Arika Okrent

Arika Okrent is an American linguist and writer of popular works on linguistic topics.

Early life and education

Okrent was born in Chicago to parents of Polish and Transylvanian descent. She was fascinated by languages beginning at an early age, which is what made her pursue a career in linguistics.

After graduating from Carleton College in 1992, 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.

Career

Okrent is 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. Her well-received 2021 book, Highly Irregular, written with Sean O'Neill, explains how the history of English explains a number of its modern irregularities and exceptions.

She is featured in Sam Green's 2011 Esperanto documentary The Universal Language.

She is a regular contributor on linguistics and language topics to the online magazine Mental Floss.

Honors and awards

In 2015 Okrent became the second winner of the Linguistic Society of America's Linguistics Journalism Award.

Personal life

She can speak in English, Hungarian, American Sign Language and Klingon, and some Esperanto.

She is the niece of writer and editor Daniel Okrent.

Books

Okrent, Arika (2009). In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build A Perfect Language. Spiegel & Grau. pp. 352. ISBN 978-0-385-52788-0.

Okrent, Arika and O'Neill, Sean (2021). Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme And Other Oddities of the English Language. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0197539408.