Portal:Constructed languages
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A planned or constructed language — known colloquially or informally as a conlang — is a language whose phonology, grammar, and/or vocabulary have been consciously devised by an individual or group, instead of having evolved naturally. There are many possible reasons to create a constructed language: to ease human communication (see international auxiliary language and code); to bring fiction or an associated constructed world to life; linguistic experimentation; artistic creation; and language games.
The expression planned language is sometimes used to mean international auxiliary languages and other languages intended for actual use in human communication. Some prefer it to the more common terms "constructed", as that term may have pejorative connotations in some languages. Outside the Esperanto community, the term language planning means the prescriptions given to a natural language to standardize it; in this regard, even "natural languages" may be artificial in some respects. In the case of prescriptive grammars, where wholly artificial rules exist, the line is difficult to draw. The term "glossopoeia," coined by J. R. R. Tolkien, is also used to mean language construction, particularly construction of artistic languages.
Kēlen is a constructed language created by Sylvia Sotomayor. It is possibly one of the most thorough attempts to create a truly alien language. It violates a key linguistic universal — namely that all human languages have verbs. In Kēlen, relationships between the noun phrases making up the sentence are expressed by one of four relationals. Despite this, Kēlen is an expressive and intelligible language; texts written in Kēlen have been translated into other languages by several people other than the creator of the language, as may be seen here. In this interview Sotomayor states that she aims for Kēlen to be naturalistic apart from its verblessness, and that to achieve this she employs the principle "change one thing and keep everything else the same".
In its concultural setting, Kēlen is spoken by an alien species (the Kēleñi). Find out more...
...that Volapük, a constructed language which once attracted thousands, now has, at most, 30 speakers?
...that Volapük nevertheless has its own Wikipedia, the Vükiped?
...that during the mid 19th century The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints briefly advocated the use by its members of the Deseret alphabet in place of the Latin one?
- Seti's Are We Alone 7/7/08, 21m35s in
- 3rd Language Creation Conference - March 21-22, 2009 at Brown University
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