Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index An artificial or constructed language, colloquially conlang, is a language whose vocabulary and grammar were specifically devised by humans, rather than having naturally evolved as part of a culture like a natural language. Some are designed for use in human communication, the same as natural languages, usually to function as an international auxiliary language, but others are created for use in fiction, linguistic experimentation, secrecy (codes), or simply for the sake of it. Conlangers differ on whether linguistic creation of the last kind is to be considered an art or a hobby. The term planned language is also used, when referring to international auxiliary languages, and by those who may object to the more common term "artificial". Speakers of Esperanto, for example, have said that "Esperanto is an artificial language like an automobile is an artificial horse." Constructed languages are often divided into a priori languages, in which much of the grammar and vocabulary is created from scratch (using the author's imagination or automatic computational means), and a posteriori languages, where the grammar and vocabulary are derived from one or more natural languages. A posteriori planned languages can be further divided into naturalistic planned languages which follow the natural languages from which they are patterned closely to minimize learning time, and schematic planned languages, whose features are deliberately simplified or synthesized from various sources. Fictional and experimental languages can also be naturalistic, in the sense that they are meant to sound natural and, if derived a posteriori, they try to follow natural rules of phonological, lexical and grammatical change. Since these languages are not usually intended for easy learning or communication, a naturalistic fictional language tends to be more difficult and complex, not less (because it tries to mimic common behaviours of natural languages such as irregular verbs and nouns, complicated phonological rules, etc.). Taking all of the above into account, constructed languages can be divided up as follows from a simplified point of view: artistic languages (artlangs) - those intended to create aesthetic pleasure auxiliary languages (auxlangs) - those intended to be used for international communication logical languages (loglangs) - those intended to be an experiment in logic or philosophy A constructed language can have "native" speakers, if children learn it at a young age from parents who have learned the language. Esperanto has a considerable number of native speakers, variously estimated to be between 200 and 2000. A member of the Klingon Language Institute, d'Armond Speers, attempted to raise his son as a native Klingon speaker, but found that at that time the vocabulary of Klingon was not quite large enough to express the large number of objects normally found in the home, such as "table" or "bottle". Proponents of particular constructed languages often have many reasons for using them. Among these, often cited is the famous but disputed Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, which claims that the language one speaks essentially limits and drives the way in which one thinks. Thus, a "better" language should allow the speaker to reach some elevated level of intelligence, or to encompass more diverse points of view. Many question the validity of this claim. Table of contents 1 Intended for general human use 2 Intended for machine assisted automatic translation purposes 3 Non-verbal languages 4 Languages designed for knowledge representation 5 Languages of fictional worlds and peoples 6 Language games 7 See also 8 External links Intended for general human use Antido Basic English Comunleng Dunia Ekspreso Esperanto Europanto Gestuno (sign language) Idiom Neutral Ido Interlingua de IALA Latino sine flexione Lojban (and TLI Loglan) Lingua Franca Nova Novial Occidental (also known as Interlingue, not to be confused with Interlingua) Ro Romanica Slovio Solresol Sona Toki Pona Volapük Intended for machine assisted automatic translation purposes Lojban Lincos Non-verbal languages some sign languages like Gestuno language hand signal systems used in military, SWAT, construction, sports such as scuba diving, etc.. Blissymbolics Languages designed for knowledge representation CycL (from Douglas Lenat's Cyc project) Loom (from the University of Southern California's Loom project) KIF (used by the SUO project) Languages of fictional worlds and peoples Babel-17, in Babel-17 by Samuel Delany Brithenig, created by the inventor of the alternate history of Ill Bethisad, Andrew Smith Drac, language of alien species in Barry B.Longyear's The Enemy Papers D'ni, the language spoken by the subterranean D'ni people in the Myst series of games and novels Gargish language, used in the Ultima computer game series, by the gargoyle race Klingon, in the Star Trek movie and television series Kobaian, from the fictional planet created by French musician Christian Vander and the language sung by his progressive rock band Magma Láadan, in Suzette Haden Elgin's science fiction novel Native Tongue and sequels Languages of Middle-earth: Sindarin, Quenya, Khuzdűl in the books by J.R.R. Tolkien Nadsat, in A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess Newspeak, in Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell Pravic, in The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin Syldavian, in some of Hergé's Tintin stories Wenedyk, a language of the alternate history of Ill Bethisad created by Jan van Steenbergen See Fictional language. Language games Pig latin Ubbi dubbi Verlan Geringoso See also Language translation Knowledge representation Language planning Literary dialect Language academy Artificial script External links The Conlang e-mail list Archives Invaluable Conlang Links ConLang Yellow Pages The Language Construction Kit How to Create a Language by Pablo David Flores. Inspired by the Language Construction Kit; covers some topics overlooked by the Language Construction Kit. Also in Spanish ("Cómo crear un lenguaje"). Zompist BBoard An online forum devoted to conlangs (and conworlds in general). Blueprints For Babel LangMaker.com Some internet resources relating to constructed languages. Compiled by Richard Kennaway. There are approximately 310 constructed languages in this list. LiveJournal Conlangs community (others can be found on Language pages) This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.