Conlangs: What are constructed languages?

In order to understand what a constructed language is, we first need to know what a language is. Normally, we think of a language as a method of communicating through speech or writing, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. Sign language, for example, conveys meaning through gestures, Morse code through rhythmic tapping, braille through bumps; the list goes on. We can see that there are many ways “language”, as we define it, can be expressed.

Traditional languages, however, do consist mainly of speech and writing. These languages form over thousands of years, changing and expanding to express new concepts and ideas, much like we see with evolution. And, just like evolution, languages branch out from one another, mostly when people are separated by distance but also with status, where oftentimes lower and upper classes speak different variations of a language. All this has led to the 7,164 languages that are spoken in the world today (See Ethnologue.com).

But these aren’t the only languages that exist. Constructed languages, further shortened to “conlang”, are languages that are artificially created for a purpose. These languages are as varied as they are numerous, but usually have a few common distinctions from traditional languages, the main one being the amount of words. According to the Oxford English dictionary (a 13 volume work), the English language has 171,476 words currency in use, as well as 47,156 obsolete words. By comparison, one of the wordier conlangs, Esperanto, only has about 77,000 words. There is just no comparison to what a naturally developed language can create through evolution and combination of words over time. It is just unfeasible, and quite frankly unnecessary, for an artificially created language to have that many words; who needs the word “autodefenestration” when rarely we feel the need to jump out of a window anyways?

Constructed Languages

Conlangs can be broadly divided into three categories based on why someone makes them: for fun, as part of a fictional world building project, or for real-life applications. It is impossible to truly know just how many conlangs exist, since anyone can make their own. Many of these people find language fascinating and want to create their own, for no other reason than that they want to. Other times, people want to try and experiment with the boundaries of what can actually be considered language. An example of this is the “Cursed Conlang Circus”, or CCC. The CCC is an event each year where individuals attempt to make the most horrendous and convoluted method of communication possible. Submissions include: Seraphim, a language which requires seven mouths to speak, IO, a language consisting of only seven words, Basque-Whale Pidgin, a pidgin being a rough merging of two or more languages, and much, much more. None of these conlangs are practical in any sense of the word, but can still prove to be a fun experiment or challenge.

Conlangs are also made in order to enhance the storytelling in a fictional universe. But why would someone go through all the effort to fabricate a whole new language when there are thousands to choose from that already exist? Oftentimes, it is simply because the worldbuilder just wants to have fun with their world, and creating a language can be a part of that. However, the fact of the matter is that language, just as we naturally affect it over time, it can also affect us and how we perceive the world. Take colors, for example. In English, there are generally 11 colors as defined by the language: red, yellow, orange, blue, green, white, black, brown, purple, pink, and gray. Yes, there are words for other colors, but no one typically says “indigo” when presented with a slightly different shade of purple. This is not true for all languages though; Russian makes a clear distinction between lighter and darker shades of blue that is not present in English. In an experiment, English and Russian speakers were presented with different shades of blue and asked to sort them into light blue and dark blue. The Russian speakers were notably faster and accurate at sorting the colors.This shows that language itself can alter how we see the world (See PNAS.com article “Russian blues reveal effects of language on color discrimination”). Conlangs can be created with this goal in mind, of fleshing out a culture by giving them their own language and showing how they see the world. One fun example is Newspeak, from George Orwell’s 1984. In this, the Party creates Newspeak, a language that removes all the words that express rebellion, resistance, or even just free will. This emphasizes the point of the story, of a tyrannical government attempting to erase all pushback against them, which includes all the words that could be used to communicate such ideas. Any of Tolkien’s languages for the Lord of the Rings also fall under this category, though in Tolkien’s case he more made the world for the language rather than the other way around (See Greenbooks.theonering.net article “Cent o Hellendem”, last updated Feb 2001). Oftentimes these first two categories blur together.

Finally, some languages are created for use in real-life. Esperanto is the most prolific and well-known of these languages, created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887 for the express purpose of being a universal language. While it didn’t quite catch on as well as he would have liked, the language nonetheless has at least 100,000 speakers and a thousand native speakers (See Babbel.com article “What is Esperanto, And Who Speaks It?”, last updated November 2023). The language derives most of its vocabulary from various Romance languages and other European languages in order to make it easy for most Europeans to learn. Overall, Esperanto was designed to be a simple language, with all of its vocabulary and the aforementioned 77,000 words being derived from about 900 base words, which can be modified by a slurry of prefixes and suffixes in order to change their meaning.

Creating a Conlang

So, let’s say that you, having read the above article, now want to create your own conlang! How would you go about that? The first step is to figure out what you want the language to be used for. Do you just want to mess around with language? Do you have a world in mind that you want to add depth to? Or do you want to create a secret code to communicate with your friends? No matter what it is, you first must figure out what it is for. The next step is to figure out what sounds your language will use, or if it will use sounds at all (See Internationalphoneticalphabet.org for reference).

Now you need to start creating grammar. Here is where things can get very confusing. You can create a language like Latin, where the grammar is primarily focused on endings, to a language like English, where word placement and prepositions are key. I couldn’t possibly fit all there is to know about language into a single article, but the possibilities are endless. However, you can’t lose track of your goal. If you are using the language for worldbuilding, what are you trying to show about the culture that speaks the language? If you are writing it to be a secret code language, make sure it's simple enough that your friends can learn it relatively easily. Or, if you have no goal, just go crazy and have fun!

Finally, you might want to create a written form of the language.  You can go with creating an alphabet, one word for each vowel and consonant. Alternatively, you could make an abjad, in which each consonant has a symbol but vowels are inferred, like in Arabic or Hebrew. You could also create an abugida in which each consonant has a full symbol, but a vowel only gets a single mark, a sort of middle ground between an alphabet and an abjad, as is seen in the Indic scripts. Syllabaries are also possible, with symbols representing whole syllables, such as with Japanese. Finally, logographic systems use symbols to represent whole words, most commonly seen in Mandarin Chinese. There are other writing systems, some being combinations of the above, but it all boils down to what your language sounds like. For example, it would not be possible for English to be written as an abjad; it is just impossible to infer what vowels there are in a word. However, English could be written as an abugida since that still includes vowels, just in a lesser form. It all depends on the structure of the words in the language, and how those can map onto written words.

People have found enjoyment in making conlangs for a long time now; a quick search on the internet will show you just how many exist for some reason or another. It can serve as a fun pastime or a dedicated activity. The sky is truly the limit when it comes to creating a language. Embrace it.