Why create artificial languages? International artificial languages

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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION OF THE MOSCOW REGION

State educational institution of higher professional education

Moscow State Regional University

Institute of Linguistics and Intercultural Communication

Faculty of Linguistics

CourseworkJob

Bydiscipline " LinguisticsAndliterary criticism"

ontopic: " Reasonscreationartificiallanguages. StorycreationAndfunctioningVolapuk"

Completed the work

student Zhigunova Elena Dmitrievna

Scientific supervisor: Art. Rev. Fedosova A.K.

Content

Introduction
1.3 Examples of artificial languages in literature and cinematography
Chapter 2. Volapyuk
2.1 History of creation
Conclusion
References

Introduction

This topic course work is quite relevant at the moment, since in our time the creation of artificial languages is quite common. After all, natural languages mainly serve as the basis for artificial languages, although there are cases when new languages are completely different from any of the existing languages.

The problem of creating artificial languages is both positive and negative, which is why I would like to consider this problem from both sides in order to find out why artificial languages are created when there are thousands of natural ones.

Indeed, at the moment, not every natural language has a written language, there are quite a lot of dead languages that no one speaks anymore, there are endangered languages that are spoken by only a few people in the whole world, and this makes one cannot help but wonder why artificial languages attracted by why he speaks some artificial languages more people than on some that are considered endangered.

The main research method in this work was studying material on different artificial languages, conducting surveys about what artificial languages people know and where they learned about them, writing short reviews about different languages after the survey, studying material about natural languages and the problems of the “language barrier” in modern world, and also negative consequences creation of artificial languages.

Chapter 1. Reasons for the creation of artificial languages

Since ancient times, people have experienced certain difficulties due to the fact that different nationalities speak different languages and dialects, accordingly, such a concept as a “language barrier” appeared.

Since then, people began to wonder how to overcome this “barrier”, because people needed to contact each other ever since states appeared, and there was a need for trade, establishing friendly ties between states and concluding treaties.

A striking example is the Old Russian state and Byzantium. In 907 and 911 the first treaties were concluded between Old Russian state and Byzantium. The first treaty of 907 was of a dubious nature and was, rather, preparatory to the treaty of 911. And the treaty of 911 determined the procedure for the ransom of prisoners, restored friendly relations between states, determined punishments for criminal offenses committed by Greek and Russian merchants in Byzantium, and rules of conduct trial and inheritance, created favorable trading conditions for Russians and Greeks, changed coastal law (the owners of the coast had to assist in rescuing a beached ship and its property instead of seizing it).

People began to solve the problem of the “language barrier” in different ways. Some began to study other languages in order to be able to speak them and understand others, others chose one language for international communication, for example, in ancient times it was Latin, and now in most countries people understand and speak English .

Also, pidgins began to emerge - peculiar “hybrids” of any two languages. An example of such a “hybrid” is a mixture of Ukrainian and Russian languages - from the outside it seems as if a person speaks Russian, but uses Ukrainian words in his vocabulary, and it turns out that both Russians and Ukrainians understand him. Although Russian and Ukrainian are very similar, this “hybrid” is still useful for communication.

Since the seventeenth century, scientists have been thinking about creating a new, special language that would be quite easy to understand and learn, and which would become the language of international communication. After all, in natural languages, the languages we speak from birth, there are quite a lot of exceptions and borrowed words, complex rules, and their structure depends on historical development, in which it is very difficult to understand the logic, such as the formation of some grammatical forms and spelling. Artificially created languages are usually called planned languages, since the word "artificial" can cause negative associations when translated into some languages.

The most famous and widespread of the artificial languages is Esperanto, which was created by Ludwig Zamenhof in 1887. “Esperanto,” which means “hopeful,” was Zamenhof’s pseudonym, and subsequently the language he created was called by this name.

Zamenhof was born in Bialystok, in Russian Empire. Jews, Poles, Germans and Belarusians lived in the city - in a word, people of completely different nationalities, and relations between people of these nationalities were quite tense. Ludwik Zamenhof decided that the reason for this enmity between ethnic groups lay in misunderstanding, and even when he was studying at the gymnasium he made attempts to develop a “common” language based on the European languages that he studied. He needed to create a language that was also neutral. The structure of Esperanto was created quite simple for ease of learning and memorizing the language. The roots of the words were borrowed from European and Slavic languages, as well as from Latin and ancient Greek.

There are many organizations that devote their activities to the dissemination of Esperanto; books and magazines are published in this language, broadcasting channels have been created on the Internet, and songs have been written. There are also versions of many popular programs in a language such as OpenOffice.org office applications, browser Mozilla Firefox, and there is also an Esperanto version in search engine Google. The language also enjoys the support of UNESCO.

In addition to Esperanto, there are quite a lot of other artificially created languages, both widely known throughout the world and not widely known. Many of them were created with the same goal - to develop the most convenient means for international communication: Ido, Interlingua, Volapuk and others.

Some other artificial languages, for example, Loglan, were created for research purposes; linguists specially developed new artificial languages in order to conduct experiments, experiments, identify patterns, etc. And languages such as Na'vi, Klingon and Sindarin were developed so that characters in books and films could speak them.

We all know the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, in which elves, gnomes, goblins, and orcs spoke languages that were completely different in sound and writing, and each of the languages had its own history, as did the peoples speaking them . Also, the Na'vi language was specially developed, which was spoken by the heroes of the film "Avatar", the film's director James Cameron specifically asked the linguist to develop and create an artificial language for the fictional world. After the film was released, there were a lot of people who wanted to learn the fictional language, which became one of the means of communication between fans of the film and the book.

Unlike natural languages, developed throughout the history of mankind, separated over time from any parent language and died, artificial languages are created by people specifically for relatively short time. They can be created based on the elements and structure of existing natural languages or "constructed" entirely.

Authors of artificial languages disagree on which strategy best meets their goals - neutrality, ease of learning, ease of use. After all, it is impossible to guess which of these parameters will make the language the most popular and spread so much as to become universal. And therefore, many believe that the creation of artificial languages makes no sense at all, since they will never spread enough to serve as a universal interethnic language. Even a language such as Esperanto is now known to few, and English is most often used for international negotiations.

Learning artificial languages is complicated by many factors. Firstly, there are no native speakers, since these are completely made-up languages that have never been spoken by anyone since ancient times. The structure may change periodically as scholars often argue about how to make the language better, which rules to keep and which should be replaced. And, as a result of disagreements between theorists, an artificial language can be divided into two variants, since some decide that one variant is more acceptable, and others decide that it should be done differently - for example, Lojban was separated from the Loglan language, Ido from Esperanto .

However, proponents of artificial languages still believe that in the conditions of modern globalization, a language is needed that could be used by everyone, but at the same time not associated with any particular country or culture, and continue linguistic research and experiments.

1.1 Negative aspects of creating artificial languages

As it turned out, artificial languages began to be created in the 17th century in order to overcome the “language barrier.” But is it right to create a language in which all people can communicate? Of course, it is good if people can communicate with each other without any problems and do not experience any difficulties when traveling to other countries.

After all, if there is one universal language of interethnic communication, then there will be no need to learn other languages almost from infancy, there will be no difficulties with incorrect pronunciation of words in another language, there will be no need to buy dictionaries just to go on vacation with your family to another country. Ignorance of another language and another country will no longer be a problem for vacationers, travelers and tourists.

If you look from this point of view, if a universal language of interethnic communication is ever created, then over time, as centuries pass, people will simply no longer need their native languages. But why, if there is one that everyone knows and understands? Now there is no “language barrier”, no translation difficulties, you can freely communicate with anyone anywhere in the world!

People of different nationalities will speak neutral, simple, fictional language which Not has history. But each of the languages, natural languages, is unique. Carries with him a whole historical era, the spirit of the people, because it is part of the ethnic group. Will he just be forgotten? Because people simply don’t want to learn other languages in order to contact other, equally unique ethnic groups with their own history.

Perhaps the creation of an artificial universal language so that people of different nations can communicate is simply an act of laziness? Many people, if possible, go abroad and receive higher education there, the opportunity to communicate with people of another country, to learn a language, is refused, and only because they simply do not want to learn another language seems savage to me.

Moreover, if there is only one language, after centuries, maybe even millennia, people will simply forget their native languages, they will become for them like Latin is for us now - a dead language that now exists only as echoes of that great language, that existed before.

What will be left for linguists? Now there are thousands of languages that are spoken, written, and they can all be studied, many dialects, neologisms, incomprehensible exceptions to the rules of languages - all this gives linguists work, knowledge, scientific discoveries, the creation of new dictionaries, and the like.

But if all this does not exist, if there is only one language, linguists will have no choice but to delve into history and study dead languages that were once great, or create new ones for their research purposes.

1.2 Positive aspects of creating artificial languages

The creation of artificial languages also brings benefits. Undoubtedly, to create a universal language for communication - great idea to overcome the language barrier, because if it is possible to create one, then most likely there will be no disputes between people due to misunderstandings. In some cases, an artificial language as a means of interethnic communication is urgently needed.

For example, in Papua New Guinea there are a huge number of languages spoken, and the authorities there are literally “hanging themselves” because even neighboring villages find it very difficult to communicate with each other due to the large difference in dialects or language in general. Problems also arise with the media, because if a country does not have a national language, then it becomes unclear how to present information to people, in what language the information should be disseminated through radio, television, newspapers and magazines so that it reaches all residents.

Also, in India there are about 17 accepted national languages, and it is very difficult to communicate with so many differences in word meanings. In China, people also experience difficulties, since the Chinese language has a huge number of different characters, and as a result, the Chinese language has quite a lot of dialect branches that are understandable only to those people who use them.

It is for such cases that the creation of a single language so that people can communicate, at least within their own country, is very important, because this can lead to strife and difficulties in people’s interaction with each other and life in general.

Also, artificial languages are a very interesting factor for fans of science fiction, books and films in general, since many writers create their own world in which they create their own language. These languages are, as it were, native to the characters in books or films, since the authors create not only the language itself, but also think through its history, not the story of creation, or the idea that came to the author’s mind, and he decided to create the language, but the story that goes deep into the fictional world that the author writes about.

1.3 Examples of artificial languages in literature and cinema

The Klingon language spoken by humanoid warriors from the planet Khonosh in the fictional universe of the series " Star Trek", was invented by linguist Marc Okrand for Paramount Studios. The language has a detailed grammar, syntax, vocabulary and even a regulatory organization - the Klingon Language Institute, which promotes Klingon culture and translations classical literature, including the Bible and Shakespeare in Klingon.

In addition to Klingon, in the Star Trek universe there are about 10 languages of varying degrees of development, including Vulcan, Borg, Rihannsu, Andorian, Orion, Tamarian, Ferengi, Bayoran, etc.

By J.R. R. Tolkien is known not only as a writer and author of "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings", but also as a linguist and inventor of many artificial languages.

Even as a child, Tolkien and his friends invented secret languages to communicate with each other. This passion remained with him throughout his life. He developed the grammar and vocabulary for a whole family of 15 Elvish languages, which he continued to work on from 1910 until his death in 1973. This group includes Proto-Elven, Common Eldarin, Quenya, Goldogrin, Telerin, Sindarin, Ilkorin, Nandorin, Avarin.

In the movie "The Fifth Element" main character Lilu speaks the so-called ancient Divine language (The Divine Language), which, according to prehistory, was spoken by the entire Universe before the beginning of time.

Designed by Luc Besson and Milla Jovovich, the language has just over 400 words. As the actress claimed, she and the director even wrote letters to each other in it for language practice. Some time after the film's release, Besson's inspired fans collected all the phrases from the film and compiled a dictionary.

In the world of A Song of Ice and Fire, created by George R.R. Martin, there are many different languages. In Westeros, the so-called common language is adopted; the languages of Valyria, Dothraki and others that differ from it are also known (dialects Free Cities, language Quart, Guiscari, language Lhazaryan, Asshai, trade language, language Summer Islands Andetc.). Most of these languages are rendered in English in the books of the saga.

We will focus on Dothraki, which Daenerys Targaryen had to learn. This language was developed in more detail especially for the Game of Thrones series, and its creator was David J. Peterson from the Language Creation Society. The books didn't have many guidelines for language development, just a few nouns and dozens of names. They set the vector for its development.

The new language received grammatical and phonetic borrowings from Russian, Turkish, Estonian, and Inuktitut (language residents extreme north Canada) and Swahili.

Several fictional languages are mentioned in the world of Harry Potter, including Gobbledook, Runic, the language of the merpeople, and Parseltongue or "serpentine." This magical language, according to JK Rowling’s story, is spoken by parsel-mouth magicians who speak with snakes. Those around cannot understand the conversation between the parselmouth and the snake, since they only hear hissing. This innate and extremely rare gift is passed on by inheritance or along with magical powers. Typically, tongue is associated with the Dark Arts, but some good wizards also possessed this gift.

The most famous Parselmouth was Salazar Slytherin, one of the four founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. That is why the symbol of the Slytherin house is a snake.

The language consists of various hissing sounds and rough letters, and words are pronounced on the exhale with hissing and imitation of snake sounds. Most sentences are very short and consist of only a subject, an object and a verb. The rest of the meaning must be figured out by the listener, based on their knowledge and context. In addition, the language does not have a written form, and the Latin alphabet is very difficult to convey its sound. The version of Parseltongue used in the films was developed by Francis Nolan, professor of phonetics and specialist in Finnish and Estonian at the University of Cambridge.

Universe " Star Wars" is also filled with sort of different languages , of which the saga mentions Galactic High, Droid Binary, Duros, Hutt, Yuuzhan Vong, and many others. The fictional languages of Star Wars, unlike Klingon or Sindarin, have no real grammatical system. For example, Wookiee growls or droid signals mostly convey intonation and emotion. The language most often used in films, Galactic Basic, is identical to modern English, with only a few additions of fictitious idioms and in separate words. Other languages are also similar to existing human ones, although unfamiliar to most viewers.

One of the original languages of the film saga is bokke , an artificial language used by space travelers, which consists of the languages of several races.

According to the narrative, the language originated in the Baobab trade ftol as a means of communication between pilots, crew and support staff, who belonged to the most different races. Although the language is not widely used, any experienced pilot and space traveler knows a few phrases in Bokke to communicate with other pilots.

Chapter 2. Volapyuk

2.1 History of creation

Volapyuk (Volapьk: vol - “world” + pьk - language) is the first international language of artificial origin in history. It was created by the German priest Johann Schleyer back in 1879. As the author himself stated, one day the Lord appeared to him in a dream and offered to create new language, capable of uniting all nations.

A disclaimer should be made here that in fact the first project to create an artificial international language was Universalglot, created in 1868 by the French linguist Jean Pirro. However, he had no success at all. Volapyuk managed to advance a little further.

Schleyer's creation was based on the classic German, from which the author excluded the sound r, considering it too complex for several nationalities, but left the original German umlauted vowels d, c, ь.

Unlike the deliberately simplified Esperanto, Volapük had a complex grammatical and word-formation system. There were several thousand forms of verbs alone in it. In addition, this language, like its progenitor, made it possible to combine in one compound word an unlimited number of roots, which led to the appearance of such monsters as klonalitakipafablеdacifalоpasekretan (“secretary of the chandelier factory directorate”). Unfortunately, it was precisely this complexity that caused the rapid decline of Volapük.

Volapuk artificial language international

2.2 Functioning of Volapük in modern society

Over the course of twenty years since its creation, this language has been actively gaining popularity. By 1889, over 210 thousand people had studied it in the most different countries, relevant literature was created, periodicals were published. But in the same year there was a conflict between Schleyer and reformers who wanted to somewhat simplify Volapük for general use. The priest forbade any changes to his creation, and fans of artificial international languages switched their attention to Esperanto, created two years earlier.

And although in 1929 it was nevertheless somewhat transformed into Volapuk, the total number of its speakers today does not exceed 30 people. This is definitely not enough for the language to develop and spread normally.

Conclusion

Thus, we can conclude that artificial languages were mainly created in order to facilitate intercultural communication for people, since people need to overcome the “language barrier” and speak freely among themselves without quarreling due to misunderstandings.

It also turned out that a lot of artificial languages were created in connection with books and films, which have their own fictional world and, accordingly, need a language to make this world look like the real one. As it turns out, these fictional languages are very popular among people because people are interested in worlds and their languages, and after the release of films or books, there are a lot of followers of trilogies or series of books or films. This is why some man-made languages eclipse endangered languages in popularity.

Also, artificial languages are created by linguists themselves, sometimes for research purposes, to observe processes, compare an artificially created language with a natural one, or develop a language for a tribe that only has a written language.

References

1. Current issues modern interlinguistics: Sat. in honor of the 75th anniversary of academician. P.A. Ariste. (Interlinguistica Tartuensis - 1). Tartu, 1982.

2. Akhmanova ABOUT. WITH, Bokarev E.A. International auxiliary language as a linguistic problem. - Questions of linguistics, 1956, No. 6, pp. 65-78.

3. Isaev M.AND. The problem of an artificial language of international communication. - In the book: Problems of interlinguistics. M.: Nauka, 1976.

4. http://london-moscow.ru/zachem_sozdavat_iskusstvennie_yaziki

5. http://whoyougle.ru/texts/artificial-languages/

6. https://ru. wikipedia.org

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Constructed languages: Esperanto

Esperanto is the most famous and most widespread artificial language in the world. Like Volapuk, it appeared at the end of the 19th century, but this language was much more fortunate. Its creator is doctor and linguist Lazar Markovich Zamenhof. Today, from 100 thousand to several million people communicate in Esperanto, there are even people for whom the language is native (usually children from international marriages in which Esperanto is the language of family communication). Unfortunately, accurate statistics for artificial languages are not kept.

Constructed language Ido (Edo)

Ido is a kind of descendant of Esperanto. It was created by the French Esperantist Louis de Beaufront, the French mathematician Louis Couture and the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen. Ido was proposed as an improved version of Esperanto. It is estimated that up to 5,000 people speak Ido today. At the time of its creation, about 10% of Esperantists switched to it, but the Ido language did not gain worldwide popularity.

Constructed languages: Slovenian

We, Russian people, cannot help but mention this interesting project, as in Slovenian. This is a new language, it appeared in 2006 as the language for international communication of the Slavs. The creators of the language set themselves the task: the language should be understandable without translation to the majority of speakers of Slavic languages (and this group includes not only us, Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. There are also Czechs, Croats, Bulgarians, and other peoples).

There are other planned, or artificial, languages, not so well known and popular: Interlingua (appeared in the mid-20th century), Tokipona (one of the simplest artificial languages, several hundred users, appeared in 2001), Quenya (the most popular and developed Elvish language, the number of people who know it to some extent reaches several thousand), Klingon language (the language of one of the alien races in the Star Trek series, a magazine is published in it, there are songs in Klingon and even Klingon Google!) . In fact, it is difficult to determine the number of artificial languages: there are only about forty more or less known artificial languages. And here is a link to a long list of artificial languages:

Linguists, there are about 7,000 languages. But this is not enough for people - they come up with new ones over and over again. In addition to such famous examples as Esperanto or Volapük, many other artificial languages have been developed: sometimes simple and fragmentary, and sometimes extremely ingenious and elaborate.

Humanity has been creating artificial languages for at least a couple of millennia. In antiquity and the Middle Ages, “unearthly” language was considered divinely inspired, capable of penetrating the mystical secrets of the universe. The Renaissance and Enlightenment witnessed the emergence of a whole wave of “philosophical” languages, which were supposed to connect all knowledge about the world into a single and logically impeccable structure. As we approached modern times, auxiliary languages became more popular, which were supposed to facilitate international communication and lead to the unification of humanity.

Today, when talking about artificial languages, people often remember the so-called artlangs- languages that exist within works of art. These are, for example, Tolkien’s Quenya and Sindarin, the Klingo language of the inhabitants of the Star Trek universe, the Dothraki language in Game of Thrones, or the N’avi language from James Cameron’s Avatar.

If we take a closer look at the history of artificial languages, it turns out that linguistics is by no means an abstract field where only intricate grammars are dealt with.

Utopian expectations, hopes and desires of humanity were often projected precisely into the sphere of language. Although these hopes usually ended in disappointment, there is a lot of interesting things to be found in this story.

1. From Babylon to angelic speech

The diversity of languages, which complicates mutual understanding between people, has often been interpreted in Christian culture as a curse from God sent to humanity as a result of the Babylonian Pandemonium. The Bible tells about King Nimrod, who set out to build a gigantic tower whose top would reach to the sky. God, angry at proud humanity, confused their language so that one ceased to understand the other.

It is quite natural that dreams of a single language in the Middle Ages were directed to the past, and not to the future. It was necessary to find a language before confusion - the language in which Adam spoke with God.

The first language spoken by humanity after the Fall was considered to be Hebrew. It was preceded by the very language of Adam - a certain set of primary principles from which all other languages arose. This construction, by the way, can be correlated with Noam Chomsky’s theory of generative grammar, according to which the basis of any language is a deep structure c general rules and principles of constructing statements.

Many church fathers believed that the original language of mankind was Hebrew. One notable exception is the views of Gregory of Nyssa, who sneered at the idea of God as school teacher showing the first ancestors the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. But in general, this belief persisted in Europe throughout the Middle Ages.

Jewish thinkers and Kabbalists recognized that the relationship between an object and its designation is the result of an agreement and a kind of convention. It is impossible to find anything in common between the word “dog” and a four-legged mammal, even if the word is pronounced in Hebrew. But, in their opinion, this agreement was concluded between God and the prophets and is therefore sacred.

Sometimes discussions about the perfection of the Hebrew language go to extremes. The 1667 treatise A Brief Sketch of the True Natural Hebrew Alphabet demonstrates how the tongue, palate, uvula, and glottis physically form the corresponding letter of the Hebrew alphabet when pronounced. God not only took care to give man a language, but also imprinted its structure in the structure of the speech organs.

The first truly artificial language was invented in the 12th century by the Catholic abbess Hildegard of Bingen. A description of 1011 words has come down to us, which are given in hierarchical order (words for God, angels and saints follow at the beginning). Previously it was believed that the author intended the language to be universal.

But it is much more likely that it was a secret language intended for intimate conversations with angels.

Another “angelic” language was described in 1581 by occultists John Dee and Edward Kelly. They named him Enochian(on behalf of the biblical patriarch Enoch) and described the alphabet, grammar and syntax of this language in their diaries. Most likely, the only place where it was used was the mystical sessions of the English aristocracy. Things were completely different just a couple of centuries later.

2. Philosophical languages and universal knowledge

With the beginning of the New Age, the idea of perfect language is experiencing a period of growth. Now they are no longer looking for it in the distant past, but are trying to create it themselves. This is how philosophical languages are born, which have an a priori nature: this means that their elements are not based on real (natural) languages, but are postulated, created by the author literally from scratch.

Typically, the authors of such languages relied on some natural science classifications. Words here can be constructed according to the principle chemical formulas, when the letters in a word reflect the categories to which it belongs. According to this model, for example, the language of John Wilkins is structured, who divided the whole world into 40 classes, within which separate genera and species are distinguished. Thus, the word “redness” in this language is conveyed by the word tida: ti - designation of the class “perceptible qualities”, d - the 2nd kind of such qualities, namely colors, a - the 2nd of colors, that is, red.

Such a classification could not do without inconsistencies.

It was precisely this that Borges sneered at when he wrote about animals “a) belonging to the Emperor, b) embalmed, h) included in this classification, i) running around like crazy,” etc.

Another project to create a philosophical language was conceived by Leibniz - and ultimately embodied in the language of symbolic logic, the tools of which we still use today. But it does not pretend to be a full-fledged language: with its help, you can establish logical connections between facts, but not reflect these facts themselves (not to mention using such a language in everyday communication).

The Age of Enlightenment put forward a secular ideal instead of a religious one: new languages were supposed to become assistants in establishing relations between nations and help bring peoples closer together. "Pasigraphy" J. Memieux (1797) is still based on a logical classification, but the categories here are chosen on the basis of convenience and practicality. Projects for new languages are being developed, but the proposed innovations are often limited to simplifying the grammar of existing languages to make them more concise and clear.

However, the desire for universalism is sometimes revived. At the beginning of the 19th century, Anne-Pierre-Jacques de Wim developed a project for a musical language similar to the language of angels. He suggests translating sounds into notes, which, in his opinion, are understandable not only to all people, but also to animals. But it never occurs to him that the French text encrypted in the score can only be read by someone who already knows at least French.

More famous musical language got a melodic name solresol, the draft of which was published in 1838. Each syllable is indicated by the name of a note. Unlike natural languages, many words differ by just one minimal element: soldorel means “to run”, ladorel means “to sell”. Opposite meanings were indicated by inversion: domisol, the perfect chord, is God, and its opposite, solmido, denotes Satan.

Messages could be sent to Solresol using voice, writing, playing notes or showing colors.

Critics called Solresol "the most artificial and most inapplicable of all a priori languages." In practice, it was really almost never used, but this did not prevent its creator from receiving a large cash prize at the World Exhibition in Paris, a gold medal in London and gaining the approval of such influential persons as Victor Hugo, Lamartine and Alexander von Humboldt. The idea of human unity was too tempting. It is precisely this that the creators of new languages will pursue in later times.

3. Volapuk, Esperanto and European unification

The most successful linguistic construction projects were not intended to comprehend divine secrets or the structure of the universe, but to facilitate communication between peoples. Today this role has been usurped by English. But doesn't this infringe on the rights of people for whom this language is not their native language? It was precisely this problem that Europe faced at the beginning of the 20th century, when international contacts intensified and medieval Latin had long fallen out of use even in academic circles.

The first such project was Volapuk(from vol "world" and pük - language), developed in 1879 by the German priest Johann Martin Schleyer. Ten years after its publication, there are already 283 Volapukist clubs around the world - a success previously unseen. But soon not a trace remained of this success.

Except that the word “volapyuk” has firmly entered the everyday lexicon and has come to mean speech consisting of a jumble of incomprehensible words.

Unlike the “philosophical” languages of the previous formation, this is not an a priori language, since it borrows its foundations from natural languages, but it is not completely a posteriori, since it subjects existing words to arbitrary deformations. According to the creator, this should have made Volapuk understandable to representatives of different language groups, but in the end it was incomprehensible to anyone - at least without long weeks of memorization.

\the most successful linguistic construction project was and remains Esperanto. The draft of this language was published in 1887 by the Polish ophthalmologist Ludwik Lazar Zamenhof under pseudonym Dr. Esperanto, which in the new language meant "Hopeful". The project was published in Russian, but quickly spread first throughout the Slavic countries and then throughout Europe. In the preface to the book, Zamenhof says that the creator of an international language needs to solve three problems:

Dr. Esperanto

from the book “International Language”

I) That the language should be extremely easy, so that it can be learned jokingly. II) So that everyone who has learned this language can immediately use it to communicate with people of different nations, no matter whether this language is recognized by the world and whether it finds many adherents or not.<...>III) Find means to overcome the indifferentism of the world and to encourage it as soon as possible and en masse to begin to use the proposed language as a living language, and not with a key in hand and in cases of extreme need.

This language has a fairly simple grammar, consisting of only 16 rules. The vocabulary is made up of slightly modified words that have common roots for many European peoples to make it easier to recognize and remember. The project was a success - today, according to various estimates, experanto speakers range from 100 thousand to 10 million people. More importantly, a number of people (about a thousand people) learn Esperanto in the early years of life, rather than learning it later in life.

Esperanto attracted a large number of enthusiasts, but did not become the language of international communication, as Zamenhof had hoped. This is not surprising: language can take on such a role due not to linguistic, but to the economic or political advantages that stand behind it. According to the famous aphorism, “a language is a dialect that has an army and a navy,” and Esperanto had neither.

4. Extraterrestrial intelligence, elves and Dothraki

Among later projects stands out loglan(1960) - a language based on formal logic, in which every statement must be understood in a unique way, and any ambiguity is completely eradicated. With its help, sociologist James Brown wanted to test the hypothesis of linguistic relativity, according to which the worldview of representatives of a particular culture is determined by the structure of their language. The test failed, since the language, of course, did not become the first and native language for anyone.

In the same year the language appeared linkos(from Latin lingua cosmica - “cosmic language”), developed by the Dutch mathematician Hans Vroedenthal and intended for communication with extraterrestrial intelligence. The scientist assumed that with its help, any intelligent being would be able to understand another, based on elementary logic and mathematical calculations.

But most of the attention in the 20th century received artificial languages that exist within works of art. Quenya And Sindarin, invented by professor of philology J.R. Tolkien, quickly spread among the writer’s fans. Interestingly, unlike other fictional languages, they had their own history of development. Tolkien himself admitted that language was primary for him, and history was secondary.

J.R.R. Tolkien

from correspondence

It is more likely that “stories” were composed in order to create a world for languages, rather than vice versa. In my case, the name comes first, and then the story. I would generally prefer to write in “Elvish”.

No less famous is the Klingon language from the Star Trek series, developed by linguist Marc Okrand. A very recent example is the Dothraki language of the nomads from Game of Thrones. George R.R. Martin, the author of the series of books about this universe, did not develop any of the fictional languages in detail, so the creators of the series had to do this. The task was taken on by linguist David Peterson, who later even wrote a manual about it called The Art of Inventing Languages.

At the end of the book “Constructing Languages,” linguist Alexander Piperski writes: it is quite possible that after reading this you will want to invent your own language. And then he warns: “if your artificial language aims to change the world, most likely it will fail, and you will only be disappointed (exceptions are few). If it is needed to please you and others, then good luck!”

The creation of artificial languages has a long history. At first they were a means of communication with the other world, then - an instrument of universal and accurate knowledge. With their help, they hoped to establish international cooperation and achieve universal understanding. IN lately they have become entertainment or become part of fantastic art worlds.

Recent discoveries in psychology, linguistics and neurophysiology, virtual reality and technological developments such as the brain-computer interface may once again revive interest in artificial languages. It is quite possible that the dream that Arthur Rimbaud wrote about will come true: “In the end, since every word is an idea, the time of a universal language will come!<...>It will be a language that goes from soul to soul and includes everything: smells, sounds, colors.”

ARTIFICIAL LANGUAGES, sign systems, created for use in areas where the use of natural language is less effective or impossible. Artificial languages differ in purpose, range of specialization and degree of similarity to natural languages.

Non-specialized general-purpose languages are international artificial languages (which are called planned languages if they are realized in communication; see Interlinguistics, International languages). In the 17th-20th centuries, about 1000 projects of such languages were created, but only a few of them received actual use (Volapuk, Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua and some others).

In functional terms, such artificial languages are divided into logical (claiming to reform human language as a means of thinking) and empirical (limited to the task of constructing language as an adequate means of communication). In material terms, languages differ between a posteriori (borrowing lexical and grammatical material from natural source languages) and a priori (devoid of material similarity to natural languages). Another classification parameter is the form of expression (manifestation) of linguistic material. Man-made languages that have two common forms of expression (sound and written) are called pasilalia. They are opposed, on the one hand, by systems of artificial languages that have only one form of expression, for example, written (pasigraphy) or gestural (pazimology), and on the other hand, by systems striving for an infinite variety of forms of expression: this is the “musical language” of G-D. sol J. Sudre (1817-66; France), which could be expressed using notes, corresponding sounds, numbers, gestures, colors of the spectrum, semaphore signals or flag signaling, etc.

A distinctive feature of the class of international artificial languages is that their typology changes over time (while in natural languages it is timeless): in initial period linguistic design was dominated by systems that were logical in function and a priori in material, but over time the focus of linguistic design gradually shifted towards empiricism and a posteriori. The equilibrium point between multidirectional trends occurred in 1879, when the first artificial language implemented in communication appeared - Volapuk (created by I.M. Schleyer; Germany). In his system, logicism is balanced with empiricism, and apriorism with a posterioriism. For this reason, Volapuk is considered a language of a mixed logical-empirical and a priori-a posteriori type: it borrows words from natural languages (English, German, French, Latin, etc.), but modifies them in order to simplify pronunciation and eliminate the phenomena of homonymy and synonymy and not give predominance to one source language over others. As a result, borrowed words lose their identifiability, for example English world > vol ‘world’, speak > рük ‘to speak’ (hence volapük ‘world language’). Volapyuk grammar is synthetic in nature (see Synthetism in linguistics), it includes a large number of nominal and verbal categories (2 numbers, 4 cases, 3 persons, 6 tenses, 4 moods, 2 aspects and 2 voices). Practice has shown the difficulty of using such a system in communication, and subsequently the semiotic range of artificial languages narrows, they are increasingly closer to the type of natural languages.

Artificial languages began to be created primarily on the basis of international vocabulary, with a certain ordering of it according to the autonomous rules of a given artificial language (autonomist artificial languages) or with its preservation in a form as close as possible to natural languages (naturalistic artificial languages). The grammar of artificial languages began to be built according to the analytical type (see Analyticism in linguistics) with a maximum reduction in the number of grammatical categories used. The stage of widespread communicative use of a posteriori artificial languages was opened by the Esperanto language (created by L. Zamenhof in 1887; Poland), which remains the most commonly used of all existing artificial languages. The Ido language (reformed Esperanto, created in 1907 by L. de Beaufron, L. Couture, O. Jespersen, W. Ostwald, and others; France) was much less widespread. Of the naturalistic projects, the following became famous: Latino-sine-flexione (or Interlingua-Peano; 1903, G. Peano), Occidental (1921-22, E. Wahl; Estonia) and Interlingua-IALA (created in 1951 by the International Auxiliary Language Association under the leadership of A. Gowda; USA). The synthesis of Ido and Occidental is presented in Jespersen's Project Novial (1928; Denmark).

Lit.: Couturat L., Leau L. Histoire de la langue universelle. R., 1907; idem. Les nouvelles langues internationales. R., 1907; Drezen E.K. Behind a universal language. M.; L., 1928; Rônai R. Der Kampf gegen Babel. Münch., 1969; Bausani A. Le lingue inventate. Rome, 1974; Knowlson J. Universal language schemes in England and France 1600-1800. Toronto; Buffalo, 1975; Kuznetsov S. N. On the issue of typological classification of international artificial languages // Problems of interlinguistics. M., 1976.

S. N. Kuznetsov.

Specialized artificial languages for various purposes are symbolic languages of science (languages of mathematics, logic, linguistics, chemistry, etc.) and languages of human-machine communication (algorithmic, or programming languages, languages of operating systems, database management, information, request-response systems etc.). General sign specialized artificial languages - a formal method of describing (defining) them by specifying an alphabet (dictionary), rules for the formation and transformation of expressions (formulas) and semantics, i.e., a method of meaningful interpretation of expressions. Despite the formal method of definition, these languages for the most part are not closed systems, since the rules for the formation of words and expressions allow recursion. Therefore, as in natural languages, the vocabulary and number of generated texts is potentially infinite.

The beginning of the creation and use of specialized artificial languages can be considered the use in Europe from the 16th century of alphabetic notation and symbols of operations in mathematical expressions; in the 17th-18th centuries the language of differential and integral calculus was created, in the 19th-20th centuries - the language mathematical logic. Elements of symbolic languages of linguistics were created in the 1930s and 40s. Symbolic languages of science are formal systems designed to represent knowledge and manipulate it in relevant subject areas (there are also knowledge representation languages independent of subject areas), that is, they implement a limited number of language functions (metalinguistic, representative), at the same time they perform functions that are not characteristic of natural language (for example, serve as a means of logical inference).

The development of human-machine communication languages began in the 1940s with the advent of computers. The first languages of this type were languages for describing computational processes by specifying machine instructions and data in binary code. In the early 1950s, symbolic coding systems (assemblers) were created that used mnemonic symbolic notations for operations (verbs) and operands (objects, complements); In 1957, the Fortran programming language was developed in the USA; in 1960, a group of European scientists proposed the Algol-60 language. Typically, text in a programming language consists of a program title, descriptive (declarative) and procedural parts; in the declarative part, objects (quantities) on which actions will be performed are described, in the procedural part, calculations are specified in imperative or sentential (narrative) form. Calculations in programming languages are specified in the form of operators (sentences), which include operands (variables and constants) and symbols denoting arithmetic, logical, symbolic, set-theoretic and other operations and computational functions; There are special grammatical constructions for specifying logical conditions, cycles, compound operators (analogues complex sentences), constructs for specifying and using procedures and functions, data input and output operators, operators for accessing the translator and the operating system, i.e., programs that interpret text in a programming language and monitor its correct execution (understanding). Of the artificial languages, programming languages are closest to natural languages in terms of the linguistic functions they perform (communicative, representative, conative, phatic and metalinguistic functions take place). For programming languages, as for natural language, asymmetry between the plan of expression and the plan of content is common (there is synonymy, polysemy, homonymy). They serve not only for programming itself, but also for professional communication between programmers; There are special versions of languages for publishing algorithms.

By the 1980s, there were apparently over 500 different programming languages, with multiple versions (dialects) of some of the most common languages (Fortran, Algola-60, PL/1, Cobol). Programming languages have, to a certain extent, the property of self-development (extensibility) due to the ability to define an infinite number of functions in them; There are languages with definable value types (Algol-68, Pascal, Ada). This property allows the user to define their programming language using this property.

Other means of human-machine communication are also close to programming languages: operating system languages, with the help of which users organize their interaction with the computer and its software; languages for interaction with databases and information systems, with the help of which users define and enter information into the system, request various data from the system. A particular (and initially emerged) form of query languages is information retrieval languages, defined by information retrieval thesauri, classifiers of concepts and objects, or simply dictionaries automatically compiled by the system when information is entered into it. The text in the information retrieval language has the form of a title sentence, which lists concepts that are signs of the data being sought. Information retrieval languages can be purely dictionary (without grammar), but they can also have grammatical means expressions of syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationships between concepts. They serve not only to formulate queries to the information system, but also as a means of indexing (i.e., displaying the content) of texts entered into the computer.

To interact with a computer, a strictly formally defined part (subset) of natural language is also used, the so-called limited natural, or specialized natural language, which occupies an intermediate position between natural and artificial languages. Limited natural language expressions are similar to natural language expressions, but they do not use words whose meanings are outside the domain, difficult to parse, or irregular grammatical forms and constructions.

Lit.: Sammet J. Programming languages: history and fundamentals. Englewood Cliffs, ; Tseytin G. S. Features of natural languages in programming languages // Machine translation and applied linguistics. M., 1974. Issue. 17; Morozov V. P., Ezhova L. F. Algorithmic languages. M., 1975; Cherny A.I. Introduction to theory information retrieval. M., 1975; Andryushchenko V. M. Linguistic approach to the study of programming languages and interaction with computers // Problems of computational linguistics and automatic text processing in natural language. M., 1980; Lekomtsev Yu. K. Introduction to the formal language of linguistics. M., 1983.

V. M. Andryushchenko.

Artificial languages of the above classes are used in the real world. The opposite of them are the artificial languages of virtual (fictional) worlds, created by the imagination of utopian philosophers (starting with “Utopia” by T. More), science fiction writers, and authors of “ alternative history", etc. At the turn of the 20th-21st century, in connection with the development of new means of mass communication and the advent of the Internet, the class of such languages, called virtual (fictional, fictitious, fantastic), sharply expanded its boundaries.

The peculiarity of virtual languages is that their authors invent not only the language system itself, but model the communicative situation as a whole (fictitious time, place, participants in communication, texts, dialogues, etc.). In the 20th century, Newspeak, described in a satirical dystopia by J. Orwell in 1948, and various language projects of J. Tolkien (the Lord of the Rings trilogy) gained fame; virtual languages are used not only in literary works, but also in films and TV series, role playing games, songs are composed and performed on them, and a significant number of Internet sites are dedicated to them. Societies of supporters of such languages are created, as a result of which they are sometimes transformed into languages of real human communication. In contrast to international artificial languages such as Esperanto, which develop in a direction that brings them closer to natural languages, virtual languages follow in the opposite direction, mastering semiotic capabilities unusual for human communication (“alternative semiosis” as a sign of an “alternative world”). See also Tolkien languages.

Lit.: Sidorova M. Yu., Shuvalova O. N. Internet linguistics: fictional languages. M., 2006.

In 19th-century linguistics (less commonly in modern linguistics), the term “artificial languages” was also applied to subsystems (or modifications) of natural languages that differ from other subsystems to a greater extent conscious human influence on their formation and development. With this understanding [G. Paul (Germany), I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay, etc.] artificial languages include, on the one hand, literary languages (as opposed to dialects), and on the other, professional and secret languages (as opposed to the common language). The most artificial languages are distinguished by those literary languages that represent a more or less arbitrary synthesis of a number of existing dialects (for example, Lansmol; see Norwegian language). In these cases, the antithesis “artificial - natural” is equated to the opposition of the conscious and the spontaneous.

In some linguistic concepts, everything was considered artificial. human languages on the grounds that they act as a product of human creativity (“the creation of humanity”, N. Ya. Marr) and in this sense they oppose the natural communication of animals. The antithesis “artificial - natural” thereby came closer to the antithesis “social - biological”.

The study of artificial languages, both in their own sense and in application to the artificially ordered subsystems of natural languages, allows us to realize general principles the structure and functioning of language in general, expands theoretical ideas about such properties of language as consistency, communicative suitability, stability and variability, as well as the limits of a person’s conscious influence on language, the degree and types of its formalization and optimization.

Lit.: Marr N. Ya. General course of study of language // Marr Ya. Ya. Selected works. L., 1936. T. 2; Paul G. Principles of the history of language. M., 1960; Baudouin de Courtenay I. A. Selected works on general linguistics. M., 1963.T. 1-2.

There are more than 7 thousand languages on planet Earth. Apparently, this quantity was not enough for people - after all, linguists developed about a thousand more artificial ones!

The history of their creation began in the 17th-18th centuries, when Latin gradually began to lose its popularity. Majority auxiliary languages were invented on the basis of living and other artificial ones, and for a specific purpose (for communication in the fictional world of books and films, international communication, overcoming the language barrier, and so on).

In this collection we have collected the ten most popular artificial languages that are interesting to learn more about.

10 Lingua Franca Nova

This language will be easily understood by those who speak Romance languages - French, Portuguese, Italian or Spanish. After all, it was from these languages, including the medieval dialect "lingua franca", that it was formed by the psychologist George Bure from Pennsylvania. The author wanted to create a convenient international language that does not require a long study of the rules and is suitable for communication without difficulties. Currently, about a thousand people use it on their Facebook profiles.

The language has a lightweight grammar, 22 letters in the alphabet, a vocabulary base of modern Romance languages and a clear word order in a sentence. But there is no grammatical gender or plural in this language!

9 Novial

This language was created by the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen on the basis of another artificial language, Ido (but later completely “deviated” from it). Novial was introduced in 1928, but was hardly used after Jespersen's death. A surge of interest in it would have been noticed in the 1990s due to the internet wave that took over the entire world. The language is currently undergoing evolution under the leadership of the Novial 98 project, which aims to revive and improve the language.

Novial is easiest for native speakers to master. English language, as the sentence structure, syntax and vocabulary closely resemble English. The words were also greatly influenced by French, German and Scandinavian languages.

8 Ido

The word "ido" in Esperanto means "descendant", and this perfectly characterizes the characteristics of this language. It is derived from the most widely spoken artificial language, Esperanto, and represents an improved version of it. Ido was created with the collaboration of Esperantist Louis de Beaufront and mathematician Louis Couture in 1907. It has been established that 500 thousand people speak this language.

Ido uses 26 letters of the alphabet, grammar and spelling are thought out so that learning the language is easy for anyone, and using it in practice would not cause difficulties. The vocabulary was greatly influenced by words from French, German, English, Russian, Italian, French and Spanish languages.

7 Rho

In the early 20th century, the language was developed by priest Edward Powell Foster from Ohio. The author described language as a picture, which gives a hint for understanding the word. Rho is built on a categorical system, for example, the word "red" is "bofoc", "orange" is "bofod", and "color" is "bofo".

Rho, which has also been called the "language of philosophers", contains only 5 vowels for the entire 26-letter alphabet. Unfortunately, due to the difficulty in perceiving the language by ear, Ro was criticized. After all, two different words could differ by only one letter!

6 Slovio

Slovakian Mark Guchko in 1999 began work on own language called "Slovio", combining the artificial language Esperanto and living Slavic languages. The author's goal was to simplify communication between those who speak languages of the Slavic group as native speakers and those who find it difficult to learn them as a foreign language.

Guchko received a language that has simplified spelling, grammar and articulation. Most words in this language (verbs, adjectives, adverbs) are determined by endings. At the moment, the Slovio language is understood by about 400 million people in the world, and work on the development of the language was completed by the author in 2010.

5 Slovianski

Due to territorial divisions and the influence of other languages, most people who speak languages of the Slavic group, but live in different countries, do not understand each other. Slovyanski is only a half-artificial language, created in order to allow Slavs to fully communicate.

The language was invented in 2006 by a group of activists and is based on living Slavic languages. You can write on it in both Cyrillic and Latin letters. The grammar is very simple, there are few exceptions in the language.

4 Sambakhsa

The name sambahsa comes from the Malay words "sama" ("same") and "bahsa" ("tongue"). The language was created relatively recently, in 2007, by the French doctor Oliver Simon. Sambahsa is based on English, French and includes some words from other less popular languages.

The language has a simplified grammar, but is also extensive vocabulary with a huge online library of reference materials. The Sambakhs development project is open online and accessible to everyone.

3 Lingua de planeta

The project to create this language was launched in St. Petersburg in 2006 by psychologist Dmitry Ivanov. He, together with a company of developers, wanted to create a universal language that would be used to communicate anywhere globe. In his opinion, the world is already moving into the state of a global community and needs a single language.

The team decided not to create new languages, but to combine the most popular ones in the world. The basic version, released in 2010, was based on the ten most common world languages - English, Chinese, Russian, French, Hindi, German, Arabic, Spanish, Persian, Portuguese.

2 Universalglot

The project for the international language "universalglot" was released in 1868 by the French linguist Jean Pirro. The language was not particularly popular before the Internet era. Now he is slowly in demand, after the publications of Jean Pirro were published in the public domain on the Internet.

Universalglot is based on Latin and has a rich vocabulary. The alphabet uses Latin letters with the exception of "Y" and "W". Letters whose pronunciation differs from English are pronounced in Italian or Spanish. The language has a well-developed structure, as well as a systematized grammar following the example of Germanic and Romance languages.

1 Esperanto

The name of this language roughly translates to “one who hopes,” and it is considered the most popular among artificial languages. Esperanto is spoken by approximately 2 million people around the world, millions of pages on the Internet, books, publications are written in it... It is used most in Europe, South America, East Asia and parts of North Africa.

The author of Esperanto, an ophthalmologist from Warsaw, Ludwik Zamenhof, spent almost a decade (1870-1880s) developing a universal language that people anywhere in the world could master. In 1887, he introduced a language whose system was designed so that people could communicate freely around the world without losing their native language and culture.

Esperanto is currently spoken as a native language by 2,000 people, and in 2016 it was reported that some New York City schools had even added it to school curriculum. It is possible to learn this language on your own - there are a lot of educational materials on the Internet.

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These languages were created by linguists and gave people of different nationalities the opportunity to understand each other. Although not all of them became popular, many found their “carriers”.

Do you think artificial languages are necessary? Would you start learning this yourself?