STATE EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION OF HIGHER PROFESSIONAL EDUCATION
"FINANCIAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL ACADEMY"
Department "IO-01"
in the discipline "Russian language and culture of speech"
Artificial languages and their classification
Teacher: Sirova T.O.
Completed by: Mikhailova A.S.
Korolev, 2013
There are the following types of artificial languages:
Programming languages and computer languages- languages for automatic processing of information with the help of a computer.
Information languages- languages used in various information processing systems.
Formalized languages of science- languages intended for symbolic recording of scientific facts and theories of mathematics, logic, chemistry and other sciences.
Languages of non-existent peoples, created for fiction or entertainment purposes, for example: the Elvish language invented by J. Tolkien, the Klingon language invented by Mark Okrand for a fantasy series "Star Trek", Na "vi language, created for the film" Avatar.
International auxiliary languages- languages created from elements of natural languages and offered as an auxiliary means of interethnic communication.
The idea of creating a new language of international communication originated in the 17th-18th centuries as a result of the gradual decrease in the international role of Latin. Initially, these were mainly projects of a rational language, freed from the logical errors of living languages and based on a logical classification of concepts. Later, projects appear based on the model and materials of living languages. The first such project was universalglot, published in 1868 in Paris by Jean Pirro. Pirro's project, which anticipated many details of later projects, went unnoticed by the public.
The next international language project was Volapuk, created in 1880 by the German linguist I. Schleyer. He caused a very big resonance in society.
The most famous artificial language is Esperanto (L. Zamenhof, 1887) is the only artificial language that has become widespread and has united quite a few supporters of the international language around itself.
Of the artificial languages, the most famous are:
Interlingua
Latin blue flexione
Occidental
Simli language
Solresol
Esperanto
Klingon language
Elvish languages
Basic English
There are also languages that were specifically designed to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligence. For example - lincos.
According to the purpose of creation, artificial languages can be divided into the following groups:
philosophical and logical languages- languages that have a clear logical structure of word formation and syntax: Lojban, Tokipona, Ithkuil, Ilaksh.
Auxiliary languages- designed for practical communication: Esperanto, Interlingua, Slovio, Slovian.
Artistic or aesthetic languages- created for creative and aesthetic pleasure: Quenya.
Also, the language is created to set up an experiment, for example, to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (that the language spoken by a person limits consciousness, drives it into certain limits).
According to their structure, artificial language projects can be divided into the following groups:
A priori languages- based on logical or empirical classifications of concepts: loglan, lojban, ro, solresol, ifkuil, ilaksh.
A posteriori languages- languages built mainly on the basis of international vocabulary: interlingua, occidental
mixed languages- words and word formation are partly borrowed from non-artificial languages, partly created on the basis of artificially invented words and word-formation elements: Volapuk, Ido, Esperanto, Neo.
The number of speakers of artificial languages can only be given approximately, due to the fact that there is no systematic record of speakers.
According to the degree of practical use, artificial languages are divided into projects that have become widespread: Ido, Interlingua, Esperanto. Such languages, like national languages, are called "socialized", among artificial ones they are united under the term planned languages. An intermediate position is occupied by such artificial language projects that have a certain number of supporters, for example, Loglan (and its descendant Lojban), Slovio and others. Most artificial languages have a single speaker - the author of the language (for this reason, it is more correct to call them "linguo projects" rather than languages).
You ask - why speak in invented languages, because no one understands them? That's the point! Suppose you need to talk about something very important on the phone (or, more recently, already on Skype), and you definitely do not want to be overheard by competitors, and even more so by intelligence agencies. No, they will eavesdrop, but they will probably not understand a word. And all you need is for your partner on the other end of the wire (on the other side of the monitor) to also know this language. Plus, learning any new language is a great brain workout. And for this you do not need to go to language courses - patience and the Internet are enough - thanks to the Omniglot website.
The utopian language of Thomas More
I hope you remember from your history lessons who Thomas More is? A professor, writer, lawyer, diplomat and politician who lived at the turn of the 15th-16th centuries and did not like English society so much that he came up with a country of prosperity long before Marx-Engels-Lenin, and called it "Utopia", which means at the same time "the best place ' and 'missing place'. The voluminous work saw the light in 1516 and was written in Latin. However, Thomas More also assumed a new language, not like anything else, as fundamental in the new ideal society.
Tengwar (Elvish) language of Tolkien
Well, just don't tell me you never got excited about Liv Tyler fluent in Sindarin Tengwar. It is the language of Valarin, Telerin, Sindarin, and heaps of other places, and even the Dark Tongue of Mordor. When you master the language perfectly, and you have in your hands “our Charm”, that is, the Ring of Omnipotence, do not rush to destroy it. Suddenly come in handy.
Kirt - Tolkien's Dwarven language
And, if we started talking about Middle-earth, then we must not forget about the numerous people of the dwarves. The Kirthic alphabet (or Kertas Daeron) was successfully integrated by the population of Moria into their Khuzdul language, because... well, you know, dwarves don't write - they carve words in stone. In principle, there is an assumption that Tolkien almost exactly “rolled” the kirth from the Celtic runes. So, at the same time, learn the language that is still spoken in some places in Ireland.
Futurama's alien language
If you think that the obscure icons that appear in many Futurama series are just a set of symbols that came to Matt Groeneng's head, then you are greatly mistaken. As, until recently, we were mistaken. Cartoon aliens even have punctuation marks. So, this language is the future :)
Klingon from Star Trek
How do you make a list of fictional languages and not mention Klingon? This language has gained such popularity that there are a certain number of people in the world who speak it fluently. Moreover, they translate into Klingon Shakespeare, and even the Bible. The only inconvenience with Klingon is that, most likely, in the "cunning schools" of the whole Earth, just in case, they already teach it.
Aurek-Besh - the language of the Jedi
Even though Aurek-besh first appeared only in Return of the Jedi, I can only assume that it has been spoken by the Jedi for centuries.
Kryptonian - the language of Superman
Kryptonian (or Kryptonese) is spoken, not surprisingly, on Krypton, Clark Kent's home planet. When deciding to learn this language, do not forget about Curse of Superman, and also think that when you end your post on Facebook (Vkontakte, Twitter, etc.) with a double exclamation point, you are actually writing the letter “a”.
Language of the Ancients from Stargate
If you believe the series SG-1, then it was in this language that the Ancients wrote and spoke - the people who created (including) the earthly civilization millions of years ago. Although, it should be noted that we, in fact, owe the appearance of this font to an old Czech poster, on the basis of which it was created by artist Boyd Godfrey for the pilot episode of Stargate: Atlantis.
Dragon Runes
The language of dragons is considered the most ancient of all that existed on Earth. Dragons are generally taciturn creatures, but if they started to speak, they spoke only this language. People in the Middle Ages often used Draconic as the universal language of magic. Now it's hard to check exactly how it sounds. And all thanks to St. George, who destroyed, they say, the last living dragon on the planet.
Matoran - bionic LEGO language
Did you know that Lego has its own language? Well, at least it was used in the Bionicle series. If your children know it (and they do!), there is a reason to learn the Matoran in order to understand what secret notes your offspring are exchanging.
The language was created by Canadian Sonia Lang and claims to be the simplest of artificial languages. There are only about 120 roots in his lexicon.
Artificial languages are those languages in which vocabulary, phonetics and grammar have been developed for specific purposes. These are fake languages invented by one person. Today there are more than a thousand of them, and new ones are constantly being created. The reasons for creating an artificial language are: facilitating human communication, giving realism to fiction and fictional worlds in cinema, linguistic experiments, language games, the development of the Internet and the creation of languages that are understandable to all peoples of the planet.
- Grammelot. The style of language used in the theater of humor and satire. This is a kind of gibberish with onomatopoeic elements along with pantomime and mimicry. Grammelot was popularized by the Italian playwright Dario Fo.
- Esperanto. The most widely used artificial language in the world. Today it is fluently spoken by more than 100,000 people. It was invented by the Czech ophthalmologist Lazar Zamenhof in 1887. Esperanto has a simple grammar. Its alphabet has 28 letters and is built on the basis of Latin. Most of the vocabulary is taken from the Romance and Germanic languages. There are also many international words in Esperanto that are understandable without translation. 250 newspapers and magazines are published in Esperanto, 4 radio stations broadcast, there are articles on Wikipedia.
- Vendergood. It was developed by teenage prodigy William James Sidis based on Romance languages. Sidis knew about 40 languages and freely translated from one to another. Sidis created vendergood in a book entitled The Book of Vendergood which he wrote at the age of 8. The language is built on Latin and Greek vocabulary and grammar, and it also contains elements of German, French and other Romance languages.
- Aui. Created by John Weilgarth. It is based on the philosophical concept of the formation of all concepts from a small number of elementary concepts, moreover, an elementary concept of language. Its very name translates as "the language of the cosmos." Each sound in AUI is associated with the concept it denotes. All vocabulary is built by combining basic concepts.
- Nadsat. Fictional language spoken by teenagers in Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange. In nadsat, part of the vocabulary is English, part is fictional, created by the author on the basis of the Russian language. Most often, Russian equivalents are written in Latin and have some distortion. The grammar system is based on English. In addition, there are slang from French and German, Malay and Gypsy, Cockney, and words invented by Burgess himself.
- LitSpeak. Used in online games, chats, sms and other electronic communication channels. The language was created as a cipher that could be read by users who knew the key to it. In litespeak, numbers and symbols replace letters. It also makes deliberate mistakes, there are phonetic variations of words and neologisms.
- Talossan. An artificial language created in 1980 by the 14-year-old founder of the virtual microstate of Thalos, Robert Ben-Madison. Talossan is built on the basis of the languages of the Romance group.
- Klingon. Linguist Mark Okrand invented Klingon for Paramount Pictures for the TV series and later the Star Trek movies. It is spoken by aliens. In addition to them, the language was adopted by numerous fans of the series. Currently, there is the Klingon Language Institute in the United States, which publishes periodicals and translations of literary classics in Klingon.
- Tokipona. The language was created by Canadian Sonia Lang and claims to be the simplest of artificial languages. There are only about 120 roots in his lexicon. Names of animals and plants are missing. But in the unofficial dictionary there are designations for countries, nations, languages that are written with a capital letter. Everything is simplified in tokipon: vocabulary, phonology, grammar and syntax.
- Na'vi. This fictional language was developed by linguist Paul Frommer for James Cameron Productions for the film Avatar. According to the scenario, the native speakers of the Na'vi language are the inhabitants of the planet Pandora. Today there are more than 1000 words in his dictionary. Work on the Na'vi language continues. By the way, in its grammatical and lexical structure, Na’vi resembles the Papuan and Australian languages.
As published in 2009 languages catalog , today people use 7,097 languages. About 230 languages are spoken by Europeans, and 2197 are spoken in Asia. According to Stephen Anderson, who wrote According to the American Linguistic Society, speakers of a quarter of the world's languages number in the hundreds, within the twenty-first century, three thousand languages will become dead, and half of the world's population speaks only twenty-three of the seven thousand.
On September 26, 2001, the world celebrated for the first time the European Day of Languages, established by the Council of Europe and the European Union. The official website of the holiday published the main goals that the initiators of the European Day of Languages are striving to achieve: to inspire people to learn new languages to facilitate intercultural communication and to acquaint them with the rich cultural and linguistic diversity of Europe. According to the latest data from the online publication Ethnologue (which has been keeping track of endangered dialects since 1950), six languages die every year. But there are also new ones.
Since Gottfried Leibniz in 1666 formulated his thoughts on lingua generalis (Universal Language) in the essay "On Combinatorial Art", many attempts have been made by philosophers, poets, scientists, musicians and writers to create their own languages. In addition to the well-known Esperanto, there are dozens of artificial dialects, including the musical language of Francois Sudra - Solresol (instead of the alphabet, the musician suggested using seven notes,"I love you" - "Dore dear home" ), the language of Leon Bolak, in which, according to HG Wells, the inhabitants of Utopia could communicate, the languages of the universe of J. R. R. Tolkien, Newspeak of George Orwell ...
Many of the languages created by the writers found native speakers thanks to successful film adaptations. Those languages that were created specifically for this or that movie universe also found their followers.
Navi language
Avatar, dir. James Cameron
The Navi language, spoken by the blue-skinned inhabitants of Pandora from the movie Avatar, was created at the request of James Cameron by linguist Paul Frommer. Navi verbs are conjugated for tenses, numbers, and persons. In addition, this language has a rare morpheme - infix, which is found today only in two modern languages: Lithuanian and Tagalog. At the time of the film's premiere, Navi's vocabulary contained about a thousand words, but Frommer significantly expanded the language while working on a video game inspired by Cameron's film. Blog Na'viteri.org Paul introduces fans of the Pandorian dialect with new words, rules of use depending on the context (to cheer someone up before a difficult task or at the right time, use the expression"Siva-ko" ) and pronunciation rules. Frommer's latest additions to date, published in July this year, include the proverb:"Koakturi kewanti keyìl ke wan" - "The face of an old man will not hide his age" . To expand your Navi vocabulary, check out Russian-Navi dictionary .Sindarin language
The Lord of the Rings, dir. Peter Jackson
In his book The Languages of Tolkien's Middle-earth, Ruth Noel writes in detail about the basic rules and features of the fourteen languages that the writer developed for the peoples of Middle-earth. The most complete of them are the Quenya and Sindarin Elvish languages. In one of the letters published in 1981, Tolkien admits that his books were designed to be the world of fictional languages, not the other way around.“Sometimes when people ask “what is it all about”, I answer that for me this is largely an essay on linguistic aesthetics” . A philologist by training, Tolkien drew inspiration from Latin, ancient Greek, Finnish, and the Celtic languages.“It was as if I had found a full wine cellar with bottles of excellent wine, varieties and flavors that I had not tasted before. Intoxicating" , - Tolkien writes in one of his letters about his acquaintance with the Finnish language. To translate the dialogues of the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies, Peter Jackson hired linguist David Salo, author of the Sindarin grammar textbook ("Sindarin: A Gateway to Sindarin: A Grammar of an Elvish language from J.R.R. Tolkien"s Lord of the Rings", 2004) In an interview with the portal http://www.theonering.net Salo spoke about the process of working on dialogues from films: if the necessary words were not in Sindarin, he borrowed the root from Quenya and formed the word according to the rules of Sindarin.
Khuzdul language
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, dir. Peter Jackson
Many, including Professor Dimitra Fimi in his article for the BBC, write about the similarities in the sound of Sindarin and Welsh. “Quenya is inspired by Finnish, and Sindarin is inspired by Welsh,” Fimi writes, and quotes Tolkien (about Welsh):"... words that give pleasure to contemplate the combination of form and feeling" .
Lapin language
Hill Dwellers, dir. Martin Rosen
The animated film, produced and directed by Rosen, like other adaptations of books in which characters use fictional languages, provides an opportunity to hear an outlandish dialect. No matter how successful the author's metaphors are, designed to help the reader imagine the sound, in this case - "it is better to hear once."
Keren Levy in his review for The Guardian calls rabbit tongue lapin"... the language of the village, ... groves, beeches ...". “What motivated me to his [rabbit tongue] creation? I dont know. Just making up words when I needed to put in a word in rabbit language. Some of them are onomatopoeic, like hrududu (which means "car"), but most of them come from my subconscious" Adams says reddit interview.
In addition to Lapin, the dialects developed by Adams also sound in the "Dwellers of the Hills". So, to communicate with other animals, rabbits switch to the lingua franca - hedgerow.
Thomas Murray, in his essay "Lapine Lingo in American English: Silflay", writes that some words of the rabbit language have become part of American slang. As an example, he gives the verbSilflay » – "get out of the hole to find food" , which can be heard in the midwest and north of the central states of America, andCrixa . The latter, which in the book is the name of the crossroads of two equestrian trails, according to Murray, is used by students at Ohio State University - they call this word university dormitories. You can get acquainted with the rules of the rabbit language .
divine language
The Fifth Element, dir. Luc Besson
According to him, this language can be mastered by creatures"who breathe air" , while all other inhabitants of the vast expanses of space will face insurmountable difficulties. Apart from dictionary on Divinelanguage.com you can find information about grammar features. The alphabet of the divine language has 78 letters (each sound has its own letter), writing visually resembles musical notation, seven colors are used for recording (black is exclusively for punctuation). Among the languages that have influenced the structure and sound of the divine language are French, Japanese, German and Imperial Aramaic. As Steven Rogers writes in his Encyclopedia of Fictional Languages, during filming, Besson and Jovovich often communicated and corresponded in a fictional dialect.
Klingon language
Star Trek franchise
A quarterly magazine is published in Klingon, and since 1992 the Klingon Language Institute has been operating in Flowertown, Pennsylvania. Those who wish can be trained in it and receive a certificate corresponding to their level of knowledge (four stages are provided). Institute employees translated Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing into Klingon - in the Star Trek movie universe, these works are considered originally created in the Klingon language (the rest of the world recognized them thanks to the translation into English). One of the heroes of the series - Chancellor Gorkon - says this about the need to get acquainted with the classics:"You will never understand Shakespeare until you read it in the original Klingon" .
Thanks to the Klingon Language Institute, the Epic of Gilgamesh and Laozi's Book of Way and Dignity were also translated. Klingon became the second fictional language in which the opera was written (it was ahead of Esperanto - in 1908, the premiere of the opera based on Iphigenia in Taurida in Esperanto took place in Berlin). The world's first Klingon opera'u'- was released on September 10, 2010 at the Siebelt Theater in The Hague. The plot of the opera is based on the legend mentioned in the series about the first emperor of the Klingon Empire - Kahless the Unforgettable. The music for the opera was written by the Dutch jazz composer If Van Breen.
An English-Klingon/Klingon-English dictionary written by its creator Mark Okrand hit store shelves in 1985. 10 years later, a Portuguese-Klingon dictionary was published, followed by a German-Klingon dictionary in 1996, an Italian-Klingon dictionary in 1998, and in 2008 the dictionary was translated into Czech.
In 2009, newspapers reprinted a story about a Minnesota linguist who taught his son Klingon as his first language. Dr. D'Armond Spears communicated with his son exclusively in Klingon during his first three years of life. In the first episode television program "The Word of Uncle Fry" - the author's program of British writer and actor Stephen Fry - Dr. Spears says that, having reached the age of three, his son stopped being interested in Klingon and"answered questions in Klingon in English"
. Fry suggests that the loss of interest in Spears Jr.'s Klingon is primarily due to the fact that this language (unlike English) was not used by the child for communication outside the home.
On the website of the Klingon Language Institute, you can learn set of phrases “for every day”, and for those who are thirsty for a deeper immersion in the language environment, there are video lessons.
One of the leading linguists of the 20th century, Noam Chomsky in an interview for the book "Contrasts: Soviet and American Thinkers Discuss the Future" talks about the indissoluble connection between language and culture. Chomsky speaks of language as the key to understanding the capabilities of the human brain, cultural codes. Would there be fewer wars in the world if people were more eager to learn new languages and get acquainted with new cultures, thereby getting rid of the fear of the "alien"? Aneliya Avtandilova
Over 6,000 people around the world speak natural languages; in addition, there are many dead. It would seem, what a Babylonian variety! But nevertheless there are enthusiasts who develop new languages. Why do they do it?
When it comes to artificial languages, the first thing to remember is Esperanto. Created in 1887, Esperanto flourishes to this day - it is fluently spoken by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. This purpose of artificial languages - for international communication - is the most obvious, but not the only and not even the most common ...
LANGUAGES FOR INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION
The popularity of Esperanto is not accidental - it is really simple (only 16 rules without a single exception) and understandable, at least for Europeans and Americans, since it contains mostly and generally the roots of words, including and.
Similar languages, with their own grammar and roots taken from natural languages, are called " a posteriori"(lat. " from subsequent"), Unlike " a priori”, for which the words were invented artificially. Languages for international communication are often referred to as " auxiliary”, since they are not intended to replace the main languages (although such ambitious aspirations once met); sometimes the word "artificial" is replaced by the word " planned" to avoid negative connotations; finally, it is customary to consider as proper languages only those of them that have become fairly widespread, and if only the author himself and a couple of his friends speak freely, and those with a dictionary, then this is not a language, but “ linguistic project».
Esperanto quickly became widespread, but it was not the first of its kind - the second half 19th century marked by a keen interest in artificial "universal" languages, so that the fruit of the labors Lazar Zamenhof was grown in fertile soil. And the first fixed artificial language - Lingua Ignota (« unknown speech”) - was created and described by the abbess Hildegard of Bingen also in XII century, which considered it sent down from above. Lingua Ignota had its own script and a glossary of a thousand words, ranging from divine concepts to the lowest word "cricket". There was also an artificial language in the Muslim East - it was called " bala ibalan"and was developed on the basis of, and the sheikh Muhieddin.
AT 1817 French Jean Francois Sudre introduced to the public an impossibly strange fiction: the language solresol, whose words (there were 2660 of them in the main dictionary) consisted of the names of musical notes. It is hard to believe that initially the idea was something more than an intellectual game, but the new language turned out to be suitable for international communication (the musical notation is international) and therefore won awards and recognition from contemporaries. Solresol words could be spoken in the usual way, played musical instruments, written down (initially with only seven letters or numbers; subsequently, enthusiasts developed a special alphabet), painted with seven primary colors, waved semaphore flags, etc.
In the second half XIX century, the popularity of Solresol faded away and was replaced by other artificial languages, less pretentious and more convenient for communication. There were quite a few: universalglot (1868), Volapuk (1880), pasilingua (1885), Esperanto (1887), lingua catholic (1890), idiom-neutral(1893-1898) ... was rather strange: it contained roots derived from European ones - strongly distorted, but still recognizable, and therefore, for most Europeans, speech in Volapuk seemed funny (still this word figuratively means) . However, he found his fans and was popular in Germany until the Nazis came to power. In contrast, it was built from pure lexemes of the main languages of Europe (Russian, English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Latin) in order to be understandable to "any educated person". Esperanto was created on a similar principle.
The creation of new languages continued in XX century - omo (1910), occidental (1922), interlingua(1936-1951) and others - but none of them even came close to Esperanto in demand and distribution. It is interesting to note that at the same time, derivative “dialects” branched off from Esperanto itself. The fact is that at the first congress of Esperantists in 1905 In 1997, it was decided to consider the rules included by Zamenhof in the book "Fundamentals of Esperanto" as unshakable - and from that moment on, the language could only expand, and the basic grammar remained unchanged. Those who were not satisfied with these rules had only one thing to do - to create their own linguistic project. Already in 1907 The first split occurred in 1993, connected with the emergence of a heavily revised version of Esperanto - ido. About 10% of the then Esperanto community followed the creators of the new language. Other Esperanto clones also appeared: station wagon, Esperantido, novial, neo, but they have not received significant distribution.
Concluding the story about international artificial languages, it is impossible not to mention such a phenomenon as " zone-constructed languages” understandable to representatives of related peoples or a limited geographical region. As an example one can name afrihili(peoples of Africa) and pan-Slavic linguistic projects slovio and slovenian. Here is an example of text for Slovio from the official website of the developers: “What is Slovio? Slovio es novyu internarodyu yazika ktor razumiyut four hundred million ludis on the whole earth!” Funny, but understandable.
RECOVERY OF DEAD LANGUAGES
If the creation of new languages is a process directed towards the future, then in the past of human speech lie dead languages, the sounds of which no one has heard for thousands of years. The science linguistic comparative studies deals with the study of the laws by which languages develop. Painstakingly, as a paleontologist recreates the appearance of a relic animal from a single bone, she “revives” dead languages, making ancient words sound again.
Since the 19th century, linguists have been reconstructing Proto-Indo-European a language spoken 5000 years ago by the common ancestors of Germans, Celts, Slavs and many other peoples. AT 1868
German scientist August Schleicher wrote in Proto-Indo-European - as it was restored by that time - the fable "Sheep and Horses". Over the course of a century and a half, the idea of the Proto-Indo-European language has changed - and Schleicher's fable has been repeatedly rewritten more "correctly".
And in 2006, two enthusiasts from Spain, based on the restored Proto-Indo-European, created an artificial "new Indo-European" language. Their ambitions are grandiose: to make Indo-European the main official language of the European Union.
FANTASTIC LANGUAGES
Connoisseurs of creativity John Ronald Reuel Tolkien it is known that his Middle-earth did not begin with the mythology of the elves, not with geography, and not at all with the plot of the Ring, but with fictional dialects. A linguist and polyglot who knew more than ten languages, Tolkien from childhood found pleasure in the sound of speech - native and foreign. As a hobby, he began constructing languages in his spare time, guided by perfection and euphony, and only then did the aesthetic process flow into the creation of a fantasy world and creatures for which invented languages \u200b\u200bcould be natural.
Now many authors who write in the genre of escapist fantasy, imitating Tolkien, create dialects for their fictional peoples, as a rule, worked out very superficially - solely in order to convey exoticism.
However, the function of fictional languages in works of art can be not only entourage. Sapir–Whorf hypothesis(“Popular Mechanics” No. 2, 2012) suggests that speakers of languages, especially those belonging to cultures far from each other, think differently, and elements of such languages are not always translated into each other without distortion. Thus, in a fantastic work, it is possible to convey a different mindset of a non-humanoid race or social formation.
George Orwell for his dystopia" 1984 "invented (however, he did not develop it entirely)" Newspeak"- an artificial language created on the basis of English and aimed at influencing people's thinking, shaping it in a certain way - in particular,. In general, dystopias and social fiction directed towards the future are fertile ground for such linguistic experiments. Artificial language concepts were addressed Evgeny Zamyatin (« We") and Anthony Burgess (« Clockwork orange»). Robert Heinlein described in the story Abyss» artificial language « speed talk”, using many sounds and a very limited set of words.
American linguist Mark Okrand by order Paramount Pictures developed a language for one of the series' alien races star trek - Klingons. He took as a basis several languages of the Indians of North America and Sanskrit. AT Klingon many sounds uncharacteristic of English: " tlh», « kx», « s", glottal stop; writing is based on the Tibetan alphabet. The grammar of the language is also very specific, due to which it is really perceived as a foreign language. The Klingon language has become widespread among fans of the series - several hundred people are currently able to speak it, there is one that publishes periodicals and translations of literary classics, there is Klingon-language rock music and theatrical productions, as well as a search engine section Google.
Another linguist, professor at the University of Southern California Paul Frommer, based on the Polynesian languages created Na'vi- the language of the blue-skinned natives of the planet Pandora from the movie " Avatar". Fans of the film willingly learn Na'vi and form groups to communicate with each other. And there are quite a lot of such examples when a full-fledged language is constructed for a work of art: David Peterson developed Dothraki language for the series Game of Thrones"based on the novels of George Martin - and fans immediately became interested in them; language D'ni, created for computer games Myst Richard Watson, also went beyond the fictional universe.
CONSTRUCTING LANGUAGES AS A HOBBY
There are people for whom inventing languages has no applied significance, it's just a hobby, a game. More often, linguists are prone to such a pastime, but sometimes mere mortals without special education suddenly begin to pronounce strange combinations of sounds, and then dig into works on comparative linguistics. Still, in order to create at least some full-fledged language, you need to understand how languages generally function, how they develop, what techniques are found in exotic dialects that are not native to you - and indeed, in order to have a taste for something, you need to be good at it.
The hobby is strange, but the community of people creating " conlangs"(from constructed languages, "constructed languages", they call themselves, respectively, " conlangers”) are quite numerous. Only American Society for the Design of Languages"(LCS) has thousands of participants (by the way, the president of the LCS is the already mentioned David Peterson, and another member of the society, Bill Welden, advised the creators of the film trilogy" Lord of the Rings"). Associations of this kind exist all over the world. The number of artificial languages also goes into the thousands. Of course, the vast majority of them can be freely used only by authors and a small circle of people close to them - that is, terminologically, these are not languages, but linguistic projects.
Native American sign language
Surely many people remember from films and adventure books that Indians, when they could not communicate with the interlocutor - whether it be a European trapper or a representative of another tribe - with the help of words, they switched to sign language. Such a language, similar to modern sign languages, really existed: over a vast territory Great Plains hundreds of thousands of people knew him. It was highly developed and not much inferior in terms of information content to ordinary oral speech. It was used in a variety of cases: for barter transactions, negotiations, the exchange of hunting and military information; subsequently it was mastered by many colonists who dealt with the Indians.
LANGUAGES FOR EXPERIMENTS
Artificial languages are devoid of complexities, contradictions, exceptions and other shortcomings inherent in spontaneously developing natural languages, and therefore can be a platform for all sorts of linguistic, psychological, philosophical and other experiments. In fact, an artificial language is a kind of programmable environment in which its creator can put any functions and values of variables.
The simplest, and the most interesting, of the artificial languages is called " tokipona", its creator is a polyglot Sonya Helen Kisa. Tokipon has only 120 roots of 14 letters, and the grammar and syntax are simple. Because of this simplicity, most words have a very wide range of meanings; people who speak this language (and there are now several hundred of them) have to be creative in constructing a phrase and, depending on the context, choose certain definitions necessary for understanding. For example, in tokipon there is no word “dog”, there is only a common word soweli for all terrestrial mammals, therefore, depending on the situation, it will be necessary to clarify who exactly we are talking about: a cute puppy (“funny little animal”), a biting and liar watchdog ("bad loud animal"), etc.
If tokipona is an extremely polysemantic language, then created in 1955–1960 years loglan- its complete opposite. It is a language absolutely devoid of ambiguities, completely logical, as its name implies (l oglan = logical language). At first, it is not easy to master, it requires a certain mindset and habits, but later, speakers of this language show a tendency to unusual comparisons and characteristics, to word creation. AT 1987 year, as a result of disagreements among linguists, a new language appeared Lojban, which is almost similar to Loglan in grammar, but with a different vocabulary. When artificial intelligence is finally created, these two languages will be most suitable for interacting with it.
But language is intended for contact with extraterrestrial civilizations lincos created by professor of mathematics Hans Freudenthal. Like loglan, it is strictly logical, it also does not contain contradictions and exceptions, but there are no sounds in it either. Information is encoded in any convenient way (for example, binary code). In developing linkos, Professor Freudenthal proceeded from two assumptions: that other civilizations can differ from humans in anything other than the presence of reason, and that mathematics is universal.
* "All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way" - the first phrase of Leo Tolstoy's novel "Anna Karenina" translated into Ithkuil, considered the most complex artificial language in the world. Above is the Latin transcription, below is içtaîl, the Ithkuil script, based on a number of archetypal forms combined in various ways depending on the sound and meaning of the word. Image: Popular Mechanics.
And finally, back to Robert Heinlein, or rather, to his idea of a language close in speed to thinking. If the science fiction writer outlined the basic principles of such a language, then the linguist John Quijada gave them further development and brought them to life. The Ithkuil language he created, to increase the information capacity of speech, uses not only an extensive set of sounds (its alphabet has 136 letters), but also a complex unusual grammar and many organizational principles borrowed from linguistics, mathematics and psychology. Yes, Ithkuil phrase translated into Russian as " »; the name of the language iţkuîl stands for " hypothetical composition of diverse statements coexisting in a cooperative unity". This article can be characterized by the same long phrase.
