The show had a backstory that hinted at a vast world and a mythology slowly revealed over many episodes. Even Cha-Ka and the other Pakuni had a language crafted linguist Victoria Fromkin so that their language would become clearer over time.
September 7, 2026 at 12:27 PM
The show had a backstory that hinted at a vast world and a mythology slowly revealed over many episodes. Even Cha-Ka and the other Pakuni had a language crafted linguist Victoria Fromkin so that their language would become clearer over time.
Could be with Altrusian and the Pakuni. The lands of the Sleestaks and Chaka. Also know as the land of the lost.
May 8, 2025 at 2:22 AM
Could be with Altrusian and the Pakuni. The lands of the Sleestaks and Chaka. Also know as the land of the lost.
I'm doing a rewatch based on your interview with Sid Krofft- it was/is an incredibly ambitious TV show (never mind Sat AM 'for kids').
Sophisticated World Building by David Gerrold!
Dinosaurs by Wah Chang!
Creature & Pakuni make-up by M Westmore! Even an entire Pakuni language.
Sophisticated World Building by David Gerrold!
Dinosaurs by Wah Chang!
Creature & Pakuni make-up by M Westmore! Even an entire Pakuni language.
August 12, 2025 at 4:33 PM
I'm doing a rewatch based on your interview with Sid Krofft- it was/is an incredibly ambitious TV show (never mind Sat AM 'for kids').
Sophisticated World Building by David Gerrold!
Dinosaurs by Wah Chang!
Creature & Pakuni make-up by M Westmore! Even an entire Pakuni language.
Sophisticated World Building by David Gerrold!
Dinosaurs by Wah Chang!
Creature & Pakuni make-up by M Westmore! Even an entire Pakuni language.
Pakuni sighting confirmed.
July 28, 2026 at 11:49 PM
Pakuni sighting confirmed.
this place this place this time, so full of creatures, of monsters. but also: of possibilities? that pakuni bitch, she smiled at you. it’s been so long since you’ve felt a woman’s warmth. but not while the children live, they’d never understand. and so the monsters stalk from within.
December 1, 2024 at 11:15 PM
this place this place this time, so full of creatures, of monsters. but also: of possibilities? that pakuni bitch, she smiled at you. it’s been so long since you’ve felt a woman’s warmth. but not while the children live, they’d never understand. and so the monsters stalk from within.
And yes, Pakuni... Chaka's people used a language invented by a UCLA linguist in the original "Land of the Lost" kids TV show, the Sid & Marty Kroft thing, the one with dinosaurs and Sleestaks.
January 16, 2024 at 11:54 PM
And yes, Pakuni... Chaka's people used a language invented by a UCLA linguist in the original "Land of the Lost" kids TV show, the Sid & Marty Kroft thing, the one with dinosaurs and Sleestaks.
Land of the Lost (1974)
Stone Soup by Joyce Perry
Based on an old folktale and fitting the very 70s vibe of community and negotiation, this introduced me to the idea.
For modern viewers, the pakuni caused drought creates hardship, tension and violence
Stone Soup by Joyce Perry
Based on an old folktale and fitting the very 70s vibe of community and negotiation, this introduced me to the idea.
For modern viewers, the pakuni caused drought creates hardship, tension and violence
May 6, 2024 at 1:44 AM
Land of the Lost (1974)
Stone Soup by Joyce Perry
Based on an old folktale and fitting the very 70s vibe of community and negotiation, this introduced me to the idea.
For modern viewers, the pakuni caused drought creates hardship, tension and violence
Stone Soup by Joyce Perry
Based on an old folktale and fitting the very 70s vibe of community and negotiation, this introduced me to the idea.
For modern viewers, the pakuni caused drought creates hardship, tension and violence
The Land of the Lost episode "The Test" aired October 4, 1975.
Full Post
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. #TodayInNerdHistory #October4 #LandOfTheLost #TheTest #ChaKa #Pakuni #BigAlice #WesleyEure #KathyColeman #PhillipPaley #Will #Holly #History #Aired #AirDate #News #OTD #FYP #Nerd .
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October 4, 2025 at 11:58 PM
The Land of the Lost episode "The Test" aired October 4, 1975.
Full Post
www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=...
. #TodayInNerdHistory #October4 #LandOfTheLost #TheTest #ChaKa #Pakuni #BigAlice #WesleyEure #KathyColeman #PhillipPaley #Will #Holly #History #Aired #AirDate #News #OTD #FYP #Nerd .
Full Post
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. #TodayInNerdHistory #October4 #LandOfTheLost #TheTest #ChaKa #Pakuni #BigAlice #WesleyEure #KathyColeman #PhillipPaley #Will #Holly #History #Aired #AirDate #News #OTD #FYP #Nerd .
I'm watching an episode here and there, and enjoying it. Some really great writers on board, and they even took time to create a Pakuni language in the world building. Just watched The Stranger, and Enik at the end, looking at the Lost City, seeing his people destroyed their society. Good stuff.
May 1, 2024 at 10:40 PM
I'm watching an episode here and there, and enjoying it. Some really great writers on board, and they even took time to create a Pakuni language in the world building. Just watched The Stranger, and Enik at the end, looking at the Lost City, seeing his people destroyed their society. Good stuff.
There are early instances, like Victoria Fromkin creating Pakuni for "Land of the Lost" (1974), or M.A.R. Barker creating Tsolyani (1940s) and its related languages for his fictional world Tékumel without influence from Tolkien. Neither seem to really start or contribute to the trend though.
![[1976 TV Guide article by Leslie Raddatz]
What do you say if your child comes up to you and inquires, "Me tobi ye, abimi?"
Now, in my day, admittedly a while back, if a kid said. "Ellohay. Owhay are ouyay, anmay?" you knew he was
saying, "Hello. How are you, man?" in pig Latin, and vou answered in kind. Every child and his parents knew pig Latin, a nice simple language formed by moving the first consonant of a word to the end and adding "ay."
But now these modern kids are starting to speak Paku, the language which that precocious nipper in the first paragraph is saying. "Hello. How areyou, man?" Paku is the language of the Pakuni, a tribe of monkey people who may be seen and heard Saturday mornings in the NBC series Land of the Lost. Their language, which sounds primitive to the untutored ear, is anything but. The inspiration of a network vice president and the creation of a professor of linguistics, it may well be the first truly original language created from, to use a term appropriate for the world of monkey people, scratch. (Such "universal" language as Esperanto has Indo-European roots.)
The network vice president responsible for Paku is Joe Taritero, who was in charge of children's programs at NBC when Land of the Lost was first projected almost three years ago. He says, "At first, we talked about using pig Latin or English words spelled back-wards, but finally we decided that if we were going to have people speaking foreign sounds, those sounds should be a real language." Also, Taritero says, "teacher pressure" was mounting to have chidren's programs aid in the development of the learning process. "I decided to commission a language that would be fun Saturday morning, but then might translate into learning Spanish the following week."
He phoned the Dean of the College of Letters and Sciences at UCLA and said. "I'd like to talk to somebody who could create a language for me." When he finally convinced the Dean he was serious.
[continued in next image…]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:af7t7vabqug3vgkvc7d3c4z2/bafkreic7sv34skiohl2a7akn524ggg7fwsmhupvmwep2y7irlvvwqgcnfa)
![[…continued from last pic]
He was referred to Victoria Fromkin, head of the university's department of linguistics.
After receiving her bachelor's degree in economics, Fromkin turned to linguistics, got her Ph.D. at UCLA in 1965 and has been there ever since. She was delighted by Taritero's proposal: "The idea of creating a language that could be learned by children was an exciting challenge—not just 'Me Tarzan, you Jane' sort of thing."
Fromkin insists that "any linguist worth his salt" could construct a new language. Languages have certain universal properties, she says. For instance. all languages have sounds (vowels and consonants) that combine into words to express certain meanings. Add rules for combining these words (syntax), and you have a language. Fromkin decided to use English sounds but to make them "different enough to be exotic, yet easy for a child to pick up.
She set up simple rules for sentence structure—subject, verb, object—like English except that adjectives follow nouns. All common nouns are polysyllabic and start with a vowel, which is actually a prefix denoting a semantic class. Plurals are formed by adding "ni" (pronounced "knee"). Thus, man is abimi, men abimini. Verbs, adjectives and adverbs begin with a consonant. Adjectives are formed from nouns by adding "sa", adverbs by adding "chi." Thus, abu is child, busa childish, and busachi childishly.
There are more rules, all logical and linguistically sound, and a vocabulary of, so far, some 300 words. The vocabulary grows, of course, as the producers of Land of the Lost send Fromkin scripts to translate into Paku. "It's a nice little language." she says. "It's still very fragmentary, but it's a possible language." So possible, in fact, that it has excited considerable interest in the linguistic fraternity. Fromkin has received letters from professors and university students throughout the U.S.. inquiring about Paku.
Which is all very well, but as for me, I'm going to stick to igpay atinlay.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:af7t7vabqug3vgkvc7d3c4z2/bafkreic7dml5quepdhq7d5eyja6xgsbdtibxkyjsmk5rsxrkxshpmfek3i)
December 1, 2024 at 1:01 AM
There are early instances, like Victoria Fromkin creating Pakuni for "Land of the Lost" (1974), or M.A.R. Barker creating Tsolyani (1940s) and its related languages for his fictional world Tékumel without influence from Tolkien. Neither seem to really start or contribute to the trend though.
Me too, though not the 3rd season. I knew the entire Pakuni vocabulary.
August 22, 2026 at 7:30 PM
Me too, though not the 3rd season. I knew the entire Pakuni vocabulary.
I memorized all the Pakuni words used on-screen.
July 25, 2026 at 6:02 PM
I memorized all the Pakuni words used on-screen.
Whether Pakuni is well enough syntactized to have a chance of qualifying as a natural language with a bit more work is unclear to me.
lotl.popapostle.com/html/pakuni....
lotl.popapostle.com/html/pakuni....
Land of the Lost: Pakuni Dictionary
lotl.popapostle.com
August 2, 2025 at 8:40 AM
Whether Pakuni is well enough syntactized to have a chance of qualifying as a natural language with a bit more work is unclear to me.
lotl.popapostle.com/html/pakuni....
lotl.popapostle.com/html/pakuni....
This is what he said about me and his long&ass post.
> Minor Esperantist Thomas Alexander in 2018 published a decipherment contribution [of Pakuni] in the Language Creation Society online magazine but I remember it being not a full decipherment at all and rather unskilled.
> Minor Esperantist Thomas Alexander in 2018 published a decipherment contribution [of Pakuni] in the Language Creation Society online magazine but I remember it being not a full decipherment at all and rather unskilled.
April 21, 2026 at 7:30 PM
This is what he said about me and his long&ass post.
> Minor Esperantist Thomas Alexander in 2018 published a decipherment contribution [of Pakuni] in the Language Creation Society online magazine but I remember it being not a full decipherment at all and rather unskilled.
> Minor Esperantist Thomas Alexander in 2018 published a decipherment contribution [of Pakuni] in the Language Creation Society online magazine but I remember it being not a full decipherment at all and rather unskilled.
Apparently somebody's been holding a grudge against me since 2018. This showed up on Reddit just today:
www.reddit.com/r/conlang/co...
www.reddit.com/r/conlang/co...
From the conlang community on Reddit: Quick History of Pakuni Language Decipherment Efforts 1974 to 2026
Explore this post and more from the conlang community
www.reddit.com
April 21, 2026 at 7:29 PM
Apparently somebody's been holding a grudge against me since 2018. This showed up on Reddit just today:
www.reddit.com/r/conlang/co...
www.reddit.com/r/conlang/co...
And so - I have learned Pakuni - not because I was "invested in LOTL IP" (although since then, I've spent time with the original cast.) I learned it because I thought it would be a weekend project and then I just couldn't stop.
November 29, 2025 at 11:02 PM
And so - I have learned Pakuni - not because I was "invested in LOTL IP" (although since then, I've spent time with the original cast.) I learned it because I thought it would be a weekend project and then I just couldn't stop.
Krome, mi ŝatas provi legi diversajn ĝermanajn lingvojn, kaj malgrajndajn malnovajn projektojn kiel Anglo-Franca, Intal, kaj Pakuni.
July 4, 2025 at 3:51 PM
Krome, mi ŝatas provi legi diversajn ĝermanajn lingvojn, kaj malgrajndajn malnovajn projektojn kiel Anglo-Franca, Intal, kaj Pakuni.
I once learned the fictional language Pakuni. I knew every word and every rule by heart and could use them without hesitation. I never claimed to "speak" Pakuni or to be "fluent" in it. There were only a few hundred words in the whole language.
March 3, 2025 at 3:25 AM
I once learned the fictional language Pakuni. I knew every word and every rule by heart and could use them without hesitation. I never claimed to "speak" Pakuni or to be "fluent" in it. There were only a few hundred words in the whole language.
I'm trying to ask... what do you mean by "up there"? Subjective opinion? Actual use? Number of books published?
I speak Esperanto fluently. I'm conversational in Interlingua. I read Ido. I used to be OK in Volapük. See my profile for my recent dabblings in Anglo-Franca. Oh, and I know some Pakuni.
I speak Esperanto fluently. I'm conversational in Interlingua. I read Ido. I used to be OK in Volapük. See my profile for my recent dabblings in Anglo-Franca. Oh, and I know some Pakuni.
March 2, 2025 at 8:39 PM
I'm trying to ask... what do you mean by "up there"? Subjective opinion? Actual use? Number of books published?
I speak Esperanto fluently. I'm conversational in Interlingua. I read Ido. I used to be OK in Volapük. See my profile for my recent dabblings in Anglo-Franca. Oh, and I know some Pakuni.
I speak Esperanto fluently. I'm conversational in Interlingua. I read Ido. I used to be OK in Volapük. See my profile for my recent dabblings in Anglo-Franca. Oh, and I know some Pakuni.
In Land of the Lost (1974-1975), Baird portrayed Sa, a Pakuni character. Again, she worked as a live-action performer in a suit.
Sa & the other Pakuni became memorable elements of the show’s charm
Sa & the other Pakuni became memorable elements of the show’s charm
November 25, 2024 at 3:16 AM
In Land of the Lost (1974-1975), Baird portrayed Sa, a Pakuni character. Again, she worked as a live-action performer in a suit.
Sa & the other Pakuni became memorable elements of the show’s charm
Sa & the other Pakuni became memorable elements of the show’s charm
We are like the Pakuni
February 7, 2026 at 12:26 AM
We are like the Pakuni
April 13, 2026 at 7:06 PM
Now I gotta go look through the existing replies for Sindarin, Klingon, Pakuni, Thermian, et cetera.
June 28, 2025 at 5:01 PM
Now I gotta go look through the existing replies for Sindarin, Klingon, Pakuni, Thermian, et cetera.
For invented languages? No, I had been referring to Klingon, Sindarin, and Pakuni for example. Inventing languages for fiction may be crazier than inventing crypto algorithms, but it's also more common.
January 16, 2024 at 11:52 PM
For invented languages? No, I had been referring to Klingon, Sindarin, and Pakuni for example. Inventing languages for fiction may be crazier than inventing crypto algorithms, but it's also more common.