and again in Providence. In his adaptation, Aklo is not just an alien language, but a key that opens doors inside the human mind which is "connected to Moore's general view on actual magic and the role of words in modifying a human's perception of reality."[http://comicsforum.org/2012/09/19/the-shadow-over-northampton-the-transmogrification-of-the-lovecraft-mythos-by-alan-moore-by-daniel-l-werneck/ The Shadow Over Northampton: The Transmogrification Of The Lovecraft Mythos By Alan Moore] Daniel L. Werneck

The Pathfinder RPG, published by Paizo, uses Aklo as the language of several subterranean, otherworldly, or otherwise Lovecraftian species in the game's universe, such as aboleths, gibbering mouthers, and shoggoths.{{cite web|title=Linguistics|url=http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/skills/linguistics.html|publisher=Paizo|accessdate=28 August 2012}}{{primary source inline|date=September 2013}}

References

{{Reflist}}

{{Arthur Machen}}

{{Cthulhu Mythos}}

{{H.P. Lovecraft}}

Category:Fictional languages

Category:Constructed languages introduced in the 1890s

Category:Cthulhu Mythos

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