List of artificial languages. Abstract artificial languages
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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION OF THE MOSCOW REGION
State educational institution of higher professional education
Moscow State Regional University
Institute of Linguistics and Intercultural Communication
Faculty of Linguistics
CourseworkJob
Bydiscipline " LinguisticsAndliterary criticism"
ontopic: " Reasonscreationartificiallanguages. StorycreationAndfunctioningVolapuk"
Completed the work
student Zhigunova Elena Dmitrievna
Scientific supervisor: Art. Rev. Fedosova A.K.
Content
- Introduction
- 1.3 Examples of artificial languages in literature and cinematography
- Chapter 2. Volapyuk
- 2.1 History of creation
- Conclusion
- References
Introduction
This topic of the course work is quite relevant at the moment, since in our time the creation of artificial languages is quite common. After all, natural languages mainly serve as the basis for artificial languages, although there are cases when new languages are completely different from any of the existing languages.
The problem of creating artificial languages is both positive and negative, which is why I would like to consider this problem from both sides in order to find out why artificial languages are created when there are thousands of natural ones.
Indeed, at the moment, not every natural language has a written language, there are quite a lot of dead languages that no one speaks anymore, there are endangered languages that are spoken by only a few people in the whole world, and this makes one wonder why artificial languages attract why some artificial languages are spoken by more people than some that are considered endangered.
The main research method in this work was studying material on different artificial languages, conducting surveys about what artificial languages people know and where they learned about them, writing short reviews about different languages after the survey, studying material about natural languages and problems of “language barrier" in the modern world, as well as the negative consequences of the creation of artificial languages.
Chapter 1. Reasons for the creation of artificial languages
Since ancient times, people have experienced certain difficulties due to the fact that different nationalities speak different languages and dialects, accordingly, such a concept as a “language barrier” appeared.
Since then, people began to wonder how to overcome this “barrier”, because people needed to contact each other ever since states appeared, and there was a need for trade, establishing friendly ties between states and concluding treaties.
A striking example is the Old Russian state and Byzantium. In 907 and 911, the first treaties were concluded between the Old Russian state and Byzantium. The first treaty of 907 was of a dubious nature and was, rather, preparatory to the treaty of 911. And the treaty of 911 determined the procedure for the ransom of prisoners, restored friendly relations between states, determined punishments for criminal offenses committed by Greek and Russian merchants in Byzantium, the rules of litigation and inheritance, created favorable trading conditions for Russians and Greeks, changed coastal law (owners of the coast should have assisted in the rescue of the beached ship and its property instead of seizing it).
People began to solve the problem of the “language barrier” in different ways. Some began to study other languages in order to be able to speak them and understand others, others chose one language for international communication, for example, in ancient times it was Latin, and now in most countries people understand and speak English .
Also, pidgins began to emerge - peculiar “hybrids” of any two languages. An example of such a “hybrid” is a mixture of Ukrainian and Russian languages - from the outside it seems as if a person speaks Russian, but uses Ukrainian words in his vocabulary, and it turns out that both Russians and Ukrainians understand him. Although Russian and Ukrainian are very similar, this “hybrid” is still useful for communication.
Since the seventeenth century, scientists have been thinking about creating a new, special language that would be quite easy to understand and learn, and which would become the language of international communication. Indeed, in natural languages, the languages that we speak from birth, there are quite a lot of exceptions and borrowed words, complex rules, and their structure depends on historical development, in which it is very difficult to understand the logic, for example, the formation of some grammatical forms and spelling. Artificially created languages are usually called planned languages, since the word "artificial" can cause negative associations when translated into some languages.
The most famous and widespread of the artificial languages is Esperanto, which was created by Ludwig Zamenhof in 1887. “Esperanto,” which means “hopeful,” was Zamenhof’s pseudonym, and subsequently the language he created was called by this name.
Zamenhof was born in Bialystok, in the Russian Empire. Jews, Poles, Germans and Belarusians lived in the city - in a word, people of completely different nationalities, and relations between people of these nationalities were quite tense. Ludwik Zamenhof decided that the reason for this enmity between ethnic groups lay in misunderstanding, and even when he was studying at the gymnasium he made attempts to develop a “common” language based on the European languages that he studied. He needed to create a language that was also neutral. The structure of Esperanto was created quite simple for ease of learning and memorizing the language. The roots of the words were borrowed from European and Slavic languages, as well as from Latin and ancient Greek.
There are many organizations that devote their activities to the dissemination of Esperanto; books and magazines are published in this language, broadcasting channels have been created on the Internet, and songs have been written. There are also versions of many popular programs in the language, such as office applications OpenOffice.org, the Mozilla Firefox browser, and a version of Esperanto is available in the Google search engine. The language also enjoys the support of UNESCO.
In addition to Esperanto, there are quite a lot of other artificially created languages, both widely known throughout the world and not widely known. Many of them were created with the same goal - to develop the most convenient means for international communication: Ido, Interlingua, Volapuk and others.
Some other artificial languages, for example, Loglan, were created for research purposes; linguists specially developed new artificial languages in order to conduct experiments, experiments, identify patterns, etc. And languages such as Na'vi, Klingon and Sindarin were developed so that characters in books and films could speak them.
We all know the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, in which elves, gnomes, goblins, and orcs spoke languages that were completely different in sound and writing, and each of the languages had its own history, as did the peoples speaking them . Also, the Na'vi language was specially developed, which was spoken by the heroes of the film "Avatar", the director of the film James Cameron specifically asked the linguist to develop and create an artificial language for the fictional world. After the film was released, there were a lot of people who wanted to learn the fictional language, which became one of the means of communication between fans of the film and the book.
Unlike natural languages, which developed throughout human history, separated over time from any parent language and died, artificial languages are created by people specifically in a relatively short time. They can be created based on the elements and structure of existing natural languages or "constructed" entirely.
Authors of artificial languages disagree on which strategy best meets their goals - neutrality, ease of learning, ease of use. After all, it is impossible to guess which of these parameters will make the language the most popular and spread so much as to become universal. And therefore, many believe that the creation of artificial languages makes no sense at all, since they will never spread enough to serve as a universal interethnic language. Even a language such as Esperanto is now known to few, and English is most often used for international negotiations.
Learning artificial languages is complicated by many factors. Firstly, there are no native speakers, since these are completely made-up languages that have never been spoken by anyone since ancient times. The structure may change periodically as scholars often argue about how to make the language better, which rules to keep and which should be replaced. And, as a result of disagreements between theorists, an artificial language can be divided into two variants, since some decide that one variant is more acceptable, and others decide that it should be done differently - for example, Lojban was separated from the Loglan language, Ido from Esperanto .
However, proponents of artificial languages still believe that in the conditions of modern globalization, a language is needed that could be used by everyone, but at the same time not associated with any particular country or culture, and continue linguistic research and experiments.
1.1 Negative aspects of creating artificial languages
As it turned out, artificial languages began to be created in the 17th century in order to overcome the “language barrier.” But is it right to create a language in which all people can communicate? Of course, it is good if people can communicate with each other without any problems and do not experience any difficulties when traveling to other countries.
After all, if there is one universal language of interethnic communication, then there will be no need to learn other languages almost from infancy, there will be no difficulties with incorrect pronunciation of words in another language, there will be no need to buy dictionaries just to go on vacation with your family to another country. Ignorance of another language and another country will no longer be a problem for vacationers, travelers and tourists.
If you look from this point of view, if a universal language of interethnic communication is ever created, then over time, as centuries pass, people will simply no longer need their native languages. But why, if there is one that everyone knows and understands? Now there is no “language barrier”, no translation difficulties, you can freely communicate with anyone anywhere in the world!
People of different nationalities will speak neutral, simple, fictional language which Not has history. But each of the languages, natural languages, is unique. It carries with it an entire historical era, the spirit of the people, because it is part of the ethnic group. Will he just be forgotten? Because people simply don’t want to learn other languages in order to contact other, equally unique ethnic groups with their own history.
Perhaps the creation of an artificial universal language so that people of different nations can communicate is simply an act of laziness? Many people, given the opportunity to go abroad and receive higher education there, refuse the opportunity to communicate with people of another country and learn a language, and only because they simply do not want to learn another language seems savage to me.
Moreover, if there is only one language, after centuries, maybe even millennia, people will simply forget their native languages, they will become for them like Latin is for us now - a dead language that now exists only as echoes of that great language, that existed before.
What will be left for linguists? Now there are thousands of languages that are spoken, written, and they can all be studied, many dialects, neologisms, incomprehensible exceptions to the rules of languages - all this gives linguists work, knowledge, scientific discoveries, the creation of new dictionaries, and the like.
But if all this does not exist, if there is only one language, linguists will have no choice but to delve into history and study dead languages that were once great, or create new ones for their research purposes.
1.2 Positive aspects of creating artificial languages
The creation of artificial languages also brings benefits. Undoubtedly, creating a universal language for communication is a great idea for overcoming the language barrier, because if one can be created, then most likely there will be no strife between people due to misunderstandings. In some cases, an artificial language as a means of interethnic communication is urgently needed.
For example, in Papua New Guinea there are a huge number of languages spoken, and the authorities there are literally “hanging themselves” because even neighboring villages find it very difficult to communicate with each other due to the large difference in dialects or language in general. Problems also arise with the media, because if a country does not have a national language, then it becomes unclear how to present information to people, in what language the information should be disseminated through radio, television, newspapers and magazines so that it reaches all residents.
Also, India has about 17 accepted national languages and it is very difficult to communicate with so many differences in word meanings. In China, people also experience difficulties, since the Chinese language has a huge number of different characters, and as a result, the Chinese language has quite a lot of dialect branches that are understandable only to those people who use them.
It is for such cases that the creation of one language, so that people can communicate at least within their own country, is very important, because because of this, strife and difficulties in people’s interaction with each other and life in general can arise.
Also, artificial languages are a very interesting factor for fans of science fiction, books and films in general, since many writers create their own world in which they create their own language. These languages are, as it were, native to the characters in books or films, since the authors create not only the language itself, but also think through its history, not the story of creation, or the idea that came to the author’s mind, and he decided to create the language, but the story that goes deep into the fictional world that the author writes about.
1.3 Examples of artificial languages in literature and cinema
The Klingon language spoken by humanoid warriors from the planet Khonosh in the fictional universe of the Star Trek series was invented by linguist Marc Okrand for Paramount Studios. The language has a detailed grammar, syntax, vocabulary, and even a regulatory organization, the Klingon Language Institute, which promotes Klingon culture and translates classical literature, including the Bible and Shakespeare, into Klingon.
In addition to Klingon, in the Star Trek universe there are about 10 languages of varying degrees of development, including Vulcan, Borg, Rihannsu, Andorian, Orion, Tamarian, Ferengi, Bayoran, etc.
By J.R. R. Tolkien is known not only as a writer and author of "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings", but also as a linguist and inventor of many artificial languages.
Even as a child, Tolkien and his friends invented secret languages to communicate with each other. This passion remained with him throughout his life. He developed the grammar and vocabulary for a whole family of 15 Elvish languages, which he continued to work on from 1910 until his death in 1973. This group includes Proto-Elven, Common Eldarin, Quenya, Goldogrin, Telerin, Sindarin, Ilkorin, Nandorin, Avarin.
In the film "The Fifth Element" the main character Lilu speaks the so-called ancient Divine language (The Divine Language), which, according to prehistory, was spoken by the entire Universe before the beginning of time.
Designed by Luc Besson and Milla Jovovich, the language has just over 400 words. As the actress claimed, she and the director even wrote letters to each other in it for language practice. Some time after the film's release, Besson's inspired fans collected all the phrases from the film and compiled a dictionary.
In the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, created by George R.R. Martin, there are many different languages. In Westeros, the so-called common language is adopted; the languages of Valyria, Dothraki and others that differ from it are also known (dialects Free Cities, language Quart, Ghiscari, language Lhazaryan, Asshai, trade language, language Summer Islands Andetc.). Most of these languages are rendered in English in the books of the saga.
We will focus on Dothraki, which Daenerys Targaryen had to learn. This language was developed in more detail especially for the Game of Thrones series, and its creator was David J. Peterson from the Language Creation Society. The books didn't have many guidelines for language development, just a few nouns and dozens of names. They set the vector for its development.
The new language received grammatical and phonetic borrowings from Russian, Turkish, Estonian, and Inuktitut (language residents extreme north Canada) and Swahili.
Several fictional languages are mentioned in the world of Harry Potter, including Gobbledook, Runic, the language of the merpeople, and Parseltongue or "serpentine." This magical language, according to JK Rowling’s story, is spoken by parsel-mouth magicians who speak with snakes. Those around cannot understand the conversation between the parselmouth and the snake, since they only hear a hiss. This innate and extremely rare gift is passed on by inheritance or along with magical powers. Typically, tongue is associated with the Dark Arts, but some good wizards also possessed this gift.
The most famous Parselmouth was Salazar Slytherin, one of the four founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. That is why the symbol of the Slytherin house is a snake.
The language consists of various hissing sounds and rough letters, and words are pronounced on the exhale with hissing and imitation of snake sounds. Most sentences are very short and consist of only a subject, an object and a verb. The rest of the meaning must be figured out by the listener, based on their knowledge and context. In addition, the language does not have a written form, and it is very difficult to convey its sound in the Latin alphabet. The version of Parseltongue used in the films was developed by Francis Nolan, professor of phonetics and specialist in Finnish and Estonian at the University of Cambridge.
The Star Wars universe is also filled with its own kind of different languages. , of which the saga mentions Galactic High, Droid Binary, Duros, Hutt, Yuuzhan Vong, and many others. The fictional languages of Star Wars, unlike Klingon or Sindarin, have no real grammatical system. For example, Wookiee growls or droid signals mostly convey intonation and emotion. The language most often used in the films, Galactic Basic, is identical to modern English and is only slightly supplemented by fictitious idioms and individual words. Other languages are also similar to existing human ones, although unfamiliar to most viewers.
One of the original languages of the film saga is bokke , an artificial language used by space travelers, which consists of the languages of several races.
According to the narrative, the language originated in the Baobab trade ftol as a means of communication between the pilots, crew, and support staff, who belonged to a variety of races. Although the language is not widely used, any experienced pilot and space traveler knows a few phrases in Bokke to communicate with other pilots.
Chapter 2. Volapyuk
2.1 History of creation
Volapyuk (Volapьk: vol - “world” + pьk - language) is the first international language of artificial origin in history. It was created by the German priest Johann Schleyer back in 1879. As the author himself stated, one day the Lord appeared to him in a dream and offered to create a new language capable of uniting all peoples.
A disclaimer should be made here that in fact the first project to create an artificial international language was Universalglot, created in 1868 by the French linguist Jean Pirro. However, he had no success at all. Volapyuk managed to advance a little further.
Schleyer's creation was based on the classical German language, from which the author excluded the sound r, considering it too complex for several nationalities, but left the original German umlauted vowels d, c, ь.
Unlike the deliberately simplified Esperanto, Volapük had a complex grammatical and word-formation system. There were several thousand forms of verbs alone in it. In addition, this language, like its ancestor, made it possible to combine an unlimited number of roots in one complex word, which led to the appearance of such monsters as klonalitakipafablеdacifalоpasekretan (“secretary of the chandelier factory directorate”). Unfortunately, it was precisely this complexity that caused the rapid decline of Volapük.
Volapuk artificial language international
2.2 Functioning of Volapük in modern society
Over the course of twenty years since its creation, this language has been actively gaining popularity. By 1889, over 210 thousand people in various countries had studied it, relevant literature was created, and periodicals were published. But in the same year there was a conflict between Schleyer and reformers who wanted to somewhat simplify Volapük for general use. The priest forbade any changes to his creation, and fans of artificial international languages switched their attention to Esperanto, created two years earlier.
And although in 1929 it was nevertheless somewhat transformed into Volapuk, the total number of its speakers today does not exceed 30 people. This is definitely not enough for the language to develop and spread normally.
Conclusion
Thus, we can conclude that artificial languages were mainly created in order to facilitate intercultural communication for people, since people need to overcome the “language barrier” and speak freely among themselves without quarreling due to misunderstandings.
It also turned out that a lot of artificial languages were created in connection with books and films, which have their own fictional world and, accordingly, need a language to make this world look like the real one. As it turns out, these fictional languages are very popular among people because people are interested in worlds and their languages, and after the release of films or books, there are a lot of followers of trilogies or series of books or films. This is why some man-made languages eclipse endangered languages in popularity.
Also, artificial languages are created by linguists themselves, sometimes for research purposes, to observe processes, compare an artificially created language with a natural one, or develop a language for a tribe that only has a written language.
References
1. Current problems of modern interlinguistics: Sat. in honor of the 75th anniversary of academician. P.A. Ariste. (Interlinguistica Tartuensis - 1). Tartu, 1982.
2. Akhmanova ABOUT. WITH, Bokarev E.A. International auxiliary language as a linguistic problem. - Questions of linguistics, 1956, No. 6, pp. 65-78.
3. Isaev M.AND. The problem of an artificial language of international communication. - In the book: Problems of interlinguistics. M.: Nauka, 1976.
4. http://london-moscow.ru/zachem_sozdavat_iskusstvennie_yaziki
5. http://whoyougle.ru/texts/artificial-languages/
6. https://ru. wikipedia.org
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People have had this problem since ancient times"language barrier". They solved it in different ways: for example, they learned other languages or chose one language for international communication (in the Middle Ages, the language of scientists around the world was Latin, but now most countries will understand English). Pidgins were also born - peculiar “hybrids” of two languages. And starting from the 17th century, scientists began to think about creating a separate language that would be easier to learn. Indeed, in natural languages there are many exceptions and borrowings, and their structure is determined by historical development, as a result of which it can be very difficult to trace the logic, for example, of the formation of grammatical forms or spelling. Artificial languages are often called planned languages because the word “artificial” can evoke negative associations.
Most famous and the most common of them is Esperanto, created by Ludwik Zamenhof in 1887. “Esperanto” - “hoping” - is Zamenhof’s pseudonym, but later this name was adopted by the language he created.
Zamenhof was born in Bialystok, in the Russian Empire. Jews, Poles, Germans and Belarusians lived in the city, and relations between representatives of these peoples were very tense. Ludwik Zamenhof believed that the cause of interethnic hostility lies in misunderstanding, and even in high school he made attempts, based on the European languages he studied, to develop a “common” language, which would at the same time be neutral - non-ethnic. The structure of Esperanto was created quite simple for ease of learning and memorizing the language. The roots of the words were borrowed from European and Slavic languages, as well as from Latin and ancient Greek. There are many organizations whose activities are dedicated to the dissemination of Esperanto; books and magazines are published in this language, there are broadcast channels on the Internet, and songs are created. There are also versions of many common programs for this language, such as the OpenOffice.org office application and the Mozilla Firefox browser. The Google search engine also has a version in Esperanto. The language is supported by UNESCO.
Besides Esperanto, there are many other artificially created languages, both well-known and less common. Many of them were created with the same goal - to develop the most convenient means for international communication: Ido, Interlingua, Volapuk and others. Some other artificial languages, such as Loglan, were created for research purposes. And languages such as Na'vi, Klingon and Sindarin were developed so that characters in books and films could speak them.
How are they different? from natural languages?
Unlike natural languages, developed throughout the history of mankind, separated over time from any parent language and died, artificial languages are created by people in a relatively short time. They can be created based on the elements and structure of existing natural languages or "constructed" entirely. Authors of artificial languages disagree on which strategy best meets their goals - neutrality, ease of learning, ease of use. However, many believe that the creation of artificial languages is pointless, since they will never spread enough to serve as a universal language. Even the Esperanto language is now known to few, and English is most often used for international negotiations. The study of artificial languages is complicated by many factors: there are no native speakers, the structure can change periodically, and as a result of disagreements between theorists, an artificial language can be divided into two variants - for example, Lojban was separated from the Loglan language, Ido was separated from Esperanto. However, proponents of artificial languages still believe that in the conditions of modern globalization, a language is needed that could be used by everyone, but at the same time not associated with any particular country or culture, and continue linguistic research and experiments.
Constructed language- a sign system created specifically for use in areas where the use of natural language is less effective or impossible. Constructed languages vary in their specialization and purpose, as well as in the degree of similarity to natural languages.
The following types of artificial languages are distinguished:
Programming languages and computer languages are languages for automatic information processing using a computer.
Information languages are languages used in various information processing systems.
Formalized languages of science are languages intended for symbolic recording of scientific facts and theories of mathematics, logic, chemistry and other sciences.
Languages of non-existent peoples created for fictional or entertainment purposes. The most famous are the Elvish language, invented by J. Tolkien, and the Klingon language, invented by Marc Okrand for the science fiction series "Star Trek" (see Fictional languages).
International auxiliary languages are languages created from elements of natural languages and offered as an auxiliary means of international communication.
According to the purpose of creation, artificial languages can be divided into the following groups :
Philosophical and logical languages are languages that have a clear logical structure of word formation and syntax: Lojban, Tokipona, Ifkuil, Ilaksh.
Auxiliary languages - intended for practical communication: Esperanto, Interlingua, Slovio, Slovyanski.
artificial language natural specialization
Artistic or aesthetic languages - created for creative and aesthetic pleasure: Quenya.
Language is also created to set up an experiment, for example, to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (that the language a person speaks limits consciousness, drives it into a certain framework).
According to their structure, artificial language projects can be divided into the following groups:
A priori languages - based on logical or empirical classifications of concepts: loglan, lojban, rho, solresol, ifkuil, ilaksh.
A posteriori languages - languages built primarily on the basis of international vocabulary: Interlingua, Occidental
Mixed languages - words and word formation are partly borrowed from non-artificial languages, partly created on the basis of artificially invented words and word-formation elements: Volapuk, Ido, Esperanto, Neo.
The most famous artificial languages are :
basic english
interlingua
Latin-blue-flexione
occidental
Simlian language
solresol
Esperanto
The most famous artificial language was Esperanto (L. Zamenhof, 1887) - the only artificial language that became widespread and united quite a lot of supporters of an international language. Esperanto is based on international words borrowed from Latin and Greek, and 16 grammatical rules with no exceptions. This language has no grammatical gender, it has only two cases - nominative and accusative, and the meanings of the rest are conveyed using prepositions. The alphabet is based on Latin. All this makes Esperanto such a simple language that an untrained person can become fluent enough to speak it in a few months of regular practice. In order to learn any of the natural languages at the same level, it takes at least several years. Currently, Esperanto is actively used, according to various estimates, from several tens of thousands to several million people. It is believed that for ~500-1000 people this language is their native language, that is, studied from the moment of birth. Esperanto has descendant languages that do not have a number of shortcomings that exist in Esperanto. The most famous among these languages are Esperantido and Novial. However, none of them will become as widespread as Esperanto.
For or against artificial languages?
Learning an artificial language has one big drawback - it is practically impossible to use it in life. That's true. A note entitled “Artificial Languages” published in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia states that: “The idea of an artificial language common to all humanity is in itself utopian and unrealizable. Artificial languages are only imperfect surrogates of living languages; their projects are cosmopolitan in nature and therefore they are vicious in principle." This was written in the early 50s. But even in the mid-60s, the same skepticism was characteristic of some scientists.
Author of the book "Principles of Language Modeling" P.N. Denisov expressed his disbelief in the possibility of implementing the idea of a universal language as follows: “As for the possibility of decreeing the transition of humanity to a single language created at least like the Esperanto language, such a possibility is a utopia. The extreme conservatism of the language, the impossibility of leaps and sudden shocks, the inextricable connection of language with thinking and society and many other purely linguistic circumstances do not allow this kind of reform to be carried out without disorganizing society."
Author of the book "Sounds and Signs" A.M. Kondratov believes that all existing native languages can never be replaced by “any artificially invented “universal” language.” He still admits the idea of an auxiliary language: “We can only talk about an intermediary language, which is used only when talking with foreigners - and that’s all.”
Such statements apparently stem from the fact that not one of the individual projects of a universal, or world international, language has become a living language. But what turned out to be impossible in some historical conditions for individual idealists and groups of the same idealists cut off from the proletariat, from the masses of the people, may turn out to be quite possible in other historical conditions for scientific groups and the masses of people who have mastered the scientific theory of language creation - with support of revolutionary parties and governments. The ability of a person to be multilingual - this phenomenon of linguistic compatibility - and the absolute primacy of the synchrony of language (for the consciousness of those who use it), which determines the absence of influence of the origin of the language on its functioning, opens up for all peoples and nationalities of the Earth the path on which the problem of their problems can and should be solved. linguistic community. This will give a real opportunity for the most perfect project of the language of the new humanity and its new civilization to turn into a living, controlled developing language on all continents and islands of the globe. And there is no doubt that it will not only be alive, but also the most tenacious of languages. The needs that brought them to life are diverse. It is also important that these languages overcome the polysemy of terms that is characteristic of natural languages and unacceptable in science. Artificial languages make it possible to express certain concepts in an extremely concise form and perform the functions of a kind of scientific shorthand, economical presentation and expression of voluminous mental material. Finally, artificial languages are one of the means of internationalization of science, since artificial languages are united and international.
It would seem that English today is the language of world communication, why is anything else needed? But linguists don't think so. The first known artificial language appeared in the world at the end of the 19th century, it was called Volapuk. In 1880, the first Volapuk language textbook was published. True, Volapuk did not take a strong position and disappeared simultaneously with the death of its creator. After this, many new artificial languages appeared in the world. Some of them are popular, for example, Esperanto, and some are spoken and written only by their creator (it would be more correct to call such artificial languages “linguistic projects”).
Moreover, there are even fictitious artificial languages, the creators of which came up with not only the name of the language and the people who use this language, but also the grammar and dictionary. The most famous and prolific creator of fictional artificial languages is Tolkien (yes, the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Ring). He invented more than a dozen Elvish languages, created a logical structure for their origin and development, distribution, and even thought out the grammar and lexical structure of each of the languages (with varying degrees of detail).
Tolkien, as a professional linguist, specialized in ancient Germanic languages. This is what helped him in creating his famous Elvish languages. In his books, Tolkien used the languages he created for names and titles, even writing poems and songs in them. So much is known about the Quenya language invented by Tolkien that you can even learn to speak it; there is a Quenya textbook. Another thing is that you can only speak Quenya with ardent Tolkien fans; in real life the language is unlikely to be useful.
Let's now remember some artificial languages (otherwise called “planned languages”) that are used in the world.
Constructed languages: Esperanto
Esperanto is the most famous and most widespread artificial language in the world. Like Volapuk, it appeared at the end of the 19th century, but this language was much more fortunate. Its creator is doctor and linguist Lazar Markovich Zamenhof. Today, from 100 thousand to several million people communicate in Esperanto, there are even people for whom the language is native (usually children from international marriages in which Esperanto is the language of family communication). Unfortunately, accurate statistics for artificial languages are not kept.
Constructed language Ido (Edo)
Ido is a kind of descendant of Esperanto. It was created by the French Esperantist Louis de Beaufront, the French mathematician Louis Couture and the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen. Ido was proposed as an improved version of Esperanto. It is estimated that up to 5,000 people speak Ido today. At the time of its creation, about 10% of Esperantists switched to it, but the Ido language did not gain worldwide popularity.
Constructed languages: Slovenian
We, Russian people, cannot help but mention such an interesting project as Slovyanski. This is a new language, it appeared in 2006 as the language for international communication of the Slavs. The creators of the language set themselves the task: the language should be understandable without translation to the majority of speakers of Slavic languages (and this group includes not only us, Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. There are also Czechs, Croats, Bulgarians, and other peoples).
There are other planned, or artificial, languages, not so well known and popular: Interlingua (appeared in the mid-20th century), Tokipona (one of the simplest artificial languages, several hundred users, appeared in 2001), Quenya (the most popular and developed Elvish language, the number of people who know it to some extent reaches several thousand), Klingon language (the language of one of the alien races in the Star Trek series, a magazine is published in it, there are songs in Klingon and even Klingon Google!) . In fact, it is difficult to determine the number of artificial languages: there are only about forty more or less known artificial languages. And here is a link to a long list of artificial languages:
Two centuries ago, humanity began to think about creating a single language that everyone could understand, so that people could communicate with each other without barriers. In literature and cinema, ordinary human language is also sometimes not enough to convey the culture of an imaginary world and make it more realistic - that’s when artificial languages come to the rescue.
Natural and artificial languages
Natural language is an inherited system of visual and auditory signs that a group of individuals uses as their native language, that is, ordinary human language. The peculiarity of natural languages is that they develop historically.
Such languages include not only languages with multi-million speakers, such as English, Chinese, French, Russian and others; There are also natural languages spoken by only hundreds of people, such as Koro or Matukar Panau. The most marginal of them are dying out at an alarming rate. People learn living human languages in infancy for the purpose of direct communication with other people and many other purposes.
Constructed languages- this term is often used to designate sign systems similar to human ones, but created either for entertainment (for example, the Elvish language of J. R. R. Tolkien) or for some practical purposes (Esperanto). Such languages are built using already existing artificial languages or on the basis of human, natural ones.
Among artificial languages there are:
- non-specialized, which are created for the same purposes that human languages serve - transfer of information, communication between people;
- specialized, such as programming languages and symbolic languages of the exact sciences - mathematics, chemistry, etc.
The most famous artificially created languages
Currently, there are about 80 artificially created languages, and this does not count programming languages. Some of the most famous artificially created languages are Esperanto, Volapuk, Solresol, as well as the fictitious Elvish language - Quenya.
Solresol
The founder of Solresol was the Frenchman François Sudre. To master it, there is no need to learn musical notation, it is only important to know the names of the seven notes. It was created in 1817 and aroused considerable interest, which, however, did not last long.
There are many ways to write words in the Solresol language: they are written both in letters and, in fact, using musical notation, as well as in the form of seven numbers, the first seven letters of the alphabet, and even using the colors of the rainbow, of which there are also seven.
When using notes, the names used are do, re, mi, fa, sol, la and si. In addition to these seven, words are made up of combinations of note names - from two-syllable to four-syllable.
In Solresol there is no such thing as synonyms, and the stress determines which part of speech a particular word belongs to, for example, a noun - the first syllable, an adjective - the penultimate one. The gender category actually consists of two: feminine and non-feminine.
Example: “miremi resisolsi” - this expression means “beloved friend.”
Volapyuk
This artificial language of communication was created by a Catholic priest named Johann Schleyer from the city of Baden in Germany in 1879. He said that God appeared to him in a dream and ordered him to create an international language.
The Volapuk alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet. It has 27 characters, of which eight are vowels and nineteen consonants, and its phonetics are quite simple - this was done to make it easier for people without complex combinations of sounds in their native language to learn it. French and English languages in a modified form represent the composition of Volapuk words.
The Volapük case system has four - the dative, nominative, accusative and genitive cases. The disadvantage of Volapuk is that it has a rather complicated system of verb formation.
Volapük quickly became popular: a year after its creation, a Volapük textbook was written in German. It did not take long for the first newspapers in this artificial language to appear. The clubs of Volapük admirers in 1889 numbered almost three hundred. Although artificial languages continued to develop, with the advent of Esperanto, Volapuk lost its popularity, and now only a few dozen people around the world speak this language.
Example: “Glidö, o sol!” means "Hello, sun!"
Esperanto
Perhaps even those who do not know the details about artificial languages have at least once heard about Esperanto. It is the most popular among artificial languages and was originally created for the purpose of international communication. He even has his own flag.
It was created by Ludwig Zamenhof in 1887. The name "Esperanto" is a word from the created language that translates as "having hope." The Latin alphabet is the basis for the Esperanto alphabet. His vocabulary consists of Greek and Latin. The number of letters in the alphabet is 28. The emphasis is on the penultimate syllable.
The grammatical rules of this artificial language have no exceptions, and there are only sixteen of them. There is no gender category here, there are only nominative and accusative cases. To convey other cases in speech, it is necessary to use prepositions.
You can speak this language after several months of constant study, while natural languages do not guarantee such a quick result. It is believed that the number of people who speak Esperanto may now reach several million, with perhaps fifty to a thousand people speaking it from birth.
Example: “Ĉu vi estas libera ĉi-vespere?” means "Are you free tonight?"
Quenya
English writer and linguist J. R. R. Tolkien created Elvish artificial languages throughout his life. Quenya is the most famous of these. The idea of creating a language did not arise on its own, but when writing a fantasy trilogy called “The Lord of the Rings,” one of the most popular books in the world, and other works by the writer on this topic.
Learning Quenya will be quite difficult. Quenya is based on Latin, as well as Greek and some Finnish. There are already ten cases in this artificial language, and four numbers. The Quenya alphabet was also developed separately, but the ordinary Latin alphabet is often used for writing.
Nowadays, speakers of this artificial language are mainly fans of Tolkien's book and film trilogy, who create textbooks and clubs for the study of Quenya. Some magazines are even published in this language. And the number of Quenya speakers around the world is several tens of thousands.
Example: “Harië malta úva carë nér anwavë alya” means “It is not gold that makes a person truly rich.”
You can watch a video about 10 artificial languages known in pop culture and beyond here:
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