This article is about the creation of planned or artificial human languages. For information about the linguistic field of language planning and policy, see language planning. For languages that naturally emerge in computer simulations or controlled psychological experiments with humans, see artificial language. For languages with a high morpheme-per-word ratio, see synthetic language.
The Conlang Flag, a symbol of language construction created by subscribers to the CONLANG mailing list, which represents the Tower of Babel against a rising sun
A constructed language (shortened to conlang)[lower-alpha 1] is a language whose phonology, grammar, orthography, and vocabulary, instead of having developed naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a work of fiction. A constructed language may also be referred to as an artificial, planned or invented language, or (in some cases) a fictional language. Planned languages (or engineered languages/engelangs) are languages that have been purposefully designed; they are the result of deliberate, controlling intervention and are thus of a form of language planning.[1]
The expression planned language is sometimes used to indicate international auxiliary languages and other languages designed for actual use in human communication. Some prefer it to the adjective artificial, as this term may be perceived as pejorative. Outside Esperantoculture,[lower-alpha 2] the term language planning means the prescriptions given to a natural language to standardize it; in this regard, even a "natural language" may be artificial in some respects, meaning some of its words have been crafted by conscious decision. Prescriptive grammars, which date to ancient times for classical languages such as Latin and Sanskrit, are rule-based codifications of natural languages, such codifications being a middle ground between naïve natural selection and development of language and its explicit construction. The term glossopoeia is also used to mean language construction, particularly construction of artistic languages.[2]
The terms "planned", "constructed", "invented", "fictional",[6] and "artificial" are used differently in some traditions. For example, few speakers of Interlingua consider their language artificial, since they assert that it has no invented content: Interlingua's vocabulary is taken from a small set of natural languages, and its grammar is based closely on these source languages, even including some degree of irregularity; its proponents prefer to describe its vocabulary and grammar as standardized rather than artificial or constructed. Similarly, Latino sine flexione (LsF) is a simplification of Latin from which the inflections have been removed. As with Interlingua, some prefer to describe its development as "planning" rather than "constructing". Some speakers of Esperanto and Esperantidos also avoid the term "artificial language" because they deny that there is anything "unnatural" about the use of their language in human communication.[citation needed]
By contrast, some philosophers[according to whom?] have argued that all human languages are conventional or artificial. François Rabelais's fictional giant Pantagruel, for instance, said: "It is a misuse of terms to say that we have natural language; languages exist through arbitrary institutions and the conventions of peoples. Voices, as the dialecticians say, don't signify naturally, but capriciously."[7]
Furthermore, fictional or experimental languages can be considered naturalistic if they model real world languages. For example, if a naturalistic conlang is derived a posteriori from another language (real or constructed), it should imitate natural processes of phonological, lexical, and grammatical change. In contrast with languages such as Interlingua, naturalistic fictional languages are not usually intended for easy learning or communication. Thus, naturalistic fictional languages tend to be more difficult and complex. While Interlingua has simpler grammar, syntax, and orthography than its source languages (though more complex and irregular than Esperanto or its descendants), naturalistic fictional languages typically mimic behaviors of natural languages like irregular verbs and nouns, and complicated phonological processes.[original research?]
Overview
In terms of purpose, most constructed languages can broadly be divided into:
Auxiliary languages (auxlangs) or IALs (for International Auxiliary Languages), devised for interlinguistic or international communication;
Artistic languages (artlangs), devised to create aesthetic pleasure or humorous effect (secret languages and mystical languages are also usually classified as artistic languages).[8]
The boundaries between these categories are by no means clear.[9] A constructed language could easily fall into more than one of the above categories. A logical language created for aesthetic reasons would also be classifiable as an artistic language; one created with philosophical motives could include being used as an auxiliary language. There are no rules, either inherent in the process of language construction or externally imposed, that would limit a constructed language to fitting only one of the above categories.
As soon as a constructed language has a community of fluent speakers, especially if it has numerous native speakers, it begins to evolve and hence loses its constructed status. For example, Modern Hebrew and its pronunciation norms were developed from existing traditions of Hebrew, such as Mishnaic Hebrew and Biblical Hebrew following a general Sephardic pronunciation, rather than engineered from scratch, and has undergone considerable changes since the state of Israel was founded in 1948 (Hetzron 1990:693).[citation not found] However, linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann argues that Modern Hebrew, which he terms "Israeli", is a Semito-European hybrid based not only on Hebrew but also on Yiddish and other languages spoken by revivalists.[11] Zuckermann therefore endorses the translation of the Hebrew Bible into what he calls "Israeli".[12]Esperanto as a living spoken language has evolved significantly from the prescriptive blueprint published in 1887, so that modern editions of the Fundamenta Krestomatio, a 1903 collection of early texts in the language, require many footnotes on the syntactic and lexical differences between early and modern Esperanto.[13]
Proponents of constructed languages often have many reasons for using them. The famous but disputed Sapir–Whorf hypothesis is sometimes cited; this claims that the language one speaks influences the way one thinks. Thus, a "better" language should allow the speaker to think more clearly or intelligently or to encompass more points of view; this was the intention of Suzette Haden Elgin in creating Láadan, a feminist language[14] embodied in her feminist science fiction series Native Tongue.[15] Constructed languages have been included in standardized tests such as the SAT, where they were used to test the applicant's ability to infer and apply grammatical rules.[16][17] By the same token, a constructed language might also be used to restrict thought, as in George Orwell's Newspeak, or to simplify thought, as in Toki Pona. However, linguists such as Steven Pinker argue that ideas exist independently of language. For example, in the book The Language Instinct, Pinker states that children spontaneously re-invent slang and even grammar with each generation. These linguists argue that attempts to control the range of human thought through the reform of language would fail, as concepts like "freedom" will reappear in new words if the old words vanish.
Proponents claim a particular language makes it easier to express and understand concepts in one area, and more difficult in others. An example can be taken from the way various programming languages make it easier to write certain kinds of programs and harder to write others.
Another reason cited for using a constructed language is the telescope rule, which claims that it takes less time to first learn a simple constructed language and then a natural language, than to learn only a natural language. Thus, if someone wants to learn English, some suggest learning Basic English first. Constructed languages like Esperanto and Interlingua are in fact often simpler due to the typical lack of irregular verbs and other grammatical quirks. Some studies have found that learning Esperanto helps in learning a non-constructed language later (see propaedeutic value of Esperanto).
One constraint on a constructed language is that if it was constructed to be a natural language for use by fictional foreigners or aliens, as with Dothraki and High Valyrian in the Game of Thrones series, which was adapted from the A Song of Ice and Fire book series, the language should be easily pronounced by actors, and should fit with and incorporate any fragments of the language already invented by the book's author, and preferably also fit with any personal names of fictional speakers of the language.[original research?]
A priori and a posteriori languages
An a priori (from Latina priori, "from the former") constructed language is one whose features (including vocabulary, grammar, etc.) are not based on an existing language, and an a posteriori language is the opposite.[8] This categorization, however, is not absolute, as many constructed languages may be called a priori when considering some linguistic factors, and at the same time a posteriori when considering other factors.
A priori language
An a priori language is any constructed language with some features which are not based on existing languages. Instead these features are invented or elaborated to work differently or to allude to different purposes. Some a priori languages are designed to be international auxiliary languages that remove what could be considered an unfair learning advantage for native speakers of a source language that would otherwise exist for a posteriori languages. Others, known as philosophical or taxonomic languages, try to categorize their vocabulary, either to express an underlying philosophy or to make it easier to recognize new vocabulary. Finally, many artistic languages, created for either personal use or for use in a fictional medium, employ consciously constructed grammars and vocabularies, and are best understood as a priori.
An a posteriori language (from Latina posteriori, "from the latter"), according to French linguist Louis Couturat, is any constructed language whose elements are borrowed from or based on existing languages. The term can also be extended to controlled versions of natural languages, and is most commonly used to refer to vocabulary despite other features. Likewise, zonal auxiliary languages (auxiliary languages for speakers of a particular language family) are a posteriori by definition.
While most auxiliary languages are a posteriori due to their intended function as a medium of communication, many artistic languages are fully a posteriori in design—many for the purposes of alternate history. In distinguishing whether the language is a priori or a posteriori, the prevalence and distribution of respectable traits is often the key.
Grammatical speculation dates from Classical Antiquity; for instance, it appears in Plato's Cratylus in Hermogenes's contention that words are not inherently linked to what they refer to; that people apply "a piece of their own voice ... to the thing".
Dionysius of Sicily created neologisms like menandros "virgin" (from menei "waiting" and andra "husband") for standard Greek parthenos; menekratēs "pillar" (from menei "it remains in one place" and kratei "it is strong") for standard stulos; and ballantion "javelin" (from balletai enantion "thrown against someone") for standard akon.
Alexarchus of Macedon, the brother of King Cassander of Macedon, was the founder of the city of Ouranopolis. Athenaeus recounts a story told by Heracleides of Lembos that Alexarchus "introduced a peculiar vocabulary, referring to a rooster as a "dawn-crier", a barber as a "mortal-shaver", a drachma as "worked silver", ... and a herald as an aputēs [from ēputa "loud-voiced"].
"He [Alexarchus] once wrote something ... to the public authorities in Casandreia ... As for what this letter says, in my opinion not even the Pythian god could make sense of it."[18]
While the mechanisms of grammar suggested by classical philosophers were designed to explain existing languages (Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit), they were not used to construct new grammars. Roughly contemporary to Plato, in his descriptive grammar of Sanskrit, Pāṇini constructed a set of rules for explaining language, so that the text of his grammar may be considered a mixture of natural and constructed language.
Early constructed languages
Page 68r of the Voynich manuscript. This three-page foldout from the manuscript includes a chart that appears astronomical.
A legend recorded in the seventh-century Irish work Auraicept na n-Éces claims that Fénius Farsaid visited Shinar after the confusion of tongues, and he and his scholars studied the various languages for ten years, taking the best features of each to create in Bérla tóbaide ("the selected language"), which he named Goídelc—the Irish language. This appears to be the first mention of the concept of a constructed language in literature.
The earliest non-natural languages were considered less "constructed" than "super-natural", mystical, or divinely inspired. The Lingua Ignota, recorded in the 12th century by St. Hildegard of Bingen, is an example, and apparently the first entirely artificial language.[14] It is a form of private mystical cant (see also Enochian). An important example from Middle-Eastern culture is Balaibalan, invented in the 16th century.[2]Kabbalistic grammatical speculation was directed at recovering the original language spoken by Adam and Eve in Paradise, lost in the confusion of tongues. The first Christian project for an ideal language is outlined in Dante Alighieri's De vulgari eloquentia, where he searches for the ideal Italian vernacular suited for literature. Ramon Llull's Ars Magna was a project of a perfect language with which the infidels could be convinced of the truth of the Christian faith. It was basically an application of combinatorics on a given set of concepts.[19] During the Renaissance, Lullian and Kabbalistic ideas were drawn upon in a magical context, resulting in cryptographic applications.
17th and 18th century: advent of philosophical languages
The 17th century saw the rise of projects for "philosophical" or "a priori" languages, such as:
Francis Lodwick's A Common Writing (1647) and The Groundwork or Foundation laid (or So Intended) for the Framing of a New Perfect Language and a Universal Common Writing (1652)
These early taxonomic conlangs produced systems of hierarchical classification that were intended to result in both spoken and written expression. Leibniz had a similar purpose for his lingua generalis of 1678, aiming at a lexicon of characters upon which the user might perform calculations that would yield true propositions automatically, as a side-effect developing binary calculus. These projects were not only occupied with reducing or modelling grammar, but also with the arrangement of all human knowledge into "characters" or hierarchies, an idea that with the Enlightenment would ultimately lead to the Encyclopédie. Many of these 17th–18th centuries conlangs were pasigraphies, or purely written languages with no spoken form or a spoken form that would vary greatly according to the native language of the reader.[21]
Leibniz and the encyclopedists realized that it is impossible to organize human knowledge unequivocally in a tree diagram, and consequently to construct an a priori language based on such a classification of concepts. Under the entry Charactère, D'Alembert critically reviewed the projects of philosophical languages of the preceding century. After the Encyclopédie, projects for a priori languages moved more and more to the lunatic fringe.[citation needed] Individual authors, typically unaware of the history of the idea, continued to propose taxonomic philosophical languages until the early 20th century (e.g. Ro), but most recent engineered languages have had more modest goals; some are limited to a specific field, like mathematical formalism or calculus (e.g. Lincos and programming languages), others are designed for eliminating syntactical ambiguity (e.g., Loglan and Lojban) or maximizing conciseness (e.g., Ithkuil[14]).
Already in the Encyclopédie attention began to focus on a posteriori auxiliary languages. Joachim Faiguet de Villeneuve in the article on Langue wrote a short proposition of a "laconic" or regularized grammar of French. During the 19th century, a bewildering variety of such International Auxiliary Languages (IALs) were proposed, so that Louis Couturat and Léopold Leau in Histoire de la langue universelle (1903) reviewed 38 projects.
The first of these that made any international impact was Volapük, proposed in 1879 by Johann Martin Schleyer; within a decade, 283 Volapükist clubs were counted all over the globe. However, disagreements between Schleyer and some prominent users of the language led to schism, and by the mid-1890s it fell into obscurity, making way for Esperanto, proposed in 1887 by L. L. Zamenhof, and its descendants. Interlingua, the most recent auxlang to gain a significant number of speakers, emerged in 1951, when the International Auxiliary Language Association published its Interlingua–English Dictionary and an accompanying grammar. The success of Esperanto did not stop others from trying to construct new auxiliary languages, such as Leslie Jones' Eurolengo, which mixes elements of English and Spanish.
Loglan (1955) and its descendants constitute a pragmatic return to the aims of the a priori languages, tempered by the requirement of usability of an auxiliary language. Thus far, these modern a priori languages have garnered only small groups of speakers.
Robot Interaction Language (2010) is a spoken language that is optimized for communication between machines and humans. The major goals of ROILA are that it should be easily learnable by the human user, and optimized for efficient recognition by computer speech recognition algorithms.
Artists may use language as a source of creativity in art, poetry, or calligraphy, or as a metaphor to address themes as cultural diversity and the vulnerability of the individual in a globalized world.
Some people prefer however to take pleasure in constructing, crafting a language by a conscious decision for reasons of literary enjoyment or aesthetic reasons without any claim of usefulness. Such artistic languages begin to appear in Early Modern literature (in Pantagruel, and in Utopian contexts), but they only seem to gain notability as serious projects beginning in the 20th century.[2]A Princess of Mars (1912) by Edgar Rice Burroughs was possibly the first fiction of that century to feature a constructed language. J. R. R. Tolkien developed families of related fictional languages and discussed artistic languages publicly, giving a lecture entitled "A Secret Vice" in 1931 at a congress. (Orwell's Newspeak is considered a satire of an international auxiliary language rather than an artistic language proper.)
The matter of whether or not a constructed language can be owned or protected by intellectual property laws, or if it would even be possible to enforce those laws, is contentious.
In a 2015 lawsuit, CBS and Paramount Pictures challenged a fan film project called Axanar, stating the project infringed upon their intellectual property, which included the Klingon language, among other creative elements. During the controversy, Marc Okrand, the language's original designer expressed doubt as to whether Paramount's claims of ownership were valid.[24][25]
David J. Peterson, a linguist who created multiple well-known constructed languages including the Valyrian languages and Dothraki, advocated a similar opinion, saying that "Theoretically, anyone can publish anything using any language I created, and, in my opinion, neither I nor anyone else should be able to do anything about it."[26]
However, Peterson also expressed concern that the respective rights-holders—regardless of whether or not their ownership of the rights is legitimate—would be likely to sue individuals who publish material in said languages, especially if the author might profit from said material.
Furthermore, comprehensive learning material for such constructed languages as High Valyrian and Klingon has been published and made freely accessible on the language-learning platform Duolingo—but those courses are licensed by the respective copyright holders.[26] Because only a few such disputes have occurred thus far, the legal consensus on ownership of languages remains uncertain.
The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre claims ownership of Palawa kani, an attempted composite reconstruction of up to a dozen extinct Tasmanian indigenous languages, and has asked Wikipedia to remove its page on the project. However, there is no current legal backing for the claim.[27]
Modern conlang organizations
Various papers on constructed languages were published from the 1970s through the 1990s, such as Glossopoeic Quarterly, Taboo Jadoo, and The Journal of Planned Languages.[28] The Conlang Mailing List was founded in 1991, and later split off an AUXLANG mailing list dedicated to international auxiliary languages. In the early to mid-1990s a few conlang-related zines were published as email or websites, such as Vortpunoj[29] and Model Languages. The Conlang mailing list has developed a community of conlangers with its own customs, such as translation challenges and translation relays,[30] and its own terminology. Sarah Higley reports from results of her surveys that the demographics of the Conlang list are primarily men from North America and western Europe, with a smaller number from Oceania, Asia, the Middle East, and South America, with an age range from thirteen to over sixty; the number of women participating has increased over time.
More recently founded online communities include the Zompist Bulletin Board (ZBB; since 2001) and the Conlanger Bulletin Board. Discussion on these forums includes presentation of members' conlangs and feedback from other members, discussion of natural languages, whether particular conlang features have natural language precedents, and how interesting features of natural languages can be repurposed for conlangs, posting of interesting short texts as translation challenges, and meta-discussion about the philosophy of conlanging, conlangers' purposes, and whether conlanging is an art or a hobby.[2] Another 2001 survey by Patrick Jarrett showed an average age of 30.65, with the average time since starting to invent languages 11.83 years.[31] A more recent thread on the ZBB showed that many conlangers spend a relatively small amount of time on any one conlang, moving from one project to another; about a third spend years on developing the same language.[32]
↑ François Rabelais, Œuvres complètes, III, 19 (Paris: Seuil, 1973). Also cited in Claude Piron, Le Défi des Langues (L'Harmattan, 1994) ISBN2-7384-2432-5.
1 2 Peterson, David (2015). The Art of Language Invention (1sted.). Penguin Books. pp.21–22. ISBN978-0143126461.
↑ "My hypothesis was that if I constructed a language designed specifically to provide a more adequate mechanism for expressing women's perceptions, women would (a) embrace it and begin using it, or (b) embrace the idea but not the language, say "Elgin, you've got it all wrong!" and construct some other "women's language" to replace it." Glatzer, Jenna (2007). "Interview With Suzette Haden Elgin". Archived from the original on 12 June 2007. Retrieved 20 March 2007.
↑ Leopold Einstein, "Al la historio de la Provoj de Lingvoj Tutmondaj de Leibnitz ĝis la Nuna Tempo", 1884. Reprinted in Fundamenta Krestomatio, UEA 1992 [1903].
↑ Artificial languages are informally called conlangs (constructed languages), and the study of artificial languages and related matters is interlinguistics.
↑ Esperanto is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language.
Related Research Articles
Fictional languages are the subset of constructed languages (conlangs) that have been created as part of a fictional setting. Typically they are the creation of one individual, while natural languages evolve out of a particular culture or people group, and other conlangs may have group involvement. Fictional languages are also distinct from natural languages in that they have no native speakers. By contrast, the constructed language of Esperanto now has native speakers.
Interlingua is an international auxiliary language (IAL) developed between 1937 and 1951 by the American International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). It is a constructed language of the "naturalistic" variety, whose vocabulary, grammar, and other characteristics are derived from natural languages. Interlingua literature maintains that (written) Interlingua is comprehensible to the billions of people who speak Romance languages, though it is actively spoken by only a few hundred.
In neuropsychology, linguistics, and philosophy of language, a natural language or ordinary language is any language that occurs naturally in a human community by a process of use, repetition, and change without conscious planning or premeditation. It can take different forms, typically either a spoken language or a sign language. Natural languages are distinguished from constructed and formal languages such as those used to program computers or to study logic.
An international auxiliary language is a language meant for communication between people from all different nations, who do not share a common first language. An auxiliary language is primarily a foreign language and often a constructed language. The concept is related to but separate from the idea of a lingua franca that people must use to communicate. The study of international auxiliary languages is interlinguistics.
An artistic language, or artlang, is a constructed language designed for aesthetic and phonetic pleasure. Constructed languages can be artistic to the extent that artists use it as a source of creativity in art, poetry, calligraphy or as a metaphor to address themes such as cultural diversity and the vulnerability of the individual in a globalizing world. They can also be used to test linguistical theories, such as Linguistic relativity.
Interlinguistics, also known as cosmoglottics, is the science of planned languages as it has existed for more than a century. Formalised by Otto Jespersen in 1931 as the science of interlanguages, in more recent times, the field has been more focused with language planning, the collection of strategies to deliberately influence the structure and function of a living language. In this framework, interlanguages become a subset of planned languages, i.e. extreme cases of language planning.
Esperanto and Interlingua are two planned languages with different approaches to the problem of providing an International auxiliary language (IAL). Esperanto has many more speakers; the number of speakers is c. 100,000-2,000,000. On the other hand, the number of speakers is c. 1,500 for Interlingua, but speakers of the language claim to be able to communicate easily with the c. 1 billion speakers of Romance languages, whereas Esperanto speakers can only communicate among each other.
"A Secret Vice", also known as "A Hobby for The Home", is a lecture first presented by English philologist and author J. R. R. Tolkien in 1931. The lecture concerns Tolkien's relations with and view on constructed languages, in particular on artistic languages. In the talk, Tolkien discusses the human desire to make languages, and his criteria to create a good language – these include phonoaesthetics and the presence of a mythology to accompany the language. Tolkien's presentation was the first instance of him openly exhibiting his hobby of conlanging, and includes examples of several of his languages.
Esperanto and Ido are constructed international auxiliary languages, with Ido being an Esperantido derived from Esperanto and Reformed Esperanto. The number of speakers is estimated at 100 thousand to 2 million for Esperanto, whereas Ido is much fewer at 100 to 1 thousand.
Lingua sistemfrater, also referred to as Frater, is an a posteriori international auxiliary language created by Vietnamese translator Phạm Xuân Thái in 1957 as Frater : The simplest International Language Ever Constructed. The language uses a largely Greco-Latin lexicon, and an Asian-influenced grammar.
Ido and Interlingua are two constructed languages created in the 20th century, Ido circa 1910 and Interlingua circa 1940. Both have had some measure of success, but Interlingua has enjoyed greater diffusion and acceptance by public and private institutions—it is taught in many high schools and universities, for example. Ido was developed by a small committee from Reformed Esperanto, whereas Interlingua was developed from scratch by an American organization, the IALA.
Novial was created as an international auxiliary language by Danish linguist Otto Jespersen, who introduced it to the world in 1928. Jespersen had previously been a co-author of Ido, which started to take form around 1907. Both languages base their vocabularies primarily on prominent Germanic and Romance languages, but differ grammatically in several important respects. Novial is more analytic in its grammar than Ido, and, in Jespersen's view, more natural.
David Joshua Peterson is an American language creator. He came to prominence after creating the Dothraki and Valyrian languages for the television series Game of Thrones. He has subsequently worked on a number of other projects, including the films Dune and Dune: Part Two, for which he created the Chakobsa language. He has written a book on language construction entitled The Art of Language Invention.
The Valyrian languages are a fictional language family in the A Song of Ice and Fire series of fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin, and in their television adaptation Game of Thrones and later House of the Dragon.
Conlanging: The Art of Crafting Tongues is a 2017 documentary film about conlanging – the hobby of constructing artificial languages and the people who make them. The film features conlangers David J. Peterson, Marc Okrand and David Salo, as well as Paul Frommer, linguistics professor and creator of Na'vi, and Christine Schreyer, anthropologist at the University of British Columbia, who hopes to be able to apply conlanging methods to endangered languages. The film also looks at the history of the hobby and modern-day conlangers. While the film was made available for online purchase in 24 August, a premiere was held on 22 July at the University of Calgary's Plaza Theatre. Production began in 2015, and received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, but the film's future was secured through an Indiegogo campaign that raised $25,000 during August 2016. The Language Creation Society provided $3,000 worth of funds towards the film and held an interview with Watkins.
A pan-Romance language or Romance interlanguage is a codified linguistic variety which synthesizes the variation of the Romance languages and is representative of these as a whole. It can be seen as a standard language proposal for the whole language family but is generally considered a zonal constructed language because it's the result of intense codification. Zonal languages are, according to interlinguist Detlev Blanke, constructed languages which "arise by choosing or mixing linguistic elements in a language group".
In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers who Tried to Build a Perfect Language is a 2009 non-fiction book by linguist Arika Okrent about the history and culture of constructed languages, or conlangs, languages created by individuals. Okrent explores the motivations for creating a language, the challenges faced by such projects, and the outcomes of a number of high-profile conlangs. The book revolves around six conlangs: John Wilkins' unnamed 'philosophical language', Esperanto, Blissymbols, Loglan and its descendant Lojban, and the Klingon language designed for the Star Trek universe. Okrent describes her personal experiences learning and interacting with these languages and their speakers, and provides historical and linguistic analyses of their structures and features.
Viossa is an experimental, community-created, constructed language (conlang) and an artificial pidgin, created in 2014 by the digital community of r/conlangs in Reddit, who wanted to simulate a pidgin. The language is created to examine the contact between languages and is classified as an engineered language.
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