Constructed Language

Introduction

This article would overview on the concept of constructed, fabricated or artificial languages. It would also mull over the use of constructed languages in World Building efforts.

A constructed language or artificial language is a language that has been created deliberately. It is very unlike the natural languages which had taken ages to evolve - and they continue to evolve. It is not that the constructed languages do not evolve, but they do not evolve naturally - they are planned and designed by a person or group of people.

The full details of creation of a language is not provided in this article as it is a broader scope. But an attempt is made to mention all of the issues involved with artificial languages, so that the reader is aware of topics in order to do further studies.

Purpose and Types

A language may be constructed for various reasons. It may be created for recreation - just for fun. Or it may be as a study of linguistics. It may also be created for the purpose of enriching a realm - in World Building. It has been also attempted to use constructed language as a means of creating universal languages that everyone in the world may speak. (Esperanto is one of the many constructed language that attempts to be the second language so that it can foster peace and international understanding).

As with most of the things related to World Building, a constructed language may be constructed to varied levels of detail. It has to be noted that, out side of this article, the concept of constructed language may be held separate from World Building techniques. Also, a real may be built with World Building techniques with out the use of constructed language - using it just makes the realm more richer and unique.

And depending on the usage, there are many different types of constructed language. Some language, like Esperanto, are capable of full communication. Some other, are not defined to that extent, and can be used for few lines. Yet another type of constructed language is what is called as naming language. It is usually used in World Building to assign unique names to people, places, and other objects and phenomenons. It results in unique set of names, but they seem to be of the same theme. They give an identity to the realm.

Construction

As there are different types of constructed languages, there are different ways to approach the process of construction of an artificial language. For simple naming languages, syllables or group of syllables may be borrowed, mixed and matched to give new words. A more systematic and scholarly approach involves, the study of different consonants and vowel sounds, the choice or subset of these sounds, syllable patterns, syllable grouping, grammatical rules on syllables, and grammar.

Sometimes, when more than one language needs to be created for a particular realm, a mother language may be created with lesser details, from which the daughter languages are derived. The derivation may involve many modification of base sounds and these can be made studying the how sounds have changed in languages as time went by. Such a setup gives a group of sibling languages, that are very different from each other, but seem to belong to the same groups. Such an attempt may be made where extreme detailing of countries or races in a realm is desired.

Conclusion

There are a lot of mailing lists and communities involved in this craft and they can be found by performing a simple search on the terms like "constructed language". The reason that drives these people to create languages, as stated earlier, are many. Once the purpose is set and it is known as to what is intended of the resulting language, the appropriate methods and techniques may be chosen.