One thing that I have been exploring over the last few weeks is the world of constructed languages. As opposed to regular languages, these did not evolve over centuries, but were rather invented by someone. I find the whole idea of creating a language with a specific aim to be fascinating and constructed languages (or conlangs for short) give us amazing freedom to explore how languages work. Even a short study of them can give us an insight into how languages like English do or do not operate. So I thought I would give a tour of the main conlangs that people do learn (excluding those that were created for TV or a book). I have included a translation of the Our Father (Lord’s Prayer) into each conlang as seems to be the standard, as well as an example of the language being spoken or song where possible.
Volapük was one of the first conlangs to receive widespread popularity. It was created around 1879 by a German priest named Johann Martin Schleyer who believed that God had come to him in a dream and told him to create a single language for the whole world. Volapük was initially extremely popular with hundreds of thousands of people learning it and clubs being set up across Europe.
However, it soon ran into problems. The first one was that it is a horrible language. It sounds terrible and uncomfortable to listen to. This is made worse by its use of umlauts (ü and ö for example). Secondly, the movement was torn apart by splits. The greatest advantage of conlangs is also their greatest disadvantage; they are so flexible anyone can change the rules. Soon other people began making suggestions as to how they could improve the language. This came up against another recurring problem of conlangs; their creators get very defensive about them. Schleyer refused to allow any changes and a schism occurred. By 1890 Volapük had splintered into dozens of competing languages, none of which attained any success. As a result, Volapük is worth examining solely as an example of how not to create a language.
O Fat obas, kel binon paisaludomöz nem ola!
Kömomöd monargän ola!
Jenomöz vil olik, äs in sül, i su tal!
Bodi obsik vädeliki givolös obes adelo!
E pardolös obes debis obsik,
äs id obs aipardobs debeles obas.
E no obis nindukolös in tendadi;
sod aidalivolös obis de bad.
I have blogged about Esperanto twice before so I won’t repeat myself. It is also the only language on this list that I am learning (I am at a roughly intermediate level) so I may be biased in that sense. Esperanto is by far and away the largest conlang with anywhere between 100,000 to 2,000,000 speakers (its hard to measure them as they are spread across the world and it depends on how you define speaker). One of the reasons for Esperanto’s success is that instead of focusing on linguistic purity and creating the perfect language like other conlangs, its creator (Zamenhof) focused on building a culture. It was not created for ivory tower linguistic reasons, but rather to solve the real problem of ethnic strife. His first actions were to write poetry and stories in Esperanto, translate proverbs and organise meetings for Esperantists. Esperanto has a thriving culture with thousands of books and songs as well as many international events where people from all over the world meet up and have fun.
Esperanto is a giant compared to other conlangs and there are far more resources available in it. If you want to hear some examples of it, you can listen to reggae, dance, melody, duets something a bit more lively and more.
Patro nia, kiu estas en la ĉielo,
Via nomo estu sanktigita.
Venu Via regno,
plenumiĝu Via volo,
kiel en la ĉielo, tiel ankaŭ sur la tero.
Nian panon ĉiutagan donu al ni hodiaŭ.
Kaj pardonu al ni niajn ŝuldojn,
kiel ankaŭ ni pardonas al niaj ŝuldantoj.
Kaj ne konduku nin en tenton,
sed liberigu nin de la malbono.
Despite Esperanto’s popularity, there were some people who thought it could be reformed. There were suggestions that it could be improved by removing the hats (as in ĉ or ŝ), changing the way genders are formed and making it more like a Western European language. However these reforms were met with opposition by people who felt they were unnecessary ot would discourage people from learning a language if it was constantly changing. It was the felt that reform would cause more problems than it would solve and would put every feature of the language up for question.
In the end a split occurred in 1907 with the reformers creating their own language called Ido (which means offspring in Esperanto). At the time there was a great deal of competition and bitterness between the two languages, but Ido never really took off. The main reason for this was that the people interested the culture and community of a conlang stayed with Esperanto, whereas the linguist purists went with Ido. A community of Ido speakers never properly formed and it too was subject to frequent splits and other languages claiming to improve on it too. The motto of the first Ido Conference was “We are not here for fun but to work” which probably sums up why it failed to take off.
Patro nia, qua esas en la cielo,
tua nomo santigesez;
tua regno advenez;
tua volo facesez
quale en la cielo, tale anke sur la tero.
Donez a ni cadie l’omnadiala pano,
e pardonez a ni nia ofensi,
quale anke ni pardonas a nia ofensanti,
e ne duktez ni aden la tento,
ma liberigez ni del malajo.
Created in 1951, Interlingua is different to most conlangs in that it tries to be as similar as possible to existing languages. In essence Interlingua is a combination of Romantic languages into one. Proponents call it a Modern Latin and claim hundreds of millions of people can have a rough idea of it without even studying it. Its slogan seems to be “the language you already know how to speak”. Interestingly, the main emphasis was on using Interlingua for communication between scientists and the first Interlingua journals were scientific journals.
Personally, Interlingua doesn’t appeal to me. It has set its sights too low. Instead of taking advantage of the freedom conlangs allow, particularly in uniting people of divergent languages, Interlingua only unites people with similar languages who could probably understand each other anyways. What does Interlingua offer that Spanish doesn’t? Being so focused on natural languages, means Interlingua has all the disadvantages that come with them such as irregular grammar with little of the advantages.
Patre nostre, qui es in le celos,
que tu nomine sia sanctificate;
que tu regno veni;
que tu voluntate sia facite
como in le celo, etiam super le terra.
Da nos hodie nostre pan quotidian,
e pardona a nos nostre debitas
como etiam nos los pardona a nostre debitores.
E non induce nos in tentation,
sed libera nos del mal.
Unlike other conlangs Lojban isn’t trying to be the second language of the world. Instead it describes itself as the logical language and hopes to promote logical thinking in its speakers. Created in 1987 from a split from Loglan another logical language, Lojban aims to be a completely clear and unambiguous language. It removes all the room for confusion and misunderstanding in English as in the difference between their, there and they’re. Each word has only one meaning unlike in English where bank could be a place where you put money or the side of a river. Lojban is completely regular (no irregular grammar) and culturally neutral (its roots are taken from the six most widely spoken languages on Earth). Interestingly, Lojban also has words to describe the emotion contained in a sentence which would greatly reduce confusion especially in written conversations.
Lojban is best designed for computer programming and has greatest appeal to computer programmers. In programming it is crucial to have the precise command in order to get exactly what you want. However, I’m not sure if there is as much appeal for the rest of us to know Lojban. A precise and logical language has its advantages but it is also extremely difficult to learn. The grammar alone of Lojban is 600 pages long. To construct a simple sentence is an extremely difficult task that requires a huge amount of research and revision. Some people doubt if it is even possible to be fluent in Lojban. Is ambiguity always bad? For example, some times I love my hometown and some times I hate it. A lot of the time I feel both ways simultaneously. How do you make puns or tell jokes in Lojban?
doi cevrirni.iu noi zvati le do cevzda do’u fu’e .aicai .e’ecai lo do cmene ru’i censa
.i le do nobli turni be la ter. ku se cfari
.i loi do se djica ba snada mulno vi’e le cevzda .e .a’o la ter.
.i fu’e .e’o ko dunda ca le cabdei le ri nanba mi’a
.i ko fraxu mi loi ri zu’o palci
.ijo mi fraxu roda poi pacyzu’e xrani mi
.i ko lidne mi fa’anai loi pacyxlu
.i ko sepri’a mi loi palci
.i .uicai ni’i loi se turni .e loi vlipa .e loi mi’orselsi’a cu me le do romei
By far the most imaginative and novel conlang on this list has to be Solresol. I’ve written a full blog post on this before so I’ll keep this brief. Basically Solresol is based on the seven musical notes, meaning not only can it be spoken it can also be sung or whistled or played on a musical note. The seven colours of the rainbow can also be used meaning you could paint a sentence.
For sheer novelty, this gets 10 out of 10. However, for actually trying to use it as a language, Solresol is pretty unworkable. The problem with having only seven letters is that all the words look very similar and it’s impossible not to get confused between them. The vocabulary is incomplete as gets steadily more confusing as the syllables increase.
The award for smallest language goes to Toki Pona created by Sonja Lang in 2001 and has only 120 words. This is a deliberative feature done to promote simple thinking and a simple life. The idea is to cut out the unnecessary and focus solely on the core. For example, the only numbers in Toki Pona are one and two. Its aim is to be fun, encourage people to simplify their life, live in the moment and understand the world around us.
However, simple thinking has its disadvantages and care must be taken so that it does not result in ignorance. It is very difficult to converse in Toki Pona about anything but the basics which I would find very restrictive and more of a harm than a help. With so little words, it is easy to get confused and misunderstand people.
mama pi mi mute o, sina lon sewi kon.
nimi sina li sewi.
ma sina o kama.
jan o pali e wile sina lon sewi kon en lon ma.
o pana e moku pi tenpo suno ni tawa mi mute.
o weka e pali ike mi. sama la mi weka e pali ike pi jan ante.
o lawa ala e mi tawa ike.
o lawa e mi tan ike.
tenpo ali la sina jo e ma e wawa e pona.
Susan Haden Elgin felt there was no language to allow women to properly express their views and feeling of the world, so she created Láadan in 1982 in her novel “Native Tongue” (I haven’t read it but the reviews I found were mostly negative). She removed a lot of ambiguity from language so that women would no longer have to say “I said this, but I meant that”. For example all sentences include a word to indicate how you know what you are saying. Wa means it is known to be true as the speaker observed it themselves, wi if it is self-evident, wáa because the speaker trusts the source, wo for a hypothetical or imagined scenario etc.
There are a lot of words in Láadan that cannot be expressed in English such as dina (friendliness for no reason), duna (friendliness for bad reasons), rahobeth (non-neighbour, someone who lives close but does not fulfil any duties of being a neighbour) or radíidin (non-holiday, a time allegedly a holiday but actually so much a burden because of work and preparations that it is a dreaded occasion; especially when there are too many guests and none of them help).
To be honest I think a lot of these words and concepts are very useful. In fact I don’t really see how Láadan is supposed to express women’s points of view. After all men too are capable of expressing emotion or the source of their knowledge and to say women are far more emotional than men is just falling into the old stereotype. Sure men and women have different experiences, but do we really need a separate language? I don’t see anything particularly feminist about Láadan or anything unique to women about it.
So that’s my summary of the main conlangs. Esperanto and to a lesser extent Lojban are the only ones with a strong community behind them. Volapük and Láadan are dead, Solresol has a handful of people interested in but no speakers, while Ido, Interlingua and Toki Pona have tiny communities. The internet has been a blessing for conlangs as it has allowed far more people to hear of them, it has made resources freely available online and while I don’t personally know any other Esperantists here in Ireland, I am able to freely communicate with scores of them online.
I would recommend “In The Land Of Invented Languages” by Arika Orent for anyone who is interested in learning more about these languages. A google search will also bring you to the main sites as well as other conlangs I didn’t mention here. Feel free to leave a comment if you have experienced any of these or other conlangs and want you think of them.