Creative linguistics

Creative linguistics is the art of designing and changing languages, whether starting from a base in reality or complete fiction. ConLangs (Constructed Languages) are examples of creative linguistics, as are constructed grammars, modifications of existing languages, and even simply adding new words to a language.

The best-known examples of creative linguistics are Interlingua; the constructed languages of the late 19th and early 20th century (Volapük, Esperanto, and so on); and the constructed languages of the author and linguist J.R.R. Tolkien (Quenya, Sindarin, etc.).

Esperanto, being the best-known of these, was created with the purpose of being an international language: a language to be used for communication between people with many different first languages. Theoretically, it would help overcome problems of miscommunication and diplomatic difficulties due to language problems. Actually, like its predecessors, it never achieved the required international recognition and eventually died back to a stable but small number of speakers. This may be due partly to the growth of an Interlingua-speaking population in the later 20th and 21st centuries.

These international languages mostly share some common principals and features, mostly to make the languages easier to learn:

* They are designed to use a vocabulary mostly based on existing vocabularies (in the case of Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua, and many others this vocabulary is mostly Latin or Romance based; in the case of Volapük it is mostly Teutonic).

* They are very regular.

* They are grammatically comparatively simple, being mostly isolating or only slightly flexional.

Tolkien's languages, on the other hand, have a different aim: they are entirely designed and created for their æsthetic qualities. The very well known fiction written by Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, etc.) was to him largely a way of presenting his masterwork: the Elvish languages. He was trying to create a truly beautiful language (or a family of truly beautiful languages), and his fiction was simply a way to present them to the world attractively: "It is to me, anyway, largely an essay in 'linguistic aesthetic', as I sometimes say to people who ask me 'what is it all about'." ref|letters

Sometimes linguistic creations may be edited 'versions' of living languages. The most obvious example of one of these is Simple English, which was similarly designed to be an international language. It takes a vocabulary entirely from English, but simplifies English grammar and reduces the size of the vocabulary significantly.

References

*cite book | title=The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien | pages=220