Artistic language
From Freepedia
An artistic language (or artlang) is a constructed language (conlang) designed for aesthetic pleasure. Unlike engineered languages or auxiliary languages, artistic languages usually have irregular grammar systems, much like natural languages. Many are designed for fictional worlds, such as J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth and Mark Rosenfelder's Almea. Others represent fictional minority languages in a world not patently different from the real world, or have no particular fictional background attached.
There are several different schools of artlangs. The most important is the naturalist school, which seeks to imitate the complexity and historicity of natural languages. However, there are also artlangers who do not care about naturalness, but follow a more abstract style.
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Genres of artlangs
Several different genres of constructed languages are classified as 'artistic'. An artistic language may fall into any one of these groups, depending on the aim of its use.
- By far the largest group of artlangs are fictional languages. Fictional languages are intended to be the languages of a fictional world, and are often designed with the intent of giving more depth and an appearance of plausibility to the fictional worlds with which they are associated. By analogy with the word "conlang", the term conworld is used to describe these worlds, inhabited by fictional concultures. The conworld influences vocabulary (what words the language will have for flora and fauna, articles of clothing, objects of technology, religious concepts, names of places and tribes, etc.), as well as influencing other factors such as pronouns, or how their cultures view the break-off points between colors or the gender and age of family members. Professional fictional languages are used for a book, movie, television show, video game, comic, toy or musical album, such as Middle Earth, the Star Trek universe, or the game Myst. Internet-based fictional languages are hosted along with their 'conworlds' on the Internet, and based at these sites, becoming known to the world through the visitors to these sites; Verdurian, the language of Mark Rosenfelder's Verduria on the planet of Almea, is a flagship Internet-based fictional language. Many other fictional languages and their associated conworlds are created privately by their inventor, known only to the inventor or perhaps a few friends. The term fictional diachronic language describes fictional languages that are invented in large families and have their fictional history traced over time, with a proto-language used to derive descendant languages.
- Alternative languages (altlangs) speculate on an alternate history and try to reconstruct how a family of natural languages would have evolved if things had been different (e.g. What if Greek civilization went on to thrive without a Roman Empire, leaving Greek and not Latin to develop several modern descendants?) The language that would have evolved is then traced step by step in its evolution, to reach its final form. An altlang will typically base itself on the core vocabulary of one language and the phonology of another. The best-known language of this category is Brithenig, which initiated the interest among Internet conlangers in devising such alternate-historical languages. Brithenig attempts to determine what Romance languages would have evolved had Roman influence in Britain been sufficient to replace Celtic languages with Vulgar Latin, and bases its phonology on that of Welsh. An earlier instance is Philip José Farmer's Winkie language, a relative of the Germanic languages spoken by the Winkies of Oz in A Barnstormer in Oz.
- Micronational languages are the languages created for use in micronations. Having the citizens learn the language is as much a part of participating in the micronation as minting coins and stamps or participating in government. The members of these micronations meet up and speak the language they have learned when they are participating in these meets. They coin new words and grammatical constructions when needed. Talossan, from R. Ben Madison's Kingdom of Talossa, is by far the best-known example of a micronational language.
- The term personal language refers to languages that are created for the ultimate purpose of creating a language. There is nobody whom the creator actually expects to speak it. The language exists as a work of art. A personal language may be invented for the purpose of having a beautiful language, for self-expression, as an exercise in understanding linguistic principles, or perhaps as an attempt to create a language with an extreme phonemic inventory or system of verbs. Personal languages tend to have short lifespans, and are often displayed on the Internet and discussed on message boards much like Internet-based fictional languages. They are often invented in large numbers by the people who design these languages. However, a few personal languages are used extensively and long-term by their creators (e.g., for writing diaries). Javant Biarujia, the creator of Taneraic, described his personal language (which he terms a hermetic language) thus: "a private pact negotiated between the world at large and the world within me; public words simply could not guarantee me the private expression I sought."
- The term jokelang is sometimes applied to conlangs created as jokes. These may be languages intended primarily to sound funny, such as DiLingo, or for some type of satire, often as satire on some aspect of constructed languages.
Examples of artistic languages
See also list of fictional languages.
Fictional languages
Literary fictional languages
- Babel-17, in Babel-17 by Samuel Delany
- Baronh, language of Abh in Seikai no Monsho (Crest of the Stars) and others, by Morioka Hiroyuki
- Codex Seraphinianus by Luigi Serafini appears to be written in a constructed language which is presumably the language of the alien civilization the book describes
- Drac, language of alien species in Barry B. Longyear's The Enemy Papers
- Glide, created by Diana Reed Slattery, used by the Death Dancers of The Maze Game
- Kesh, spoken by the Kesh people in Ursula Le Guin's Always Coming Home
- Láadan, in Suzette Haden Elgin's science fiction novel Native Tongue and sequels
- Lapine, in Watership Down by Richard Adams
- Marain, in The Culture novels of Ian M. Banks
- the languages of Middle-earth by J. R. R. Tolkien, partly published in The Lord of the Rings, and posthumously discussed in The History of Middle-earth and other publications.
- Nadsat slang, in A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
- Newspeak, in Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
- Pravic and Iotic, in The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin
- Sindarin, Quenya and Khuzdûl, in the works of J. R. R. Tolkien
- Syldavian, in some of Hergé's Tintin stories
- Utopian language, appearing in a poem by Petrus Gilles in a poem accompanying Thomas More's Utopia
- Several languages spoken by Panurge in François Rabelais' Pantagruel (1532)
- Rihannsu, spoken by the Rihannsu (Romulans) in the Star Trek novels of Diane Duane
Fictional languages in other media
- Atlantean language, in the Disney movie Atlantis: The Lost Empire
- Bluddian, from the game "Captain Blood" by Cryo Interactive Entertainment
- Divine Language, spoken by Leeloo in The Fifth Element
- D'ni, the language spoken by the subterranean D'ni people in the Myst series of games and novels
- Furbish, the language of the Furby plush toy (Furbish at Langmaker.com)
- Gargish language, used in the Ultima computer game series, by the gargoyle race
- Klingon, in the Star Trek movie and television series, created by Mark Okrand
- Kobaian, from the fictional planet created by French musician Christian Vander and the language sung by his progressive rock band Magma
Internet-based fictional languages
- Arovën, also a logical language, spoken in fictional Aroël, by Joshua Shinavier
- Kélen, by Sylvia Sotomayor
- Teonaht, by Sally Caves
- Tokana, by Matthew Pearson
- Verdurian, one of several languages created for the fictional planet of Almea by Mark Rosenfelder
Alternative languages
- Brithenig, created by the inventor of the alternate history of Ill Bethisad, Andrew Smith
- Breathanach, created in 1998 by Geoff Eddy, Q-Celtic sound changes applied to Classical Latin.
- Wenedyk (Venedic in English), a language of the alternate history of Ill Bethisad created by Jan van Steenbergen
Micronational languages
- Talossan, by R. Ben Madison
Personal languages
- Aingeljã, created by Ángel Serrano (official homepage)
- K by Robert Dessaix (interview on Lingua Franca)
- Taneraic, used by Javant Biarujia for about ten years in his diary
- Toki Pona, by Sonja Elen Kisa
See also
External links
- Zompist.com
- A Constructed Languages Library
- Conlang Profiles at Langmaker.com
- Audience, Uglossia and CONLANG by Sarah L. Higley
Wikis on or about constructed languages and artistic languages
- ConlangWiki - a wiki devoted to the topics of ConLangs and ConCultures.
- Conlang Wikicity
- FrathWiki
- Unilang.org - a database of language- and linguistic-related information
