Talk:Kenneth Searight

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I'm unsure whether the creator of Sona is the same Kenneth Searight mentioned in this article: http://freespace.virgin.net/old.whig/proporn.htm . Frankly, I was unsure that Searight actually existed -- most of the references to him on Google come directly or indirectly from a digitalization of the Sona book. But I was able to find the Sona book in the LOC online and the British Library online, so it's probably reasonable to assume that the person isn't a fictional character created by imaginative latter-day conlangers.

The LOC listing gives Searight's birth year as 1883, but they don't have any other publications (such as the aforementioned 137-page verse autobiography) listed -- nor does the British Library. I found birth and school records on ancestry.co.uk. I'm going to try to dig up the --ESP 18:49, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I forgot to mention: the LOC lists Searight as "1883-", with no year of death. It's unlikely but possible that a 120-year-old Englishman is alive somewhere in the world, but I'd wager this is an oversight. --ESP 18:53, 18 Jan 2004 (UTC)

So, it appears that the Sona language book was published on C.K. Ogden's press, Psyche. Ogden (creator of Basic English) wrote the intro to the Sona book, and he was renowned for using pseudonyms. There's a possibility that Searight is still non-existent, but the hoax is older than I thought. --ESP 22:29, 19 Jan 2004 (UTC)

So, I've done some more research on Searight. It was originally compiled here, in the public domain, and copied to Wikipedia. I'm the author of the page linked. --ESP 07:22, 29 Jan 2004 (UTC)

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