Alan Roy King (24 October 1954 – 19 February 2019) was a British linguist notable for his work on minority languages Basque and Nawat.

When he was twenty-five, he moved to the Basque Country, and since then he lived there, in Gipuzkoa, although he spent some time abroad, such as in England, Catalonia, Wales and El Salvador (Central America).

[9] King spoke and communicated in English, Welsh, French, Basque, Spanish, Catalan, Galician, Nawat,[10] Hawaiian, Hebrew, Yiddish and Lenca.

King, his younger brother Selwyn and his parents stayed in Israel for a few months while visas to settle in America were approved.

Alan was still a loner by choice, not finding much in common with other youngsters of his own age.The family joined a synagogue as soon as they settled so that they could continue their Jewish and Hebrew education as well as social activities.

King authored the Basque Threshold Level objective, part of a Council of Europe modern languages programme: Atalase Maila.

King wrote a doctorate thesis at the University of London (Mary-Westfield) in Linguistics titled: Communicative Grammar of the Basque Verb (Selected Aspects).

[15]Four of King's poems in Basque language were used by Finnish composer Jaakko Mäntyjärvi as lyrics for choral songs sung by the Kauppakorkeakoulun Ylioppilaskunnan Laulajat, aka the Helsinki Academic Male Choir.

[16] The final work by Jaakko Mäntyjärvi titled Hiru gaukantu euskaldun eta tabernako abesti bat (1999) [that is, “Three Basque evening-songs (?)

With much help from the volunteer staff of TIT (see below), he planned, designed, programmed, organised, prepared, coordinated and taught in the first two yearly intensive training courses for future and practising Nawat language teachers, within the framework of the aforementioned schools programme.

As part of the aforementioned project, he created and ran an office of the Nawat language in Izalco, the historical and symbolic centre of the Pipil nation, with a staff of three, called Tajkwiluyan Ipal Ne Taketzalis (TIT).

King played a key role in the creation of a grassroots pro-Nawat association called Iniciativa para la Recuperación del Idioma Náhuat (IRIN) – Te Miki Tay Tupal.

Besides keeping the university school project going in its first critical years (a role which has not been acknowledged), IRIN has been responsible for other work of fundamental importance for the language recovery movement including the printing and distribution of Nawat books and materials, and a groundbreaking language documentation project which resulted in obtaining many hours of new audio and video recordings of Nawat-language interviews between native speakers.

King created the Seminario Lingüístico Náhuat which early on addressed important subjects such as the proposal of a standard spelling, internal dialect variation, and the lexicon.

More recently this material was again revised and reorganised as a complete book constituting a comprehensive elementary language course titled Timumachtikan!.

King worked with the team of TIT to create, print and distribute two issues of a local newsletter, partly in Nawat, called Tinemit.

King advised IRIN from a distance (since he was no longer in El Salvador) on its great language documentation project, mentioned above.

[22] Translations constituted his main source of income, while he continued to dedicate most of his remaining time to a range of language-related projects.

Over the years King translated, into or out of, quite a number of languages, including Basque, Catalan, English, French, Galician, New Testament Greek, Biblical Hebrew, Nawat, Spanish and Welsh.

At times he did venture further afield into, for example, education, history, geography, information technology, literature, politics and social sciences.