List of constructed languages

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The following list of notable constructed languages is divided into auxiliary, ritual, engineered, and artistic (including fictional) languages, and their respective subgenres. All entries on this list have further information on separate Wikipedia articles.

Auxiliary languages

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

Name	ISO	Origin	Creator	Description
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	The most popular auxiliary language 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 inflection", 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	ie, 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 systematize the international scientific vocabulary. It aims to be immediately comprehensible by Romance language speakers and to some extent English speakers.
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 Esperantido.
Babm		1962	Rikichi Okamoto	Notable for using Latin letters as a syllabary.
Guosa		1965	Alexander Igbinéwéká	Made for use in West Africa.
Arcaicam Esperantom		1969	Manuel Halvelik	'Archaic Esperanto', developed to produce an archaic effect in Esperanto literature.
Afrihili	afh	1970	K. A. Kumi Attobrah	A pan-African language.
Kotava	avk	1978	Staren Fetcey	A sophisticated a priori IAL focused on cultural neutrality.
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 natural 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:

Name	Origin	Creator	Comments
Basic English	1925	Charles Kay Ogden	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.
Special English	1959	Voice of America
Globish	2004	Jean-Paul Nerrière
E-Prime	1940s	D. David Bourland Jr.	Eliminates the verb to be with the intent of making writing more expressive and accurate.
Simplified Technical English	1983	European Association of Aerospace Industries	Seeks to largely reduce the complexity and ambiguity of technical texts such as manuals.
Parallel English	1998	Madhukar Gogate	A constructed language, which is based on, but independent of, English.
Plain English		Various	Proposes a more direct, short, clear language by avoiding many idioms, jargon and foreign words.

Visual languages

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

Name	ISO	Origin	Creator	Comments
Blissymbols	zbl	1949	Charles K. Bliss	Based on a ideographic writing system.
Gestuno	ils	1970s	Jasin Maloku	International sign language.

Ritual languages

These are languages in actual religious use by their communities or congregations.

Name	ISO	Origin	Creator	Comments
Eskayan	esy	c. 1920–1940	Mariano Datahan	Gramatically based on the Boholano dialect of Cebuano.
Medefaidrin		1930s	Obɛri Ɔkaimɛ church	Used by this Nigerian Christian church; said to be of sacred origin.
Damin		unknown	the Lardil people	Created by native speakers of Lardil; only click language outside Africa.

Engineered languages

Engineered languages are devised to test some hypothesis. They fall into three categories: philosophical, experimental and logical. An engineered language may belong to more than one of those categories.

Human-usable

Name	ISO	Origin	Creator	Description
Logopandecteision		1653	Sir Thomas Urquhart	Suggestions toward a taxonomic language of great complexity.
Unnamed language		1668	John Wilkins	Detailed suggestions for a symbolic language capable of philosophical precision.
Isotype		1925–1934	Otto Neurath et al.	A pictographic language.
Loglan		1955	James Cooke Brown	Created to test the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis; the inspiration for Lojban.
aUI		1962	W. John Weilgart	Each phoneme is also a morpheme and a sememe, so that a single word can express a complex idea.
Ithkuil		1978–2011	John Quijada	Complex language designed to express deeper meanings briefly and clearly.
Láadan	ldn	1982	Suzette Haden Elgin	A tonal language oriented towards women; created to test if natural languages are biased towards men.
Lojban	jbo	1987	Logical Language Group	logical and syntactically unambiguous language; successor of Loglan.
Toki Pona		2001	Sonja Lang	Minimalist language with small vocabulary which reflects Taoist philosophy.

Knowledge representation

See also: Ontology language

Languages mainly intended for knowledge representation, which are easier for computers to understand.

Knowledge Query and Manipulation Languages

Several well known Knowledge Query and Manipulation Languages have been created from extensive research projects to represent and query knowledge on computers:

Name	Acronym	Origin	Creator	Description
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.
Universal Modeling Language	UML	1994–96	Grady Booch Ivar Jacobson James Rumbaugh	Describes 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.
Web Ontology Language	OWL	2004, 2009	Various	Another knowledge representation language standardized by W3C, and derived from Common Logic.

Others

Name	Origin	Creator	Description
Lincos	1960	Hans Freudenthal
Loom	1970s–1999	Information Sciences Institute
Attempto Controlled English	1995	University of Zurich	A controlled natural language that is also a knowledge representation language.
Universal Networking Language (UNL)	1996	United Nations University
CycL

Artistic/fictional languages

Languages used in fiction

J. R. R. Tolkien

Further information: Languages constructed by J. R. R. Tolkien

Star Wars

Further information: Languages in Star Wars

Other literature

Name	Work	Origin	Creator	Description
Zaum		1913	Velimir Khlebnikov, Aleksei Kruchonykh et al.	Poetic tongue elaborated by these Russian Futurists as a "transrational" and "most universal" language "of songs, incantations, and curses."
Newspeak	Nineteen Eighty-Four	1949	George Orwell	A form of controlled English created by an authoritarian government to gradually reduce the capability of human thought, thus preventing rebellion.
Nadsat slang	A Clockwork Orange	1962	Anthony Burgess
Lapine	Watership Down	1972	Richard Adams	Spoken by rabbits.
Láadan (ldn)	Native Tongue and sequels	1984	Suzette Haden Elgin
Starsza Mowa (Elder Speech)	Hexer saga (The Witcher)	1993–2013	Andrzej Sapkowski
Baronh	Seikai no Monshō (Crest of the Stars) and others	1996	Morioka Hiroyuki	Language of Abh in and others.

Comic books

Name	Work	Origin	Creator	Description
Syldavian	The Adventures of Tintin, mostly in King Ottokar's Sceptre	1938–39	Hergé	Fictional West Germanic language of Syldavia, a Balkan kingdom.
Bordurian	The Adventures of Tintin, mostly in The Calculus Affair	1954–56	Hergé	Language of Borduria, a country bordering Syldavia.

Film

Name	Work	Origin	Creator	Description
Klingon (tlhIngan Hol)	Star Trek	1979–present	Marc Okrand
Tenctonese	Alien Nation film and television series	1988	Van Ling, Kenneth Johnson
Atlantean	Atlantis: The Lost Empire	2001	Marc Okrand
Ku	The Interpreter	2005	Said el-Gheithy	Fictional African language.
Na'vi	Avatar	2009	Paul Frommer	Spoken by the Na'vi.
Barsoomian	John Carter	2012	Paul Frommer, Edgar Rice Burroughs	Language of the Martians.
Kilikili	Baahubali: The Beginning	2015	Madhan Karky	Spoken by the Kalakeyas.

Television

Name	Work	Origin	Creator	Description
Vulcan	Star Trek: The Original Series	1966–69	Further developed by fans as Golic Vulcan.
Pakuni	Land of the Lost television series and film	1974		The language of the Pakuni.
Goa'uld	Stargate SG-1	1997–2007		A galactic lingua franca which supposedly influenced Ancient Egyptian.
Enchanta	Encantadia and Etheria television series	2005	Suzette Doctolero	Spoken by the denizens of Encantadia, known as Encantado(s)/Encantada(s) or Diwata (fairies).
The Valyrian languages and Dothraki	Game of Thrones	2011–2019	David J. Peterson
Trigedasleng	The 100	2014–present	David J. Peterson

Music

Name	Origin	Creator	Description
Kobaïan	1970s	Christian Vander	Used by French rock group Magma.
Loxian	2005	Roma Ryan	Used on Enya's 2005 album Amarantine and 2015 album Dark Sky Island.
Moss	2009	Jackson Moore	A language with a musical phonology, modeled on pidgins.

Games

Name	Work	Origin	Creator	Description
Tsolyani	Empire of the Petal Throne	1940s	M. A. R. Barker	Language of the world of Tékumel as described in this roleplaying game.
Gargish	Ultima series	1981–2013		Language of the gargoyle race.
D'ni	Myst series	1993–2005	Cyan Worlds	Language spoken by the subterranean D'ni people.
Simlish	Sim series	1996	Will Wright	Babble-like Language spoken by the sims (simulated persons).
Hymnos	Ar Tonelico series	2006-2010	Akira Tsuchiya	Language designed with strong focus on expressing emotions. Used by Reyvateil to chant song magic.

Toys

• Furbish, the default language spoken by Furbies, which can learn English with time.

Internet-based

Name	Origin	Creator	Description
Teonaht	1962	Sally Caves	Language of the Teonim, a race of polydactyl humans who have a cultural history of worshiping catlike deities.
Verdurian and others	1995	Mark Rosenfelder	Spoken in the country Verduria of planet Almea.
Dritok	2007	Don Boozer	Spoken by the Drushek, a large-eared, long-tailed race without vocal cords that lives in the continent Kryslan.
Kēlen	2009	Sylvia Sotomayor	An alien language that lacks verbs, violating a universal feature among natural human languages.

Other

• Spocanian, language of Spocania, developed by Rolandt Tweehuysen starting from 1962.

Alternative languages

Some experimental languages were developed to observe hypotheses of alternative linguistic interactions which could have led to very different modern languages. The following two examples were created for Ill Bethisad, an alternate history project.

Name	Origin	Creator	Description
Brithenig	1996	Andrew Smith	A Romance language that replaced native Celtic languages in Great Britain instead of the Germanic Anglo-Saxon.
Wenedyk	2002	Jan van Steenbergen	Polish as a Romance language.

Micronational languages

• Talossan, by R. Ben Madison (1980)

Personal languages

Name	Origin	Creator	Description
Lingua Ignota	12th century	Hildegard of Bingen	Latin-influenced mystical language.
Balaibalan	c. 14th to 16th century	Muhyî-i Gülşenî	Language with mostly a priori vocabulary and written in Arabic script; influenced by Persian, Turkish and Arabic.
Enochian	late 16th century	John Dee, Edward Kelley	Purported Angelic language, possibly used in magic and occultism.

See also

• Alien language
• Constructed script
• Conlanger
• Constructed language
• Engineered language
• International auxiliary language
• Language game
• List of languages
• Rohonc Codex
• Voynich Manuscript
• List of markup languages
• List of extinct languages

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