About the Author
As a baby, David J. Catchpoole spoke his first word at only three weeks, but unfortunately it was unintelligible. Even though he clearly repeated “unintelligible” several times, he couldn’t seem to get the point across, so he gave up and mumbled “distinctly” instead.
As a child, he started making up silly words, but it was only after much practice that they became severely silly.
As an adult, he was drawn deeper and deeper into the mystery of linguistics, and eventually he found, at its core, the ineffable. He was so dumbstruck that he dropped all his decibels.
Heddigadelleriesheddigadelleries interjection hello.Synonym: saloom, bonbonjuka, hearty miles, konniciaoa, howdy-g’daily-raysAntonym: feravidy mosta, moolas[a variant of Hoptanglish haudigudailiraze.]! I’m David and I seem to have a touch of the scribbles. I remember that day in a junior school spelling class when we had to answer each question by putting little lettered cards into a series of transparent pockets. At one point I stopped making the correct, easy answers and started putting different, random letters and syllables together just to see what would happen. Well, what happened was pure enjoyment for me, and criticism from the teacher followed by approval when she understood my experiment. I can’t remember the word I created, but I will never forget this as my first experience of neology. English had always been my favourite subject, but something about that lesson in the tactile construction of words started awakening me to the deeply profound potential of language, and from that day forth my awe, fascination and pure excitement have propelled me enchanted through a literary lifetime.
In middle school my favourite homework was Words in Sentences, a delight mightily multiplied by the wit, creativity and adventurousness of my father, John Roger Catchpoole, to whom I dedicate this work. Prior to 2006 I only occasionally had urges to coin words, but the more I indulged the more often it happened. In 2008 I knew I had to collate and organize them into a dictionary, so I began building Hoptanglish, my a posteriori, artistic conlang (constructed language) spoken in my fictional world of Hoptanglia. Since it’s based on English it freely borrows from other languages. Over the next two decades the development of the scope, coherence and quality of the vocabulary has been my obsession. I invented 10,000 neologisms by 2010, 20,000 by 2016, 30,000 by 2018, 40,000 by 2021, and by the end of 2025 I reached 47,540. Every single word and definition has been thought-born and hand-crafted, i.e. an original creation written or typed by myself alone with no automation other than using a program that finds anagrams out of any combination of letters. Since quantity ain’t quality, many words and definitions are atrociously mediocre, boring or stupid, but I’m proud that the rest are respectably pointless.
Literature
Art
Music & Film
Follow
Discord: HopCatchy