Artistic language
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An artistic language (artlang) is a constructed language (conlang) designed for aesthetic pleasure. Unlike engineered languages or auxiliary languages, artistic languages usually have irregular grammar systems, much like natural languages. Many are designed for fictional worlds, such as J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth and Mark Rosenfelder's Almea. Others represent fictional minority languages in a world not patently different from the real world, or have no particular fictional background attached.
There are several different schools of artlangs. The most important is the naturalist school, which seeks to imitate the complexity and historicity of natural languages. However, there are also artlangers who do not care about naturalness, but follow a more abstract style.
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Genres of artlangs
Several different genres of constructed languages are classified as 'artistic'. An artistic language may fall into any one of these groups, depending on the aim of its use.
Fictional languages
By far the largest group of artlangs are fictional languages (sometimes also referred to as "professional artlangs"). Fictional languages are intended to be the languages of a fictional world, and are often designed with the intent of giving more depth and an appearance of plausibility to the fictional worlds with which they are associated, and to have their characters communicate in a fashion which is both alien and dislocated. By analogy with the word "conlang", the term conworld is used to describe these worlds, inhabited by fictional concultures. The conworld influences vocabulary (what words the language will have for flora and fauna, articles of clothing, objects of technology, religious concepts, names of places and tribes, etc.), as well as influencing other factors such as pronouns, or how their cultures view the break-off points between colors or the gender and age of family members. Primary examples of this are:
- George Orwell's Newspeak in Nineteen Eighty-Four
- Václav Havel's Ptydepe in The Memorandum
- Anthony Burgess's Nadsat in A Clockwork Orange
- Iain M. Banks' Marain in his Culture novels
- Ursula K. LeGuin's Pravic in The Dispossessed
- Christopher Paolini's Ancient Language in the Inheritance Trilogy
Some of these languages are presented as distorted versions or dialects of modern English.
Professional fictional languages are used for a book, movie, television show, video game, comic, toy or musical album, such as Middle Earth, the Star Trek universe, or the game Myst. Internet-based fictional languages are hosted along with their 'conworlds' on the Internet, and based at these sites, becoming known to the world through the visitors to these sites; Verdurian, the language of Mark Rosenfelder's Verduria on the planet of Almea, is a flagship Internet-based fictional language. Many other fictional languages and their associated conworlds are created privately by their inventor, known only to the inventor and perhaps a few friends. In this context the term "professional" (used for the first category) as opposed to "amateur" (used for the second and third) refers only to the professionalism of the used medium, and not to the professionalism of the language itself or its creator. In fact, most professional languages are the work of non-linguists, while many amateur languages were in fact created by linguists, and in general the latter are better developed.
A fictional language is separated from the remaining genres of artlangs by both purpose and relative completion: a fictional language generally has the least amount of grammar and vocabulary possible, and rarely extends beyond the absolutely necessary. Nevertheless, some others have developed languages in detail for their own sake, such as J. R. R. Tolkien's Quenya and Sindarin and Star Trek's Klingon language, which exist as functioning, useable languages. Here "fictional" can be a misnomer.
The term fictional diachronic language describes fictional languages that are invented in large families and have their fictional history traced over time, with a proto-language used to derive descendant languages.
Alternative languages
Alternative languages, or altlangs, speculate on an alternate history and try to reconstruct how a family of natural languages would have evolved if things had been different (e.g. What if Greek civilization went on to thrive without a Roman Empire, leaving Greek and not Latin to develop several modern descendants?) The language that would have evolved is then traced step by step in its evolution, to reach its final form. An altlang will typically base itself on the core vocabulary of one language and the phonology of another. The best-known language of this category is Brithenig, which initiated the interest among Internet conlangers in devising such alternate-historical languages, like Wenedyk. Brithenig attempts to determine what Romance languages would have evolved had Roman influence in Britain been sufficient to replace Celtic languages with Vulgar Latin, and bases its phonology on that of Welsh. An earlier instance is Philip José Farmer's Winkie language, a relative of the Germanic languages spoken by the Winkies of Oz in A Barnstormer in Oz.
Micronational languages
Micronational languages are the languages created for use in micronations. Having the citizens learn the language is as much a part of participating in the micronation as minting coins and stamps or participating in government. The members of these micronations meet up and speak the language they have learned when they are participating in these meets. They coin new words and grammatical constructions when needed. Talossan, from R. Ben Madison's Kingdom of Talossa, is by far the best-known example of a micronational language.
Personal languages
The term personal language refers to languages that are ultimately created for one's own edification. There is nobody whom the creator actually expects to speak it. The language exists as a work of art. A personal language may be invented for the purpose of having a beautiful language, for self-expression, as an exercise in understanding linguistic principles, or perhaps as an attempt to create a language with an extreme phonemic inventory or system of verbs. Personal languages tend to have short lifespans, and are often displayed on the Internet and discussed on message boards much like Internet-based fictional languages. They are often invented in large numbers by the people who design these languages. However, a few personal languages are used extensively and long-term by their creators (e.g., for writing diaries). Javant Biarujia, the creator of Taneraic, described his personal language (which he terms a hermetic language) thus: "a private pact negotiated between the world at large and the world within me; public words simply could not guarantee me the private expression I sought."
Jokelangs
The term jokelang is sometimes applied to conlangs created as jokes. These may be languages intended primarily to sound funny, such as DiLingo, or for some type of satire, often as satire on some aspect of constructed languages.
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Language games
Strictly speaking, language games are not really languages, but merely provide a mechanism for altering an existing language according to a fixed pattern. They are often used by groups with the purpose of keeping their conversation incomprehensible for outsiders. The best-known example is Pig Latin, which consists roughly of moving the first consonant of an English word to the end of it and having it followed by "ay".Example ('hi' would be "ihay" and pronounced, aihei), but many variations of it can be found all over the world.
Another slightly more difficult one is Gibberish, where each syllable is split into consanant and vowel sound and iddag is placed in between them. Example ('Hi' would be "hiidagi", and pronounced hidduhgai). Many different forms of Gibberish exist. A similar language is Verlan, popular in France, which is based on exchanging syllables. Language games are especially popular among children. Similar to Gibberish is Op Language, where the syllable 'op' is placed before every vowel sound. Thus, 'Op Language' in Op Language is "Opop Lopangopaugop" (Pronounced Ahpahp Lahpangahpwijjahp)
Other language games might involve mixing up or instituting new rules of grammar. For instance, in The Gilmore Girls, there is a reference to a language with no "e"s. Some books are written without a certain letter.
Frequently, people will replace the first person with third person in a sort of language game. This might be taken further by switching first- and second- person, or first- and third-, or any combination.
Examples of artistic languages
See list of constructed languages for a list.
See also
External links
- Zompist.com
- A Constructed Languages Library
- Conlang Profiles at Langmaker.com
- Audience, Uglossia and CONLANG by Sarah L. Higley
Wikis on or about constructed languages and artistic languages
- ConlangWiki - a wiki devoted to the topics of ConLangs and ConCultures.
- Conlang Wikicity
- FrathWiki
- Unilang.org - a database of language- and linguistic-related informationes:Lengua artística
eo:Fikcilingvo fr:Langue imaginaire it:Lingua artistica ko:예술어 nl:Kunsttaal#Artistieke talen ru:Вымышленные языки fi:Taidekieli zh:藝術語言