Portal:Constructed languages/Language of the month
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[edit] November 2005
Ido is a constructed language, arguably the second-most used International Auxiliary Language in the world. It was developed in the early 1900s, and retains a small following today, primarily in Europe. It is largely based on Esperanto, created by L. L. Zamenhof. Ido first appeared in 1907 as a result of a desire to reform perceived flaws in Esperanto that its supporters believed to be a hindrance in its propagation as an easy-to-learn second language. Many other reform projects appeared after Ido: examples such as Occidental and Novial appeared afterwards but have since faded into obscurity. At present Ido, along with Esperanto and Interlingua are the only auxiliary languages with a large body of literature and a relatively large speaker base. The name of the language likely traces its origin to the Ido pronunciation of "I.D." (from "International Delegation", see below) or the word ido, "descendant (of Esperanto)". Find out more...
[edit] December 2005
Quenya is one of the languages spoken by the Elves in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. It was the language developed by those non-Telerin Elves who reached Valinor (the "High Elves") from an earlier language called Common Eldarin. Of the Three Houses of the Elves, the Ñoldor and the Vanyar spoke slightly different, though mutually intelligible, dialects of Quenya (Quenya and Vanyarin Quenya (also Quendya), respectively). The language was also adopted by the Valar, who made some new introductions into it from their own original language, though these are more numerous in the Vanyarin dialect than the Ñoldorin one. This is probably the case because of the enduringly close relationship the Vanyar had with the Valar. The Third House, the Teleri, spoke a different, closely related language, Telerin, although this was by some seen as a dialect of Quenya, which is untrue in a historic perspective but plausible in a linguistic one; the languages do not share a common history, but are very much alike. Find out more...
[edit] January 2006
Ithkuil (Iţkuîl) is an extremely complicated constructed human language created by American linguist John Quijada between 1978 and 2004.
In the author's description of Ithkuil: "A Philosophical Design for a Hypothetical Language", it appears as a cross between an a priori philosophical language and a logical language. The creator attempts to show how human languages could or may function. Ithkuil is designed to convey large amounts of linguistic information using fewer and shorter words than naturally-evolved languages; most sentences in other languages will be shorter when translated into Ithkuil. Find out more...
[edit] February 2006
The Klingon language or Klingonese (tlhIngan Hol in Klingon) is a constructed language (an artistic language created by Marc Okrand for Paramount Pictures and spoken by Klingons in the fictional Star Trek universe). He designed the language with Object Verb Subject (OVS) word order to give an alien feel to the language. Klingon is similar to Native American languages in several aspects. The basic sound (and a very few words) were first devised by James Doohan for Star Trek: The Motion Picture; the film marked the first time the language had been heard on screen, all previous appearances of the Klingons being in English (through the in-universe use of universal translators).
Klingon is sometimes referred to as Klingonese (most notably in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "The Trouble with Tribbles"), but among the Klingon-speaking community this is often understood to refer to another Klingon language that is described in John M. Ford's Star Trek novels as Klingonaase. Find out more...
[edit] March 2006
Lingua Franca Nova is an auxiliary constructed language created by Dr. C. George Boeree of Shippensburg University, Pennsylvania. It is based on French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan. Lingua Franca Nova is usually abbreviated to LFN and has also been referred to as Europijin and Creol. The language is phonetically spelled, using 21 letters of either the Latin or Cyrillic alphabets. The grammar is inspired by the Romance creoles. Like most creoles, LFN has a highly simplified grammar system. However, this system does not mean that one is not able to be as expressive in LFN as one could be in any other language. Find out more...
[edit] April 2006
Brithenig is an invented language, or constructed language ("conlang"). It was created as a hobby in 1996 by Andrew Smith from New Zealand, who also invented the alternate history of Ill Bethisad to "explain" it.
Brithenig was not invented to be used in the real world, like Esperanto, nor to provide detail to a work of fiction, like J.R.R. Tolkien's Elvish tongues or Klingon from the Star Trek scenarios. Rather, Brithenig started as a thought experiment to create a Romance language that might have evolved if Latin had displaced Old Celtic as the spoken language of the people in Great Britain. The result is a sister language to French, Spanish and Italian, albeit a test-tube child, which differs from them by having sound-changes similar to those that affected the Welsh language, and words that are borrowed from Old Celtic and from English throughout its pseudo-history. Find out more...
[edit] May 2006
Lojban (IPA [ˈloʒban], official full name Lojban: a realization of Loglan) is a constructed language which was created by the Logical Language Group in 1987 based on the earlier Loglan, with the intent to make the language more complete, usable, and freely available. It has the ISO 639 language code jbo.
The language itself shares many of the features and goals of Loglan; in particular, Lojban:
- Has a grammar that is based on predicate logic, and is capable of expressing complex logical constructs precisely.
- Has no irregularities or ambiguities in spelling or grammar, so it can be easily parsed by computer.
- Is designed to be as culturally neutral as possible.
- Is simple to learn and use compared to many natural languages.
- Possesses an intricate system for effectively communicating contextual emotion.
While the initial goal of the Loglan project was to investigate the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, the active Lojban community has additional goals for the language. Find out more...
[edit] June 2006
Lingua Ignota (Latin for unknown language) was a language described by Hildegard of Bingen, abbess of Rupertsberg, in the 12th century, apparently for mystical purposes. Hildegard used an alphabet of 23 letters, the litterae ignotae, to go with the language.
Hildegard partially described the language in a work titled Lingua Ignota per simplicem hominem Hildegardem prolata, which survived in two manuscripts, both dating to ca. 1200, the Wiesbaden Codex and a Berlin MS. The text is a glossary of 1011 words in Lingua Ignota, with glosses mostly in Latin, sometimes in German; the words appear to be a priori coinages, mostly nouns with a few adjectives. Grammatically it appears to be a partial relexification of Latin, that is, a language formed by substituting new vocabulary into an existing grammar. Find out more...
[edit] July 2006
Novial [nov-, new + IAL, International Auxiliary Language] is a constructed language devised by Professor Otto Jespersen, a Danish linguist who had previously been involved in the Ido movement. He devised Novial to be an international auxiliary language (IAL), which would facilitate international communication and friendship, without displacing anyone's native language.
It features a vocabulary based largely on the Germanic and Romance languages, and a grammar heavily influenced by English.
The first introduction of Novial was in Jespersen's book An International Language in 1928, with an update in his dictionary, Novial Lexike, published two years later. Further modifications were proposed in the 1930s, but with Jespersen's death in 1943, it became dormant, although in the 1990s, with the revival of interest in artificial language brought on by the Internet, many people rediscovered Novial. Find out more...
[edit] August 2006
Toki Pona is a constructed language which was first published online in mid-2001. It was designed by Canadian translator and linguist Sonja Elen Kisa (b. 1978), of Toronto.
Toki Pona is a minimal language. Like a pidgin, it focuses on simple concepts and elements that are relatively universal among cultures. Kisa designed Toki Pona to express maximal meaning with minimal complexity. The language has 14 phonemes and 118 words. It is not designed as an international auxiliary language but is instead inspired by Taoist philosophy, among other things.
The language is designed to shape the thought processes of its users, in the style of the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. This goal, together with Toki Pona's deliberately restricted vocabulary, have led some to feel that the language, whose name literally means "simple language", "good language", or "goodspeak", resembles George Orwell's fictional language Newspeak. Find out more...
[edit] September 2006
Solresol is an artificial language, devised by a Frenchman, François Sudre, beginning in 1817. He published his major book on it, Langue musicale universelle, in 1866, though he had already been publicizing it for some years. Solresol enjoyed a brief spell of popularity, reaching its pinnacle with Boleslas Gajewski's 1902 publication of Grammaire du Solresol.
Solresol words are made up of only seven different syllables. These syllables can be represented in a number of different ways -- as musical notes of different pitch, as spoken syllables (based on solfege, a way of identifying musical notes), with colours, symbols, hand gestures etc. Thus, theoretically Solresol communication can be done through speaking, singing, flags of different color, etc. — even painting. Find out more...
[edit] October 2006
The Verdurian language is a constructed language (or conlang) designed by Mark Rosenfelder. It is the most developed of the languages featured in Rosenfelder's constructed world of Almea and is spoken by the inhabitants of Verduria, a country in that planet. The language's name for itself is soa Sfahe, "the speech". The language has its own alphabet.
The language has a grammar and vocabulary that borrows deliberately from a variety of European languages, particularly French, Russian, Latin, and German. Find out more...
[edit] November 2006
The constructed language Interlingua is an international auxiliary language (IAL) published in 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). It is the most successful naturalistic constructed language. In appearance, Interlingua combines a Romance vocabulary with a simplified Romance grammar, and can thus be seen as a modernized and simplified Latin (or Vulgar Latin to be more precise). It is sometimes called IALA Interlingua to distinguish it from the other uses of interlingua.
The expansive movements of science, technology, trade, diplomacy, and the arts, combined with the historical dominance of the Greek and Latin languages have resulted in a large common vocabulary among Western languages. Interlingua uses a mostly rigid procedure to extract and standardize the most widespread word (or, occasionally, words) for a concept found in a set of control languages (English, French, Italian and Spanish/Portuguese, with German and Russian as secondary references). The resulting vocabulary corresponds closely with the Neolatin element in the International Scientific Vocabulary. Find out more...
[edit] December 2006
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Baronh is an artificial language created by Japanese science fiction author Morioka Hiroyuki and used in Crest of the Stars and Banner of the Stars. The name Baronh means "language of the Abh".
The Baronh language is derived from the ancient Japanese language, spoken till the beginning of the ninth century and recorded in Kojiki, Man'yōshū and other ancient documents. It is not precisely the ancient language itself, but a reconstructed one which is named Takamagahara language after the mythological heaven in Kojiki. In Crest of the Stars, Japanese revolutionists seeking to remove foreign influence from the Japanese language created their own "purified" version, which removed borrowed words and expressions and revived ancient ones. It was these revolutionists who established the colony that created the Abh, giving them their language. Find out more...
[edit] January 2007
Esperanto is the most widely spoken constructed international language. The name derives from Doktoro Esperanto, the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof first published the Unua Libro in 1887. The word itself means 'one who hopes'. Zamenhof's goal was to create an easy and flexible language as a universal second language to foster peace and international understanding.
Although no country has adopted the language officially, it has enjoyed continuous usage by a community estimated at between 100,000 and 2 million speakers. The 2005 edition of the Ethnologue estimates that there are about a thousand native speakers.
Today, Esperanto is employed in world travel, correspondence, cultural exchange, conventions, literature, language instruction, television (Internacia Televido) and radio broadcasting. Some state education systems offer elective courses in Esperanto; there is evidence that learning Esperanto is a useful preparation for later language learning. Find out more...
[edit] February 2007
Wenedyk (in English: Venedic) is a constructed language of the naturalistic kind, created by the Dutch translator Jan van Steenbergen. It is used in the fictional Republic of the Two Crowns (based on the Republic of Two Nations), in the alternate timeline of Ill Bethisad. Officially, Wenedyk is a descendant of Vulgar Latin with a strong Slavic admixture, based on the premise that the Roman Empire incorporated the ancestors of the Poles in their territory. Less officially, it tries to show what Polish would have looked like if it had been a Romance instead of a Slavic language. Find out more...
[edit] March 2007
Láadan is a constructed language created by Suzette Haden Elgin in 1982 to test the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis for women, specifically to determine if Western natural languages were better suited for expressing the views of men than women. The language was included in her Native Tongue science fiction series. Láadan contains a number of words that are used to make unambiguous statements that include how one feels about what one is saying. According to Elgin, this is designed to counter male-centred language's limitations on women, who are forced to respond "I know I said that, but I meant this". Find out more...
[edit] April 2007
Teonaht is a constructed language that has been developed since 1962 by science fiction writer and University of Rochester English professor Sarah Higley, under the pseudonym of Sally Caves. It is spoken in the fantasy setting of the Teonim, a race of polydactyl humans who have a cultural history of worshipping catlike deities.
Teonaht uses the Object Subject Verb (OSV) word order, which is rare in natural languages. An interesting feature of Teonaht is that the end of the sentence is the place of greatest emphasis, as what is mentioned last is uppermost in the mind. The language has a "Law of Detachment" whereby suffixes can be moved to the beginnings of words for emphasis and even attach onto other words such as pronouns.
Teonaht is a highly elaborated language, and many consider it one of the finest examples of an artistic language since the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. It is often cited, like Verdurian, as an example of the genre in articles on the world of Internet-hosted amateur conlanging. Find out more...
[edit] May 2007
Blissymbolics or Blissymbols were conceived of as an ideographic writing system consisting of several hundred basic symbols, each representing a concept, which can be composed together to generate new symbols that represent new concepts. Blissymbols differ from all the world's major writing systems in that the characters do not correspond at all to the sounds of any spoken language.
They were invented by Charles K. Bliss (1897-1985) after the Second World War. Bliss wanted to create an easy-to-learn international auxiliary language to allow communication between people who do not speak the same language. He was inspired by Chinese ideograms, with which Bliss became familiar while in Shanghai as a refugee from Nazi anti-semitic persecution. His system World Writing was explained in his work Semantography (1949). This work laid out the language structure and vocabulary for his utopian vision of easy communication, but it failed to gain popularity. However, since the 1960s, Blissymbols have become popular as a method of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) for non-speaking people with cerebral palsy or other disorders, for whom it can be impossible to otherwise communicate with spoken language. Find out more...
[edit] June 2007
Zaum (Russian: заумь or заумный язык) is a word used to describe the linguistic experiments in sound symbolism and language creation of Russian Futurist poets such as Velimir Khlebnikov and Aleksei Kruchenykh.
Coined by Kruchenykh in 1913, the word zaum is made up of the Russian prefix за "beyond, behind" and noun ум "the mind, nous" and has been translated as "transreason" or "beyonsense" (Paul Schmidt). According to scholar Gerald Janecek, zaum can be defined as experimental poetic language characterized by indeterminacy in meaning.
As Kruchenykh has it, zaum is a transrational language, "wild, flaming, explosive (wild paradise, fiery languages, blazing coal)," which awakens creative imagination from the manacles of everyday speech. Zaum "can provide a universal poetic language, born organically, and not artificially like Esperanto." Find out more...
[edit] July 2007
Afrihili is a constructed language designed in 1970 by K. A. Kumi Attobrah to be used as a lingua franca in all of Africa. The name of the language is a combination of Africa and Swahili. The author, a native of Akrokerri in Ghana, originally conceived of the idea in 1967 while on a sea voyage from English Dover to French Calais. His intention was that "it would promote unity and understanding among the different peoples of the continent, reduce costs in printing due to translations and promote trade". It is meant to be easy for Africans to learn.
Afrihili draws its phonology, morphology and syntax from various African languages. The lexicon covers as many African languages as possible, as well as words from many other sources "so Africanized that they do not appear foreign", although no specific etymologies are indicated by the author.
The language uses the Latin alphabet with the addition of two vowel symbols, ɛ and ɔ, which denote the same sounds as in IPA, namely open-mid front and back vowels, as in several Western African languages like Ewe and Yorùbá. Find out more...
[edit] August 2007
Khuzdûl is the language of the Dwarves in J. R. R. Tolkien's fiction of Middle-earth. Khuzdûl is usually written with the Cirth script. It appears to be based, like the Semitic languages, on triconsonantal roots: kh-z-d, b-n-d, z-g-l.
Little is known of Khuzdûl, as the Dwarves kept it to themselves, except for their battle-cry: Baruk Khazâd! Khazâd ai-mênu! meaning Axes of the Dwarves! The Dwarves are upon you!; and the runes written on Balin's tomb in Moria can be translated to read "Balin Fundinul Uzbad Khazad-dumu", meaning "Balin, son of Fundin, Lord of Moria". This secrecy extended to Dwarven names: with the exception of the Petty-dwarves, all Dwarven names are either from another language (Dalish) or nicknames/titles, and Dwarves don't even record their names on their tombstones. Only few non-Dwarves are recorded of having learnt Khuzdûl, most notably Eöl.
Placenames were not subject to this secrecy, and form the major sample of known Khuzdûl. Unlike their private names, Dwarves seemed eager to share these names with others. Find out more...
[edit] September 2007
Basic English is a constructed language with a small number of words created by Charles Kay Ogden and described in his book Basic English: A General Introduction with Rules and Grammar (1930). The language is based on a simplified version of English, in essence a subset of it.
Ogden said that it would take seven years to learn English, seven months for Esperanto, and seven weeks for Basic English, comparable with Ido. Thus Basic English is used by companies who need to make complex books for international use, and by language schools that need to give people some knowledge of English in a short time. Ogden did not put any words into Basic English that could be paraphrased with other words, and he strove to make the words work for speakers of any other language. He put his set of words through a large number of tests and adjustments. He also simplified the grammar but tried to keep it normal for English users.
The concept gained its greatest publicity just after the Second World War as a tool for world peace. Find out more...
[edit] October 2007
Sindarin is an artificial language developed by J. R. R. Tolkien. In Tolkien's mythos, it was the Elvish language most commonly spoken in Middle-earth in the Third Age. It was the language of the Sindar, those Teleri which had been left behind on the Great Journey of the Elves. It was derived from an earlier language called Common Telerin. When the Noldor returned to Middle-earth, they adopted the Sindarin language, although they believed their native Quenya more beautiful. Sindarin shared common roots with Quenya, and the two languages had many similar words. Sindarin was said to be more changeful than the older tongue, however, and there were a number of regional 'dialects' of the tongue. The Sindarin spoken in Doriath was said to be the highest and most noble form of the language.
Before the downfall, most of the Men of Númenor also spoke the language. Knowledge of it was kept in the Númenórean exile realm of Gondor, especially amongst the learned. Sindarin is the language referred to as the Elven-tongue in The Lord of the Rings. Find out more...
[edit] November 2007
Signuno is a manual encoding of Esperanto, derived from Gestuno roots and Esperanto morphology by an anonymous author.
Its alphabet has signs for Esperanto's diacritic letters : Ŝ, Ĥ, Ĝ, Ŭ are derived from their base letters S, H, G, U; while Ĉ and Ĵ (like J) are of Cyrillic origin. H, P, Q are from the Irish manual alphabet, while Z (shaped like an ASL 3) appears to be unique to Signuno. The other letters follow international norms. (That is, similar to ASL but with an Irish T.)
The system works to capture Esperanto grammar rather than exploit the spatial options available to sign language; it faces similar shortcomings as did de l'Épée's "methodical signs" in comparison to French Sign Language. Because of this, it is unlikely to be viable as an independent sign language. In effect, Signuno is a manual, logographic orthography for Esperanto; comparable to Manually Coded English vis a vis spoken English. Find out more...
[edit] December 2007
The Talossan language (El Glheþ Talossán) is a constructed language created by R. Ben Madison for the micronation he founded, the Kingdom of Talossa. It's also the official language in the other Talossan micronation which split off in 2004, the Republic of Talossa.
Talossan is a constructed Gallo-Romance language, inspired by French and Occitan, and very naturalistic (with quite a few irregularities). In an effort to create a kind of "national mythology" for his micronation, Madison discovered in 1985 that one of the Berber sub-tribes of Morocco was called the Talesinnt, and decided that Talossans were "inexplicably and inextricably connected somehow to Berbers." This resulted in the Talossan language being inspired by Berber languages. More recently however, words are derived from Romance roots and given a French/Provençal feeling to them (some see a Romanian influence as well), but there is no one set of rules for derivation through which every word can be predicted. The word "Talossa" itself is not Romance, but Finno-Ugric in origin: it comes from the Finnish word for "inside the house" (Talossa began in Madison's bedroom.). Find out more...
[edit] January 2008
The language Occidental, later Interlingue, is a planned language created by the Baltogerman naval officer and teacher Edgar de Wahl and published in 1922.
Occidental is devised with great care to ensure that many of its derived word forms reflect the similar forms common to a number of Western European languages. This was done through application of de Wahl's rule which is actually a small set of rules for converting verb infinitives into derived nouns and adjectives. The result is a language relatively easy to understand at first sight for individuals acquainted with several Western European languages. Coupled with a simplified grammar, this made Occidental exceptionally popular in Europe during the 15 years before World War II, and it is believed that it was at its height the fourth most popular planned language, after Volapük, Esperanto and perhaps Ido in order of appearance. Find out more...
[edit] February 2008
The Black Speech is the fictional language of Mordor in The Lord of the Rings. Sauron created the Black Speech, as an artificial language, to be the sole language of all the servants of Mordor, replacing the many different varieties of Orkish and other languages used by his servants. Tolkien describes the language as existing in two forms, the ancient "pure" forms used by Sauron himself, the Nazgûl, and the Olog-hai, and the more "debased" form used by the soldiery of the Barad-dûr at the end of the Third Age.
Having designed the Black Speech to be unpleasant, J. R. R. Tolkien did not enjoy writing in it (according to Tolkien, he once received a goblet from a fan with the Ring inscription on it in Black Speech, and, finding it distasteful, used it only as an ashtray). As a result, the Black Speech is one of the more fragmentary languages in the novels. The forces of good refuse to utter it, as it attracts the attention of the Eye of Sauron. Unlike Elvish, there are no poems or songs written in it (apart from the Ring's inscription). Find out more...
[edit] March 2008
Ro is an a priori constructed language created by Edward Powell Foster beginning in 1904. In Ro, words are constructed using a category system. For example, the word for red is "bofoc", and yellow is "bofof". All words starting with "bofo-" signify colors. Foster did not simply try to design a better language in general, but to optimize his language for one design criterion: recognizability of unknown words. Foster wrote about Ro: "Ro did not begin with attempting to rival or supplant any other language whatever, either natural or artificial, nor was it suggested by any of them. Unexpectedly came the thought: 'how strange it is that there is nothing in the appearance of a written or printed word that gives the slightest hint of its meaning. Why should a word not be a picture? A new word, never seen before would then, like a painting seen for the first time, convey at least some of the meaning to the eye.'" Find out more...
[edit] May 2008
Ro is an a priori constructed language created by Rev. Edward Powell Foster beginning in 1904. In Ro, words are constructed using a category system. For example, the word for red is "bofoc", and yellow is "bofof". All words starting with "bofo-" signify colors. Foster did not simply try to design a better language in general, but to optimize his language for one design criterion: recognizability of unknown words. Foster wrote about Ro:
- Ro did not begin with attempting to rival or supplant any other language whatever, either natural or artificial, nor was it suggested by any of them.
- Unexpectedly came the thought: "How strange it is that there is nothing in the appearance of a written or printed word that gives the slightest hint of its meaning. Why should a word not be a picture? A new word, never seen before would then, like a painting seen for the first time, convey at least some of the meaning to the eye." Find out more...
[edit] June 2008
Volapük (pronounced [volaˈpyk], or IPA: /ˈvɒləpʊk/ in English) is a constructed language, created in 1879-1880 by Johann Martin Schleyer, a Roman Catholic priest in Baden, Germany. Schleyer felt that God had told him in a dream to create an international language. Volapük conventions took place in 1884 (Friedrichshafen), 1887 (Munich), and 1889 (Paris). The first two conventions used German, and the last conference used only Volapük. In 1889, there were an estimated 283 clubs, 25 periodicals in or about Volapük, and 316 textbooks in 25 languages. Today there are an estimated 20-30 Volapük speakers in the world. Volapük was largely displaced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by simpler and more easily-learned languages, such as Esperanto and Latino Sine Flexione. Find out more...
