Zonal auxiliary languages, or zonal constructed languages, are

constructed language A constructed language (shortened to conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, orthography, and vocabulary, instead of having developed natural language, naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devise ...

s made to facilitate communication between speakers of a certain group of closely related languages. They form a subgroup of the

international auxiliary language An international auxiliary language (sometimes acronymized as IAL or contracted as auxlang) is a language meant for communication between people from different nations, who do not share a common first language. An auxiliary language is primarily a ...

s but are intended to serve a limited linguistic or geographic area, rather than the whole world like

Esperanto Esperanto (, ) is the world's most widely spoken Constructed language, constructed international auxiliary language. Created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887 to be 'the International Language' (), it is intended to be a universal second language for ...

and

Volapük Volapük (; , 'Language of the World', or lit. 'World Speak') is a constructed language created in 1879 and 1880 by Johann Martin Schleyer, a Roman Catholic priest in Baden, Germany, who believed that God told him to create an international lang ...

. Although most zonal auxiliary languages are based on European language families, they should not be confused with "Euroclones", a somewhat derogatory term for languages intended for global use but based (almost) exclusively on European material. Since universal acceptance is not the goal for zonal auxiliary languages, the traditional claims of neutrality and universalism, typical for IALs, do not apply. Although they may share the same internationalist commitments of the latter, zonal auxiliary languages have also been proposed as a defense against the effects of the growing hegemony of English on other cultures or as a means to promote a sense of ethnicity or community in a manner similar to revitalized languages, such as

Modern Hebrew Modern Hebrew (, or ), also known as Israeli Hebrew or simply Hebrew, is the Standard language, standard form of the Hebrew language spoken today. It is the only surviving Canaanite language, as well as one of the List of languages by first w ...

and Cornish. Related concepts are

koiné language In linguistics, a koine or koiné language or dialect (pronounced ; ) is a standard or common dialect that has arisen as a result of the contact, mixing, and often simplification of two or more mutually intelligible varieties of the same langu ...

, a dialect that naturally emerges as a means of communication among speakers of divergent dialects of a language, and

Dachsprache In sociolinguistics, an abstand language is a language variety or cluster of varieties with significant linguistic distance from all others, while an ausbau language is a standard variety, possibly with related dependent varieties. Heinz Klo ...

, a dialect that serves as a standard language for other, sometimes mutually unintelligible, dialects. The difference is that a zonal language is typically a mixture of several natural languages and is aimed to serve as an auxiliary for the speakers of different but related languages of the same family. Most zonal constructed languages were developed during the period of

romantic nationalism Romantic nationalism (also national romanticism, organic nationalism, identity nationalism) is the form of nationalism in which the state claims its political legitimacy as an organic consequence of the unity of those it governs. This includes ...

at the end of the 19th century, but some were created later. Most older zonal constructed languages are now known only to specialists. A modern example is Interslavic, which has become the most successful example of all zonal constructed languages.

Pan-Slavic languages

Most numerous among the zonal auxiliary languages are, by far,

Pan-Slavic language A pan-Slavic language is a zonal auxiliary language for communication among the Slavs, Slavic peoples. There are approximately 400 million speakers of the Slavic languages. In order to communicate with each other, speakers of different Slavic lan ...

s. The oldest known example is Ruski jezik (1665) by the Croatian priest

Juraj Križanić Juraj Križanić ( – 12 September 1683), also known as Jurij Križanič, Yuriy Krizhanich, Iurii Krizhanich, and Yury Krizanitch (; , , ), was a Croatian Catholic missionary and polymath who is often regarded as the earliest recorded pan-Slav ...

, who is often regarded as the first recorded Pan-Slavist. Other notable examples of early Pan-Slavic language projects are Universalis Lingua Slavica by Ján Herkeľ (1826), ''Uzajemni Pravopis Slavjanski'' by the Slovene

Matija Majar Matija Majar, also spelled Majer (7 February 1809 – 31 July 1892), pseudonym Ziljski, was a Carinthian Slovene Roman Catholic priest and political activist, best known as the creator of the idea of a United Slovenia. Biography Majar was bor ...

(1865), ''Neuslawisch'' by the Czech Ignac Hošek (1907) and Slavina by the Czech Josef Konečný (1912). Until the beginning of the 20th century, all projects were characterized by a heavily naturalistic grammar, based directly or indirectly on

Old Church Slavonic Old Church Slavonic or Old Slavonic ( ) is the first Slavic languages, Slavic literary language and the oldest extant written Slavonic language attested in literary sources. It belongs to the South Slavic languages, South Slavic subgroup of the ...

. Their authors were motivated by the belief that all Slavic languages were dialects of one single Slavic language rather than separate languages. They deplored the fact that these dialects had diverged beyond mutual comprehensibility, and the language they envisioned was intended to reverse this process. Their long-term objective was that it would replace the individual Slavic languages. Naturalistic projects have been created later as well. Notable examples are Mežduslavjanski jezik, an unpublished project from the years 1954–1958 by a team of Czech interlinguists; Slovianski, a collaborative project started in 2006; and Novosloviensky, based on Old Church Slavonic and published in 2010 by the Czech Vojtěch Merunka. In 2011, Slovianski and Novosloviensky merged into one common project under the name Interslavic (''Medžuslovjansky''), also incorporating material from older naturalistic projects. Most naturalistic projects are so similar that they can easily be considered versions of the same language. During the 20th century, however, a few

schematic A schematic, or schematic diagram, is a designed representation of the elements of a system using abstract, graphic symbols rather than realistic pictures. A schematic usually omits all details that are not relevant to the key information the sc ...

projects have emerged as well, such as Slovanština (Edmund Kolkop, 1912), Neposlava (Vsevolod Cheshikhin, 1915), ''Slavski jezik'' (Bohumil Holý, 1920) and Slovio (Mark Hučko, 1999). These projects aim at radical simplification of the grammar, often combining Slavic vocabulary with

grammar.

Pan-Germanic languages

Languages for Pan-Germanic use have been created as well. Examples include Tutonish, a Pan-Germanic project by Elias Molee (1902), which was intended to be an auxiliary language at first but to eventually supplant all other

Germanic language The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania, and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, ...

s; Euronord, an effort by A.J. Pilgrim (1965); and Folkspraak, a heterogeneous project consisting of various dialects, started in 1995.

Pan-Romance languages

Many international auxiliary languages intended for global use consist exclusively or predominantly of

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

and/or Romance material, like

Latino sine flexione Latino sine flexione ("Latin without inflections"), Interlingua de Academia pro Interlingua (IL de ApI) or Peano's Interlingua (abbreviated as IL) is an international auxiliary language compiled by the Academia pro Interlingua under the chairmansh ...

, Neolatino by André Schild (1947), Internacional by João Evangelista Campos Lima (1948),

Interlingua Interlingua (, ) is an international auxiliary language (IAL) developed between 1937 and 1951 by the American International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). It is a constructed language of the "naturalistic" variety, whose vocabulary, ...

(IALA), Latino Moderne] by David Stark (1996),

Interlingue Interlingue (; ISO 639 ''ie'', ''ile''), originally Occidental (), is an international auxiliary language created in 1922 and renamed in 1949. Its creator, Edgar de Wahl, sought to achieve maximal Grammaticality, grammatical regularity and Na ...

, and

Lingua Franca Nova Lingua Franca Nova (), abbreviated as LFN and known colloquially as Elefen, is a constructed international auxiliary language originally created by C. George Boeree of Shippensburg University, Pennsylvania, and further developed by many of its ...

, which makes it hard to distinguish them from Pan-Romance languages. Some languages, however, have been presented explicitly as languages for use among (or with) Romance speakers, including

Romanid Romanid is a zonal auxiliary language for speakers of Romance languages, intended to be understandable to them without prior study. It was created by the Hungarian language teacher Zoltán Magyar Zoltán Magyar (born 13 December 1953) is a ...

, Romanova by Richard Sorfleet and Josu Lavin (2001), Romance Neolatino by a group of linguists led by Jordi Cassany Bates (2012) and Latino Interromanico by Raymund Zacharias and Thiago Sanctus (2017).

Other zonal constructed languages

Apart from these Indo-European examples, there have also been attempts on other language families: * Efatese (19th century), an artificially mixed language based on the languages of Efate Island in

Vanuatu Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (; ), is an island country in Melanesia located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of northern Australia, northeast of New Caledonia, east o ...

. *

Palawa kani Palawa kani is a constructed language created by the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre as a composite Tasmanian languages, Tasmanian language, based on reconstructed vocabulary from the limited accounts of the various languages once spoken by the Abo ...

(1992) by the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre. It is constructed from the vocabulary registered from the

Tasmanian languages The Tasmanian languages were the languages indigenous to the island of Tasmania, used by Aboriginal Tasmanians. The languages were last used for daily communication in the 1830s, although the terminal speaker, Fanny Cochrane Smith, survived u ...

before their extinction. It is intended as an indigenous language for the descendants of the Aboriginal Tasmanians. * Budinos (2000s), a language designed to be for communication between

Finno-Ugric Finno-Ugric () is a traditional linguistic grouping of all languages in the Uralic languages, Uralic language family except for the Samoyedic languages. Its once commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is based on criteria formulated in ...

cultures * Ortatürk / Öztürkçe (1992, 2008), a Pan-Turkic zonal auxiliary language, with statistically calculated vocabulary Linguist Alan Reed Libert also lists languages for use by speakers of unrelated languages in a particular geographical area among the zonal languages, including: * Guosa (intended as a common language for Nigeria) *

Afrihili Afrihili (''Ni Afrihili Oluga'' 'the Afrihili language') is a constructed language designed in 1970 by Ghanaian historian K. A. Kumi Attobrah (Kumi Atɔbra) to be used as a lingua franca in all of Africa. The name of the language is a combination ...

(intended as a

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, link language or language of wider communication (LWC), is a Natural language, language systematically used to make co ...

for Africa)

References

Literature

* *

External links

A list of constructed Slavic languages
{{Constructed languages International auxiliary languages