List of constructed languages

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.

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.

Name ISO Origin Creator Description
Solresol 1827 François Sudre Based on pitch levels sounded with their solfege syllables (a "musical language") although no knowledge of music is required to learn it.
Communicationssprache 1839 Joseph Schipfer Based on French.
Universalglot 1868 Jean Pirro An early a posteriori language, predating even Volapük.
Volapük vo, vol 1879–1880 Johann Martin Schleyer First to generate international interest in IALs.
Esperanto eo, epo 1887 L. L. Zamenhof The most popular auxiliary language ever invented, including, possibly, up to two million speakers, the highest ever for a constructed language and the only one to date to have its own native speakers (approximately 1,000).[1]
Mundolinco 1888 J. Braakman The first Esperantido.
Bolak, "Blue Language" 1899 Léon Bollack Prospered fairly well in its initial years; now almost forgotten.
Idiom Neutral 1902 Waldemar Rosenberger A naturalistic IAL by a former advocate of Volapük.
Latino sine Flexione la-peano 1903 Giuseppe Peano "Latin without inflection", it replaced Idiom Neutral in 1908.
Ro 1904 Rev. Edward Powell Foster An a priori language using categories of knowledge.
Ido io, ido 1907 A group of reformist Esperanto speakers The most successful offspring of Esperanto.
Adjuvilo 1910 Claudius Colas An Esperantido some believe was created to cause dissent among Idoists.
Timerio 1921 Tiemer A language where each concept is replaced with a number, intended to be used as a means for automatic translation.
Interlingue ie, ile 1922 Edgar de Wahl A sophisticated naturalistic IAL, also known as Occidental.
Novial nov 1928 Otto Jespersen Another sophisticated naturalistic IAL by a famous Danish linguist.
Sona 1935 Kenneth Searight Agglutinative language with universal vocabulary. Its 360 radicals can be combined to form new words.
Esperanto II 1937 René de Saussure Last of linguist Saussure's many Esperantidos.
Mondial 1940s Dr. Helge Heimer Naturalistic European language.
Interglossa igs 1943 Lancelot Hogben It has a strong Greco-Latin vocabulary.
Blissymbols zbl 1949 Charles Bliss An ideographic writing system, with its own grammar and syntax.
Interlingua ia, ina 1951 International Auxiliary Language Association A major effort to systematize the international scientific vocabulary. It aims to be immediately comprehensible by Romance language speakers and to some extent English speakers.
Intal 1956 Erich Weferling An effort to unite the most common systems of constructed languages.
Lingua sistemfrater 1957 Pham Xuan Thai Greco-Latin vocabulary with southeast Asian grammar.
Neo neu 1961 Arturo Alfandari A very terse Esperantido.
Babm 1962 Rikichi Okamoto Notable for using Latin letters as a syllabary.
Unilingua (now Mirad) 1966 (revised 1967 and 2022) Noubar Agopoff A priori ontological vocabulary. Every letter has semantic or functional meaning.
Arcaicam Esperantom eo-arkaika 1969 Manuel Halvelik 'Archaic Esperanto', developed to produce an archaic effect in Esperanto literature.
Eurolengo 1972 Leslie Jones Combines elements of English and Spanish.
Glosa 1975 Ronald Clark and Wendy Ashby An evolution of Interglossa.
Kotava avk 1978 Staren Fetcey A sophisticated a priori IAL focused on cultural neutrality.
Uropi 1986 Joël Landais Based on the common Indo-European roots and the common grammatical points of the IE languages.
Poliespo 1990s? Billy Ray Waldon Esperanto grammar with significant Cherokee vocabulary.
Romániço 1991 Anonymous Vocabulary is derived from common Romance roots.
Europanto 1996 Diego Marani A "linguistic jest" by a European diplomat.
Unish 1996 Language Research Institute, Sejong University Vocabulary from fifteen representative languages.
Lingua Franca Nova lfn 1998 C. George Boeree and others Romance vocabulary with creole-like grammar.
Sambahsa-Mundialect 2007 Olivier Simon Mixture of simplified Proto-Indo-European and other languages.
Lingwa de planeta 2010 Dmitri Ivanov Worldlang based on Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.

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.

Name ISO Origin Creator Description
Ruski jezik 1666 Juraj Križanić The first known example of an artificially created Pan-Slavic language.
Tutonish 1901 Elias Molee The first Pan-Germanic language, later reformed under names like nu teutonish, alteutonik, etc.
Romanid 1956 Zoltán Magyar A zonal auxiliary language based on the Romance languages.
Guosa 1965 Alexander Igbinéwéká A zonal auxiliary language for West Africa derived primarily from Hausa, Yoruba, and Igbo.
Afrihili afh 1970 K. A. Kumi Attobrah A pan-African language.
Runyakitara early 1990s A standardized language based on four closely related languages of western Uganda.
Palawa kani 1992 Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre Based on reconstructed vocabulary from the limited accounts of the various Tasmanian languages once spoken by the eastern Aboriginal Tasmanians.
Slovio 1999 Mark Hučko A constructed language based on the Slavic languages and Esperanto grammar.
Romance Neolatino 2006 Jordi Cassany Bates and others A Pan-Romance language
Slovianski 2006 Ondrej Rečnik, Gabriel Svoboda, Jan van Steenbergen, Igor Polyakov A naturalistic language based on the Slavic languages.
Neoslavonic 2009 Vojtěch Merunka A modernized form of Old Church Slavonic.
Budinos 2009 Aleksey Andreyevitch Arzamazov A zonal auxiliary language based on the Finno-Ugric languages.
Interslavic 2011–2017 Jan van Steenbergen, Vojtěch Merunka A Pan-Slavic zonal auxiliary language, the result of the merger of Slovianski and Neoslavonic.

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:

Name Origin Creator Comments
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 English 1959 Voice of America
Globish 2004 Jean-Paul Nerrière
E-Prime 1940s D. David Bourland Jr. Eliminates the verb to be with the intent of making writing more expressive and accurate.
Simplified Technical English 1983 European Association of Aerospace Industries Seeks 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 Various Proposes 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.

Name ISO Origin Creator Comments
Blissymbols zbl 1949 Charles K. Bliss Based on an ideographic writing system.
International Sign ils 1970s Jasin Maloku International auxiliary sign language. Also known as Gestuno.

Ritual languages

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

Name ISO Origin Creator Comments
Eskayan esy c. 1920–1940 Mariano Datahan Grammatically based on the Boholano dialect of Cebuano.
Medefaidrin dmf 1930s Obɛri Ɔkaimɛ church Used by this Nigerian Christian church; said to be of sacred origin.
Damin unknown the 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.

Name ISO Origin Creator Description
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.
Isotype 1925–1934 Otto Neurath et al. A pictographic language.
Loglan 1955 James Cooke Brown Created to test the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis; the inspiration for Lojban.
aUI 1962 W. John Weilgart Each phoneme is also a morpheme and a sememe, so that a single word can express a complex idea.
Ithkuil 1978–2023 John Quijada Complex language designed to express deeper meanings briefly and clearly.
Láadan ldn 1982 Suzette Haden Elgin A tonal language oriented towards women; created to test if natural languages are biased towards men.
Lojban jbo 1987 Logical Language Group Logical and syntactically unambiguous language; successor of Loglan.
Toki Pona tok 2001 Sonja Lang Minimalist language with 120-137+ words, with over 700 speakers.[2][3]
Kēlen 2009 Sylvia Sotomayor An alien language that attempts to eliminate verbs, which would violate a universal feature among natural human languages.

Others

Name Origin Creator Description
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 used in fiction

Comic books

Name Work Origin Creator Description
Syldavian The Adventures of Tintin, mostly in King Ottokar's Sceptre 1938–39 Hergé Fictional West Germanic language of Syldavia, a Balkan kingdom.
Bordurian The Adventures of Tintin, mostly in The Calculus Affair 1954–56 Hergé Language of Borduria, a country bordering Syldavia.
Interlac Legion of Superheroes 1973 Cary Bates Common language in the 30th century.

Constructed by J. R. R. Tolkien

Tolkien's most prominent languages are:

Language ISO Description
Sindarin sjn an Elvish language, largely inspired by Welsh.
Quenya qya an Elvish language, largely inspired by Finnish, Latin, and Ancient Greek.
Khuzdul a Dwarvish language, largely inspired by the Semitic languages.

Film

Name Work Origin Creator Description
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 2005 Said el-Gheithy Fictional 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
Interslavic The Painted Bird 2019 Jan van Steenbergen & Vojtěch Merunka Unspecified Slavic language spoken by the village people.[6]

Games

Name Work Origin Creator Description
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 series 1981–2013 Language of the gargoyle race.
D'ni Myst series 1993–2005 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.[7]
Wenja Far Cry Primal 2016 Andrew Byrd, Brenna Byrd Three dialects (Wenja, Udam, Izila) used in all dialogs and by NPCs. Engineered as an archaic version of PIE.[8]

Internet-based

Name Origin Creator Description
Teonaht 1962 Sally Caves Language of the Teonim, a race of polydactyl humans who have a cultural history of worshiping catlike deities.
Verdurian and others 1995 Mark Rosenfelder Spoken in the country Verduria of planet Almea.
Dritok 2007 Don Boozer Spoken by the Drushek, a large-eared, long-tailed race without vocal cords that lives in the continent Kryslan.

Music

Name Origin Creator Description
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

Name Work Origin Creator Description
Vulcan Star Trek: The Original Series 1966–1969 Further developed by fans as Golic Vulcan.
Pakuni Land of the Lost television series and film 1974 The language of the Pakuni.
Goa'uld Stargate SG-1 1997–2007 A galactic lingua franca which supposedly influenced Ancient Egyptian.
Enchanta Encantadia and Etheria television series 2005 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.[9]
Romulan Star Trek: Picard 2019 Trent Pehrson

Other literature

Name Work Origin Creator Description
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."
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.
Spocanian 1962 Rolandt Tweehuysen Language of Spocania.
Nadsat slang A Clockwork Orange 1962 Anthony Burgess A register of Russian-influenced English used by teenagers.
Lapine Watership Down 1972 Richard Adams Spoken by rabbits.
Láadan (ldn) Native Tongue and sequels 1984 Suzette Haden Elgin Spoken by women.
Baronh Seikai no Monshō (Crest of the Stars) and others 1996 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.

Name ISO Origin Creator Description
Brithenig bzt 1996 Andrew Smith A 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

Name ISO Origin Creator Description
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 1980 R. Ben Madison Used 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.[10]

Name ISO/Link Origin Users Nr. of Active Editors Nr. of Articles
Esperanto eo 1887 100,000 – 2,000,000 307 353,994
Volapük vo 1880 ? 25 36,895
Ido io 1907 c. 1000 50 48,199
Interlingua ia 1951 c. 1000 41 29,595
Kotava avk 1978 ? 12 29,157
Interlingue ie 1922 ? 33 12,664
Lingua Franca Nova lfn 1998 ? 22 4,262
Novial nov 1928 ? 7 1,637
Lojban jbo 1987 ? 14 1,333

See also

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. ^ "2021 toki pona census". 2 June 2021.
  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. ^ Helena Williams & Marie-Louise Gumuchian, "The Painted Bird" tells "timeless" story of survival in dark times. Yahoo! News, 3 September 2019.
  7. ^ game.salburg.com
  8. ^ Zorine Te (January 26, 2016). "Far Cry Primal Developers Talk About Uncovering History". GameSpot. Retrieved February 8, 2016.
  9. ^ "Nick Farmer knows dozens of languages, so he invented one for the Expanse". 22 December 2019.
  10. ^ Meta:List of Wikipedias

Further reading

  • Adams, Michael, ed. (2011). From Elvish to Klingon: Exploring Invented Languages. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192807090. OCLC 713186702.
  • Okrent, Arika (2009). In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build a Perfect Language. New York: Spiegel & Grau. ISBN 9780385527880. OCLC 321034148.
    • Reprinted as: ——— (2010). In the Land of Invented Languages: Adventures in Linguistic Creativity, Madness, and Genius. New York: Spiegel & Grau. ISBN 9780812980899. OCLC 436030223.
  • Peterson, David J. (2015). The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves, the Words Behind World-Building. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 9780143126461. OCLC 900623553.
  • Rosenfelder, Mark (2010). The Language Construction Kit. Chicago: Yonagu Books. ISBN 9780984470006. OCLC 639971902.
  • Rosenfelder, Mark (2012). Advanced Language Construction. Chicago: Yonagu Books. ISBN 9781478267539. OCLC 855786940. The sequel to The Language Construction Kit.

External links

  • Language analysis from Linguist List
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