List of constructed languages

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The following list of notable constructed languages is divided into auxiliary, engineered, and artistic (including fictional) languages, and their respective subgenres.

Auxiliary languages

International auxiliary languages are languages constructed to provide communication among all human beings, or a significant portion, without necessarily replacing native languages.

Language name	ISO	Year of first publication	Creator	Comments
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	Perhaps one of the most popular auxiliary languages 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).
Spokil		1887 or 1890	Adolph Nicolas	An a priori language by a former Volapük advocate
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		1903	Giuseppe Peano	"Latin without inflections," 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
Occidental	ile	1922	Edgar de Wahl	A sophisticated naturalistic IAL, also known as Interlingue
Novial	nov	1928	Otto Jespersen	Another sophisticated naturalistic IAL by a famous Danish linguist
Sona		1935	Kenneth Searight	Best known attempt at universality of vocabulary
Esperanto II		1937	René de Saussure	Last of linguist Saussure's many esperantidos
Mondial		1940s	Dr. Helge Heimer	Naturalistic European language
Glosa	igs	1943	Lancelot Hogben, et al.	Originally called Interglossa, 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 develop a common Romance vocabulary
Intal		1956	Erich Weferling	An effort to unite the most common systems of constructed languages
Romanid		1956	Zoltán Magyar	A zonal constructed language based on the Romance languages
Lingua sistemfrater		1957	Pham Xuan Thai	Greco-Latin vocabulary with southeast Asian grammar
Neo	neu	1961	Arturo Alfandari	A very terse European language
Babm		1962	Rikichi Okamoto	Notable for using Latin letters as a syllabary
Arcaicam Esperantom		1969	Manuel Halvelik	'Archaic Esperanto', developed for use in Esperanto literature
Afrihili	afh	1970	K. A. Kumi Attobrah	A pan-African language
Kotava	avk	1978	Staren Fetcey	A sophisticated a priori IAL
Uropi		1986	Joël Landais	Based on the common Indo-European roots and the common grammatical points of the IE languages
Poliespo		1990s?	Nvwtohiyada Idehesdi Sequoyah	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
Slovio		1999	Mark Hučko	A constructed language based on the Slavic languages and Esperanto grammar
Interslavic		2006	Ondrej Rečnik, Gabriel Svoboda, Jan van Steenbergen, Igor Polyakov	A naturalistic language based on the Slavic languages
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

Controlled languages

Controlled 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:

• Basic English, Special English and Globish 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
• Plain English proposes a more direct, short, clear language by avoiding many idioms, jargon and foreign words
• Simplified Technical English seeks to largely reduce the complexity and ambiguity of technical texts (such as manuals)
• E-Prime eliminates the verb to be with the intent of making writing more expressive and accurate.

Visual languages

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

• Blissymbols (zbl)
• Gestuno
• List of sign languages

Engineered languages

Human-usable

• An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language by John Wilkins
• aUI
• Ilaksh
• Isotype
• Ithkuil
• Láadan (ldn)
• Loglan by James Cooke Brown
• Logopandecteision
• Lojban (jbo) successor to Loglan by the Logical Language Group
• Toki Pona by Sonja Lang

Knowledge representation

• Several well known Knowledge Query and Manipulation Languages have been created from extensive research projects, to represent and query knowledge on computers:
  • Knowledge Interchange Format (KIF), a precursor for knowledge representation.
  • Common Logic (CL), an ISO standard derived from KIF.
  • Resource Description Framework (RDF), a language standardized by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) based on the principles of Common Logic, which represents knowledge as a directed graph built from unordered sets of "sentences" (in fact, as relational triples: subject, relation, attribute) using various syntaxes (XML, Turtle, JSON-LD, RDFa) for its interchange format. Each element of the triple can be either a simple value (if its semantic value is not specified outside of the relation using it), or identifiers of objects (such as URIs) that are part of enumeration built from another subset of relational triples. The relations may be open (in which case the attributes are not enumerable) or closed in a finite enumerable set whose elements can be easily represented as objects as well with their own identity participating in many different relations for other parts of the knowledge.
    • UML may be used to describe the sets of relations and rules of inference and processing, and SQL may be used to use them in concrete schemas and compact store formats, but RDF designs its own (semantically more powerful) schema language for handling large sets of knowledge data stored in RDF format.
    • RDF is most probably useful only for automated machine processing, but its verbosity and complex (for a human) representation mechanisms and inference rules does not qualify it as a human language except in very limited contexts. It is still a specification with extensive research.
  • Web Ontology Language (OWL), another knowledge representation language standardized by W3C, and derived from Common Logic.
• CycL
• The Distributed Language Translation project used a "binary-coded" version of Esperanto as a pivot language between the source language and its translation.
• Lincos
• Loom
• Universal Networking Language (UNL)

Artistic/fictional languages

Languages used in fiction

J. R. R. Tolkien

• Quenya
• Sindarin
• Taliska (unpublished)

Additionally, sketches of various other languages, such as Adûnaic, the Black Speech, Khuzdul, Telerin and Westron appear in his Middle-earth works alongside earlier draughts or imagined archaic forms of Elven languages such as Common Eldarin or Primitive Quendian, Goldogrin, and Ilkorin. Others such as Entish, Rohirric, and six languages of the Avari are mentioned but have only one or two words or phrases noted.

Star Wars

Other literature

• the Ancient Language, in Christopher Paolini's Inheritance Cycle.
• Baronh, language of Abh in Seikai no Monshō (Crest of the Stars) and others, by Morioka Hiroyuki
• Kesh, language used in Ursula K. Le Guin's novel Always Coming Home
• Kiitra, the principal language used by the Alplai in D. R. Merrill's science fiction novel Lamikorda
• Láadan (ldn), in Suzette Haden Elgin's science fiction novel Native Tongue and sequels
• Lapine, spoken by the rabbits in Watership Down by Richard Adams
• Marain, spoken by the citizens and computers/robots (Minds) of the Culture in Ian M. Banks's novels.
• Nadsat slang, in A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
• Newspeak, a constructed language in Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
• Spocanian, in Rolandt Tweehuysen's fictional country Spocania
• Starsza Mowa from Andrzej Sapkowski's Hexer saga
• Zaum, poetic tongue elaborated by Velimir Khlebnikov, Aleksei Kruchonykh, and other Russian Futurists as a "transrational" and "most universal" language "of songs, incantations, and curses".

Comic books

• Bordurian, in some of Hergé's The Adventures of Tintin, mostly in The Calculus Affair.
• Syldavian, in some of Hergé's The Adventures of Tintin, mostly in King Ottokar's Sceptre.

Film and television

• Atlantean created by Marc Okrand for the film Atlantis: The Lost Empire.
• Barsoomian, the language of the Martians in the 2012 film John Carter based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' novels.
• Dothraki, created by David J. Peterson for the TV series Game of Thrones (based on the novel series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin).
• Enchanta, in the Encantadia and Etheria television series in the Philippines, created by the head writer Suzette Doctolero.
• Goa'uld, the galactic lingua franca from Stargate SG-1, supposedly influenced Ancient Egyptian.
• Klingon (tlhIngan Hol), in the Star Trek films and television series, created by Marc Okrand.
• Ku, a fictional African language in the 2005 film The Interpreter.
• Na'vi, the fictional language spoken by the Na'vi in Avatar, created by Paul Frommer.
• Pakuni, the language of the Pakuni from the Land of the Lost television series and film.
• Tenctonese from the Alien Nation film and television series, created by Van Ling and Kenneth Johnson
• The Valyrian languages, created by David J. Peterson for the TV series Game of Thrones (based on the novel series A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin).
• Vulcan language from Star Trek. Further developed by fans as Golic Vulcan.

Music

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

Games

• D'ni, language spoken by the subterranean D'ni people in Cyan Worlds' Myst series of computer games and novels.
• Dovahzul, the primary non-English language used in the game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which has been refined and modernized by fans of the game.
• Gargish, used in the Ultima computer game series, by the gargoyle race.
• Tho Fan, in the Xbox game Jade Empire, created by Wolf Wikeley.
• "Panzerese," a mix of Ancient Greek, Latin and Russian in the Panzer Dragoon series.
• Tsolyani, by M. A. R. Barker in his world of Tékumel as described in the roleplaying game Empire of the Petal Throne.
• Al Bhed, spoken by the race of the same name in Final Fantasy X.
• Wenja, Udam and Izila are the three primitive dialects based on Proto-Indo-European in Far Cry Primal.

Toys

• Furbish

Internet-based

• Dritok, by Don Boozer
• Kēlen, by Sylvia Sotomayor
• Teonaht, by Sally Caves
• Verdurian and several other languages created for the fictional planet of Almea by Mark Rosenfelder

Alternative languages

Some experimental languages were developed to observe hypotheses of alternative linguistic interactions which could have led to very different modern languages. Two examples include:

• Brithenig, created by the inventor of the alternate history of Ill Bethisad, Andrew Smith
• Wenedyk, a language of the alternate history of Ill Bethisad created by Jan van Steenbergen

Micronational languages

• Talossan, by R. Ben Madison

Personal languages

• Balaibalan by Muhyî-i Gülşenî
• Enochian by Edward Kelley
• Lingua Ignota, by Hildegard of Bingen

See also

• Alien language
• Artificial script
• Conlanger
• Constructed language
• Engineered language
• International auxiliary language
• Language game
• List of languages
• Voynich Manuscript

References

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
• LingoJam Tool for creating a conlang translator