"At some point in the next century the number
of invented languages
will probably overtake the number of surviving natural languages."
- Cullen Murphy in Atlantic Monthly
(October, 1995)
Introduction
Recent Additions
Top 10 Model Languages
Index
Classifications
Interrelated Model Languages
Barsoomian (Burroughs, Edgar Rice) -
fictional language - 1900s
Brithenig
(Smith, Andrew) - diachronic fictional language - 1996
Dunia
(Robertson, Ed) - international auxiliary language - 1996
Eaiea (Koestner, Bruce) - philosophical
language - 1990s
Novial 97 (NOVIAL-L) - international
auxiliary language - 1997
Solresol: Langue Musicale Universelle
(Sudre, Jean Francois) - international auxiliary language
- circa 1830
Curious about model languages? Here
are the ones you should study first.
Indicates
a link to a sample text written in the language (The Babel Text).
Afrihili
(Attobrah, K. A. Kumi) - international auxiliary language
- 1973
Attobrah designed Afrihili to be an auxiliary language for the
continent of Africa, with a phonology, vocabulary and grammar
all derived from African languages. The grammar will be especially
unusual to speakers of European languages. Unfortunately, little
information is available about Afrihili.
AllNoun
(Breton, Tom) - logical language- 1990s
This language attempts to be as true to its name as possible,
containing primarily nouns. Created by Tom Breton, AllNoun does
use four operators however as part of its grammar. Breton has
primarily specified the grammar of the language (which resembles
a simple programming language and in fact has been modified by
Breton for use as such); he uses English primarily to illustrate
the noun vocabulary. Very atypical, AllNoun is good inspiration
for a fictional language for aliens.
Americai Speak
(Foulk, Ruby Olive) - international auxiliary language
- 1937
This is a simplification of American English, with phonetic spelling
and simplified grammar. Plurals of nouns and pronouns are regular
(e.g., man, mans), comparison of adjectives and adverbs
is regular (e.g., good, gooder, goodest), adjectives are
formed from nouns by adding -i (e.g., sun, suni; America, Americai)
and verbs are regular.
Amman-Iar
(Bell, David) - fictional diachronic language - 1990s
Originally inspired by Tolkien's Elvish languages (Quenya and
Sindarin), Amman-Iar has grown into something quite different,
with a unique flavor of its own. The phonology is very reminiscent
of Tolkien, but the grammar is unique. Amman-Iar is one of the
few model languages on the WWW with a detailed fictional history
of word derivation. This site is constantly changing, and worth
re-visiting.
Ancallon languages
- fictional languages - 1990s
Ancallon is a continent created for an RPG (role-playing game)
campaign. The eight main languages of Ancallon are each described
in just a paragraph or two; some are based on natural languages
(English, Welsh, Irish), while the others are invented (Konamoata
is patterned on Hawaiian, and Banrok
provides the obligatory ergative language).
Anglo-Saxon Computerese
(Berkhout, Carl T.) - fictional language - 1996
Not every model language has to be large and complex. Anglo-Saxon
Computerese is the hundred or so terms you would need to be able
to talk about computers in Anglo-Saxon (Old English). Most terms
are compounds of real Anglo-Saxon words: for instance, the word
for "computer" is circolwyrde.
Barsoomian
(Burroughs, Edgar Rice) - fictional language - 1900s
The language of Edgar Rice Burrough's Martian series (A Princess
Of Mars, The Gods Of Mars, Warlord Of Mars, etc.) added greatly
to the verisimilitude of Barsoom and inspired many model language
designers.
Basic Anglo-Saxon English (Henning,
Jeffrey) - fictional language - 1995
An unimaginative derivative of Basic English, replacing all words
not of Anglo-Saxon origin.
Basic English
(Ogden, C.K.) - international auxiliary language - 1930
Basic English (Basic is an acronym for "British American
Scientific International Commercial") was designed as a subset
of English. Any Basic English text is also a valid English text,
but Basic English has just 850 core words (not counting inflectional
forms); extensions to the lexicon are permitted for specific subject
domains. The Bible
and other texts have been translated into Basic English. For a
time, Ogden hoped Basic English would be used for teaching English
as a second language, but because Basic English permits the full
complexity of English grammar, this was not practical.
Black Speech
(Tolkien, J.R.R) - fictional language
In Middle Earth, the Black Speech is the language of Sauron,
most famously used for the inscription on the One Ring (Ash
nazg durbatulu^k, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulu^k agh
burzum-ishi krimpatul; "One Ring to rule them all, One
Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the Darkness
bind them"). Although Tolkien published little about the
language, the Black Speech shows Tolkien's usual genius for matching
the sound of a language with the personality of its speakers.
This link is to an analysis of the language prepared by Anthony
Appleyard.
Brithenig
(Smith, Andrew) - diachronic fictional language - 1996
One of the best of the fictional languages on the web. Brithenig
is the language of an alternate history, being the Romance language
that might have evolved if Latin speakers had displaced Celtic
speakers in Britain. Brithenig has undergone sound changes similar
to those of Welsh, and has borrowed from Old Celtic and from Old,
Middle and Modern English.
Cardassian
(Miller, Timothy) - fictional language - 1990s
This is an unofficial language for the Cardassians, a race of
aliens that are key to the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine series.
Cho-ba
(Leigh, Thomas)
Cispa
(Miller, Herman) - fictional language
Miller has invented quite a few languages spoken by the furry
aliens of Mizar, including Cispa, for which he has published on
the Web a font for the Cispa alphabet, a short grammar and a dictionary.
Cyberyak
- international auxiliary language - 1996
A creative language for the Internet, with all words based on
just 220 roots. It even has a variant, Microyak,
with just 50 words.
CycL (Cowan, John) - logical language - 1996
Damin
- stealth language
This language was used by the Lardil tribe, of Mornington
Island off the coast of Australia. It was used as an initiation
language for men and was an unusual variant (or speaking style
or slang) of the "everyday" Lardil language. Damin is
fascinating and well worth learning about.
Dhemonh'ka
- fictional language - 1990s
This small language was invented for AmberMUSH, a MUD, to be the
language of Chaosian demons (Dhemonh'ka means "demon language").
The orthography, pronunciation and vocabulary of Dhemonh'ka was
inspired by Klingon.
DiLingo
- personal language - 1990s
DiLingo is a silly English slang with just a few words.
Doraya
(Parrish, Adam) - fictional language - 1991+
Doraya is the language of an imaginary world consisting of the
regions of Mofeva, Doryn and Rooken. The most fascinating part
of the language is the relative roles of nouns and verbs. Verbs
are invariable, while nouns take special modifiers to indicate
tense. The subject typically is modified for tense, and the direct
object may be modified for tense as well. A sample sentence: so
silidae e silinae sorn, 'until future-you and future-me are
together', "Until I see you again."
Dunia (Robertson, Ed) -
international auxiliary language - 1996
Dunia is unique in the scope of its vocabulary, with different
parts of speech typically drawn from a single language. Most verbs
are from Spanish, most common nouns are from English, most scientific
nouns are from Latin, most adjectives are from Hindi/Urdu, most
simple adverbs are from Russian, and so forth.
Dutton Speedwords
See Speedwords.
ehmay ghee chah
(Hankes, Elmer J.) - international auxiliary language - 1992
Not much about ehmay ghee chah is available online, but a $17
book is available.
Eaiea
(Koestner, Bruce) - philosophical language - 1990s
Eaiea uses groups of notes to form words. Unlike Solresol,
this language uses all twelve notes of the musical chromatic scale.
Elet Anta
(Fisher, John) - personal language - 1997
Eklektu 96
(Miller, Herman) - personal language - 1996
Unlike other of Herman Miller's languages, Eklektu 96 is not a
language of furry aliens, but instead has a vocabulary containing
an eclectic mix of the world's languages, though the emphasis
to date has been on European languages.
Enochian (Dee, John) [link broken when last checked]
Erone
(Schutrick, Carrie) - personal language - 1996
This is just a sketch of the language, but it is promising: Erone
has an attractive lexicon, and I look forward to more to come.
Esperanto
(Zamenhof, Ludwig Lazarus) - international auxiliary language
- 1887
Esperanto is the most successful model language ever, with perhaps
a million speakers in the world (estimates vary from 100,000 to
15 million), concentrated in Europe but also with pockets of speakers
in Japan and China. Esperanto has more books, periodicals and
radio broadcasts using it than any other auxiliary language. It
is a classic and required study for anyone serious about model
languages. It has spawned more offspring than any other model
language, with reform projects including Ido
and Sen:esepera.
Esperanto sen Fleksio
(Harrison, Rick) - international auxiliary language - 1996
A reform of Esperanto that eliminates
flexions.
Essential World English (Hogben) - international auxiliary language
Etwu
- fictional international language - 1997
The secret organization Eternia has created the international
language, Etwu, an extremely regularized language based on French
and English.
Eurolang
(Hunt, Philip) - international auxiliary language - 1990s
Hunt is designing Eurolang to be the language of the European
Union, and he has some aggressive goals for ease of learning.
Unlike Esperanto, Eurolang has more freely
borrowed words from English.
Eurolengo
(Jones, Leslie) - international auxiliary language- 1972
About the only thing interesting about Eurolengo is that the author
claims the primary sources of vocabulary are English and Spanish.
Otherwise it is just another Euroclone. Yawn.
Ferengi
(Miller, Timothy) - fictional language - 1990s
Ferengi is another language that Timothy Miller has invented for
a Star Trek race of aliens. Perhaps he hopes to become the next
Marc Okrand (inventor of Klingon, and only model language inventor
to be making a significant amount of money from his invention).
Miller has detailed the grammar and lexicon of Ferengi, as well
as the alphabet.
Fith (Henning,
Jeffrey) - fictional language - 1996
Fith is a language for an imaginary alien race. Since many model
languages for aliens use grammars that follow the universal grammar
of humans, I wanted to invent a language that specifically violated
linguistic universals and could never be spoken by a human in
actual practice. Humans can translate Fithian texts that have
been written down, but due to the nature of the grammar - where
words can be spoken long before their semantic role, if any, is
apparent - no human could learn to translate Fith in real time.
The grammar is based on the principals of a LIFO-stack (Last In
First Out) data structure. Fith is also unusual in that each word
has both a spoken component and a hand signal (one of 12 hand
signals, each often signaling a different word).
Fjinnjikulla (Donnarumma, Tommaso) - 1990s
Folkspraak
(CONLANG members) - international auxiliary language -
1990s
Folkspraak is an international auxiliary language intended as
a pan-Germanic language, easily learned by speakers of English,
German, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Afrikaans, Frisian
and other Germanic languages. Folkspraak is an attempt to distill
the Germanic languages. Folkspraak is primarily an exercise in
collaborative invention, as it is being designed jointly by participants
on the CONLANG mailing list. If you would like to work with others
to design a model language, definitely check it out. (See Tutonish.)
Frater
(Pham Xuan Thai) - international auxiliary language -
1957
Frater is a Euroclone from Asia, with a Classical (Greek and Latin)
vocabulary, but with the roots somewhat modified to better suit
the palate of Chinese, Japanese and other Asian-language speakers.
To make it easier for Asian speakers, the language has only five
vowels and thirteen consonants (bdfgjklmnprst) but permits
more consonant clusters than might be expected given Chinese and
Japanese phonotactics.
Frater 2
(Bartlett, Paul) - international auxiliary language - 1996
A planned reform of Frater.
Fuchisch [link broken when last checked]
Gargish
(Miller, Herman, et al) - professional fictional language
The language of the gargoyles in the Ultima 6 and 7 computer
games. The language is more developed than you would expect for
a game, and it features an interesting "phonabet" (an
alphabetic writing system structured to have its symbols show
the phonetic features of its sounds).
Glaugnea (Helsem, Michael)
Glosa
(Hogben, Lancelot,1943; Ashby, Wendy and Clark, Ross, 1981) -
international auxiliary language
Hogben published a draft form of the language, which he called
Interglossa, in 1943, with Ashby and Clark preparing a modified
version, called Glosa, in 1981. The language is generally criticized
by model language enthusiasts, because it has basically not specified
a grammar, relying instead upon English grammar. The vocabulary
is Classical (Greek and Latin) and contains about a thousand words.
-gua!spi
(Carter, Jim) - logical language - 1991
Jim Carter has prepared his own logical language, inspired by
Loglan and Lojban.
He feels he has simplified the deep structures in Loglan enough
to make them 100 times easier to learn.
Ido (de
Beaufront, Louis or Couturat, Louis) - international auxiliary
language - 1907
With a name meaning "derived from" in Esperanto,
Ido
is a modification of Esperanto.
Ignota
(Hildegarde of Bingen) - stealth language
Dating back to the 1100s, Lingua Ignota ("Unknown Language")
is considered to be the first model language ever invented (or
the first that we have record of).
Ilish (Henning, Jeffrey) - fictional
language - 1996
Ilish is the language family of the il, a species of sentient
sea creatures of Fithia (see Fith), which
communicate by sending electrical shocks to one another. Ilish
is unusual in that it has no nouns, but instead uses thousands
of pronouns.
Ilianore
(Smith, Jeff) - fictional language - 1996
Jeff Smith is inventing a pseudo-Germanic fictional language,
inspired largely by Old English. He has specified some declensions
and has created a small lexicon.
Inda
(Higley, Gregory) - fictional language - 1990s
Inda is ergative and features an interesting grammar, with adjectives
treated as verbs (as in Japanese). The pronunciation system is
also interesting, with consonants undergoing assimilation in different
positions. Higley plans to provide more background about the fictional
Indarans and their culture, and of course how that has affected
their language.
Interglossa
(Hogben, Lancelot) - international auxiliary language -
1943
See Glosa.
Interlingua
(International Auxiliary Language Association) - international
auxiliary language - 1951
Developed by an organization that was originally founded in New
York in 1924 to choose one model language to support as an auxiliary,
the International Auxiliary Language Association eventually created
its own language, with a grammar derived from the Romance languages
and a vocabulary drawn from western European languages. Not to
be confused with Latino Sine Flexione, originally
called Interlingua.
Intermythic English (Henning,
Jeffrey) - superset language - 1996
This failed experiment involved adding a few hundred words to
English based on many mythologies, as a slang or simple code (e.g.,
Nar from Narcissus for the first-person pronoun, Centaur
for "ride a horse" or "equestrian"). Thank
the gods there's no Babel Text for it…
Jafo (Leigh, Thomas)
Jigwa
(Harrison, Rick, et al) - international auxiliary language
- 1990s
An international language meant to correct the European bias of
most of its competitors, by drawing primarily on Asian languages.
Jirit
(Miller, Herman) - fictional language - 1996
Jirit is the language of the Mizarian mice people. Only about
22 words of vocabulary are listed here, but the language is interesting
for its agglutinative morphology, which makes its grammar very
straightforward.
J2 (Campbell, James) - fictional language - 1992
Kalaba-X
(Pike, Kenneth L.) - artificial training language - 1957
Kalaba-X is nothing more than a formalized grammatical description
[verb (modifier) object (modifier) subject (modifier)], yet Pike
makes excellent use of it to teach some of the challenges of translation,
as he translates material to and from Kalaba-X. This is a must-read
for anyone designing the grammar of a model language; this article
is one of a series of four articles posted at this site (I,
II,
III,
IV).
Kinya (Gavioli, Maurizio)
Kiromi
(Raphael Singing Wolf) - stealth language
Wolf created Kiromi for the amusement of himself and his friends
and as an enjoyable way of learning more about linguistics. It
has the most informal definitions I have encountered in a model
language, with words such as batra (defined as "drums,
poundable instruments of rhythm") and bejke (defined
as "belch, burp, suddenly emit").
Klingon
(Okrand, Marc) - fictional language
The most popular fictional language today, with more speakers
and more enthusiasts than even Tolkien's Quenya. Okrand invented
the Klingon language for Star Trek, and there are many commercial
products available to help with learning the language, including
a dictionary, audio tapes and a multimedia software tutor.
LáAdan
(Elgin, Suzette Haden) - professional fictional language, international
auxiliary language
Elgin, noted author of The Gentle Art Of Verbal Self Defence
series of books, created LáAdan as an experiment to
test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Specifically, she felt that English
and most natural languages were better suited for expressing the
views of men than women. She designed LáAdan to enable
women to better give voice to their viewpoints, and the lexicon
of LáAdan, more than any other
model language, has many unique concepts that are expressed in
LáAdan in one word but cannot be easily expressed in natural
languages. Elgin included LáAdan in her Native Tongue
science-fiction trilogy. Unfortunately, little of the language
has been documented on the Internet.
Latino Moderne (LM) (Stark, David)
- international auxiliary language - 1994
Latino Moderne is based on IALA Interlingua.
The vocabulary for LM is the same as that of Interlingua, but
Stark has rejected Interlingua's grammar, which he views as oversimplified
and hard to use in practice, especially in regards to pronouns.
The grammar of LM is instead a distillation of that of ancient
Latin and the modern Romance languages. Learning Latino Moderne
can serve as a good foundation for later study of Classical Latin
or a modern Romance language.
Latino Sine Flexione
[LSF, formerly Interlingua] (Peano, Giuseppe) - international
auxiliary language - 1931
Peano felt that - while the Latin vocabulary is known to many
people through its descendant languages and scientific borrowings
- its inflexional system and syntax were too complex. By stripping
Latin of its "ponderous burden of inflexions", Peano
hoped to design the ideal auxiliary language. Latino Sine Flexione
(LSF)'s vocabulary consists of all Latin words (including Latin
borrowings of Greek terms) and the growing collection of common
"international" words. Peano originally called the language
Latino sine Flexione ("Latin without inflections") then
changed the name to Interlingua. Since the IALA's Interlingua
is now more well known, the language is usually referred to by
its original name.
Lesko (Knight, Shawn C.)
Lingua Ignota de Hildegardis
See Ignota.
Loglan
(Brown, James Cooke) - logical language
- 1955+
Brown designed Loglan (short for "Logical Language")
to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis through use of a language that
followed the concepts and structures of symbolic logic, while
striving for a thoroughly unambiguous grammar. Brown's original
language has served as the foundation for at least two other logical
languages, -gua!spi and Lojban.
Logulo (Knight, Shawn C.)
Lojban
- logical language - 1996
Designed by others as a continuation of Loglan,
Lojban (its name is a contraction for "Logical Language"
in Lojban) is the most professional and thought-provoking of the
modern logical languages, with a fascinating methodology
for deriving its root words from Arabic, Chinese, English, Hindi,
Russian and Spanish. Extensive information is available on-line.
Mavod (Annis, William)
Martian (Smith, Helene)
Microyak
- international auxiliary language - 1996
See Cyberyak.
Mundo-Lingue (Lott, Julius) - international auxiliary language
Nadsat
(Burgess, Anthony) - professional fictional language, superset
language
Nadsat is the language (slang, actually) used by gangs of
violent English teenagers in the now-classic book and movie A
Clockwork Orange. This English slang serves a serious purpose
in the book, which is to help keep the violence of the protagonist
(who rapes, murders and steals) from becoming unbearable to the
reader. Nadsat is the best slang ever invented, with over 300
words, many of them cleverly derived from Russian (e.g, Russian
nadsat, "-teen").
Nanigani (Tai, Kai-hsu) - fictional language
Neo
(Alfandari, Arturo) - international auxiliary language
- 1964
An international language that for a time seemed like it might
supplant Interlingua, but instead went
gently into that good night.
Novial
(Jespersen, Otto) - international
auxiliary language - 1928
Novial (an acronym for New International Auxiliary Language) was
designed primarily from two other languages, Ido
and Occidental.
Novial 97
(NOVIAL-L) - international auxiliary language - 1997
A promising modernization of Novial by an open committee of Internet
participants (NOVIAL-L). The design goal is to improve the regularity
and recognizability of Novial, while expanding the lexicon to
include terms for post-1928 concepts.
Occidental
(von Wahl, Edgar) - international auxiliary language -
1922
An international language using a Romance vocabulary, intended
almost solely for Western speakers. The language is so naturalistic
that Don Harlow says, "a linguist unfamiliar with it might
be forgiven for assuming it to be a minor Romance dialect that
had grown up after the collapse of Rome." Inspired by Mundo-Lingue,
Occidental itself served as an inspiration for Novial.
Olaetyan
(Miller, Herman) - fictional language - 1990s
Olaetyan, spoken on planets in the Kolagian sector, has an interesting
phonology and a detailed lexicon, but no grammar is described.
The vocabulary has enough unique words to make you want to learn
more about the culture of the speakers (unusual musical instruments,
game pieces, extraterrestrial creatures and mythological beings).
How do you play the game of xayadophon, anyway?
Old Tongue (Jordan, Robert) - professional fictional language
Penta (Harrison, Rick) - personal
language
See Zengo.
Poliespo (Sequoyah,
Nvwtohiyada Idehesdi, formerly known as Billy Joe Waldon) - international
auxiliary language
A bizarre combination of Esperanto and Cherokee.
Polylang
(Henning, Jeffrey and others) - international auxiliary language
- 1997
Designed to be the easiest international auxiliary to learn to
articulate, Polylang has just 12 sounds, the five vowels a,
e, i, o, u and the seven consonants m, n, r, p, t, k, s;
all syllables follow the consonant-vowel pattern (with optional
initial consonant), as in motosike ("motorcycle").
The vocabulary is designed for maximum international recognizability,
where possible given the limited phonology, with words like anima
("animal"), motore ("motor") and poreko
("pig, pork"). The vocabulary is eclectic and anyone
is free to coin new words (based on borrowings), so this is your
chance to easily contribute to a model language!
Quenya
(Tolkien, J.R.R.) - professional fictional language
Quenya is the chief of Tolkien's Elvish languages, used mainly
in The Lord of The Rings and The Silmarillion. The
beauty of Quenya has inspired many to take up the hobby of model
languages. Unfortunately, it was never a primary goal of Tolkien's
to finish the design of Quenya, and his death left the vocabulary
and grammar incomplete. This incompleteness has dampened the fires
of enthusiasm for many who would have liked to have learned the
language. At present there exists no single authoritative reference
to the meta-history (the history of the creation of the fictional
history) of Quenya. This gap will be filled eventually, when some
unknown among us rises to the challenge of analyzing the editorial
efforts of Tolkien's son, who has prepared a series of volumes
relating the history of Tolkien's invention of Middle Earth.
Radilu (Collins, Chris) - personal language - 1995
Ro (Foster,
Rev. and Mrs. Edward Powell) - philosophical language -
1906
Like Solresol, Ro is a pasigraphy (an
a priori philosophical language), with a vocabulary
derived not from natural languages but from a classification structure.
You can roughly guess the sense of a word by recognizing its initial
letters; for instance, in Ro, bo- is the category of "sense-affecting
matter", and color words (falling under this category) begin
with bofo-: bofoc means "red", bofod
means "orange" and bofof means "yellow".
Unfortunately, if you make a typo in Ro, you've probably just
spelled another word, and your spell checker is not going to catch
the mistike…
Romulan
- fictional language - 1990s
Another unofficial Star Trek language. Phrase-generating software
is available.
Roxhai (Henning,
Jeffrey) - philosophical language - 1996
Roxhai is a philosophical language, with its vocabulary automatically
structured, as with Ro. For instance: r'o
means "sentiment and moral power"; ro'yo,
"religious affection"; roc'o, "supernatural
being or region"; roca'yo, "Christian supernatural
being or region"; and rocac'o, "God". The
core vocabulary of Roxhai is based on nouns, with verbs, adjectives
and adverbs derived from these. Roxhai was inspired by Solresol,
Ro and Esperanto, and
is still being refined.
Rhozhendi
(Leigh, Thomas)
Sen:esepera
(Henning, Jeffrey) - international auxiliary
language - 1995
I designed Sen:esepera to reform Esperanto
to make it easier to pronounce. Where Esperanto has 23 consonants,
Sen:esepera has only the 14 most commonly used consonants; where
Esperanto permits complex consonant clusters (e.g., spr),
Sen:esepera only permits clusters using nasals. Sen:esepera is
also noteworthy for its kinship terms, capable of concisely expressing
thousands of familial relationships.
Simpenga (Henning, Jeffrey)
- international auxiliary language - 1995-1996
Simpenga, pronounced /sim-PEN-ga/, is a contraction of Simpela
Engelisa, "Simple English." The language is just
a phonetically simpler version of Basic English. Yawn.
SIMPLE
- 1990s
A simplified English, with about a 500-word vocabulary. Unlike
Basic English, SIMPLE does not aim
to be a grammatical subset of English, but attempts to simplify
the rules. The SIMPLE language is not so simple, for it does not
formally specify its grammar (which appears to consist of some
arguable but complex subset of English), it idiomatically forms
new words that have to be learned (a'other, there-for),
it ignores the issues of polysemy, and it permits a full range
of verbal idioms (verb-preposition pairs: give up, put up,
go in, etc.).
Solresol: Langue Musicale Universelle
(Sudre, Jean Francois) - international
auxiliary language - circa 1830
The cleverest philosophical language, the earliest model language
to be successful and the most likely to be learned by Julie Andrews.
Solresol is based on the musical scale and has just seven syllables:
do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si. Additional site.
Sona - international language
Speedwords
(Dutton, Reginald J.G.) - international auxiliary language,
shorthand - 1943
This language was invented as a shorthand system, as well as a
language, and emphasizes extremely short words.
SPL
A simplified Latin.
Streich (Donnarumma, Tommaso) - fictional language
Suma
(Russell, Barnett) - international auxiliary language -
1957
Suma is an a priori language, but is unusual for the category
in that its vocabulary does not use a systematic classification
system. The language allows only CV (consonant+vowel) syllables,
for easy-to-pronounce words.
Syai (Lilburn, Brian) - fictional language
Taeisan
languages - fictional languages
There are four Taeisan languages: Drgn, Iniel, Ohs and Petrocea.
Talossan
(Madison, R. Ben) - fictional language - 1980s
Madison has invented the imaginary country of Talossa (which claims
part of Milwaukee as its sovereign territory). Talossan is a Gallo-Romance
language, inspired by French, Provencal and Occitan, and very
naturalistic (with quite a few irregularities). Little of the
language is available on the Internet, but Madison does sell three
books about Talossan: two dictionaries and a grammar. With over
20,000 words, it is the most detailed fictional language ever
invented. A principle weakness of the language is that it has
no fictional derivation from Latin, with forms having been invented
arbitrarily rather than regularly. Additional site.
Tamarian
- professional fictional language
This mythometaphorical language was inspired by the "Darmok"
episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Taneraic
(Javant Biaruja) - stealth language - 1969
This language was originally intended only for use by the author
in writing his journal, but he has since made the language public.
Tceqli (Rmay) - 1996
Tenctonese - fictional language
Tepa
(Elzinga, Dirk) - personal language - 1990s
A unique personal language, professionally designed and presented;
highly regarded among the Internet community of language modelers.
Tokana
(Pearson, Matthew) - personal language - 1993-
Another unique personal language, presented by a professional
linguist as if written by a fieldworker studying the language.
The web site is not yet complete, but you can purchase the entire
grammar for a small fee from the author.
TRAN
(Andrei Burago) - fictional language - 1996
This is an unusual language, with two very interesting features:
first, a unique morphology for cases, and second, unusual formation
of noun/verb pairs. Cases are marked on the end of preceding words
(so, Vagu gat is "A cat sitting", where -u
marks the case of gat, "sit"); this is well suited
for forming compound words, e.g., tanosharasvanak is tan
("house") o-shar ("of selling", genitive)
a-svanak ("drugs"), "pharmacy". Finally,
verbs are formed from nouns by transposing the initial and final
consonants: e.g., tran, "speech", becomes nrat,
"to speak".
Tsolyani (Abd-el-Rahman Barker, Muhammad) - fictional language
Tutonish
(Molee, Elias) - international auxiliary language - 1902
Molee designed Tutonish as an "Anglo-German union tongue"
and actually intended for it to be not just an international auxiliary
language but the new mother tongue of the Germanic-speaking peoples,
supplanting their native languages. Tutonish has a phonetic spelling,
a simplified grammar and a vocabulary drawn primarily from German
and English. (See Folkspraak for a modern,
ongoing effort at designing a pan-Germanic language.)
Uni - international auxiliary language
Unitario
- international auxiliary language
A Euroclone with a vocabulary based extensively on Spanish.
Contrast with Eurolengo.
Universala Lingva Kodo [link broken when last checked]
Voksigid (Gilson, Bruce, et al) - logical language - 1980s
Volapük
(Schleyer, Johann Martin) - international auxiliary language
- 1880
With a name meaning "world speech", Volapük
became something of a fad in the late nineteenth century and was
the second international auxiliary language to win thousands of
adherents (after Solresol); it was the
precursor to Esperanto in popularity. It has a vocabulary based
primarily on English and German roots that have been somewhat
simplified for ease of pronunciation and morphological analysis.
Its grammar was difficult enough that enthusiasts were rarely
able to actually learn to speak the language. The language was
successfully reformed in the 1930s (Modern Volapük,
sample texts,
other site).
If Esperanto is the GUI (Graphical User Interface) of auxiliary
languages, than Volapük is the DOS of the field. The language
is primarily of interest now for historical reasons, and there
is little information available about it on the Internet.
Vorlin
(Harrison, Rick) - international auxiliary language - 1990s
Harrison is approaching the design of Vorlin very professionally,
and you can read his opinions about the requirements of an international
language in an excellent essay on his web site. Harrison is the
editor of the Journal Of Planned Languages and has prepared
a detailed bibliography of model languages. He is arguably the
foremost scholar of model languages working on the Internet today.
Vorlin is most noted for its use of words with three letters for
its base vocabulary. The language has changed significantly over
the years and still has far to go, as Harrison restructures its
vocabulary. This site is worth checking out periodically.
Vulcan
YASTLAN. Yet Another (Unofficial) Star Trek LANguage.
Xaîni - fictional language
yf rgalin (Shoulson, Mark) - 1996
Y-irril (Marshall, Jeremy) - personal language -
1995
Zegzolt (Keskitalo, Toni) - personal language -
1995
Zengo
(Harrison, Rick) - personal language - 1990s
Zengo is a language that allows Harrison to indulge his interest
in words with five letters. The small vocabulary contains an eclectic
mix of such words from different languages. Zengo was formerly
called Penta (until Intel made him change the name :-).
Zireenka
(Miller, Herman) - fictional language - 1990s
Zireenka is the language of another one of Miller's furry aliens,
the Zireen, who dwell on the planet Reeshai, in the general direction
of Ursa Major. This site has a playful introduction to the language,
a very short vocabulary and sample sound files. Zireenka is a
tonal language.
Prepared by Jeffrey Henning
Back to Model Languages home page
Keywords: constructed languages; international auxiliary languages; artificial languages; international languages; interlanguages; model languages; invented languages; planned languages.