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An artistic language, or artlang, is a
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. ...
designed for aesthetic and phonetic pleasure. Language can be artistic to the extent that artists use it as a source of creativity in art, poetry, calligraphy or as a metaphor to address themes as cultural diversity and the vulnerability of the individual in a globalizing world. Unlike
engineered language Engineered languages (often abbreviated to engelangs, or, less commonly, engilangs) are constructed languages devised to test or prove some hypotheses about how languages work or might work. There are at least three subcategories, philosophical l ...
s or auxiliary languages, artistic languages often have irregular grammar systems, much like natural
language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...
s. Many are designed within the context of
fictional world A fictional universe, or fictional world, is a self-consistent setting with events, and often other elements, that differ from the real world. It may also be called an imagined, constructed, or fictional realm (or world). Fictional universes ma ...
s, such as
J. R. R. Tolkien John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, ; 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works ''The Hobbit'' and '' The Lord of the Rings''. From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was the Rawl ...
's
Middle-earth Middle-earth is the fictional setting of much of the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy. The term is equivalent to the '' Miðgarðr'' of Norse mythology and ''Middangeard'' in Old English works, including ''Beowulf''. Middle-earth is ...
. Others can represent fictional languages in a world not patently different from the real world, or have no particular fictional background attached.


Genres

Several different genres of constructed languages are classified as 'artistic'. An artistic language may fall into any one of the following groups, depending on the aim of its use. Similarly to
philosophical language A philosophical language is any constructed language that is constructed from first principles. It is considered a type of engineered language. Philosophical languages were popular in Early Modern times, partly motivated by the goal of revising n ...
s, artlangs are created in accordance with an initially defined principle in mind.


Fictional languages

By far the largest group of artlangs are fictional languages (sometimes also referred to as "professional artlangs"). 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, and to have their characters communicate in a fashion which is both alien and dislocated. By analogy with the word "conlang", the term ''
conworld Worldbuilding is the process of constructing a world, originally an imaginary one, sometimes associated with a fictional universe. Developing an imaginary setting with coherent qualities such as a history, geography, and ecology is a key task ...
'' is used to describe these worlds, inhabited by fictional
constructed culture Worldbuilding is the process of constructing a world, originally an imaginary one, sometimes associated with a fictional universe. Developing an imaginary setting with coherent qualities such as a history, geography, and ecology is a key task fo ...
s. There are two major categories of fictional languages. Professional fictional languages are those languages created for use in books, movies, television shows, video games, comics, toys, and songs. Prominent examples of works featuring fictional languages include the
Middle-earth Middle-earth is the fictional setting of much of the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy. The term is equivalent to the '' Miðgarðr'' of Norse mythology and ''Middangeard'' in Old English works, including ''Beowulf''. Middle-earth is ...
and ''
Star Trek ''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the eponymous 1960s television series and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. The franchise has expanded into vario ...
'' universes, the game '' Ico'' and the songs of the French band
Magma Magma () is the molten or semi-molten natural material from which all igneous rocks are formed. Magma is found beneath the surface of the Earth, and evidence of magmatism has also been discovered on other terrestrial planets and some natural s ...
, singing in Kobaïan. 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 sites' visitors. An example is Verdurian, the language of
Mark Rosenfelder Zompist.com is a website created by Mark Rosenfelder a.k.a. Zompist, a conlanger. It features essays on comics, politics, language, and science, as well as a detailed description of Rosenfelder's constructed world, Almea. The website is also ...
's Verduria on the planet of Almea.


Alternative languages

Alternative languages, or ''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 had gone on to thrive without a Roman Empire, leaving
Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
and not
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, 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 ...
to develop several modern descendants? The language that ''would have'' evolved is then traced step by step in its evolution, to reach its modern 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, like Wenedyk. Brithenig attempts to determine how Romance languages would have evolved had Roman influence in Britain been sufficient to replace Celtic languages with
Vulgar Latin Vulgar Latin, also known as Popular or Colloquial Latin, is the range of non-formal registers of Latin spoken from the Late Roman Republic onward. Through time, Vulgar Latin would evolve into numerous Romance languages. Its literary counterpar ...
, and bases its phonology on that of Welsh. An earlier instance is
Philip José Farmer Philip José Farmer (January 26, 1918 – February 25, 2009) was an American author known for his science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories. Obituary. Farmer is best known for his sequences of novels, especially the '' World of Tier ...
's Winkie language, a relative of the
Germanic languages 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, ...
spoken by the Winkies of Oz in ''A Barnstormer in Oz''. Another example is
Anglish Linguistic purism in English involves opposition to foreign influence in the English language. English has evolved with a great deal of borrowing from other languages, especially Old French, since the Norman conquest of England, and some of its ...
, which tries to reconstruct how English could have looked without Latin influence.


Micronational languages

Micronational languages are the languages created for use in
micronation A micronation is a political entity whose members claim that they belong to an independent nation or sovereign state, but which lacks legal recognition by world governments or major international organizations. Micronations are classified ...
s. 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 Talossa, also known as the Kingdom of Talossa ( tzl, Regipäts Talossan ), is one of the earliest micronationsfounded in 1979 by then-14-year-old Robert Ben Madison of Milwaukee and at first confined to his bedroom; he adopted the name after di ...
, is an archetypal example of a micronational language.


Personal languages

Personal languages are ultimately created for one's own edification. The creator does not expect anyone 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 Diaries may refer to: * the plural of diary A diary is a written or audiovisual record with discrete entries arranged by date reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. Diaries have traditionally been handwrit ...
). 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 author Robert Dessaix describes the origins of his personal language K: "I wanted words that described reality. So I made them up."


Languages with small vocabulary

The aim of such languages is to express deep meaning with very few parts. For instance, Toki Pona is generally said to have around 120, 123, or 125 root words and 14
phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-w ...
s. It was created by Canadian linguist and translator Sonja Lang for the purpose of simplifying thoughts and communication. Another example is Mini, a language of 1,000 words created by S. C. Gruget in 2020.


Jokelangs

The term jokelang is sometimes applied to conlangs created as jokes. These may be languages intended primarily to sound funny, such a
DiLingo
or for some type of
satire Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming o ...
, often as satire on some aspect of constructed languages. Some typical jokelangs are: * Europanto – an unstructured mixture of European languages * Transpiranto – constructed from international words inflected to sound like Swedish jargon, in order to improve malplacedness and ambiguity * Oou – a deliberately ambiguous and
polysemous Polysemy ( or ; ) is the capacity for a sign (e.g. a symbol, a morpheme, a word, or a phrase) to have multiple related meanings. For example, a word can have several word senses. Polysemy is distinct from ''monosemy'', where a word has a s ...
language whose writing system is made up entirely of punctuation marks and whose
phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-w ...
inventory is made up entirely of vowels * DiLingo – a rhyming languageDiLingo - official website
/ref> * Gulevache – a fictional joke romance language created by the Argentinian comedy-musical group Les Luthiers for its opera Cardoso en Gulevandia * Unwinese – the nonsensical but structured alternative English, also known as
gobbledygook Gibberish, also called jibber-jabber or gobbledygook, is speech that is (or appears to be) nonsense. It may include speech sounds that are not actual words, pseudowords, or language games and specialized jargon that seems nonsensical to outsi ...
but named by its creator Basic Engly Twentyfimode, used by comedian Stanley Unwin * Inflationary Language – invented by comedian
Victor Borge Børge Rosenbaum (3 January 1909 – 23 December 2000), known professionally as Victor Borge ( ), was a Danish-American comedian, conductor, and pianist who achieved great popularity in radio and television in the North America and Europe. His ...
, incrementing numbers embedded in words, e.g., ''crenine'' ("create") and ''elevennis'' ("tennis")


Experimental languages

An experimental language is a
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. ...
designed for the purpose of exploring some theory of
linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Ling ...
. Most such languages are concerned with the relation between language and thought; however, languages have been constructed to explore other aspects of language as well. In
science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel univ ...
, much work has been done on the assumption popularly known as the
Sapir–Whorf hypothesis The hypothesis of linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis , the Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, is a principle suggesting that the structure of a language affects its speakers' worldview or cognition, and thus people ...
. Artlangs of this type overlap with
engineered language Engineered languages (often abbreviated to engelangs, or, less commonly, engilangs) are constructed languages devised to test or prove some hypotheses about how languages work or might work. There are at least three subcategories, philosophical l ...
s.


Examples of artistic languages

See
list of constructed languages The following list of notable constructed languages is divided into auxiliary, ritual, engineered, and artistic (including fictional) languages, and their respective subgenres. All entries on this list have further information on separate Wik ...
for a list.


See also

*
Asemic writing Asemic may refer to: * Asemia Asemia is the term for the medical condition of being unable to understand or express any signs or symbols. It is a more severe condition than aphasia, which is the inability to understand linguistic signs. Asemia i ...
*
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. ...
*
Engineered language Engineered languages (often abbreviated to engelangs, or, less commonly, engilangs) are constructed languages devised to test or prove some hypotheses about how languages work or might work. There are at least three subcategories, philosophical l ...
*
Esoteric programming language An esoteric programming language (sometimes shortened to esolang) is a programming language designed to test the boundaries of computer programming language design, as a proof of concept, as software art, as a hacking interface to another language ...
* Idioglossia *
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 primar ...
*
Language game A language game (also called a cant, secret language, ludling, or argot) is a system of manipulating spoken words to render them incomprehensible to an untrained listener. Language games are used primarily by groups attempting to conceal their c ...
*
Mystical language Divine language, the language of the gods, or, in monotheism, the language of God (or angels), is the concept of a mystical or divine proto-language, which predates and supersedes human speech. Abrahamic traditions In Judaism and Christianity ...


References


External links


The CONLANG Mailing List

Zompist.com



Audience, Uglossia and CONLANG
by Sarah L. Higley
''Asemic Magazine''
is an Australian publication that explores artistic writing systems, at least some of which are ''asemic'', not representing specific meaning.


Wikis on or about constructed languages and artistic languages


ConlangWiki
– a wiki devoted to the topics of ConLangs and ConCultures.
Conlang wiki at Fandom

Unilang.org
– a database of language- and linguistic-related information {{DEFAULTSORT:Artistic Language