List of constructed languages

This list of constructed languages is in alphabetical order, and divided into auxiliary, engineered, and artistic (including fictional) languages, and their respective subgenres.

Auxiliary languages

Spoken (major)

The following are languages that have generated significant followings, or which have been of significance in the history of auxiliary languages.

Spoken (minor)

There have been hundreds of proposals for auxiliary languages, and more continue to be created. The following are languages with some notability, either historically or because of unusual characteristics.

Controlled languages

Controlled languages are natural languages that have in some way been altered to make them simpler, easier to use, or more acceptable to those who do not speak the original language well. Most of these have been based on English.

• Basic English
• Globish
• Special English
• Plain English
• Simplified English
• E-Prime

Visual languages

Visual languages use symbols or movements in place of the spoken word.

• Blissymbols (zbl)
• Gestuno
• Signuno

Engineered languages

Human-usable

• An Essay towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language by John Wilkins
• Arahau
• aUI
• Characteristica universalis
• Ilaksh
• Isotype
• Ithkuil
• Láadan (ldn)
• Loglan
• Lin Compress in factor of 7
• Logopandecteision
• Lojban (jbo)
• Ro
• Unilingua

Knowledge representation

• Common Logic, an ISO standard derived from KIF
• CycL
• The Distributed Language Translation project used a "binary-coded" version of Esperanto as a pivot language between the source language and its translation.
• Lincos
• Loom
• RDF
• Universal Networking Language

Artistic languages

Languages used in fiction

Literature

This section contains information which may be of unclear or questionable importance or relevance to the article's subject matter. Please help improve this article by clarifying or removing superfluous information.

• Adûnaic from J. R. R. Tolkien's works
• Aklo, Tsath-yo, and R'lyehian are ancient and obscure languages in the works of H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and others. Aklo is considered by some writers to be the written language of the Serpent People
• Amtorian, spoken in some cultures on the planet Venus in Pirates of Venus by Edgar Rice Burroughs and several sequels. Judged by critic Fredrik Ekman to have "a highly inventive morphology but a far less interesting syntax." (See [2].)
• Ancient Language in the Inheritance Trilogy by Christopher Paolini (although this is considered to be a cipher of English by many)
• Angley, Unglish and Ingliss - three languages spoken respectively at Western Europe, North America and the Pacific in the 29th Century world of Poul Anderson's "Orion Shall Rise". All derived from present-day English, the three are mutually unintelligible, following 800 years of separate development after a 21st century nuclear war and the extensive absorption of words and grammatical forms from French in the first case, Russian, Chinese and Mongolian in the second, and Polynesian in the third.
• Anglic, the dominant language of the declining Galactic empire depicted in Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry series, is descended from present-day English but so changed that only professional historians or linguists can understand English texts.
• Anglo-French, in the alternate history world of the Lord Darcy stories by Randall Garrett - where England and France were permanently united into a single kingdom by Richard the Lionheart and their languages consequently merged.
• Anglo-French, unconnected with the above, spoken in the dystopian 20th Century of Poul Anderson's "The Shield of Time" where England won the Hundred Years' War and conquered France, but later the center of the English-French Kingdom shifted to Paris, and it was all eventually absorbed into a Europe-wide, oppressive Catholic theocracy. The language is essentially a French dialect with a considerable number of English terms, words and titles, such as "Lord". "England" is called that rather than "Angleterre" as in the French of our timeline.
• asa'pili ("world language"), in bolo'bolo, by Swiss author P.M..
• Babel-17, in Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany
• Baronh, language of Abh in Seikai no Monsho (Crest of the Stars) and others, by Morioka Hiroyuki
• Black Speech - language of Mordor in The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
• Bokonon - language of the Bokononism religion in Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle"
• Codex Seraphinianus by Luigi Serafini appears to be written in a constructed language which is presumably the language of the alien civilization the book describes
• High D'Haran The ancient, dead language of pre-Great War New World (D'Hara, Midlands, and Westland) in Terry Goodkind's "Sword of Truth" series.
• Drac, language of the alien species in Barry B. Longyear's Enemy Mine and The Enemy Papers
• Kad'k, the language of the Dwarfs in Terry Pratchett's Discworld
• From Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea books:
  • Language of the Making - the basis of all magic, spoken by Dragons as their native tongue and learned with considerable effort by human mages.
  • Hardic - linguistically descended from the above
  • Osskilian, and Kargish - a different family of languages, distantly related
• Elemeno, language of two sisters in Caucasia by Danzy Senna.
• "Expanded English" or "World English", spoken throughout the world in the Twenty-Second Century Utopian world of H.G.Wells' "The Shape of Things to Come", its spread simultaneous with the establishment of world government. In 1979 of that time line, Basic English was proclaimed a worldwide ligua franca, and a European rebellious movement demanding "freedom from Basic English" was crushed. Following upon Basic English with its limited vocabulary, English in general made great strides, gradually displacing all other languages while absorbing many of their words into its vocabulary. It is mentioned that in the 21st Century English and Spanish became "interchangeable languages" and that Arabic became "decerpit" and was abandoned by its former speakers. The final result was a worldwide English, very different from that of the 20th Century, with a vocabulary of nearly two million words, "a synthetic language into which roots, words and idioms from every speech in the world have been poured". People of different ethnic origins (Italians and Chinese are specifically mentioned) show a preference for using words derived from their former language, but all understand each other [3].
• The Giant's Fence by Michael Jacobson. ([4])
• Goodenuf English, a form of English used by foreigners in the novel Rainbows End by Vernon Vinge
• Glide, created by Diana Reed Slattery, used by the Death Dancers of The Maze Game
• Groilish, spoken by giants in Giants and the Joneses by Julia Donaldson.
• Gnommish, spoken by the fairies in Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl series.
• High Speech of Gilead from Stephen King's The Dark Tower (series)
• Kesh, in Ursula K. Le Guin's novel Always Coming Home
• Krakish, in Guardians of Ga'Hoole by Kathryn Lasky
• Láadan (ldn), in Suzette Haden Elgin's science fiction novel Native Tongue and sequels
• Lapine, in Watership Down by Richard Adams
• Linyaari spoken by the Linyaari people of Vhiliinyar in Anne McCaffery's Acorna series.
• Mando'a, created by Karen Traviss, used by the Mandalorians in the Star Wars Republic Commando novels Hard Contact and Triple Zero
• Marain, in The Culture novels of Iain M. Banks
• The Martian language in Percy Greg's Across the Zodiac may have been the first fictional language described using linguistic and grammatical terminology^[4].
• The Matoran language used by the various sentient species in Bionicle. It is named after its creators the Matoran species.
• The languages of Middle-earth (most notably Sindarin (sjn), Quenya (qya) and Khuzdûl) by J. R. R. Tolkien, partly published in The Lord of the Rings, and posthumously discussed in The History of Middle-earth and other publications.
• Molvanian from Molvania, A Land Untouched By Modern Dentistry
• Nadsat slang, in A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
• Newspeak, in Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (fictional constructed language)
• The "Nautilus Language", spoken on board Jules Verne's famous fictional submarine, in token of crew members having completely renounced their former homelands and backgrounds. Every morning, after scanning the horizon with his binoculars, Nemo's second-in-command says: "Nautron respoc lorni virch". The meaning of these words is never clarified, but their construction seems to indicate that the "Nautilus Language" (its actual name is not given) is based on European languages.
• Old Solar, in Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis
• The Old Language from Stephen King's The Dark Tower series.
• The Old Tongue from Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series
• Parseltongue, the language of snakes, in the Harry Potter series. The ability of humans to speak it is considered a magic ability.
• Pravic and Iotic, in The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Ptydepe, from Václav Havel's play The Memorandum
• Quintaglio from Robert J. Sawyer's Quintaglio Ascension Trilogy
• Quenya from J. R. R. Tolkien's works.
• Qwghlmian from Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon and The Baroque Cycle
• Rihannsu, spoken by the Rihannsu (Romulans) in the Star Trek novels of Diane Duane
• Spocanian, in Rolandt Tweehuysen's fictional country Spocania
• Sindarin from J. R. R. Tolkien's works.
• Stark (short for Star Common), a common interstellar English-based language from Orson Scott Card's Ender series
• Starsza Mowa from Andrzej Sapkowski's Hexer saga
• Troll language from Terry Pratchett's Discworld
• Utopian language, appearing in a poem by Petrus Gilles accompanying Thomas More's Utopia
• Waynhim, spoken by the Giants in "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant".
• Whitmanite, spoken by members of a radical Anarchist-Pacifist cult of the same name in Robert A. Heinlein' The Puppet Masters. "Allucquere" is a female given name in Whitmanite.
• Zaum, poetic tongue elaborated by Velimir Khlebnikov, Aleksei Kruchonykh, and other Russian Futurists as a "transrational" and "most universal" language "of songs, incantations, and curses".
• Several languages spoken by Panurge in François Rabelais' Pantagruel (1532)
• The Time Machine featured an unnamed language for the Eloi people.
• Jack Womack's Dryco novels feature a future form of English with a modified grammar.

Comic books

• Bordurian in some of Hergé's The Adventures of Tintin, mostly in The Calculus Affair
• Syldavian, in some of Hergé's The Adventures of Tintin, mostly in King Ottokar's Sceptre

Movies and television

• Ancient in the Stargate universe (i.e. Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis) is the language of the Ancients, the builders of the Stargates; it is similar in pronunciation to Medieval Latin. The Athosians say prayers in Ancient. (However, when shown onscreen, written Ancient is simply a different character set for English)
• Atlantean created by Marc Okrand for the film Atlantis: The Lost Empire
• The Divine Language is a language invented by director Luc Besson and actress Milla Jovovich for the 1997 movie The Fifth Element.
• Enchanta, in the Encantadia and Etheria television series in the Philippines, created by the head writer Suzette Doctolero
• Goa'uld, the galactic lingua franca from Stargate SG-1, supposedly influenced Ancient Egyptian
• Klingon (tlhIngan Hol), in the Star Trek movie and television series, created by Marc Okrand
• Krakozhian from The Terminal
• Ku, a fictional African language in the movie The Interpreter (2005)
• Nadsat, the fictional language spoken by Alex and his friends in Clockwork Orange
• Pakuni, the language of the Pakuni from the Land of the Lost television series and movie.
• Quenya (qya) and Sindarin (sjn), the two Elven languages, spoken in the Lord of the Rings movies.
• Slovetzian, the fictional Slavic language of Slovetzia in the movie The Beautician and the Beast
• Tenctonese from the Alien Nation movie and television series, created by Van Ling and Kenneth Johnson
• Ulam, the language spoken by the prehistoric humans in the movie Quest for Fire, created by Anthony Burgess by melting roots of European languages.
• Vulcan language from Star Trek

Unnamed languages

• Riddley Walker, a 1980 novel by Russell Hoban, set in a post-apocalyptic future, is written entirely in a "devolved" form of English.

Music

• Gulevache: fictional Romance Language of the kingdom of Gulevandia on the bilingual opera Cardoso en Gulevandia by the comedy group Les Luthiers
• Kobaïan, the language used by 70's French rock group Magma.
• Vonlenska, sometimes known as "Hopelandic", the language sung by Jón Þór Birgisson of the Icelandic band "Sigur Rós" on many of their songs.
• Unnamed language by Yves Barbieux, used in his song "Sanomi" and performed by the Belgian group Urban Trad in the Eurovision Song contest in 2003.
• Mohelmot, a forbidden language used by The Residents on the album The Big Bubble: Part Four of the Mole Trilogy.
• Unnamed language by Emmanuelle Orange, used in her song Pialoushka and performed by Montreal band Eden106.
• Unnamed language featured in the chorus of 2NU's 1991 track This is Ponderous.
• Unnamed language featured in the soundtrack to the film 1492: Conquest of Paradise by Vangelis.
• Unnamed language constructed by Wim Mertens to be used in his vocal performances (piano/voice).
• Unnamed language constructed by the Canadian classical composer Claude Vivier, used in some of his works like Trois Airs pour un opéra imaginaire.
• Unnamed language constructed by unknown. The language was used in Belgium's Eurovision 2008 song O Julissi by the band Ishtar. It resembles Ukrainian a bit.

Performance

• Grammelot (Cirquish) is a "gibberish" that goes back to the 16th century, used by performers, including those of Cirque du Soleil

Games

• D'ni, the language spoken by the subterranean D'ni people in Cyan Worlds' Myst series of computer games and novels
• Gargish, used in the Ultima computer game series, by the gargoyle race
• Hymmnos, used by Reyvateils for Song Magic in Ar tonelico
• kiZombie, used by zombies in the Urban Dead MMORPG
• Lashonnu is the language of the Wealdings (the Forest People) in the Gondica role playing game by Anders Blixt
• Mando'a, created by Karen Traviss, used by the Mandalorians in Star Wars: Republic Commando
• Tho Fan, in the Xbox game Jade Empire, created by Wolf Wikeley
• Tsolyani, a language developed by M. A. R. Barker in the mid-to-late 1940s in parallel with the development of his legendarium leading to the world of Tékumel as described in the roleplaying game Empire of the Petal Throne, published by TSR in 1975 and later literary tie-ins.
• Vasudan, the language spoken by the Vasudan race in Descent: FreeSpace – The Great War and in the other titles in the FreeSpace series.

Toys

• Furbish

Internet-based

• Kēlen, by Sylvia Sotomayor
• Teonaht, by Sally Caves
• Verdurian and several other languages created for the fictional planet of Almea by Mark Rosenfelder

Alternative languages

• Luna
• Anglish
• Brithenig (bzt), created by the inventor of the alternate history of Ill Bethisad, Andrew Smith
• Several North Slavic languages, inspired by the existence of West, East and South Slavic languages and the absence of a Northern branch
• Wenedyk, a language of the alternate history of Ill Bethisad created by Jan van Steenbergen

Micronational languages

• Talossan, by R. Ben Madison

Personal languages

• Enochian by Edward Kelley
• Lingua Ignota, by Hildegard of Bingen

Language games

• Binaliktad
• Gibberish
• Jeringonza
• Língua do Pê
• Louchebem
• Opish
• Pig Latin
• Rosarigasino
• Rövarspråket
• Sananmuunnos
• Šatrovački
• Starckdeutsch, Starckteutsch
• Tutnese
• Ubbi dubbi
• Verlan
• Vesre

External links

• [5]

References and notes

See also

• Alien language
• Artificial script
• Constructed language
• Engineered language
• International auxiliary language
• Language game
• List of languages
• Voynich Manuscript