From mystical cant to Star Trek: the long history of invented languages
Most languages emerge naturally from human interaction, but some are meticulously designed. Whether created for divine revelation, philosophical precision, or cinematic worlds, these 'conlangs' prove that language can be a deliberate tool for engineering thought, art, and even international unity.
The concept of the constructed language, or 'conlang', spans millennia. In classical antiquity, figures like Dionysius of Sicily experimented with neologisms, replacing standard Greek terms with new compounds like 'menandros' for virgin. Later, the 7th-century Irish legend of Fénius Farsaid described a scholar who spent ten years studying various tongues to create 'the selected language,' Goídelc. By the 12th century, the focus shifted toward the mystical; St. Hildegard of Bulence recorded the 'Lingua Ignota,' an entirely artificial language used as a private mystical cant.
During the 17th and 18th centuries, the movement turned toward 'philosophical' or 'a priori' languages. These were often taxonomic, designed to organize all human knowledge into hierarchical systems. Figures like John Wilkins and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz sought to create universal characters that could simplify grammar or even allow users to calculate true propositions through a form of binary calculus. Many of these were 'pasigraphies'—systems intended for writing only, without a unique spoken form.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the focus shifted to 'auxiliary languages' (auxlangs) designed for international communication. While the 1879 project Volapük saw massive global popularity with 283 clubs, internal disputes led to its decline, clearing the path for Esperanto in 1887. Today, conlangs serve diverse ends: 'artlangs' like Tolkien’s Quenya or the Na’vi of Avatar create aesthetic depth, while 'engineered languages' like Lojban aim to eliminate syntactical ambiguity. The spectrum remains broad, ranging from the purely mathematical to the cinematic.
Source: Constructed language
