Loxian

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Loxian is an artistic language and alphabet created by writer and lyricist Roma Ryan for Enya's 2005 album Amarantine. The language is featured in three songs on the album. The term apparently derives from the Greek Loxos, meaning oblique.

Ryan created the language when she found herself unable to create satisfactory lyrics in English, Gaelic or Latin for some of Enya's songs. She came up with the idea after having worked with Tolkien's fictional Elvish languages while writing lyrics in these languages for one of Enya's tracks recorded for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack in 2001.

Loxian is described by its creators as "a futuristic language from a distant planet"; its script (seen both in the Amarantine CD and the book Water Shows the Hidden Heart) is said to draw on Tolkien, Runic language and elements of Pitman shorthand.

After examining Loxian, Terry Dolan, a professor of English at University College Dublin, has offered his professional opinion regarding the language. "It's a very eclectic language. It seems to choose elements at random. It brings in a whole wealth of different language forms such as Anglo-Saxon, Hindi, Welsh and, I think, Siberian Yupik as well. It is very mixum-gatherum linguistically — it seems to have no form of grammar or word order which has very limited comprehensibility. The script resembles several existing languages. They've drawn on Tolkien, on Runic language [sic] and there are elements of Pitman shorthand as well."

Enya describes the Loxians as beings who "live on another planet and are looking out, wondering, 'Are we the only ones who exist?' "

Roma Ryan has written a book that was published in December 2005, called Water Shows The Hidden Heart, which gives background information on the three Loxian songs and explore her developing of the language.

Enya and Ryan consider Loxian to be under copyright; reproducing the language without the permission of Ryan or Enya's record label, Aigle Records, is considered a copyright violation. As with Klingon, it is disputed whether a language itself can be copyrighted.

External links

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