An
artistic language (
artlang) is a
constructed language designed for aesthetic pleasure. Unlike
engineered languages or
auxiliary languages, artistic languages usually have irregular grammar systems, much like natural
languages. Many are designed within the context of
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 artistic language construction. The most important is the
naturalist school, which seeks to imitate the complexity and historicity of natural languages. Others do not attempt to imitate the natural evolution of languages, but follow a more abstract style.
Genres Main article: Fictional language Fictional 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 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, like
Wenedyk. 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.
Alternative languages 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.
Micronational languages The term
personal language refers to languages that are ultimately created for one's own edification. 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."
Vabungula by Bill Price is another notable example of an extensively used and thoroughly documented personal language; the author says of it, "It would of course be interesting to have someone else to converse with, but I have gotten along fine these past 35 years without a 'partner' and will probably get along just fine for the next 35 years without one." The author
Robert Dessaix describes the origins of his personal language K: "I wanted words that described reality. So I made them up."
[1] Personal languages 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.
Some typical Jokelangs are:
See also: Language game Europanto - constituting an unstructured mixture of any European Language
Transpiranto - constructed from international words inflected to sound like Swedish jargon, in order to improve malplacedness and ambiguity.
Oou - a deliberately ambiguous and
polysemous language whose writing system is made up entirely of punctuation marks and whose phoneme inventory is made up entirely of vowels
DiLingo- a rhyming language that contains much humor, both superficial and cleverly sneaky.
Examples of artistic languages Constructed language Language game Poto and Cabengo Taneraic
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