Arika Okrent
Arika Okrent is an American linguist, known particularly for her 2009 book In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build A Perfect Language, a result of her five years of research into the topic of constructed languages. She is also featured in Sam Green's 2011 documentary The Universal Language.Youth and education
Okrent was born in Chicago to parents of Polish and Transylvanian descent and was fascinated by languages since an early age, which is what made her pursue a career in linguistics. After Carleton College, she left for Hungary to teach there for a year; she earned an M.A. in Linguistics from the Gallaudet University, and a Ph.D. in Psycholinguistics from the University of Chicago in 2004. She can communicate in English, Hungarian, American Sign Language and Klingon, and has a good passive command of Esperanto.
She is the niece of writer and editor Daniel Okrent.Publications
*
