Some Internet resources relating to constructed languages

Constructed languages are languages which are intended to be spoken by people, to people (as distinct from, say, programming languages), and which have been deliberately constructed rather than having evolved. There is a vast number of these, most of which are never used by anyone but their inventor. Only a handful have ever had a significant circulation, but with the advent of the World Wide Web, it now becomes possible to make one's ideas available to all at little cost.

Mention artificial languages to most people and they will think of Esperanto and its imitators: languages intended to foster international communication without favouring one particular country, usually created by hybridising several Western European languages. While that is no doubt valuable, it is interesting that the majority of those that I know of through the net were not invented primarily for that purpose. Some, like Klingon, are associated with fictional worlds. Others, such as (I guess) Nanigani, are the principal ingredient of the fictional world they are associated with. Some, like Loglan, Lojban, and AllNoun, are linguistic experiments in form. Some, like Láadan, have social or political purposes. Some, such as Ahua are hypothetical creations or jeux d'esprit. And a language may have several of these purposes at once.

This page lists all the constructed languages I know of which have a presence on the Internet. I've deliberately chosen not to attempt to cover languages which exist only in print. A good source for these is the Bibliography of Planned Languages (excluding Esperanto) maintained by Rick Harrison.

Contents of this page:

• Mailing Lists and other electronic forums
• Particular Constructed Languages
  A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
• The Graveyard
• Constructed Script Systems
• Aspects of Constructed Cultures
• Reformed Natural Languages
• Conlangers' home pages and other pointers to pointers
• Miscellanea
• Some natural languages
• Resources for language building

Mailing Lists and other electronic forums

The Constructed Languages Mailing List exists to discuss all aspects of constructed languages. The site includes an archive of conlang going back to 1998.

The Auxiliary Languages Mailing List was formed in 1996 as an offshoot of the Constructed Languages Mailing List, for discussion of issues particularly relating to the design and use of constructed languages as international auxiliary languages. The separate forum was created because discussions of IAL issues have tended to be of intense and voluminous interest to some members of conlang, but of little interest to many others.

Conlangia is a collection of on-line discussion groups for constructed languages. It is run by Hinkle and Jaaaaaa.

There is an Artificial Languages Forum on Yahoo, run by Paul Alecsandri.

Aleppe is a conlang mailing list for Italian speakers.

IdeoLengua is a conlang discussion forum for Spanish speakers. There is an associated web site. The main page is in Spanish; there is also an English version.

Particular Constructed Languages

Adare: see Asier G.'s pages.

Adelic is an old Germanic language. Its ancestry can be traced back through Old Adelic, High Dythonic, Proto-Dythonic, and ultimately to Proto-Indo-European. Besides a Roman orthography, there is also a runic script. Adelic is created by Scott MacLagan.

The goal of Aep, the Archaic English Project, is to resurrect favorite archaic English words, spellings and structures from Old English up to the present. The project is organised by William W. Patterson.

Ahua, the Water Language is conceived by Richard Kennaway, the maintainer of this page.

AllNoun is designed by Tom Breton. It is a minimal conlang, containing only nouns and a small, fixed number of particles.

Almalinë is a fictional world inhabited by the two Races of Cardë: Men and Celts. The sounds and grammar are described, with a dictionary, a writing system and a font, as well as a description of the culture and its history. It is designed by Bryant K.

Almaqerin: see Didier Willis's conlang page.

Alphistian is the official language of Alphistia, a model nation created by Tony Skaggs. Alphistia is a republic divided into nine provinces. The major work of Alphistian literature is the Skansatala, a mythical tale of the ancient origins of the nation. The Alphistian language (De Alvesteane Lantase) has a simple grammar in the Indo-European style, with few inflections and subject-verb-object word order.

Aluric is the language of the Alurian people. Besides the language, there is information about the culture and geography of Aluria. It is designed by Tony Harris.

ámman-îar and other languages of the land of Amman are designed by David Bell.

Anawanda is the language of the Anawanda tribes of the Southern-Eastern Archipelago of Elaire. The Anawanda language had many dialectal variations in the various islands and among groups of villages. Written monuments display a largely uniform speech known as Epigraphic Tshakan, from the island of Tshaka were it is traditionally believed to have originated. Anawanda is created by Tommaso Donnarumma.

Arden was created by Jean-François (Jeff) Smith and Tommaso Donnarumma for their own amusement and as a personal language for private communication. Jeff Smith has also created Ilianóre, and Tommaso Donnarumma has created several languages.

The An'dorians are a race from Star Trek, with blue skins, antennae, and four non-interbreeding castes. They call their own language ub An'ed or Ub Ed aam An'dor. There are four major dialects, associated with caste rather than region. An'dorian grammarians divide the parts of speech into the camp of nouns (nouns and words associated with them, such as articles), the camp of verbs (verbs, adverbs, etc.), and "ah zhiidaa" -- "war victims left to die on the field of battle". Word order is subject-object-verb. Verbs are inflected for tense, mood, and aspect. There are eight noun classes: abstract, animate, flat, long, round, sentient, spongy, and wet. These names are only a rough guide; if you ask an An'dorian why jails are in the wet class, he may say:

Aninese is one of the languages of Uteged.

Anti-Math is a simple graphic notation system for story plots. Here is an example in ASCII art form:

     =============================================================
     |                           |                               |
     |                 ,!.       |       ,!.           ,!.       |
     |   _+m"m+_       j't       |       j't           j't       |
     |  Jp     qh  K=-=:: -=->   |   K=-=:: -=->   K=-=:: -=->   |
     |  O       O   "=i.: [-'    |    "=i.: [-'     "=i.: [-'    |
     |  Yb     dY    /;:":.\     |     /;:":.\       /;:":.\     |
     |   "Y5m2Y"    ;}'   '(,    |    ;}'   '(,     ;}'   '(,    |
     |                           |                               |
     =============================================================

      a bored person                      contact high!
               and a happy person

Arkian is the official literary language of the micronation of the Ark Federation (Ark Maramija). Its background draws mainly on Hibernian. There are several varieties: the ancient language, the literary language, and the modern dialects of Ramarnamian and Sinian. It is created by Jan Havlis.

Arovën: See Danovën.

Asrord-Dânis: see Asier G.'s pages.

Astou: see Christophe Grandsire's conlangs.

Atlango is intended as a new common language for Europe. It is claimed to be easier to learn and pronounce, and more euphonious than previous attempts such as Esperanto,Ido, Occidental and Novial and Interlingua. It is developed by Richard A. Antonius.

Atlantean is the language of Atlantis in Disney's animated film "Atlantis: The Lost Empire". It is designed by Marc Okrand (who also designed Klingon). Marc Okrand is also the model for the hero of the film. Atlantean has its own script; the transcription below is from the screenplay, and its somewhat ugly orthography was designed to minimise the learning effort for the actors.

aUI, the Language of Space, is a philosophical a priori language intended to be an international auxiliary language. It is based on 31 basic elements of meaning from which all concepts are composed. It was originally developed by Dr. W. John Weilgart in the 1950's. The web site is due to Annie Weilgart.

Aulingese is one of the languages of Uteged. It is created by Arjan van Dijk.

Ayeis: see Asier G.'s pages.

Azak: see Christophe Grandsire's conlangs.

B-G-2-3 is one of the alien languages of the Commonwealth, the main language of the northern continent. Little is known of it; it is based on colours and patterns. It is designed by Adam Walker.
See also Lifehomese, Lrahran, q~'u^pl!, Tvernel, and Xt!.

Barallen is created by Kevin K.

Barushlani is one of the languages of Andal. It is created by Boudewijn Rempt.

Basic English was designed by C.K. Ogden. It is simply a subset of English, containing about 850 of the commonest words, with which is it possible to express most of the requirements of everyday life.

Bendeh is designed by Nathaniel Geoffrey Lew.

Biyuron belongs to a fictional parallel Earth, created by Pablo Flores.

Blaaninian is created by Lord Blaa. The language has subject-object-verb order, with free ordering available by means of noun inflections for a large number of cases. Verbs are inflected for subject and object, and there are many modifying inflections. Numbers are expressed in base 8. See also Gleeb.

Black Speech: see Tolkien's languages.

Blissymbolics (also called Blissymbols, Bliss Symbols, or Semantography) is a form of pasigraphy, that has some use in teaching some of the disabled. The web page is that of Blissymbolics Communication International, but currently (June 1997) gives very little information. Here is another collection of Bliss-related links. None of these links gives much concrete information about the language.

Bogomol is used by the insectoid race of Epsilon Indi II. The designer describes it as a "quantum language": the meaning of an utterance remains only potential until the very end, when a "ranking syllable" collapses all the potential meanings into one. Bogomol is created by Teresh.

The Borg are a race in the Star Trek universe having a collective consciousness, who attempt to assimilate all other cultures to themselves. The Borg language (borgh tve vagh) has been created by Teresh.

Breathanach is Geoff Eddy's answer to Brithenig: the same basic idea, but with Q-Celtic (Irish and Gaelic) sound-changes instead.

Brithenig is a Romance language that might have evolved if Latin had displaced Old Celtic in Britain, and had then undergone the P-Celtic (Welsh) sound changes. It is designed by Andrew Smith.

Broyan: See Denden.

Castorian: see Patrienish.

Ceqli: See Txeqli.

Cetonian is spoken on Cetonia (Wuiou), a planet in the Kelhetoma solar system. The sapient inhabitants who speak it are 12-foot-long cetaceans with somewhat orca-like patterning. Metallurgic vents, in underground vent-communities, help warm these creatures and provide a basis for civilization in which tools can be made. The language has only eight different syllables, plus a click to separate words.
Cetonia is part of the Kankonian universe created by James Landau.

Classical Charyan See Denden.

Cho-ba is created by Thomas Leigh.

Ciravesu belongs to a fictional parallel Earth, created by Pablo Flores.

Cispa is a language of the Zaik people of Mizar (rodent-like humanoids), in the Kolagian universe of Herman Miller.

Clalia is the language of a small nomadic people. The web page is in German. It is designed by Johannes Hufnagel. See also Fergiartisch

Curco belongs to a fictional parallel Earth, created by Pablo Flores.

The Daimyo is the language of the daimyo, a kind of creature like a gargoyle. It is devised by Muke Tever.

Damin: see Rick Harrison.

Danovën (literally "language of logic") is the strictly unambiguous form of Arovën, the "language of thought". It is a logical language designed by Joshua Shinavier.

Dapnant (more precisely, Dapna'nt sitsath, speech of the city) is a language reportedly born from the contact of human and non-human races at the dawn of humanity. The web pages are by David Durand.

Darmok is the language of the Children of Tama, in an episode from the fifth season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Statements in the language consist of allusions to old legends. For example:

The Dead Easy Language is supposed to be simple and easy to learn. The meaning of a root is defined by its consonants, its syntactic function is shown by its vowels.
[Update Jan 1999: broken link.]

Dejeru Sapuho: See Desa Chat.

Denden is the lingua franca of Charya. There is a font, Denden Chancellery. Other languages spoken in Charya include Classical Charyan, Matraian and the Broyan Stage language. These languages are created by Boudewijn Rempt.

Desa Chat is the English name of the language Dejeru Sapuho. It is an international auxiliary language intended to be amenable to computer processing. There are 5 vowels and 21 consonants, giving 105 syllables. Words are 1, 2, or 3 syllables long. The 1- and 2-syllable words express grammatical structure, prepositions, pronouns, and some adverbs, while the 3-syllable words are the nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. Desa Chat is designed by Peter Davis with the sponsorship of the Desa Educational Trust, an educational charity aiming to encourage the application of enhanced thinking and study skills, and the development of Desa Chat.

Detbap is one of the languages of Uteged.

Deviasew is devised by Jonathan North Washington.

Deymual or "Fire Speech" is the language of the Elves of Câlnima. It is written in Mumaniiw, an alphabet shared with Espanzë, in Netmuman, a phonetic semi-pictograph system, and in a syllabary shared with Khilashi. It is devised by Jonathan North Washington.

Dilhok is the language of Ghouls: psychotically violent, unintelligent, immortal unless killed, eaters of human flesh. The creator is Andrew Hardie.

DiLingo is the gutteral utteral, the paradigm of rhyme, the pox of vox. Designed by Sumus Cacoonus.

Diom is an inflectional language with a free word order, like Latin or Greek, created for a role-playing game by David Stokes.

D'ni (pronounced "dunny") is the language of people in the Myst and Riven game worlds. It is created by Cyan (Chris Brandkamp). Myst^®, Riven ^®, and D'ni^® are registered trademarks of Cyan, Inc.

Doraya is designed by Adam Parrish. It is spoken by a sea-faring elf-like race called the Movari, on the world of Endra. "Te li'asaran sidor aelae" ("On the next meeting future-star shines", or "I hope to see you again soon"). See also Kusthü, Saakha, and Telyana.

Draseléq belongs to a fictional parallel Earth, created by Pablo Flores.

The Drhaqa language has a vocabulary which reflects the spiritual, sensual and spontaneous nature of its people. Its grammar reflects their understanding of everything in the universe as being sets of relationships and patterns. A whole sentence can consist of a single word, a root together with many modifying particles:

Dunnek is spoken by the Dun people, a cultural group inhabiting the British Isles and much of Western and Central Europe on Zyem, an alternate-history version of the Earth. See also Vogu.

Dutton Speedwords is both an international auxiliary language and a stenographic system for rapid note-taking. It was developed in the 30's by Reginald J.G. Dutton. The original books are long out of print, but you might find "Teach Yourself Dutton Speedwords" (1951) in a library. Here is some information about the background and purpose of Speedwords, a dictionary, notes on pronunciation, and an article on Speedwords (which includes a list of the basic root words).
The New Congress has recently (as of February 2001) begun to undertake a revival of Dutton Speedwords.
Robert Petry has a page on Speedwords, and another page on Speedwords. Here is the first sentence of his translation of the Gettysburg address: Garronum & sep an pas wi perz yzes fovi o c terle u nov dem, ygeni i libs, & diwe a l wee k al on e fony eg.

Eaiea is designed to allow musical instruments the opportunity to speak words through combinations of pitches, and also to let singers speak two languages simultaneously. The letters 'a' to 'l' stand for the 12 notes of the chromatic scale from A to G#/Ab. "Divine" = "abcdefghijklad" "musical composition" = "iec", "nut (for screw)" = "edeafafga", "wonder" = "aegaeg", ...
Eaiea is designed by Bruce Koestner.

The Earth Language is intended to be a new common method for thinking and communicating worldwide. It is a visual, ideographic language. There are 89 basic signs which stand directly for ideas. They can be combined to make more complex signs. There are also spoken and gestural representations for the signs. The language is created by Yoshiko F. McFarland.

Earth Minimal is "An Ultra-Compact Auxiliary Language". It is a priori, consisting mostly of short words, with a large set of prefixes and suffixes to express most of the grammar.

Eiler Erdoten: see Taeis.

Eklektu is a language whose vocabulary is derived from many languages around the world. There is an Eklektu-English dictionary and some lessons. Devised by Herman Miller.

Elephant's Memory is a pictorial language consisting of more than 150 combinable graphic elements (pictograms and ideograms). It is designed as an experimental workshop where innovative reflections on language, computers, and communication can be explored. It is designed by Timothy Ingen Housz.

Elet Anta is the language of the Anta, a secretive subculture which has lived in the British Isles for at least a thousand years, indistinguishable from the humans. It is designed by John Fisher.

Rialian's Elven Language page lists a collection of words from various Elven languages: Tulari, Silver Elves, Shiri, Yyl'Nectaar, etc.

Elvish: see Tolkien's languages, uuteib eafeis, or Rialian's Elven Language page. The last site also has much material on otherkin in general.

The Energy language is a project aiming to explore human consciousness, language systems, epistemology (the study of knowledge), evolution of living systems, and processes of self-reflection. It is a way to meta-evolve into a more sophisticated mode of thought and existence, maximizing human creativity and transcending conventional thought. The aim is to develop a framework for a more efficient universal system of information transmission, reception and processing. It is devised by F. Matthias Lorenz.

E-Prime is the English language, with all forms and uses of the verb "to be" omitted. It was invented by David Bourland for reasons connected with General Semantics. Very roughly and briefly: According to General Semantics, there are certain habits of thought which, it is argued, are conducive to misevaluation of the world, and generally un-sane functioning. They may be summed up as "identification" or "unconsciousness of abstraction": the failure to distinguish words from the things they refer to, concepts in one's mind from things out there, inferences from the data they are based on, value judgements from inferences, etc.
In English, identifications are often expressed using the verb "to be", and "to be" is often used to express identifications. The two do not coincide, but there is a large overlap. Hence E-Prime, which by blocking the natural way one might express such identifications, forces one to think more carefully about what one really wants to mean.
Here is some more information about General Semantics.

Eroné is influenced by both French and Tolkien's Quenya. It is designed by Carrie Schutrick. The beginning of the Babel Text in Eroné:

Esei is created by Tuomo Sipola.

Espanzë is a generic Romance language of the future. The Espans were the original inhabitants of part of the Iberian peninsula, France, Italy, and other Romance-speaking areas of Europe who live in Asia minor around 3200 C.E. It is devised by Jonathan North Washington.

Esperanto is the most well-known constructed language, and the one with the most speakers worldwide. Its purpose is to be an international auxiliary language (IAL), to foster communication worldwide amongst people of all nations. There are many Esperanto resources on the Web. Martin Weichert's Virtuala Esperanto-Biblioteko contains many Esperanto documents and references. The front page is entirely written in Esperanto -- if lost, try his multilingual collection of Esperanto-related documents. Edmund Grimley-Evans has an extensive collection of Esperanto material. Don Harlow's Esperanto site is an extensive collection of pointers to Esperanto information on the net. The Esperanto League for North America (ELNA) has a web site with a great deal of information. Ken Caviness has a page of questions and answers regarding Esperanto as an IAL. There was an on-line Esperanto-English dictionary, but the link is defunct.

Esperanto sen Fleksio: see Rick Harrison.

Ethirë: see Asier G.'s pages.

Eulingua is a simple language with a regular grammar, based on Latin with some Spanish and English. It is designed by Joacim Henriksson.

Eunoia is the human name for the language of the Taelons, an alien race that appears in Gene Roddenberry's posthumous TV series "Earth: Final Conflict". Their language "is the lingua franca of an enlightened consciousness, the product of an intelligence that has exceeded all the categories of our own anthropic philosophy in order to embody a logic that is both non-boolean and non-Euclidean in its grammar...an evolving structure, whose exquisite complexity dramatizes a philosophy of ethereality and ephemerality (not unlike the chaosophy imagined by such French philosophers as Deleuze and Guattari).".

Euransi is designed by Libor Sztemon.

Eurish is intended to be a language for the whole of the Islamic Empire of Europe, based on Latin. The page is in German. There is also an English page for Eurish. It is created by Molla Muhammad Selim.

Eurolang is a constructed language, created by Philip Hunt. It is designed to be a common second language, particularly easy to learn for people who speak Latin-based western European languages. The WWW pages include an introductory description, a dictionary, and sample texts.

Europanto esse un "pidgin" gemade von multe parts von multe Europish langues, que chaquebody with un gemutfeeling por dies langues verstand posse. Il esse gedacht by Diego Marani, un traducter por die Europish Togethering.

Fampónd is a language of vampires. It is created by Christopher Wright. See also his other languages Lashkos, Runda, and Sturnan.

Ferengi is the language of the Ferengi, an alien race in the Star Trek:TNG/Deep Space 9 universe. The ultimate entrepreneurs, as obsessed with material gain through trading as Klingons are with honour and glory. The Ferengi language was created by Timothy Miller. This version has no connection with Paramount.

Fergiartisch is a language spoken on the continent of Fergiartu. The web page is in German. It is designed by Johannes Hufnagel. See also Clalia

The language which appears in Luc Besson's film Fifth Element. This information has been collected by The Generic.

Finnstek is the language of the Fince, a clan from the planet Pii created by N. Gruscha et al. The language is created by T. Alexander McLeay. There are two dialects, Finnzsa (spoken in the west), and the Standard dialect. Both descended from Common Finnstek, which evolved from Old Finnstek.

Fjinnjikulla is a game-language designed by Tommaso Donnarumma. Its purpose is to transform any Italian text into something with a would-like-to-be-Finnish look.

The Language of Flowers was a code by which, in Victorian times, one might discreetly express one's sentiments through the flowers that one might wear, give, or display. At this site Katherine Bryant has collated several contemporary sources, some of them highly elaborate, and also gives a reverse dictionary, from meanings to flowers.

Folkspraak is an ongoing collaborative project to develop a language based on what is common to the extant Germanic languages. Here is a second website.

Folksstem, "de Nue Germane Kunstsprak", is a conlang standing in a similar relation to the Germanic languages as Esperanto does to the Romance languages. The home page is written in Esperanto, with Folksstem examples. It is designed by Aaron Chapman.

Frater2 is a modification and enhancement of a proposed international auxiliary language FRATER (Lingua Sistemfrater) originally published by Pham Xuan Thai in Vietnam. The modifications are by Paul Bartlett.

Fuchisch or Fukhian. "Fuchisch ist eine komische Sprache. Ich kann sie nicht, keiner kann sie. In der Beschreibung sind fast nur Fehler. Aber man kann sie sich ansehen." ("The Fukhian language is a funny one. I can't speak it, no-one can. The description is full of mistakes. But you can look at it. In German, and of course Fukhian.") It has a rather nice font. The language is designed by Henrik Theiling.

Fukhian: see Fuchisch.

The Gamyar people were discovered in 1929 in northeastern Siberia. They live on the coast and on the tundra to the south. They appeared in mysterious circumstances, following stories of "large, shiny airships" flying through the sky. The page requires Cyrillic fonts to view the language samples.

Ganh is the language of the Ganh people. It is designed by mrprofessor13.

Gargish is the language of the Gargoyle race which lives in the Underworld of Ultima VI (a computer game published by Origin). The web site contains some vocabulary items, the runic-like alphabet, and some cultural background. The Ultima VI hint book also contains a dictionary. The vocabulary has a somewhat Latinate flavour. Herman Miller did most of the development of the language, and translated the Gargish text that appears in the game. Origin also have web pages on Ultima and Gargish
    Ánte kódex skríle prí ben esh ver res quí quae.
    in codex written one well and true answer any problem
    "Within the Codex is written the one right and true answer to any problem."

Gestuno: a former name for International Sign Language.

Gevey is spoken on the continent of Ewlah on the planet Kallieda, colonised by humans some thousands of years ago and cut off from human civilisation for most of that time. Gevey is designed by Rik Roots.

Giak is spoken by the evil Giaks in the world of Magnamund, created by Joe Dever for the Lone Wolf books. It is crude and simple, like the Giaks. The Desert Giak version began as a language of dialogue between merchants on a certain caravan route and the agents of the Dark Ones they dealt with, and has become the language of choice among the criminal element of Vassagonia and Casiorn. The site includes tutorial lessons in Desert Giak. ("No human throat can imitate the repulsive, guttural sounds of a Giak spewing curses in his native tongue. Even though the attempt is futile, it is worthwhile. Correct pronunciation reveals the true flavor of Giak.")

Gilo is an international auxiliary language drawing strongly on English structures, having subject-verb-object word order, and a vocabulary based on condensed English words. Its phonology, vocabulary, and grammar are more regular, with a 1-1 correspondence between letters and sounds, and between words and meanings. Gilo is created by Alan Giles.

Gladilatian is the primary language of the gladifers, the dominant species in the galaxy. It has no verbs. It is designed by Dennis Himes.

Glaugnea: see Rick Harrison.

Gleeb or "Nu Leng Glibèn" ("The Language of the Gleebish") is the official tongue of Gleeb. It derived from Old Gleeb, which derived from Ancient Blaaninian and the common tongues of Wyrd. It is created by Lord Blaa.

Glide is a written and gestural language with no spoken form. There are 27 glyphs, each with a core meaning from which related meanings radiate metaphorically. There is a downloadable editor (Mac and Windows) for creating and arranging Glide glyphs. Glide is a maze, an architecture, a personal world, and a collaborative work by Bill Brubaker, Daniel J. O'Neil, and Diana Slattery at the Academy of Electronic Media at Rensselaer Polytechnic, New York. (The site requires Flash to view.)

Glosa: "The International Language You Don't Know You Know!" Glosa was developed by Ron Clark and Wendy Ashby from the work of Lancelot Hogben. It is designed to be a common second language, particularly easy to learn for people who speak Latin-based western European languages. There are web pages on Glosa by Paul Bartlett and Robin Gaskell. They include introductory descriptions, information about the Glosa Education Organization and other Glosa activities, and sample texts. Marcel Springer has a Glosa site written in Glosa, English, German, and several other languages.

Goblin: see Didier Willis's conlang page.

Goesk is based on several Germanic languages. It is designed by James Grossmann.

Gotish (more commonly known as Gothic) was spoken by the historical East-Germanic people known as the Goths, Visigoths and Ostrogoths, around the fourth century. It is now extinct, and has no modern descendants. (The author of the page uses the term "Gotish" to avoid confusion with people who dress in black and engage in recreational depression.) The web page documents a modern revival of the language. Here is a riddle by Gerry, aka Gsartor.

-gua!spi is a "logical language", built along similar lines to Loglan and Lojban. (The "-" and "!" are tone marks.) It is designed by Jim Carter.

gzb (or gjax zaxnq-box baxm-box in full) is constructed by Jim Henry. The documentation is in a mixture of English, Esperanto, and a few other languages. I don't understand enough to say much about it, but here's a sample. The apparently strange orthography is an ASCII encoding of an alphabet that contains a lot of diacritics.

Hadwan is a language spoken by the monsters of Southern Europe. It is devised by Muke Tever.

Hallon began life as a substitution cipher but now bears little resemblance to any other language. It is designed by Paul Townsend.

Hambhukringki is spoken on the planet Gliipskandhu in the galaxy NGC0888. The language explores the possiblility of bypassing the usual notions of noun, verb, adjective, etc., and dividing linguistic expression along other axes. It was created by R. Skrintha. See also Lin.

Hänäthlîêr is like a simplified Sindarin, with minimal verb conjugation. Word order is subject-object-verb, with cases indicated by postpositions.

Hani is the language of an intelligent humanoid feline race who appear in C.J. Cherryh's Chanur novels.

Hapoish is spoken on the planet of Hapoish (ba e Poî) in Lehola's Refea Solar System. Its sapient inhabitants are humanoid creatures with fiery red bodies. Hapoish contains no adjectives or nouns, verbs doing duty for both. An adjective like "pretty" is expressed by a verb meaning "to be pretty", and a noun like "pencil" is expressed by a verb meaning "to be like a pencil". There are numerous pronouns and adverbs.
Hapoish is part of the Kankonian universe created by James Landau.

iaPil is created by Quetz.

Ideography is an iconic language intended for use on the Internet. The site contains two long documents in Adobe Acrobat format, written by Prof. John Roscoe of Stavanger University, Norway.

Ido is an auxiliary international language, a reformed version of Esperanto. See also Rick Harrison's pages.

Idrani is an agglutinative language constructed by T. Mitchell Pehrson.

Ignota: see Rick Harrison.

Ilaini is spoken in the fictional kingdom of Valdyas, which has some similarities to Western Europe in the Middle Ages. The language is highly inflected, and is a state of transition from prepositions to postpositions and from prefixes to suffixes. Valdyan is designed by Irina Rempt-Drijfhout.

Ilianóre is the language of the Scealdings (Scealdenas) It is inspired by Anglo-Saxon, and designed by Jeff Smith.

Iniel: see Taeis.

Interlingua is an international language designed by merging and simplifying some of the Latin-derived modern European languages: English, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. It was first published by the International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA) in 1951.
The Foreign Languages for Travelers site has many Interlingua links.
There is an on-line vocabulary list and a searchable dictionary.
There is an Interlingua mailing list, which can be subscribed to at , where its archives can also be read.

Interlingua is also the name of the language formerly known as Latino sine Flexione or Latin without Flexions, which was devised by the mathematician Guiseppe Peano. It is as the name suggests, a simplified form of Latin. To avoid ambiguity, the two languages called Interlingua may be referred to as Interlingua de I.A.L.A. and Interlingua de Peano.

Interlingue: see Occidental.

International Sign Language is described at http://www.handspeak.com/: select the link "International Sign" near the top left, and then the link "About International Sign" that appears near the top right -- due to the way that site uses frames, a direct link won't work very well. Previously known as Gestuno, ISL is an artificially devised sign language, intended as an equivalent for the Deaf to Esperanto for the Hearing.

J2: see Sevorian.

Jameld is a West Germanic constructed language with an associated constructed culture. The vocabulary is influenced by Old Frisian.

Jarda has as a principal goal to be a language that contributes to clarity and precision of thought, without losing the ability to use poetic language as well. It is written with the Lhörr-têk script. It is designed by Herman Miller.

Javifo is a fantasy language created by Daniele Morelli. The web page is in Italian.

Katanda is an interlingua, that is, an intermediate language intended for use in machine translation. It is designed by Rick Morneau.

Kaupelan is an Austronesian kingdom whose language is Kaupelanese, or basa kaupèlan. It belongs to the Eastern Bandanese subgroup of the Austronesian languages. There are five modern dialects deriving from the 14th century Old Kaupelanese. Several related languages are also documented. It is created by Paulo Eduardo França Padilha.

Keleñ has nouns, pronouns, adjectives (sort of), articles, particles, but no verbs. Instead it has relationals, a closed class of four words, roughly expressing "is", "has", "does-to", and a three-part relation hard to briefly translate. The language has its own script. The language is created by Sylvia Sotomayor.

Kaliso (called, in Kaliso, Sëkal Isëtozhëd, which translates roughly into "The Words of The Beings"), is a Patient-Agent language, primarily analytic, with all cases based on the default Agent case. Syntax is mainly indicated by word order, but noun cases are also marked. It is devised by Jashan. See also Kir and Ley Arah.

Kakarak has similarities with Zulu and some Native American languages. (The page requires a browser with UTF-8 encoding and up to date fonts for best effect.) There is a script for the language. It is an agglutinative SOV language with ergative case-marking, pronouns distinguishing actual from hypothetical events, and adverbs which conflate the notions of time, distance, and similarity. Kakarak is designed by Kaurpin.

Kankonian is spoken on the planet Kankonia, of the star Venska, in the Lehola galaxy. The inhabitants and humans with brown skin and curly dark hair. It is created by James Landau. See also Hapoish.

Khurwich now called Ukhik.

Kiffish is the language of the Kif, a race who appear in C.J. Cherryh's Chanur series of science fiction novels. The language is jointly created by C.J. Cherryh and Spence Hill.

Kinya is devised by Maurizio Gavioli. It makes no distinction among verbs, nouns, and adjectives.

Kir is devised by Jashan. See also Kaliso and Ley Arah.

Kizval is a member of the Shiqté family of languages, and is spoken by the same species as Maktalu. It is the official language of the Kilz Empire. It is created by Nik Taylor.

Klingon is the language of the Klingons, a warlike alien race in the Star Trek universe. Many net resources are available.

• The Klingon Language Institute, which exists to bring together Klingonists worldwide. It has several hundred members in upwards of 17 countries and publishes a quarterly magazine, HolQeD ("linguistics"). Their WWW pages give membership details, and also explain the creation and development of the language, with recordings of spoken Klingon and illustrations of the Klingon writing system. Under the auspices of the KLI, projects are under way to translate the Bible and the entire works of Shakespeare into Klingon. Already completed are the book of Jonah, St. Mark's Gospel (translated from Hebrew and Greek respectively -- this is not a retranslation of a modern English version), "Hamlet", "Much Ado About Nothing", and several sonnets. As General Chang says, "You cannot fully appreciate Shakespeare until you have heard him in the original Klingon!"
• An ftp site, containing various Klingon translations. For copyright reasons there is no on-line dictionary, so don't ask, but Marc Okrand's books "The Klingon Dictionary" (Pocket Books) and "The Klingon Way" are available from all good bookshops, as are the two audio tapes "Conversational Klingon" and "Power Klingon" (Simon and Schuster).
• A mailing list, tlhIngan-Hol dot kli dot org. Send mail to listproc at kli dot org to subscribe.
• The Klingon Educational Virtual Environment, a MUSH (multi-user role-playing environment), accessible by telnetting to mush.kli.org, port 2218.
• The Klingon Academy ("Klingonska Akademien" in swedish) by Zrajm C Akfohg is a page dedicated to the Klingon Language and hosting The Canon Klingon Dictionary, a project to collect together all the Klingon vocabulary which has appeared in any of the Okrandian canonical sources.
• A thesis has been written on the Klingon language phenomenon: Judith Hermans' Klingon and its Users: a sociolinguistic profile.
• Klingon fonts can be purchased from the KLI. In addition, there is a freely available Klingon Block font.
• Here's a home page written in Klingon.
• K'Mel's Guide to Klingon Cyberspace contains many links to Klingon-related material on the web.
• A Galactic phrasebook, containing useful phrases in Klingon, Klinzhai (a different Klingon language), and Vulcan.
• Useful phrases:
  • "Qapla'!" ("Success!")
  • "reH Suvrup SuvwI''a'" ("A great warrior is always prepared.")
  • "nuqDaq yuch Dapol" ("Where do you keep the chocolate?")
  • "QuchlIj vIyach vIneH" ("I would like to stroke your forehead.")
• Marc Okrand also designed Atlantean.

Knarwaz belongs to a fictional parallel Earth, created by Pablo Flores.

The Kolagian universe is created by Herman Miller. Among its languages are Alzetjan, Cispa, Jaradh, Jarda, Jirit, Kelásse, Kirezagi, Olaetyan, Qiira, Rynnan, Siralla, Thakinya, Zharranh, Zírí:nká, and others.

The Korpesk Language (Ave Korpeskarinen) It is designed by Shawn Clayton Knight.

Kusthü is one of the languages of the world of Endra, and is the earliest language in the Estani language group. It is designed by Adam Parrish. See also Doraya, Saakha, and Telyana.

Kyran was created for an alternate Earth, called (in one of its languages) Taris. Several versions of the language exist at different stages of its history. It is designed by Kian.

Láadan was created by Suzette Haden Elgin, and forms part of the cultural background and foreground for a series of three novels, "Native Tongue", "The Judas Rose", and "Earthsong". It is designed to express the perceptions of women, both in the fictional world of the novels, and in the real world of the present. Besides the novels, there is a published grammar and vocabulary of Láadan. Here is another Láadan site.

LANG53 (formerly called NN53H) is an international auxiliary language. Its grammar resembles that of Chinese, and the orthography is a consonantal script analogous to Hebrew Nikud. "53" refers to its 53 phonemes. LANG53 is designed by Antony Alexander.

LanguageX is the working title for a project by Christopher Paul

Lashkos is a subject-object-verb language sounding similar to Urdu. It is created by Christopher Wright. See also his other languages Fampónd, Runda, and Sturnan.

Lannu den gental is based on romance languages. The name means "language of the people". It is created by Morris.

Latino Moderne is an extrapolation of what Latin might have become if it had not broken up into the dialects that became the modern Romance languages. It is designed by David Stark. The basic vocabulary is the same as that of Interlingua (IALA), with minor changes. There is a description of the grammar, and some texts in Latino Moderne. Here is the beginning of the gospel of St. John, translated from the original Greek:
Capitulo 1. 1. In le principio era le Verbo, e le Verbo era con Deo, e le Verbo era Deo. 2. Iste era in le principio con Deo. 3. Omne cosas eran facite per ille, e sin ille nulle era facite que era facite. 4. In ille era vita, e le vita era le lumine del homines. 5. E le lumine lustra in le tenebras, e le tenebras non lo comprehendevan.

Latino sine Flexione: see Interlingua de Peano.

La Lengua Universal designed by Sotos Ochando in 1851 has been given a Web presence (in Spanish) by Manuel Sanz.

Léten is designed to derive different forms (e.g. nouns or verbs) from a single root. Roots are strings of consonants and semi-vowels; inflections are strings of vowels to be intercalated with the consonants. Léten is designed by the Léten Synthetic Language Project. Some Léten words:

Lesko is the name of a fictional planet inhabited by a race who call themselves (in their lingua franca) lesu (singular les). The lingua franca is also called Lesko. It is designed by Shawn Clayton Knight.

The language Leturian is the language of Leturia, which lies to the west of Griffons Aerie. It is inhabited by people with tails. For further background (in gigantic quantities) see the Great Shoonaben Encyclopedia.

Ley Arah is spoken by the Tsara, the warrior-sect of the Tsendashai. It is devised by Jashan. See also Kaliso and Kir.

Lifehomese is one of the alien languages of the Commonwealth. It is the olfactory/secretory language of the beings inhabiting the planet Lifehome. It is designed by Adam Walker.
See also B-G-2-3, Lrahran, q~'u^pl!, Tvernel, and Xt!.

Lin, or Ln, has a stress on spatial compactness. It was created by R. Skrintha as a form of transcription for telepathic conversations with aliens.

Lingo is a partially agglutinative language with SVO or SSVO word-order. It is a revision of Miksa. It is designed by Mike Adams.

Lingua Franca Nova is a Romance-based auxiliary language, designed by George Boeree.

Lingua Mundi is a project to construct a universal auxiliary language for the new millennium. All are welcome to participate.

The Liotan languages are a family of related languages designed by Geoff Eddy as part of a fictional world.

Liva is a logical language created by Claudio Gnoli. The part of speech of a word is indicated by its initial sound, and the grammatical structures of the language are based on mathematical logic. It is based on an earlier version, called Aarbad (now defunct).

Loglan Home Page. Loglan is a constructed language invented by the late James Cooke Brown. Its design goals include:

• A language for people to communicate with each other.
• "Metaphysical parsimony" --- it should not by its structure place impediments in the way of creative and clear thought and communication.
• Cultural neutrality.
• A structure based on mathematical logic.
• A mathematically unambiguous formal grammar.
• Unambiguous resolution of sounds into words.
• Phonetic spelling.
• Simplicity.
• Regularity.
• A means of testing the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that the structure of the language one speaks influences the way one thinks.

Logulos is drawn from a number of sources, mainly English, Egyptian, Greek, Latin, Japanese, and Esperanto. It is intended as a means of personal expression, a work of art. It is not intended to be optimally easy to learn, totally alien, perfectly regular, or anything else. It's supposed to sound right to its author. It is designed by Shawn Clayton Knight.

Lojban is a variant of Loglan, with the same goals. The development effort is organised by the Logical Language Group.
See also Loglan.

Lojsk is a logical language influenced by Loglan, Lojban, the Universal Networking Language, Dutton Speedwords, and others. It is designed by Ari Reyes.

Lrahran is one of the alien languages of the Commonwealth. It a melodic language, containing a large number of vowels, liquids, nasals and semivowels. It makes fine distictions of tense and aspect. It is designed by Adam Walker.
See also B-G-2-3, Lifehomese, q~'u^pl!, Tvernel, and Xt!.

Machi is used by the insectoid race of Epsilon Indi II. It is created by Teresh.

Maktalu is the language of the Great Valley on the planet Yord. It is designed by Nik Taylor. See also Kizval and Kagizerin.

Malat is intended to be a logical language. The structure of the language is based on causation. Sentences are of three types: agent/patient, agent/self, and nil/patient, and can be strung together to indicate causal chains. Malat is designed by Garrett Jones, aka Alkaline. The web site includes a message board for discussions.

The Master Language is a proposed international language. This link connects to an online copy of the book "The Master Language" published in 1907 by Stephen Chase Houghton, and scanned in by Paul Bartlett, with additional notes. The language is based on Latin words with simplifed orthography and English word-order.

Matraian See Denden.

Mavod is designed by William Annis. The design is influenced by Finnish and related Finno-Ugric languages, Latin, Turkish, Esperanto, Chinese and Láadan.

Mermaid is designed by Neil Buckley. There is a series of lessons.

Mesogeóika is based on modern and ancient Greek, with smaller amounts of several other languages. It is designed by Alex Katsaros.

The Meth Language (Sorin Methor) The Meth are a fictional race.

Microlang 1.0 is an a priori minimal conlang.

Miksa: see Lingo.

Mjuteità Inglisja (Mjutlisja, Mutate English, or Mutlish) is a mutated form of English, which is written according to its English pronunciation, but with Slovakian orthography, and with Slovakian stress and grammatical endings. Mjutlisja is designed by Tomas Magath.

Moten: see Christophe Grandsire's conlangs.

Mowhan is a "germanic-romance" language, the language of the "Mowameddo Regime", a micronation from Canada. It is designed by Erik Rothwell.

Mua is a universal world language based on logical principles, intended for both human-human and human-machine communication. Emerging from years of research into artificial intelligence, Mua is closely connected with the symbolical systems of ancient myths, occult science, magic rituals, music, and quantum mechanics: a universal symbolical system which allows the mind greater access to reality, leading to scientific advances, starships, and galactic domination. Mua is created by Valentin Koulikov.

Nadsat is the teen slang which appears in Anthony Burgess' novel "A Clockwork Orange".

Nanigani is designed by Kai-hsu Tai, who has provided the Asteroid Commonwealth of nanigani with a home page. Here is an alternative link. Information is provided in both English and Chinese.

Naqu is the language of the planet Naqu. It evolved from Oktaan. Naqu is created by Kevin Albrecht.

Nashica, or nasësk îezik, is the language of the Ossers, a north Slavonic people who became established around the 5th century C.E. It is created by Jan Havlis.

Neelan is designed by Neil Buckley. There is a dictionary and a series of lessons.

Neo was an international auxiliary language designed by Arturo Alfandari and first published in 1937. It is one of the most completely detailed IALs, after Esperanto and Ido. Further information is available at one of Rick Harrison's sites.

Neo-Dalmatian is a reconstruction of the now-extinct Dalmatian, or Vegliot, language, based on the extant fragments of Vegliot, and the patterns of its development from Vulgar Latin.

Net English is a superset of the English language with a relaxed orthography. It is the invetion of Jack Durst. Alas, I have lost the link to it.

Next Generation Language (NGL) is designed for now and the next millennium, optimized to deal with modern concepts and modern dilemmas. It is intended to be not just an international auxiliary language, but to be learned as a first language. The project was initiated by Julian Morrison, and is being carried out by a small group.

Ligedas am Nirdaen (the language of Nirdaen) is spoken in the land of Vaenthyr. Currently there are a sample text (in a rather attractive script) and some information on phonology.

Notya: see Christophe Grandsire's conlangs.

NN53H: see LANG53.

Nordien is a Germanic language created by Aaron Chapman.

Nova is the principal language spoken on the island of Pan and the contiguous nation of Nowapan. It is an oligosynthetic language, currently with about 1000 morphemes, from which all words are created by combination. The language is intended to be heavily inflected, but not for any of the commonly recognized categories. It would literally be an attempt to reinvent language and what a speaker had to analyze to convey information. It is designed by Brad Coon.

Novial is an international language created by Otto Jespersen in 1928. Bruce Gilson has some Novial material, including many links to other Novial resources. More links can be found on Don Blaheta's Novial page.

Occidental is intended as an international auxiliary language. There is a page by Morten Svendsen and another by Ailanto. Occidental is also known as Interlingue.

Ohs: see Taeis.

Ok is a language originally inspired by Robert Heinlein's fictional Speedtalk. It is created by Duke Keenan.

Oktaan is a language developed by Kevin Albrecht. There is a project to translate the Bible into Oktaan.

Olaetyan is a human language spoken on many planets of the Kolagian universe of Herman Miller.

Old Southern is a precursor to the language currently spoken in the country of Arvandra and neighboring territories to the north. "Old Southern" was last commonly in use close to a thousand years ago. It is designed by Laurie Gerholz.

Ongakh'ta Sakartveloi-Tuskualduat! The link may not last; try a web or newsgroups search for the words "Sakartveloi", "Izkappialgut", or "Muzcreidt" if it doesn't work. This text was posted to a large number of newsgroups in August 1996 by one "Antoni Gomez Muzcreidt, Ph.D., People's International University Historical Research Division." It purports to be "a call to all who long to restore the glorious tribal and shamanistic past of the paleo-Sakartveloi, the founders of the great Izkappialgut Tuskualdo, the ancient paleo-Letzisch Empire, to take up arms and fight!" I don't know what the name of the language is; I've listed it here under the title of the text. It begins:

Gh'Izkappialgut Tuskualdo dongat ha lanjaa!
An-badisloak nogh'aonhdaidak poxaian iskaa dadlanga ptamoak,
ta izkaappan-at Hakungoak ojingaa tuk talga nothhaon dagt.
Tankuu lakhaon daz, rotkiuk lanjaa lobbaxi dadzla at-fodthaan.

Opus-2 is an abstract language designed by Chris Pressey. Its main goal is to eliminate word order entirely. For example, verbs are colours, nouns are sounds, adjectives are smells, adverbs are inner-ear sensations, and some tenses and phrasings are indicated by tastes. Object nouns are quiet, subjects are foreground sounds.

Osë is created by Thomas Leigh.

Otg is an agglutinative language with a slightly Celtic look. It is designed by Galivad.

The P language, formerly called Pig. The language will be based on Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, English, and Hindi. It is created by Danny Wier.

pala-kallojna is designed by Chris Palmer and Scott Jann. It is a predicate-based language (i.e. one part of speech plays all the roles that nouns, verbs, adjectives, and prepositions do in English), with a syllabic script.
[Update February 1999: link is broken.]

Pantato belongs to a fictional parallel Earth, created by Pablo Flores.

Patrienish (Linguí Patríenic) (formerly called Castorian) is the language of Antarbhumi Ramrajya, the Inner Realm of Patria This micronation began to be created in 1972, but its history extends back to its establishment as an independent realm on June 30, 1818. Since the Dharmic Revolution of 1989-90, it is a Hindu theocracy, ceremonially ruled by the goddess Saraswati as Queen, and governed by the elected Congressus Patriae, whose head is currently Michael Brooker. Documentation on the language is primarily of the Romance form in which it existed prior to the revolution; under the influence of the revolution, the current language has a strongly Sanskrit bias.

The Paulic Language (Egaugnala Ciluapa) is a transformed version of English. Most Paulic words are English words spelled backwards, with "-mak" added to verbs, various other inflections, and free word order.

Penta: now called Zengo.

Petrocea: see Taeis.

Phalera is the language of the inhabitants of Gelenê, a large satellite orbiting the second planet of Upsilon Andromedae. Phalera is designed by Tom Wier.

Phonetic Picture-Writing is a design for a conlang which is simultaneously ideographic and phonetic. The ideograms are built from basic graphic elements, which are also letters representing sounds. Thus each picture can also be spoken. The webpages exist in English, Spanish, and German versions. There is an interactive dictionary and translation facility. The language is created by Leonhard Heinzmann.

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Pikachu is the language spoken by Electric Mice. The page provides a facility to translate any web page into Pikachu. It was created by Aneel Nazareth.

Poliespo was designed by Nvwtohiyada Idehesdi Sequoyah, a Cherokee Indian. Roughly speaking, it consists of Esperanto extended with Cherokee words, with its own orthography.

Qa is an a priori language designed by Jedidjah L. de Vries. There are five letters for vowels, seven modifying symbols for consonants, and four spoken punctuation marks. Word order is verb-subject-object. Numbers are written in base 7.

Qatama is created by Carl Buck.

Quenya: see Tolkien's languages.

q~'u^pl! is one of the alien languages of the Commonwealth. It contains many consonant clusters, clicks, and trills. All its vowels are whistles. It is designed by Adam Walker.

Rahha is a language used by an agricultural people living at an unspecified location on Earth. It is designed by James Campbell.

Rav Zarruvo is the language of the jungle-living inhabitants of a fantasy world. It is designed by Bob Greenwade.

Réman: see Christophe Grandsire's conlangs.

Yf Rgalin is designed by Mark Shoulson, as "a study in a few strange features that happened to appeal to its creator."

Rikchik is the language of the rikchiks, a race of intelligent creatures living on a number of planets scattered throughout this galaxy. They use their seven tentacles to talk, each symbol of their language being a gesture. The written form of the language depicts the tentacle positions.

Rivertongue is the language of the people of Seventeen Rivers and the elves of the Seven Planes. It is created by Keolah.

Ro is an a priori language designed by the Reverend Edward Powell Foster (1853-1937). There is a poem, Thanatopsis, presented in both Ro and English.

Rokbeigalmki is created by Stephen "Steg" Belsky. All verbs can be made into nouns and vice versa. Verbs are inflected with prefixes for subject and tense. There are several scripts. The site includes a soundclip of spoken Rokbeigalmki.

Romanice derives from Romanico by omitting compulsory gender suffixes and making some other minor changes.

Romanico is intended to be an improvement on Esperanto by simplifying the grammar and making the vocabulary more easily recognisable. See also Romanice.

Romanova is an international auxiliary language based on the four major romance languages: Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese.

Runda is is an agglutinating language with subject-object-word word order. It is created by Christopher Wright. See also his other languages Fampónd, Lashkos, and Sturnan.

Saakha is the language of the Saakha, a nomadic people living in the southern deserts of the planet Endra. Its web pages are currently (June 1999) off-line for reworking. All of its sounds, including the vowels, are voiceless. All nouns are classed into one of seven categories, and inflected for four cases. Verbs are marked for tense, mood, aspect, subject class, and object class. It is created by Adam Parrish. See also Doraya, Kusthü, and Telyana.

Sapuho Deveru: See Desa Chat.

Sarkelean is created by Ben Addis.

Scallin is a verb-subject-object language with much of its grammar adapted from Germanic and Celtic sources. The main sources for the lexicon are archaic English and derived languages, Icelandic, Finnish and other languages of the area. The phonology is inspired by Anglo-Saxon. It is designed by Kaurpin.

Sëkal Isëtozhëd: see Kaliso.

Semantography: see Blissymbolics.

Sen:espera is an interlanguage designed by Jeffrey Henning.

Seversk is a North Slavonic artificial language designed by Libor Sztemon.

Sevorian (Sievrøsku to its speakers, and formerly J2) is a North Slavic constructed language with an agglutinating morphology. Sevorian is created by James Campbell, latterly in collaboration with Alexis Hansen. James Campbell also created Jameld.

Shaleyan is spoken on Shaleya (Wuiou), part of the Refea Solar System. The native inhabitants, sometimes called "the Soloflex race", are a 6-foot tall race of humans, with white skin, blue eyes and straight hair. The population of Shaleya numbers 650,000,000.
Shaleyan is part of the Kankonian universe created by James Landau.

Shan Cannibals: A Language Described By Wilhelm van Waartuig (C18). There are four kinds of words: nouns, pronouns, enclitics and participials.
[Update February 1999: link is broken.]

Shkanshej is the language of a people who call themselves Shej-feshta' or "the winged people" on a fictional parallel Earth, created by Pablo Flores.

Sindarin: see Tolkien's languages.

Sitarwelas: see Didier Willis's conlang page.

Skerre is spoken by the Skerre people, who dwell on Plane 86 of the multi-planed universe called Varidien. Skerre and Varidien are created by Doug Ball.

Slavëni is a North Slavonic conlang, and a predecessor of Seversk. It is created by Libor Sztemon.

Slavisk is a Slavonic artificial language designed by Libor Sztemon.

Solresol was invented by Jean Francois Sudre (1798-1866). Its words are composed from the seven notes of the Western musical scale. See also Rick Harrison's pages.

Sona: see Rick Harrison.

Speedtalk was conceived by the science fiction author Robert Heinlein in his short story Gulf. It is a highly compact language with a vocabulary of potentially over 200,000 words, nearly all of which are single syllables or shorter. A sentence of Speedtalk can express a complex thought in the time taken to say a single word of English. Its semantic structure is also designed to be in accordance with the structure of the real world, according to the principles of General Semantics. Natural languages such as English are, in comparison, no more than "a species of grunting". The compactness and sanity of Speedtalk make it ideally suited, not only for being spoken by the super-intelligent, but for fostering super-intelligence. Such, at any rate, is the hope. Heinlein, as far as is known, did not actually create a language according to his description, but others have tried. Here is one attempt.
Other languages with connections to General Semantics or logicality are E-Prime, Loglan, and Lojban.

Spokaans is the language of Spokanië, a group of islands in the Atlantic Ocean, southwest of Iceland. The site describes (in Dutch and Spokaans only) the history, politics, and language of Spokanië. It is created by Rolandt Tweehuysen.

Streich is the language of the Hélu, one of the main civilisations flourished in the Archipelago of Elaire. At their apogee, the Hélu occupied a vast area, comprising the Eastern corner of Elaire Island (a region they called Hail’r, whence the modern name Elaire) and most of the Eastern islands of the Archipelago. Streich i ul, or noble Streich, was the literary language created by the Hélu poets-singers for their artistic needs. Streich is designed by Tommaso Donnarumma.

Sturnan is based on Proto-Indo European. It is created by Christopher Wright. See also his other languages Fampónd, Lashkos, and Runda.

Suma: see Rick Harrison.

Syldavian is a language appearing in the adventures of Tintin, by the Belgian artist Hergé. Mark Rosenfelder has collected everything that is known about the language and attempted to extrapolate.

Sylvyn is the language of the Silver Elves. It is recorded by the Silver Elves.

Taeis was a fantasy world organised by Geoff Tuffli in the early 1990s. It is very likely no longer active. There was a newsgroup, alt.world.taeis, but it appears to be unused. I have some information about four Taeian languages: Ohs, Petrocea, Eiler Erdoten, and Iniel.

Taelon: See Eunoia.

Talean: see Didier Willis's conlang page.

The Kingdom of Talossa is an independent, sovereign nation in North America which seceded peacefully from the United States in 1979. Its official languages are Talossan and English. The Web site describes how the country came to be founded and its history up to the present. On paper, there are a large dictionary and grammar (the Treisoûr del Glhetg Talossán or "Treasure of the Talossan Language"), a Talossan newspaper, and some Talossan translations and original literature. Talossan began as a pidgin of several modern European languages, but its history has gone through a great deal of evolution. Currently (1997) the language and the state of Talossa are rediscovering their Berber roots. It appears that the Talossans are the descendants of the last wave of Latin-influenced Berber migrants to the New World around 500 AD. The language is the closest surviving relative of Occitan. There are on-line a detailed discussion of the history of Talossan, sound samples of the King and citizen Tomás Gariçéir speaking Talossan, and a description of the language itself. There is also a set of Talossan language pages, maintained by citizen Tomás Gariçéir, written in Talossan and containing many more links. How deeply the Kingdom should be involved in the Internet is a hot topic of Talossan politics (the principal activity of its citizens).
Here is the beginning of the Epistle of James in Modern Talossan:
TXEC, ün servesc da Dïeu és del Segñhôr Iésu- C'hrïost, àls dudësch tribâs dal tvistraziun: Dïeu t'alegra! En consideretz come la pür aleretzâ, quândevri dals diviársen tentaziuns voi ec'hperistent; parç që voi säpetz që la provaziun da voastra féitz encoraxha l'endurançù.

Tanerai: see Rick Harrison.

tAruven is the language of the ruling classes of an empire known as the Outlawed Lands, in a universe imagined by taliesin.

Tceqli: See Txeqli.

Tech is the Afro-Asiatic language of the people of Techia, who originated in the upper Nile Valley at least ten thousand years ago. It is created by Danny Wier.
[Update February 1999: link is broken.]

Telyana is the language of the Telyani Empire, a conquering force that controlled much of the planet of Endra for two hundred years, centuries prior to the Movari's arrival there. It is created by Adam Parrish. Its web pages are currently (June 1999) off-line for reworking.

Teonaht is the language of the Teonim, the human inhabitants of Teon, a region that surfaces and submerges most often within the Black Sea, sometimes the Caspian. Teonaht is an analytic language, probably Indo-European. Unusual features include its object-subject-verb sentence order (rare amongst human languages), its distinguishing of an agentive and an experiential nominative, and the migration of tense suffixes from verbs to their pronominal subjects. Teonaht and Teon are the invention of Sally Caves.

Tepa is designed by Dirk Elzinga. It draws on many recondite features of existing natural languages.

Thauliralau Triyk is the language of the Thauliralau, mammalian inhabitants of an unnamed planet. Thauliralau Triyk and its predecessor Toaliralolo are designed by Jim Henry.

Thosk is a member of the Indo-european language family, spoken with varying degrees of fluency by a very small and geographically diffuse group of people throughout North America. It is documented by Dean Easton.

Tjà-tsàñ: see Christophe Grandsire's conlangs.

Toaliralolo is a predecessor of Thauliralau Triyk. It is designed by Jim Henry.

Toki Pona is designed to use the simplest and fewest elements for the maximum effect, appropriate to a primitivist lifestyle. The language has only 14 sounds and 150 words. The grammar is similarly minimal, having no tenses, definite and indefinite articles, or singular and plural markers. The vocabulary was built by borrowing from several natural languages. The language is created by Christian Richard.

Tolkien's languages: Sindarin, Quenya, Black Speech, etc. The WWW page includes details of the TolkLang mailing list and the TolkLang file-server, and many links to other Tolkienian linguistics pages. Carl F. Hostetter has a page of Resources for Tolkienian Linguistics. Here is another page devoted to Tolkien's languages, created by Helge Kåre Fauskanger.
A computer font of the Elvish script called Tengwar is available, created by Dan Smith.

Tomoulini Ganmaa belongs to a fictional parallel Earth, created by Pablo Flores.

Topesetic is a fantasy language created by Daniele Morelli. The web page is in Italian.

Toxu was designed by Chris Palmer, and later became pala-kallojna.

TRAN is designed by Andrei Burago.

Tsolyani is a language of Tékumel, the world of the fantasy role-playing game "Empire of the Petal Throne". Tsolyani, Tékumel, and EPT were all designed by Muhammad Abd-el-Rahman Barker, who has also written two SF/fantasy novels set in Tékumel ("Man of Gold" and "Flamesong"). A third is reported to be in progress ("Lords of Tsamra").
The above Tékumel site has a Tsolyani font, a pronunciation tape, a Tsolyani word generator, and much Tékumel material.
There is a partial on-line dictionary as part of Rick Harrison's Unified Dictionary Project.
On paper, Tsolyani has been published in a pair of booklets containing a grammar and a dictionary.
You can obtain a Tsolyani word a day.

Der Hämpajína ó der Triparik Tãng (The Home Page of the Triparian Language), Prepared by the Committee for the Development and Usage of the Triparian Language (CDUTL) Der Kønigzjõnt ó Tripária (the Kingdom of Triparia) is a sovereign, independent state which established itself on February 19th, 1998 CE. It is a "micronation" -- in this case, an experiment in politics and government by a group of people dedicated to exploring the political process and having fun with it. The boundaries of Triparia are those of Allegheny County, PA. The language is designed by Shawn Clayton Knight.

Tundrian is the official language of Tundria, an island country off the western coast of France. It is a Romance language, descended from Latin. It is designed by Gabor Sandi.

Tunu is the auxiliary language used since the early 2090's in and around the Pacific Rim, and at that time the fourth most widely used language in the world (after Mandarin, Spanglish and Aspirinto 5.2 (Macrohard^TM)). The grammar is modelled on Indonesian, its everyday vocabulary comes from Indonesian, Japanese and Tahitian, and its scientific vocabulary from classical Pali and modern Sino-Japanese. It is created by Manishtusu.

Tvernel is one of the alien languages of the Commonwealth designed by Adam Walker.

Txeqli (pronounced "cheng-li" and previously spelt "Ceqli" or "Tceqli") began as an attempt to reform Loglan/Lojban and make it more user-friendly, although its goals have evolved since then. Words are mostly borrowed from natural languages (with allowances for the requirements of Txeqli phonology and morphology), while the grammar follows the "logical" style of Loglan/Lojban. As in Loglan/Lojban, distinctions of number, tense, aspect, etc. are expressible but always optional. There is a mailing list devoted to the language. Txeqli is created by Rex May.

Tydash is intended to be as weird and twisted as it can possibly be made. It is designed by Carrie Schutrick.

Ukhik (more fully, Ginir Ukhik-u, "the Speech of the Free Ones") is one of the languages spoken on a fictional parallel Earth, created by Pablo Flores.

Universal was designed in 1923-1928 by G. I. Muravkin and L. I. Vasilevskij as a universal language.

The Universal Networking Language or UNL is a digital metalanguage intended for storing information in a machine-independent and human-language-neutral form. It is a mark-up language which represents not the formatting but the information contained in a text. The UNL project was set up in 1996 at the United Nations University in Tokyo.

Universal Picture Language is a pictorial language. Unlike most such languages, it does not simply replace words by pictures, but includes syntax for combining pictures in various ways that allow the writer to denote such things as the difference between two pictures, the transformation from one picture to another, etc. The UPL is designed by Wally Flint.

Üqoi is the language of the Zhoooonaiï, a race that lives on Paklunvös Continent, in the Western Hemisphere of the planet Kaj'eevdhuz. The language has its own font, with both handwritten and printed forms. It is designed by Bruce Bracken.

UTL is an auxiliary language designed to be logical and unambiguous in order to help in machine translation. It is derived from Esperanto and is designed by Marcos Franco.

uuteib eafeis, (or in English, Elvish) is spoken by the elves on Faya. The world of Faya and the Elvish language are created by David Caveney. (The world and the language are not related to Tolkien's Elves.) There are also links to other conlang pages and other pages about elves.
Update 2000-09-14: links are dead. Web search fails to uncover their current whereabouts, if any.

Vabungula is a language created by Bill Price. It can be written in the Roman alphabet, but also has its own script.

Vaior is an a priori language in the Indo-European style, with declension, conjugation, and VSO word order. It is created by William Annis.

Sand-ai       Din ach Rhith Auhal, tha mie-far-o,         
dispute-PAST  sun and wind  north, who MORE-strong-PRESENT
thildu achur-ler-anthal-o       faonal   od-o-l          síathe-n. 
when   near-come-BY=CHANCE-PRES traveler wear-PRES-PART  cloak-ACC.

Valdyan: see Ilaini.

Valmelind: see Asier G.'s pages.

Vendergood was invented by William James Sidis as an international auxiliary language. Most of what is on-line is about Sidis rather than the language. He seems to have been an extraordinary person.

Verdurian is the language of Verduria, a country in the metaverse created by Mark Rosenfelder. There is an alphabet and a cursive script.

Vilani is a language being created for the Traveller science fiction role-playing game setting.

Vogukadanë is the language of the Kadanë people of the planet Zyem, an alternate-history version of the Earth. See also Dunnek.

Volapük is an early rival of Esperanto, still in existence. There are various Volapük sites, including Ken Caviness' Volapük site, Arden Smith's fanzine VOLAPOP!, written in Volapük, and Dean Gahlon's Volapük page. The last of these deals with the 1890 version, rather than Arie de Jong's revised version of 1931.

Vorlin: see Rick Harrison.

The Vulcan Language Institute was formed in 1980 to explore the Vulcan language from the Star Trek universe. Specifically, it is concerned with Golic Vulcan, which appears in Star Trek: The Motion Picture and later films, as well as several related languages. The work is organised by Mark Gardner, the director of the VLI.

The Waldzell Constructed Language was devised by Mark Line. Its intention is to minimize ontological vagueness and ambiguity. The development of the language will take place through proposals being submitted to the Waldzell Glass Bead Game, of which the language is a part. The language itself will not have a name until one is decided on through this mechanism.

The Web Language is a collaborative project to design a new language, organised by Walter Rader.

Wede:i was spoken by the inhabitants of the Xengi plain and Ceiy, who established the first states of men, and created the first human writing sytem on Almea (c. -1550). It is created by Mark Rosenfelder.

Wessisc is an attempt to create a hybrid of what would have been spoken if Anglo-Saxon and P-Celtic had merged. It is created by Damon Lord.

Woznackh.

Xaîn is the second world of the green F2 star known as Ar. There are many languages on Xaîn, but xathmel is common to most of the cultures of the planet. There are several scripts.
Designed by Paulus the Woodgnome.

Xap is a series of languages: Xap I is for children, Xap II extends Xap I and is for adults, and Xap III extends Xap II and is for interspecies use. The languages are spoken in the Baeba Swamp on the planet Teppala, around 2400 AD. They are quite complicated, and have connections with the magic system of a certain computer game. They are created by Mercator.

Xara is an a priori language whose grammar has Indo-European characteristics. One of its aims is to be a functional and expressive means of communication between friends. It is devised by Jim Taylor.

Xkanxey: now called Shkanshej.

Xt! is one of the alien languages of the Commonwealth, spoken by a race of insectoid aliens. There are no vowels, and all the consonants are clicks. It is designed by Adam Walker.
See also B-G-2-3, Lifehomese, Lrahran, q~'u^pl!, and Tvernel.

Ygyde is an a priori international auxiliary language. It is claimed to be easy to pronounce, easy to understand, extremely easy to learn, and able to define all meanings (except proper nouns) in words of 7 letters or less. There is also a mirror site.

Classical Yiklamu is designed to explore the possibilities of highly disambiguated verbal communication. It does this by having word stems for each of the 90,000 entries in the WordNet thesaurus. The morphology and syntax are as yet minimal, and intended to evolve, hence the name Classical Yiklamu.

Ystheron is a logical language based upon the "Polish notation" of modern predicate logic. It is designed by Patrick Littell.

Zadri is the language of the Zadarans, an offshoot of humans, and the major influence in a spacefaring organisation called the Zadaran Alliance The Zadarans were created by Vionau Raitàk.

Zanktooks is the language of the Zaynktooksians of the planet Zaynktooks. It is designed by Spence Strango.

Zharranh is the language of the Kireethin, furry aliens around four to five feet tall, who are hybrids of Zireen and Sangari. They exist in the Kolagian universe of Herman Miller.

Zoinx is based on Germanic and Romance languages, with other borrowings. It is intended to sound nice, feel natural, be easy to learn, yet difficult to understand without learning it. It is a personal experiment, born when the author posted a sentence in Zoinx to a local bulletin board. It is designed by Roger Espel Llima.

The Graveyard

Aelya was designed as a religious language for Clann Coire (a group devoted to proto-Celtic, Eirish paganism in America) in an attempt to modify the way in which they think. It was designed by Clinton Moreland-Stingham.

'Amdunic: see Sinanjala.

Degaspregos was a philosophical language based in part on Proto-Indo-European examining the effects of language on thought. It was created by Tom Wier. Although the original web site is no longer operational, it has been recorded at The Internet Archive.

Dibávënïd was formerly known as the Mann Constructed Language or MCL. It was a constructed language created by David Mann, integrating his previous projects of Mannspëk and Weltunspaak. The name "Dibávënïd" means "beautiful truth". Dibávënïd has been re-superceded by the revived MCL.

Inda is the language of the Indaran. Inda and its culture are designed by Gregory Higley. The language draws on many sources in existing languages, but stems primarily from the creator's artistic preferences. Some linguistic features are these: the language is ergative, nouns are inflected for case, principal clauses are verb-initial and subordinate clauses are verb-final, adjectival notions are expressed by verbs, verbs are not inflected for person, and personal pronouns are used infrequently.

ISU (short for In Stat Ua = international language) was originally inspired by Dutton Speedwords, but has evolved beyond that. It is designed to be simple and and regular, with phonetic spelling and short words based on familiar roots. There is no web site. The author, White-Field Senate, was formerly contactable by email, but that address appears to have expired.

Jai: see Sinanjala.

Kagizerin was the official language of the Kiz Empire, a mighty Empire on the planet Yord, the fourth planet of Alpha Centauri A. Kagizerin was designed by Nik Taylor. See also Maktalu and Kizval.

Malininic: see Sinanjala.

The Mann Constructed Language (MCL) was intended to be as unambiguous and regular as possible, with a structured vocabulary intended to be easy to memorise. It was designed by David Mann.

Mannspëk was developed by David Mann. Parts of it were integrated into his Dibávënïd. See also the Mann Constructed Language.

mindbrush is an artificial language intended to allow faster, more efficient thinking, allow precise description of complex situations and concepts, and provide easy and efficient notation for several of the designer's favorite productive thinking systems. It is designed by David Gressett.
(Links found dead and untraceable 14 January 2002.)

Sinanjala was a fictional world devised by Charles Newburn. It contained several languages: Malininic, Jai, 'Amdunic, Tokyr, and Tihvuhd't. Discovered missing 2000-08-11.

Tihvuhd't: see Sinanjala.

Tokyr: see Sinanjala.

Weltunspaak was an auxiliary language being developed by the Weltunspaak Council, whose Prime Minister was the creator of Weltunspaak, David Mann. It is no longer under development. Parts of this language were integrated into his Dibávënïd. See also the Mann Constructed Language.

Constructed Script Systems

Aluric has its own script system.

Arkian has its own script, similar in style to Korean Hangul.

The Aurabesh script is the basic script system of the Galactic Empire in the Star Wars films. The link has a picture of the script and a downloadable font, but no other information about the language.

Deseret is a phonetic alphabet for English promulgated by the Mormon Church in the 1850's and 1860's. Unicode status is pending.

The script for Don Blaheta's unnamed conlang.

The creator of Kinya has designed an elaborate history of the Kinya writing systems.

Lhörr-têk is a writing system intended to represent all the distinctive features of the sounds of human languages, as well as a few sounds from non-human languages (such as the distinctive Neyasai whistles). It is used for writing the Jarda language. It is designed by Herman Miller.

Olaetyan has its own script. You can also see its font encoding

Shavian is a phonetic alphabet for English designed by Kingsley Read under the terms of George Bernard Shaw's will. The above web page is maintained by Bob Richmond. Demeyere has another Shavian page. Unicode status is pending.

Tal-eglar is a script related to Tolkien's Tengwar, used for writing ámman-îar.

Talin is the writing system of the language Doraya, originally derived from the script of the language Telyana. It is created by Adam Parrish.

Aspects of Constructed Cultures

There is a vast amount of material on the web relating to fictional worlds for role-playing, historical reenactment, story-telling, and creative joy. This page does not attempt to be an index to them. The few links gathered here are those which for whatever reason attracted my interest.

The Conculture mailing list exists to discuss all aspects of constructed cultures.

The World-Building HomePage hosts archives of another mailing list for discussion of world-building in the context of writing fantasy, science fiction, and horror. There are links to several similar sites.

Herman Miller's Music Page, containing samples of music from his created worlds.

The Great Shoonaben Encyclopedia contains a vast quantity of links to free-form roleplaying material relating to a single quasi-mediaeval world. There is a (rather small) section on languages.

Andal is an imaginary world developed by Boudewijn Rempt, including several languages.

Valdyas is an imaginary kingdom having similarities to Western Europe in the Middle Ages. it is designed by Irina Rempt-Drijfhout. The language spoken there is Ilaini.

Zyem is an alternate-history version of the Earth in which the Neanderthals survived and coexist with the rest of humanity. It is created by Teresh.

Reformed Natural Languages

Some reforms to natural languages have been so extensive that, in effect, they created a new language.

There are several simplified forms of English, designed mainly for the benefit of those learning it as a second language. Basic English was inented by C.K. Ogden, and is English reduced to a vocabulary of 850 words. Grammar and usage are identical to those of full English. Special English is used in Voice Of America's radio broadcasts. Other simplified forms of English include Specialized English and EasyEnglish. Here is more information about Special English and some other simplified forms.

Bokmål and Nynorsk are the modern written and spoken forms of the Norwegian language. As so named, they date from 1938. There is a certain amount of controversy over the reforms.

There is a proposal for merging the Scandinavian languages (Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish) into a single tongue. (The page is written in Swedish.)

Modern Hebrew. This site contains a lot of information and references about Jewish languages throughout history, including the modern revival of Hebrew from 1881 onwards.

Controlled Languages. "A controlled language is a precisely defined subset of a natural language, on the one hand constrained in its lexicon, grammar and style, on the other hand possibly extended by domain-specific terminology and grammatical constructions."

Conlangers' home pages and other pointers to pointers

Ailanto's language page contains references to conlangs, auxlangs, natlangs, on-line translation services, and more.

Aosheth's Garden has a Language page. Aosheth is also known as Mia Sherryandra Soderquist, or the Wild Tuozine.

Asier G. has created Adare, Asrord-Dânis, Ayeis, Ethirë, and Valmelind. The pages are in Spanish.

Paul Bartlett's conlang page.

David Bell, The Gray Wizard's home page and conlang pages.

Don Blaheta's conlang page.

Blueprints for Babel: "a web geek's guide to artificial languages and why you've never heard of them." This site contains information on several auxiliary languages, including Romanico and Romanice. The site is maintained by FaFaFloly.

Chris Bogart's conlang page.

Jay Bowks has a web site devoted to auxiliary languages. There is material on Auxilingua, Bitruscan, Ekspreso, and Europeano.

James Chandler's pages contain much material on the international auxiliary languages Ido and Novial, and some references to material on languages in general.

Ivan Derzhanski.

Tommaso R. Donnarumma's conlang page. Donnarumma is also the designer of Anawanda, Arden, Fjinnjikulla, and Streich.

Jack Durst's conlang page.

Dean's Constructed Languages Page includes a conlang FAQ, Thosk, and a collection of conlang links.

Suzette Haden Elgin created Láadan. She also publishes a newsletter about linguistics and science fiction, originally titled "The Lonesome Node", changed in January 1995 to "Linguistics & Science Fiction". Since January 2000, it has switched from paper distribution to email. A sample issue is available on her web site. Here is a bibliography of Elgin's science fiction. Lingua, One More Lonesome Node is another site devoted to Elgin's works.

Dirk Elzinga's conlang page.

Pablo Flores has created several languages, including: Biyuron, Ciravesu, Curco, Draseléq, Knarwaz, Pantato, Shkanshej, Tomoulini Ganmaa, and Ukhik.

Bruce Gilson's conlang page.

Claudio Gnoli maintains a list of logical languages: constructed languages based on logical principles.

Christophe Grandsire's conlang page (in French). His conlangs include:
Astou, the language of the Dhastem. Related to both IE and South American languages, possibly originating in Atlantis.
Azak: Similar to Hungarian or Turkish.
Réman: A Romance language.
Moten: The first language of Tsela Jemufan Atlinan C.G. Uses infixes and complicated phonetic mutation.
Notya: Very simple phonology and a syllabic alphabet. No distinction between nouns and verbs.
Tjà-tsàñ is the language of a civilisation that once covered the whole of the Earth, long before the Roman Empire, who called themselves "Peuple du Ciel" ("People of the Sky").

Edmund Grimley-Evans' home page. His pages contain a lot of material on Esperanto, some in Esperanto and some in English. He also has an article on constructed languages (in Esperanto).

Ron Hale-Evans' conlang page.

Don Harlow's conlang page.

Rick Harrison's Invisible Lighthouse contains his Artificial Language Lab. He maintains a Bibliography of Planned Languages (excluding Esperanto), which is a listing of printed references, including many obscure ones. There is (or was, or may be) also material on Damin, Esperanto sen Fleksio, Glaugnea, Ido, Ignota, Ro, Solresol, Sona, Suma, Tanerai, Vorlin, Zengo (formerly Penta), and other conlangs. He has written a comparison of modern and classical Volapük, and an essay outlining proposed guidelines for the design of an optimal international auxiliary language.

Sean Hendricks's conlang page contains links to various conlang projects, and extensive material on his own fictional world, Makchka, and its languages.

Jeffrey Henning has a conlang site containing his Model Language newsletter, his Sen:espera interlanguage, and a long list of conlangs. He also has the Babel text (the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel), and several translations of it into various constructed languages.

The Human Languages page (also mirrored in the UK) contains an enormous collection of links to many human languages, including at least one constructed one (Esperanto).

Richard Kennaway's conlang page. You are looking at it.

Shawn Clayton Knight's languages, including Logulos, Lesko, Meth, Korpesk, and Triparian.

Sami Laitala's home page and conlang page. Includes some sound samples.

LangLinks contains a large quantity of links to resources relating to constructed and natural languages.

Thomas Leigh has information on several conlangs, including Talossan, Cho-ba, Osë, and (currently off-line) Rozhêndi.

A List of Languages In Science Fiction And Fantasy compiled by David Solly.

Herman Miller's home page and a page of languages he designed.

Rick Morneau's home page. Material on the construction of the Katanda Interlingua, and a collection of essays on various aspects of the design of artificial languages: vocabulary, syntax, morphology, linguistic universals, transitivity, metaphor, etc.

Nick Nicholas has a home page in English, Greek, Esperanto, Klingon, and Latin. Active in the Klingon and Lojban communities, and a major contributor to the Klingon edition of Hamlet and other Shakespearean translations.

Chris Palmer's linguistics and constructed languages page.

Adam Parrish's conlang page, containing several languages of his own design, including Doraya, Kusthü, Saakha, and Telyana.

Boudewijn Rempt's conlang page includes general information on constructed languages, linguistics, some fonts, some rare natural languages, and other material. He is also the creator of the Charyan languages.

Mark Rosenfelder's home page. Mark Rosenfelder is the author of the Language Construction Kit

Gabor Sandi has a large directory of languages, real and imaginary.

Jukka Santala's page of fantasy languages.

Manuel Sanz's conlang page (in Spanish).

The Scattered Tongues webring links together many conlang sites.

Rick Schellen's language links include many references to conlangs.

Joshua Shinavier's conlang page aims to list every constructed language anywhere on the web. There is a bare-bones classification by type (fictional, micronational, hypothetical, etc.).

Carrie Schutrick's languages, Eroné and Tydash.

Mark Shoulson's home page.

Nicholas Summers has some conlang references at his web site. [Update Jan 1999: This link, and Nicholas Summers, currently off-line.]

Teresh has details of several conlangs and conlang resources, including Bogomol, Borg, Machi, Zyem, and others.

Jonathan North Washington has a conlang page containing several of his conlangs: Deviasew, Espanzë, Deymual, and Khimashi.

Didier Willis's conlang page, which includes descriptions of his languages Almaqerin, Goblin, Sitarwelas, and Talean

Miscellanea

The Babelfish translator will automatically translate several European languages to and from English, or between French and German. You can submit either a piece of text, or the URL to a web page.

A class on constructed languages was taught by Joel Anderson in November and December 1997, at an elementary school in the U.S.

Translations of "Jabberwocky", Lewis Carroll's famous nonsense poem, in languages from Afrikaans to Welsh. Among the translations is one in Klingon.

The History of the Universe in 200 Words or Less, translated into various languages.

Proletariat of the World, Unite! translated into many constructed and natural languages.

The Travellers Languages web site is designed for travellers wishing to learn foreign languages. It includes material on a large number of languages, mostly natural but some constructed.

A 1996 article about conlangs from Wired magazine

Word2Word's collection of links to online dictionaries, free translation services, and free language courses.

The Zompist phrasebook -- the last phrasebook you'll ever need.

Some natural languages

Here are a few WWW references for a few natural languages, for no reason other than that I felt like including them.

Basque is the only surviving language from archaic prehistoric Europe, spoken nowadays among peoples of the Spanish-French border. The page contains many links to other Basque pages.

Black English is an Africanized form of English reflecting Black Americans' linguistic-cultural ties to their African Heritage.

Chinook Jargon is a trade language which originated in 1792 as an amalgam of Nootka, English, and Chinook proper.

The Thesaurus Linguae Graecae is a research center at the University of California, Irvine with the aim of creating a comprehensive digital library of Greek literature from antiquity to the present era.

The Lowlands web site contains information relating to Low German cultures, including languages such as Frisian.

Inuktitut is an Inuit language.

Mingo: See Unyææshæötká'.

An English to Old English word list. See also Stephen Pollington's book "Wordcraft: Concise Dictionary and Thesaurus, Modern English -- Old English", ISBN 1-898281-02-5. (Old English to English dictionaries are easy to find, the reverse direction is less common.)

The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, the Sumerian Lexical Archive, and John Halloran's Sumerian Language Page.

Native American languages.

The Red Book of the Peoples of the Russian Empire documents some of the nations that were subsumed into the former Soviet Empire, and previously the Tsarist Empire, and which are now in danger of extinction.

Unyææshæötká' (also called Mingo) is a northern Iroquoian language of the Mingo people, politically distinct from the League Iroquois and originally inhabiting the Ohio drainage in western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, and northern West Virginia. The web site has been praised as an excellent example of how to present a language on the web. It uses the Egads system for online dictionaries and reference grammars.

The Uralic languages include Erzya, Ingrian Finnish, Izhorian, Kamassian, Karelian, Khanty, Komi, Livonian, Ludian, Mansi, Mari, Selkup, Udmurt, Veps, and Votic.

Wol Wantok, or Pidgin English, has been used to give a performance of Shakespeare's "Macbeth" by Ken Campbell.

Resources for language building

• Databases, corpuses, and related tools
• Scripts and writing systems
• Collections of information about many languages
• Generating tools
• Computer-aided learning
• Linguaphilia
• News from elsewhere
• Onward, Outward, Upward!

Egads (Extensible Grammar and Dictionary System) is an ongoing project to produce online dictionaries and reference grammars. The first language it is being implemented for is Mingo.

Combined Basic English and Essential World English vocabularies.

Cyc is an artificial intelligence project to encode all of "common-sense" human knowledge into one gigantic database. The site includes the "Upper Cyc Ontology", which consists of approximately 3000 of Cyc's highest concepts with hierarchical links between them.

FRELI, the Free Repository of English Lexical Information. This currently consists of about 36,000 English words with information about part of speech, frequency, etc. Produced by Paul Hoffman.

Kura is a project by Boudewijn Rempt, to create a multi-user, multi-language language description database application.

The Landau Universal Vocabulary is a list of about 2000 concepts, categorised by meaning and part of speech, which may serve as a basis for constructing the vocabulary of a language. It is created by James Landau.

The Longman Defining Vocabulary is a set of 2197 English words, plus a few prefixes and suffixes, with which all the definitions in that dictionary are written. Designers of conlangs may find it a useful list of concepts for building their vocabulary.

The Oxford English Dictionary. No, not the full text (which you would have to pay ££££ for an online copy of), but they publish a newsletter here.

The full text of Roget's Thesaurus on-line at Project Gutenberg.

The Sydney Morning Herald Word Database contains 23440636 words from 38526 articles.

WordNet is an on-line lexical reference system inspired by current theories of human lexical memory. English nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are organized into synonym sets, each representing one underlying lexical concept. WordNet was developed by the Cognitive Science Laboratory at Princeton University.

All the Scripts in the World claims to contain a sample of every script that is in current use in any of the 6,000 or so languages in current use on the planet.

The ConScript Unicode Registry, or CSUR for short, is a web page for coordinating the assignment of blocks out of the Unicode Private Use space (E000-F8FF and 000F0000-0010FFFF) to constructed/artificial scripts, including scripts for constructed/artificial languages. The CSUR is held at two sites, one in North America and one in Europe. Unicode is a 16-bit character code standard (also known as ISO 10646) which is intended to provide character codes for, in principle, all the world's written languages. Currently, over 40 constructed scripts are handled.
Klingon, Cirth and some other script descriptions are available.

SAMPA (Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet) is a machine-readable phonetic alphabet, developed by an international group of phoneticians under the ESPRIT project SAM (Speech Assessment Methods) in 1987-89. It consists of a mapping of symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet onto ASCII codes in the range 33..127, the 7-bit printable ASCII characters. The WWW site also contains guidelines for the transcription of the various languages to which SAMPA has been applied. It is hoped to extend it to all languages.
X-SAMPA is an extension of SAMPA for encoding the entire IPA in machine-readable form.
SAMPROSA (SAM Prosodic Transcription) is a related system for prosodic transcription (i.e. representing tones, stress, length, syllable/word boundaries, etc.)

The IPA chart of phonetic symbols.

Another ASCII rendering of the International Phonetic Alphabet.

UNIFON is a 40-letter phonetic alphabet for English.

The Ethnologue is a catalogue of all the languages of the world (or as many as the compilers could document). This consists primarily of statistical, sociological, and taxonomic information rather than linguistic descriptions. More than 6800 languages are catalogued, including 109 deaf sign languages.

The Language Materials Database is maintained by the UCLA Language Materials Project. It is a bibliography of teaching materials for a very large set of natural languages, from Abipon to Zyrien.

The Web of Online Grammars contains links to as many on-line grammars of as many languages as the compiler can find on the web. Urtwurt, Potawatomi, Spanish, Pali, and many more.

A collection of links to pages dealing with Celtic and other minority languages, language resources, localization and character set encoding issues.

The Alternative Dictionaries are dictionaries of slang in many languages, including Esperanto.

The Phonetic Survey of Diverse Languages.

The Universal Language Dictionary, hosted by Richard Harrison, is a collaborative project of the conlang mailing list, and consists of a dictionary of a set of basic concepts in (currently) seven languages: English, German, Dutch, Italian, Esperanto, Novial, and Tsolyani.

The Universal Survey of Languages is a project to create a major reference work: a general survey of all the world's languages. There is a section on invented languages.

Langmake is a tool for generating languages, by Jeffrey Henning.

The Language Construction Kit was written by Mark Rosenfelder. It contains a great deal of useful advice for constructing languages.

Names2 is a random name generator. The program is written (by me) in C and runs on Unix-like systems (and on a Mac, but only if you have MPW or some similar environment supporting a Unix-style command-line interface). You can use it to generate names for fantasy characters, words for constructed languages, pronounceable yet totally meaningless passwords, or fake quotations.

Geoff Black has written a word generator, WordGen (16-bit version for Windows 3.1 or 95; there is also a 32-bit version for 95 and NT)

FlashCards is a free flashcard program for the Macintosh (no Windows or Unix version) for helping with memorisation tasks such as vocabulary learning. You can download it from http://www.cmp.uea.ac.uk/~jrk/distribution/FlashCards.sit.Hqx. It is in binhexed stuffit format, and includes documentation and some demo vocabulary files. It is written by Richard Kennaway.

VTrain is a shareware flashcard program for Windows. There are many vocabulary files available for it. VTrain is created by Paul Raedle. Clip2VTrain is a related program for creating new vocabulary files from foreign language text. Clip2VTrain is created by Pedro Meca.

A.Word.A.Day is a mailing list which sends a different word to its members every day. Triste, pasquinade, mithridatism, portal-to-portal,... The web site has several links to other words-related resources.

An article by Larry Wall, the creator of the Perl programming language, has some interesting guidelines for the creation of a language.

Maybe building a language isn't enough. How about building an entire culture, a planet, or a universe?

Epona. Epona is the third planet of the star Taranis, otherwise known as 82 Eridani.

The Waldzell Glass Bead Game is a realization of the eponymous game of Hermann Hesse's novel "Das Glasperlenspiel". It is managed by Mark Line.

Worlds in the Net is a collection of links to fantasy worlds.

If miniaturism is more to your liking, take inspiration from the ezh-yogh controversy. You will truly have achieved something if your fictional creation can support a similarly minute debate. What, I'm not sure.

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