List of constructed languages

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The following list of notable constructed languages is divided into auxiliary, ritual, engineered, and artistic (including fictional) languages, and their respective subgenres. All entries on this list have further information on separate Wikipedia articles.

Contents

Auxiliary languages

International auxiliary languages

International auxiliary languages (IAL) are languages constructed to provide easy, fast, and/or improved communication among all human beings, or a significant portion, without necessarily replacing native languages.

Zonal auxiliary languages

Zonal auxiliary languages are languages created with the purpose of facilitating communication between speakers of a certain group of related languages. Unlike international auxiliary languages for global uses, they are intended to serve a limited linguistic or geographic area. Examples include Pan-Slavic languages, Pan-Romance languages and Pan-Germanic languages.

Controlled languages

Controlled natural languages are natural languages that have been altered to make them simpler, easier to use, or more acceptable in certain circumstances, such as for use by people who do not speak the original language well. The following projects are examples of controlled English:

NameOriginCreatorComments
Basic English 1925 Charles Kay Ogden Seek to limit the language to a given list of common-use words and terms in order to make it simpler to foreign learners or other people who may have difficulties.
Special (Learning) English 1959 Voice of America
Globish 2004Jean-Paul Nerrière
E-Prime 1940sD. David Bourland Jr.Eliminates the verb to be with the intent of making writing more expressive and accurate.
Simplified Technical English 1983European Association of Aerospace IndustriesSeeks to largely reduce the complexity and ambiguity of technical texts such as manuals.
Parallel English 1998 Madhukar Gogate A constructed language, which is based on, but independent of, English.
Plain English VariousProposes a more direct, short, clear language by avoiding many idioms, jargon and foreign words.

Visual languages

Visual languages use symbols or movements in place of the spoken word. Constructed sign languages also fall in this category.

NameISOOriginCreatorComments
Blissymbols zbl1949 Charles K. Bliss An ideographic writing system, with its own grammar and syntax.
International Sign ils1970sJasin MalokuInternational auxiliary sign language. Also known as Gestuno.
Isotype 1925–1934 Otto Neurath et al.A pictographic language.

Ritual languages

These are languages in actual religious use by their communities or congregations.

NameISOOriginCreatorComments
Lyaric c. 1930s Rastas "Rasta Talk" "Dread Talk" Constructed by some in the Rastafari Movement to replace the lost African languages of their heritage.
Eskayan esyc. 1920–1940Mariano DatahanGrammatically based on the Boholano dialect of Cebuano.
Medefaidrin dmf1930sObɛri Ɔkaimɛ churchUsed by this Nigerian Christian church; said to be of sacred origin.
Damin unknownthe Lardil people Created by native speakers of Lardil; only click language outside Africa.

Engineered languages

Engineered languages are devised to test a hypothesis or experiment with innovative linguistic features. They may fall into one or more of three categories: philosophical, experimental and logical.

NameISOOriginCreatorDescription
Logopandecteision 1653 Sir Thomas Urquhart Suggestions toward a taxonomic language of great complexity.
Unnamed language 1668 John Wilkins Detailed suggestions for a symbolic language capable of philosophical precision.
Loglan 1955 James Cooke Brown Created to test the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis; the inspiration for Lojban.
aUI 1962W. John WeilgartEach phoneme is also a morpheme and a sememe, so that a single word can express a complex idea.
Ithkuil 1978–2023John QuijadaComplex language designed to express deeper meanings briefly and clearly.
Láadan ldn1982 Suzette Haden Elgin A tonal language oriented towards women; created to test if natural languages are biased towards men.
Lojban jbo1987Logical Language GroupLogical and syntactically unambiguous language; successor of Loglan.
Toki Pona tok2001 Sonja Lang Minimalist language with 120–137+ words, with over 1600 speakers. [2] [3]
Kēlen 2009Sylvia SotomayorAn alien language that attempts to eliminate verbs, which would violate a universal feature among natural human languages.
Viossa 2014Artificial pidgin language with no strict grammar or phonetic rules; accepted as correct as long as speakers can understand each other.

Others

NameOriginCreatorDescription
Lincos 1960 Hans Freudenthal Designed to be understandable by any possible intelligent extraterrestrial life, for use in interstellar radio transmissions.
Attempto Controlled English 1995 University of Zurich A controlled natural language that is also a knowledge representation language. [4]
Mänti 2006 Daniel Tammet An invented language that uses some Finnic words and grammar.

Artistic/fictional languages

Languages mainly used in fiction

Constructed by J. R. R. Tolkien

Tolkien's most prominent languages are:

LanguageISODescription
Sindarin sjnan Elvish language, largely inspired by Welsh.
Quenya qyaan Elvish language, largely inspired by Finnish, Latin, and Ancient Greek.
Khuzdul a Dwarvish language, largely inspired by the Semitic languages.

Film

NameWorkOriginCreatorDescription
Klingon Star Trek 1979–present Marc Okrand Language of the Klingon alien species.
Atlantean Atlantis: The Lost Empire 2001 Marc Okrand Language of the citizens of the mythical city of Atlantis.
Ku The Interpreter 2005Said el-GheithyFictional African language.
Naʼvi Avatar 2009 Paul Frommer Spoken by the Naʼvi.
Barsoomian John Carter 2012 Paul Frommer, Edgar Rice Burroughs Language of the Martians.
Kiliki Baahubali 2015 Madhan Karky Spoken by the Kalakeyas. [5]
Beama Alpha 2016 Christine Schreyer Upper Paleolithic, 20ka

Games

NameWorkOriginCreatorDescription
Tsolyani Empire of the Petal Throne 1940s M. A. R. Barker Language of the world of Tékumel as described in this roleplaying game.
Gargish Ultima series1981–2013Language of the gargoyle race.
D'ni Myst series1993–2005 Cyan Worlds Language spoken by the subterranean D'ni people.
Hymmnos Ar Tonelico 2006–2010 Akira Tsuchiya Language of Ar Ciel, used in dialogues and lyrics of the songs and as a decorative element. [6]
Wenja Far Cry Primal 2016Andrew Byrd, Brenna ByrdThree dialects (Wenja, Udam, Izila) used in all dialogs and by NPCs. Engineered as an archaic version of PIE. [7]

Internet-based

NameOriginCreatorDescription
Teonaht 1962 Sally Caves Language of the Teonim, a race of polydactyl humans who have a cultural history of worshiping catlike deities.
Verdurian and others1995 Mark Rosenfelder Spoken in the country Verduria of planet Almea.
Dritok 2007Don BoozerSpoken by the Drushek, a large-eared, long-tailed race without vocal cords that lives in the continent Kryslan.

Music

NameOriginCreatorDescription
Kobaïan 1970s Christian Vander Used by French rock group Magma.
Loxian 2005 Roma Ryan Used on Enya's 2005 album Amarantine and 2015 album Dark Sky Island .
Moss 2009 Jackson Moore A language with a musical phonology, modeled on pidgins.

Television

NameWorkOriginCreatorDescription
Vulcan Star Trek: The Original Series 1966–1969Further developed by fans as Golic Vulcan.
Enchanta Encantadia and Etheria television series2005 Suzette Doctolero Spoken by the denizens of Encantadia, known as Encantado(s)/Encantada(s) or Diwata (fairies).
The Valyrian languages and Dothraki Game of Thrones 2011–2019 David J. Peterson
Trigedasleng The 100 2014–2020 David J. Peterson
Belter Creole The Expanse 2014 Nick Farmer Spoken by Belters, inhabitants of the asteroid belt and outer planets of the Solar System. [8]
Romulan Star Trek: Picard 2019 Trent Pehrson

Other literature

NameWorkOriginCreatorDescription
Utopian Utopia 1516 Thomas More, Peter Gillis Constructed language created for the residents of More's fictional nation of Utopia; one of the first attempts at a constructed language.
Zaum 1913 Velimir Khlebnikov, Aleksei Kruchonykh et al.Poetic tongue elaborated by these Russian Futurists as a "transrational" and "most universal" language "of songs, incantations, and curses."
Syldavian The Adventures of Tintin , mostly in King Ottokar's Sceptre 1938–39 Hergé Fictional West Germanic language of Syldavia, a Balkan kingdom.
Newspeak Nineteen Eighty-Four 1949 George Orwell A form of controlled English created by an authoritarian government to gradually reduce the capability of human thought, thus preventing rebellion.
Bordurian The Adventures of Tintin, mostly in The Calculus Affair 1954–56HergéLanguage of Borduria, a country bordering Syldavia.
Spocanian 1962Rolandt TweehuysenLanguage of Spocania.
Chakobsa Dune 1965 Frank Herbert, David J. Peterson, Jessie PetersonSpoken by the Fremen.
Lapine Watership Down 1972 Richard Adams Spoken by rabbits.
Láadan (ldn) Native Tongue and sequels1984 Suzette Haden Elgin Spoken by women.
Baronh Seikai no Monshō ( Crest of the Stars ) and others1996 Morioka Hiroyuki Language of Abh in and others.

Alternative languages

Some experimental languages were developed to observe hypotheses of alternative linguistic interactions which could have led to very different modern languages. The following two examples were created for Ill Bethisad, an alternate history project.

NameISOOriginCreatorDescription
Brithenig bzt1996Andrew SmithA Romance language that replaced native Celtic languages in Great Britain instead of the Germanic Anglo-Saxon. A scenario where British Latin survived and developed further into a modern language.
Wenedyk
(Venedic)		2002 Jan van Steenbergen Polish as a Romance language. A language with Polish phonetics and orthography but with Romance instead of Slavic vocabulary.

Personal languages

NameISOOriginCreatorDescription
Lingua ignota 12th century Hildegard of Bingen Latin-influenced mystical language.
Balaibalan zba c. 14th to 16th century Muhyî-i Gülşenî Language with mostly a priori vocabulary and written in Arabic script; influenced by Persian, Turkish and Arabic.
Enochian late 16th century John Dee, Edward Kelley Purported Angelic language, possibly used in magic and occultism.
Vendergood early 20th century William James Sidis Based mainly on Latin and Greek, with influence from German, English and Romance languages. Contains eight moods, including Sidis's own strongeable, and has a base twelve number system.
Talossan tzl 1980R. Ben MadisonUsed for the Talossa micronation

Constructed languages in Wikipedia

There is a version of Wikipedia in each of the following nine constructed languages. Eight of these languages are IALs (international auxiliary languages), while Lojban is an engineered language. Until 2005, there were also versions of Wikipedia in the constructed languages Toki Pona and Klingon, but these have been deleted. [9]

Constructed languages in Wikipedia
NameISO/LinkOriginUsers worldwideActive editorsArticles
Esperanto eo 1887100,000 – 2,000,000310 368,692
Volapük vo 1880 ?36 41,050
Ido io 1907c. 10005854,639
Interlingua ia 1951c. 10004329,901
Kotava avk 1978 ?2029,892
Interlingue ie 1922 ?3813,106
Lingua Franca Nova lfn 1998 ?244,460
Novial nov 1928 ?291,858
Lojban jbo 1987 ?201,338
Láadan [a] ldn 1982 ?——
Interslavic [a] isv 2011–20177,000 – 20,000——

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 Hosted on the Wikimedia Incubator

References

  1. ↑ Robert Phillipson. English-Only Europe? 2003. p. 172: "several thousand children worldwide are growing up (in over 2000 families) with Esperanto as one of their mother tongues"
  2. ↑ "2022 toki pona census". Toki Pona census. 27 August 2022.
  3. ↑ Lang, Sonja (2014). Toki Pona: the Language of Good. Sonja Lang. ISBN   9780978292300.
  4. ↑ Schwitter, Rolf. "Controlled natural languages for knowledge representation." Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Computational Linguistics: Posters. Association for Computational Linguistics, 2010.
  5. ↑ Cinema, Telugu. "Welcome to new language 'Kilikili' from Baahubali". SaddaHaq. Retrieved 2017-06-11.
  6. ↑ game.salburg.com
  7. ↑ Zorine Te (January 26, 2016). "Far Cry Primal Developers Talk About Uncovering History". GameSpot. Retrieved February 8, 2016.
  8. ↑ "Nick Farmer knows dozens of languages, so he invented one for the Expanse". 22 December 2019.
  9. ↑ Meta:List of Wikipedias

Further reading

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