Constructed & Invented Languages

LINKS and WHATNOT
1.) Lingua Ignota - Hildegard von Bingen!

2.) "linguistic artifacts" -- We need more of these.

3.) Human languages disappearing:

4.) Conlangs as model langs:

5.) See also, Ian Watson - "The Embedding" for a fictional look at what language can and can't do with the human brain.

6.) Writing tablet, "Phonecian inscriptions" found online.

Codes & Naming Languages

8.) Lapine, in Richard Adams's "Watership Down"

9.) Languages of Frank Herbert's "Dune" series:

10.) Harry Potter magical language:

11.) "Quest for Fire"-- go see this movie. The Neanderthal language was created by Anthony Burgess, who also created Nadsat for "A Clockwork Orange". The Sapiens' language was apparently a hodgepodge of Cree/Inuit words.

Full Langs
14.) Sindarin... for all of Tolkien's languages, start here:
or go buy this book:

15.) Láadan

16.) Esperanto

17.) Ido
18.) Novial
For both Ido & Novial, start here:

Underdeveloped Langs
19.) SolReSol

20.) Khuzdûl, Entish (see #14, above)

21.) Clan of the Cave Bear. Apparently, the language of the novel is not manual, but totally vocal. I guess I need to read the books.

AuxLangs
22.) I'm not anti-German by any means. Love the language, love the people, just got back from Berlin. But there is an easily accessed history there... Anti-German WWI Propoganda posters:

23.) Esperanto (see #16, above)
24.) SolReSol (see #19, above)

Philosophical Langs
26.) some links about BASIC:

Art Langs
28.) Klingon (see #12)
29.) Dothraki (see #13)
30.) Quenya, Sindarin (see #14)
31.) Láadan (see #15)

Personal Langs
32.) Lingua Ignota (see #1, above)
33.) Voynich Manuscript is another good example of a likely personal lang / code:

[Parso]

Really enjoyed your “defence”. I’ve often said that it is the quirks and imperfections which *make* Esperanto, because they give us an idea of the limitations of which you speak.

[Freshbott]

I've come up with an idea for a language where stressed consonants (sounding like double consonants in Finnish) at the beginning or end of a word are used to denote nominative and accusative and using verb position to denote tense. The subjects and objects can be flexible while verb first, verb second, and verb third are past, current and future tense respectively. Certain consonants would be changed to fricatives etc. to be able to lengthen them.

If you applied it to written English it would look like this for example:

The Ggrass eat the cowss - The cows eat/are eating the grass. Or
Eat the cowss the ggrass - The cows ate the grass.
The ccows the grasss eat - The grass will eat the cows (just to show how the cases work).

Does anyone know if there any real languages that use features like this? I thought it's kind of cool to use something I've never heard of before. It shows how varied language can be.

[nvdawahyaify]

I have been working on a language for about four years now. It is phoneticly based of cherokee with elaments of inuktitut. It is called Tsata' Kalik. Sadly i have lost most of the material i had on it.

Sample words:
Kalik - us, our, ours, we.
Tsata - sound, word, language.
Alun - moon.
Ya - man, male, he.
Wa - wolf.
Alona- spirit.

Alphabet:
A- as in father
E- as in get
I- as in police
O- as in note
U- as in rule
V- like u in sun but nazalized
D, g, h, k, l, m, n, qu, s, t, w, y

[Jaclyn_Lizzi]

I find the constructed languages that were created for a purpose (like Esperanto, for example) interesting, but even more interesting are the ones that were made just for books or stories that the fans have added to and learned to make the story more real. People be crazy, I suppose :)

[WmAnnis]

Congrats on saying "Láadan" correctly!

Poor, poor, Volapük.

[Kleo]

That Solresol bit was fire. I can imagine myself jamming to that.

[aboubacarsissoko]

Man, you're being profusely heplful for some of us your style very much. I hope to see more videos from you. .... (y)

[IABITVpresents]

I once attempted creating a conlang for my imaginary country.

That didn't go well because a) it was English words replaced with these imaginary ones, b) I started it in 2011 when I knew the English language poorly myself, c) I never developed it further through the course of years.

[anonb]

If you learn Volapük, you'll struggle to find anyone to speak to, but if you learn Loglan/Lojban, you won't find anyone you want to speak tom

[cmasp]

I enjoyed your discussion on the different invented languages. I am currently interested in learning one Espranto/Ido. I know the two are different and was hoping you might consider doing a short discussion on the difference between the two. There is almost nothing on Ido.

[MultiSciGeek]

do you make more of such videos? Subscribed!

[ВераБаранова-дю]

These were the most interesting 8 minutes of my day. Thank you for the video!!!

[johnnyirish]

This is awesome!
I really like your format. Keep it up! :)

[lockattack]

I'm working on a few artistic languages right now that I'm doing my best to not base off of anything in particular. The main one is Kitlin, which in the process of making, I accidentally made multiple languages by constantly changing everything. To be honest, I started it in the first place specifically to avoid doing schoolwork. It does have a written English form, but it has it's own alphabet as well, which has a few similarities to Tengwar. Sí lin-á, anglos-ák. (This is the language written in [the Latin alphabet]). I plan on using it as a baseline to make a bunch of others.

[christosfrantzolas]

Actually, I love constructing languages, though most of the conlangs I have created are still relatively incomplete...
Most of them are just artlangs, but there is an auxlang among them as well.

[MatthewMcVeagh]

Loglan/Lojban =/= philosophical languages
They're classed as logical languages/loglangs.
Yes logic is an area studied by philosophy, but the focus of loglangs is to be able to express concepts with logical clarity and especially avoid ambiguity. It's not to express a philosophy or discuss philosophical topics better.

[AtlantaBill]

The term 'metalanguage' was coined by Western linguists to describe natural, socially existing languages. Linguistic metalanguage is now pretty sophisticated and has been incorporated into computer algorithms that deal with language translation. It's hard to envision a successful conlang that didn't incorporate a great deal of what has been learned by computer linguists. One lifetime is probably not enough time to develop a sophisticated colang. Computer linguistics has the advantage of utility for automatic-language development and has a use in developing natural language-teaching. Lexicology needs a lot more development, but computer linguistics is breaking ground there too. One of the problems in grounding lexemes (units of lexicology) in the naturally developed etymology is that modern words may be translated accurately from one language to another but have a completely different basis in etymology. Words change their signification over time. At the same time, etymologically based language-learning is far more direct and simpler than culturally based language-learning (at the advanced level). That doesn't mean that etymology can't be helpful, but basing comparative linguistics on it has presented as many problems for computer linguistics as it has for natural linguistics. The scientific development of language-learning has lagged behind other aspects of artificial intelligence, but that may not continue to be the case. Language-learning today is a hodge-podge of different methodologies, which might not be bad from the vantage point of the different advantages distinct methods have for distinct (unique) individuals. The field is a vaste one that hasn't attracted anything like the investment in human potential and financing that it demands if we're going to see global communication flourish as it should.

[akelgb]

I am creating a conlang in Excel, It will unite the world.

[lolabOa]

This is so interesting! Please keep up with these great videos.
I think that sometimes I do think and speak in my own language which is a rare mix between Spanish, english, french and a bit of german. The good thing is that my closest friends have sort of the same experience their own so there ain't much problem understanding each other, which is actually great. I may give you our greatest example of this: "Je ne peux pas vivir this way." 

[NoahNobody]

I guess if I was to create a new language, I would create it so that it could be learned quickly at a basic level, then mastered at an advanced level (and perhaps even mixed along the way if you are, say...communicating something basic or casual as opposed to something complex or unambiguous).