Zonal auxiliary languages, or zonal constructed languages, are
constructed language
A constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, instead of having developed naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a work of fiction. ...
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 all different nations, who do not share a common first language. An auxiliary language is primaril ...
s but are intended to serve a limited linguistic or geographic area, rather than the whole world like
Esperanto
Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communi ...
and
Volapük
Volapük (; , "Language of the World", or lit. "World Speak") is a constructed language created between 1879 and 1880 by Johann Martin Schleyer, a Catholic priest in Baden, Germany, who believed that God had told him in a dream to create an i ...
. 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 ( he, עברית חדשה, ''ʿivrít ḥadašá ', , '' lit.'' "Modern Hebrew" or "New Hebrew"), also known as Israeli Hebrew or Israeli, and generally referred to by speakers simply as Hebrew ( ), is the standard form of the He ...
and
Cornish.
Related concepts are
koiné language
In linguistics, a koiné language, koiné dialect, or simply koiné (Ancient Greek κοινή, "common anguage) is a standard or common language or dialect that has arisen as a result of the contact, mixing, and often simplification of two or ...
, 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 Kloss in ...
, 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
Interslavic (''Medžuslovjansky'' / ''Меджусловјанскы'') is a pan-Slavic language, pan-Slavic zonal auxiliary language, auxiliary language. Its purpose is to facilitate communication between speakers of various Slavic languages, as ...
, 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 Slavic peoples.
There are approximately 400 million speakers of the Slavic languages. In order to communicate with each other, speakers of different Slavic languages ...
s. The oldest known example is
Ruski jezik (1665) by the Croatian priest
Juraj Križanić
Juraj Križanić (c. 1618 – 12 September 1683), also known as Jurij Križanič or Yuriy Krizhanich (russian: Юрий Крижанич), was a Croatian Catholic missionary who is often regarded as the earliest recorded pan-Slavist. His ideal, of ...
, who is often regarded as the first recorded
Pan-Slavist
Pan-Slavism, a movement which crystallized in the mid-19th century, is the political ideology concerned with the advancement of integrity and unity for the Slavic people. Its main impact occurred in the Balkans, where non-Slavic empires had ruled ...
. Other notable examples of early Pan-Slavic language projects are
Universalis Lingua Slavica by
Ján Herkeľ
Ján Herkeľ (1786–1853) was a Slovak attorney and writer.
Herkel was born at Vavrečka, Kingdom of Hungary
The Kingdom of Hungary was a monarchy in Central Europe that existed for nearly a millennium, from the Middle Ages into the 20 ...
(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 born i ...
(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 () was the first Slavic languages, Slavic literary language.
Historians credit the 9th-century Byzantine Empire, Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius with Standard language, standardizing the lan ...
. 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
Interslavic (''Medžuslovjansky'' / ''Меджусловјанскы'') is a pan-Slavic language, pan-Slavic zonal auxiliary language, auxiliary language. Its purpose is to facilitate communication between speakers of various Slavic languages, as ...
(''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
A pan-Slavic language is a zonal auxiliary language for communication among the Slavic peoples.
There are approximately 400 million speakers of the Slavic languages. In order to communicate with each other, speakers of different Slavic languages ...
(Mark Hučko, 1999). These projects aim at radical simplification of the grammar, often combining Slavic vocabulary with
Esperanto
Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Created by the Warsaw-based ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communi ...
grammar.
Pan-Germanic languages
Languages for Pan-Germanic use have been created as well. Examples include
Tutonish
Tutonish (also called Teutonish, Teutonik, Allteutonish, Altutonish, Alteutonik, Nu Teutonish, Niu Teutonish, or Neuteutonish) is a constructed language created by Elias Molee. He worked on it for several years, and he reformed it multiple times, ...
, 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, Engli ...
s;
Euronord A pan-Germanic language is a zonal auxiliary language designed for communication amongst speakers of Germanic languages. Many of them are very similar and overlap in their approach but they are mutually inconsistent in their orthography, phonology, ...
, an effort by A.J. Pilgrim (1965); and
Folkspraak A pan-Germanic language is a zonal auxiliary language designed for communication amongst speakers of Germanic languages. Many of them are very similar and overlap in their approach but they are mutually inconsistent in their orthography, phonology, ...
, 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 branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
and/or
Romance
Romance (from Vulgar Latin , "in the Roman language", i.e., "Latin") may refer to:
Common meanings
* Romance (love), emotional attraction towards another person and the courtship behaviors undertaken to express the feelings
* Romance languages, ...
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 chairmanshi ...
, Neolatino by
André Schild (1947), Internacional by João Evangelista Campos Lima (1948),
Interlingua
Interlingua (; ISO 639 language codes ia, ina) is an international auxiliary language (IAL) developed between 1937 and 1951 by the American International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). It ranks among the most widely used IALs and is t ...
(IALA)
Latino Moderne by David Th. Stark (1996) and
Lingua Franca Nova
Lingua Franca Nova (), abbreviated as LFN and known colloquially as Elefen, is an auxiliary constructed language originally created by C. George Boeree of Shippensburg University, Pennsylvania, and further developed by many of its users. Its voc ...
, 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, for example
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, who published a first version in May 1956 and a s ...
Romanovaby David Crandall and Robert W. Hubert (2000)
Interlingua Romanicaby Richard Sorfleet and Josu Lavin (2001)
Romance Neolatinoby a group of linguists led by Jordi Cassany Bates (2012) an
Latino Interromanicoby 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
Efate (french: Éfaté) is an island in the Pacific Ocean which is part of the Shefa Province in Vanuatu. It is also known as Île Vate.
Geography
It is the most populous (approx. 66,000) island in Vanuatu. Efate's land area of makes it Vanua ...
in
Vanuatu
Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (french: link=no, République de Vanuatu; bi, Ripablik blong Vanuatu), is an island country located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of no ...
.
*
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 eas ...
(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 unt ...
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
Fenno-Ugric cultures
Some linguists, such as Alan Reed Libert, also list languages for use by speakers of unrelated languages in a particular geographical area among the zonal languages.
For example:
*
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, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...
for Africa)
See also
*
Dialect leveling
Dialect levelling or leveling (in American English) is the process of an overall reduction in the variation or diversity of features between two or more dialects. Typically, this comes about through assimilation, mixture, and merging of certain d ...
*
Lingua franca
A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...
References
Literature
*
*
External links
A list of constructed Slavic languages
{{Constructed languages
International auxiliary languages