An artistic language, or artlang, is a

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 ...

designed for aesthetic and phonetic pleasure. Constructed languages can be artistic to the extent that artists use it as a source of creativity in art, poetry, calligraphy or as a

metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide, or obscure, clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are usually meant to cr ...

to address themes such as cultural diversity and the vulnerability of the individual in a globalizing world. They can also be used to test linguistical theories, such as

Linguistic relativity Linguistic relativity asserts that language influences worldview or cognition. One form of linguistic relativity, linguistic determinism, regards peoples' languages as determining and influencing the scope of cultural perceptions of their surro ...

. 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 ...

s or auxiliary languages, artistic languages often have irregular grammar systems, much like natural

language Language is a structured system of communication that consists of grammar and vocabulary. It is the primary means by which humans convey meaning, both in spoken and signed language, signed forms, and may also be conveyed through writing syste ...

s. Many are designed within the context of fictional worlds, 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 Rawlinson ...

Middle-earth Middle-earth is the Setting (narrative), setting of much of the English writer J. R. R. Tolkien's fantasy. The term is equivalent to the ''Midgard, Miðgarðr'' of Norse mythology and ''Middangeard'' in Old English works, including ''Beowulf'' ...

. 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, sometimes following a classification. It is considered a type of engineered language. Philosophical languages were popular in Early Modern times, partl ...

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'' is used to describe these worlds, inhabited by fictional constructed cultures. 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

and ''

Star Trek ''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the Star Trek: The Original Series, series of the same name and became a worldwide Popular culture, pop-culture Cultural influence of ...

'' universes, Simlish in ''

The Sims ''The Sims'' is a series of life simulation video games developed by Maxis and Video game publisher, published by Electronic Arts. The franchise has sold nearly 200 million copies worldwide, and is one of the List of best-selling video game fran ...

'', games like '' Ico'' and the ''Ar Tonelico'' series, and songs of the French band

Magma Magma () is the molten or semi-molten natural material from which all igneous rocks are formed. Magma (sometimes colloquially but incorrectly referred to as ''lava'') is found beneath the surface of the Earth, and evidence of magmatism has also ...

, 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'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: 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 of all kno ...

and not

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 ...

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 Colloquial, Popular, Spoken or Vernacular Latin, is the range of non-formal Register (sociolinguistics), registers of Latin spoken from the Crisis of the Roman Republic, Late Roman Republic onward. ''Vulgar Latin'' a ...

, 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 fiction, fantasy novels and short story, short stories. Obituary. Farmer is best known for two sequences of novels, t ...

's Winkie language, a relative of the

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages, 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 spoke ...

spoken by the Winkies of Oz in ''A Barnstormer in Oz''. Another example is

Anglish Purism in the linguistic field is the historical trend of languages to conserve intact their lexical structure of word families, in opposition to foreign influences which are considered 'impure'. Historically, linguistic purism in English is a ...

, which tries to reconstruct how English could have looked without Latin influence. Although technically a professional fictional language, Wenja, used in the video game Far Cry Primal is an attempt an reconstructing an earlier stage of

Proto-Indo-European Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...

, before the appearance of characteristics such as

gender Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...

ablaut In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut ( , from German ) is a system of apophony (regular vowel variations) in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE). An example of ablaut in English is the strong verb ''sing, sang, sung'' and its relate ...

or the s-mobile, to name a few.

Micronational languages

Micronational languages are the languages created for use in

micronation A micronation is a polity, political entity whose representatives claim that they belong to an independent nation or sovereign state, but which lacks legal recognition by any sovereign state. Micronations are classified separately from list o ...

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, 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). 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 Robert Dessaix (born 1944), also known as Robert Jones, is an Australian novelist, essayist and journalist. Early life and education Robert Dessaix was born in Sydney, Australia, and was adopted at an early age by Tom and Jean Jones, after w ...

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 Toki Pona (; , , translated as 'the language of good') is a Philosophical language, philosophical, Artistic language, artistic, constructed language designed for its small vocabulary, simplicity, and ease of acquisition. It was created by Canadia ...

is generally said to have around 120, 123, or 125 root words and 14

phoneme A phoneme () is any set of similar Phone (phonetics), speech sounds that are perceptually regarded by the speakers of a language as a single basic sound—a smallest possible Phonetics, phonetic unit—that helps distinguish one word fr ...

s. It was created by Canadian linguist and translator Sonja Lang for the purpose of simplifying thoughts and communication.

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 exposin ...

, 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, morpheme, word, or 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 single meani ...

language whose writing system is made up entirely of punctuation marks and whose

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 Les Luthiers is an Argentine comedy-musical group, very popular also in several other Spanish language, Spanish-speaking countries including Paraguay, Guatemala, Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Spain, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay, Bolivia, Cuba, Costa Rica an ...

for its opera Cardoso en Gulevandia * Unwinese – the nonsensical but structured alternative English, also known as gobbledygook 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 and American actor, comedian, and pianist who achieved great popularity in radio and television in both North America and Europe. Hi ...

, incrementing numbers embedded in words, e.g., ''crenine'' ("create") and ''elevennis'' ("tennis")

Experimental languages

An experimental language is a

designed for the purpose of exploring some theory of

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

. 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 (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

, much work has been done on the assumption popularly known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. Artlangs of this type overlap with

Examples of artistic languages

See list of constructed languages.

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