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Constructed languages, or conlangs, are intentionally created by individuals or groups for various purposes such as international communication or fictional settings. Examples include Esperanto, Tolkien’s languages for Middle-earth, and the Klingon language from Star Trek. Some conlangs aim to be more precise or logical than natural languages and are known as engineered languages.
A constructed language is a language that was intentionally constructed by a person or group of people, rather than evolving naturally over time. Constructed languages are also called artificial languages and can be referred to by the short term conlang. A constructed language that is constructed to be used as an internationalist language may sometimes be referred to by proponents as a planned language.
A constructed language can be created for a number of different reasons. For groups looking to create an international language that can be easily learned by disparate groups, using a constructed language is an obvious choice. By far the most famous example of this type of constructed language is Esperanto, a language created in the late 1890s as an auxiliary language to be used around the world to help build international understanding. Esperanto has approximately one million speakers worldwide, with approximately 1,000 native speakers.
Many works of fiction also make use of constructed language as the primary language for their fictional cultural groups. Much of contemporary fantasy and science fiction makes use of constructed language to some extent, with some of these languages incredibly complex and thoroughly thorough. JRR Tolkien’s languages created for his fantasy setting of Middle-earth are perhaps the most detailed of these, with entire language families, a rich history of language evolution, and quite extensive lexicons. The Klingon language developed by Marc Okrand for the Star Trek universe is another example of a language created for use in a fictional world, though it now boasts many thousands of speakers in the real world.
Some early constructed languages were not seen as intentionally constructed, but rather as God-inspired languages. These include the 12th-century Lingua Ignota, which was presented as a mystical language spoken by angels, and some kabbalistic attempts to resurrect the original language of man who was lost at Babel.
Constructed languages can also be used to try and create more logical and precise alternatives to natural languages. These languages can be philosophical languages or logical languages and are collectively known as engineered languages. A logical language, such as Lojban, tries to reduce any ambiguity in a sentence to the point where it is practically non-existent, so that the meaning you are trying to convey is the only meaning that can be logically derived from the sentence. A philosophical language, such as Ro, often seeks to reflect some philosophical truth in the form of the language. Ro, for example, is a constructed language in which the meaning of a word can be derived from the construction of the word itself, so that if one knows the rules by which words are formed, the meaning of each new word can be understood immediately.
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