Some feminist theorists have argued that in patriarchy,
a standard of male "supremacism" is enforced through a variety of
cultural, political, religious, sexual, and interpersonal strategies.
Since the 19th century there have been a number of feminist movements
opposed to male supremacism, usually aimed at achieving equal legal
rights and protections for women in all cultural, political and
interpersonal relations.
During the 19th century, "The White Man's Burden",
the phrase which refers to the thought that whites have the obligation
to make the societies of the other peoples more 'civilized', was widely
used to justify imperialist policies as a noble enterprise. Thomas Carlyle, known for his historical account of the French Revolution, The French Revolution: A History,
argued that European supremacist policies were justified on the grounds
that they provided the greatest benefit to "inferior" native peoples. However, even at the time of its publication in 1849, Carlyle's main work on the subject, the Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question, was poorly received by his contemporaries.
Before the outbreak of the American Civil War, the Confederate States of America
was founded with a constitution that contained clauses which restricted
the government's ability to limit or interfere with the institution of
"negro" slavery. In the Cornerstone Speech, Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens declared that one of the Confederacy's foundational tenets was white supremacy over black slaves. Following the war, a secret society, the Ku Klux Klan, was formed in the South. Its purpose was to maintain white, Protestant supremacy after the Reconstruction period, which it did so through violence and intimidation.
According to William Nichols, religious antisemitism can be distinguished from modern antisemitism which is based on racial or ethnic grounds. "The dividing line was the possibility of effective conversion ... a Jew ceased to be a Jew upon baptism." However, with racial antisemitism, "Now the assimilated Jew was still a Jew, even after baptism ... . From the Enlightenment
onward, it is no longer possible to draw clear lines of distinction
between religious and racial forms of hostility towards Jews... Once
Jews have been emancipated and secular thinking makes its appearance,
without leaving behind the old Christian hostility towards Jews, the new
term antisemitism becomes almost unavoidable, even before explicitly
racist doctrines appear."
One of the first typologies which was used to classify various human races was invented by Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854–1936), a theoretician of eugenics, who published L'Aryen et son rôle social (1899 – "The Aryan and his social role") in 1899. In his book, he divides humanity into various, hierarchical races,
starting with the highest race which is the "Aryan white race,
dolichocephalic", and ending with the lowest race which is the
"brachycephalic", "mediocre and inert" race, that race is best
represented by Southern European, Catholic peasants". Between these, Vacher de Lapouge identified the "Homo europaeus" (Teutonic, Protestant, etc.), the "Homo alpinus" (Auvergnat, Turkish, etc.), and finally the "Homo mediterraneus" (Neapolitan, Andalus,
etc.) Jews were brachycephalic just like the Aryans were, according to
Lapouge; but he considered them dangerous for this exact reason; they
were the only group, he thought, which was threatening to displace the
Aryan aristocracy. Vacher de Lapouge became one of the leading inspirations of Naziantisemitism and Nazi racist ideology.
Cornel West, an African-American philosopher, writes that black supremacist religious views arose in America as a part of black Muslim theology in response to white supremacism.
In Africa, black Southern Sudanese allege that they are being subjected to a racist form of Arab supremacy, which they equate with the historic white supremacism of South African apartheid. The alleged genocide and ethnic cleansing in the ongoing War in Darfur has been described as an example of Arabracism.
For example, in their analysis of the sources of the conflict, Julie Flint and Alex de Waal say that Colonel Gaddafi, the leader of Libya, sponsored "Arab supremacism" across the Sahara during the 1970s. Gaddafi supported the "Islamic Legion" and the Sudanese opposition "National Front, including the Muslim Brothers and the Ansar, the Umma Party's military wing." Gaddafi tried to use such forces to annex Chad from 1979–81. Gaddafi supported the Sudanese government's war in the South during the early 1980s, and in return, he was allowed to use the Darfur region as a "back door to Chad". As a result, the first signs of an "Arab racist political platform" appeared in Darfur in the early 1980s.
In Asia, ancient Indians considered all foreigners barbarians. The Muslim scholar Al-Biruni wrote that the Indians called foreigners impure.
A few centuries later, Dubois observes that "Hindus look upon Europeans
as barbarians totally ignorant of all principles of honour and good
breeding... In the eyes of a Hindu, a Pariah (outcaste) and a European are on the same level."
The Chinese considered the Europeans repulsive, ghost-like creatures,
and they even considered them devils. Chinese writers also referred to
foreigners as barbarians.
Academics Carol Lansing and Edward D. English argue that Christian supremacism was a motivation for the Crusades in the Holy Land, as well as crusades against Muslims and pagans throughout Europe. The blood libel is a widespread European conspiracy theory which led to centuries of pogroms
and massacres of European Jewish minorities because it alleged that
Jews required the pure blood of a Christian child in order to make matzah for Passover. Thomas of Cantimpré writes of the blood curse which the Jews put upon themselves and all of their generations at the court of Pontius Pilate
where Jesus was handed a death sentence: "A very learned Jew, who in
our day has been converted to the (Christian) faith, informs us that one
enjoying the reputation of a prophet among them, toward the close of
his life, made the following prediction: 'Be assured that relief from
this secret ailment, to which you are exposed, can only be obtained
through Christian blood ("solo sanguine Christiano")." The Atlantic slave trade has also been partially attributed to Christian supremacism. The Ku Klux Klan has been described as a white supremacist Christian organization, as are many other white supremacist groups, such as the Posse Comitatus and the Christian Identity and Positive Christianity movements.
Academics Khaled Abou El Fadl, Ian Lague, and Joshua Cone note that, while the Quran and other Islamic scriptures express tolerant beliefs, there have also been numerous instances of Muslim or Islamic supremacism. Examples of how supremacists have interpreted Islam include the Muslim participation in the African slave trade, the early-20th-century pan-Islamism promoted by Abdul Hamid II, the jizya and rules of marriage in Muslim countries being imposed on non-Muslims, and the majority Muslim interpretations of the rules of pluralism in Malaysia. According to scholar Bernard Lewis, classical Islamic jurisprudence imposes an open-ended duty on Muslims to expand Muslim rule and Islamic law to all non-Muslims throughout the world.
North Africa has had numerous incidents of massacres and ethnic cleansing of Jews and Christians, especially in Morocco, Libya, and Algeria, where eventually Jews were forced to live in ghettos. Decrees ordering the destruction of synagogues were enacted during the Middle Ages in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. At certain times in Yemen, Morocco, and Baghdad, Jews were forced to convert to Islam or face the Islamic death penalty. While there were antisemitic incidents before the 20th century, antisemitism increased after the Arab–Israeli conflict. Following the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the Palestinian exodus, the creation of the State of Israel and Israeli victories during the wars of 1956 and 1967 were a severe humiliation to Israel's opponents – primarily Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. However, by the mid-1970s the vast majority of Jews had left Muslim-majority countries, moving primarily to Israel, France, and the United States. The reasons for the Jewish exodus are varied and disputed.
Ilan Pappé, an expatriate Israeli historian, writes that the First Aliyah
to Israel "established a society based on Jewish supremacy" within
"settlement-cooperatives" that were Jewish owned and operated. Joseph Massad, a professor of Arab studies, holds that "Jewish supremacism" has always been a "dominating principle" in religious and secular Zionism. Zionism was established with the goal of creating a sovereign Jewish
state, where Jews could be the majority, rather than the minority. Theodor Herzl, the ideological father of Zionism, considered antisemitism
as an eternal feature of all societies in which Jews lived as
minorities, and as a result, he believed that only a separation could
allow Jews to escape eternal persecution.
"Let them give us sovereignty over a piece of the Earth's surface, just
sufficient for the needs of our people, then we will do the rest!"
Since the 1990s, Orthodox Jewishrabbis from Israel, most notably those affiliated to Chabad-Lubavitch and religious Zionist organizations,including The Temple Institute, have set up a modern Noahide movement.
These Noahide organizations, led by religious Zionist and Orthodox
rabbis, are aimed at non-Jews in order to convince them to commit to
follow the Noahide laws. However, these religious Zionist and Orthodox rabbis that guide the modern Noahide movement, who are often affiliated with the Third Temple movement, expound a racist and supremacist ideology which consists in the belief that the Jewish people are God's chosen people and racially superior to non-Jews, and mentor Noahides because they believe that the Messianic era will begin with the rebuilding of the Third Temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem to re-institute the Jewish priesthood along with the practice of ritual sacrifices, and the establishment of a Jewish theocracy in Israel, supported by communities of Noahides. David Novak, professor of Jewish theology and ethics at the University of Toronto, has denounced the modern Noahide movement by stating that "If Jews are telling Gentiles what to do, it’s a form of imperialism".
In the aftermath of the 2022 Israeli legislative election, the winning right-wing coalition included an alliance known as Religious Zionist Party – a grouping of the Religious Zionist, Otzma Yehudit, and Noam parties. Within the context of the 2019–2022 Israeli political crisis, this was the fifth legislative election in nearly four years, as no party since 2019 had been able to form a stable coalition.Jewish-American columnist David E. Rosenberg said the Religious Zionist Party's "platform includes things like annexation of West Bank settlements, expulsion of asylum-seekers, and political control of the judicial system". He further described the Religious Zionist Party as a political party "driven by Jewish supremacy and anti-Arab racism".
The Conlang Flag, a symbol of language construction created by subscribers to the CONLANG mailing list, which represents the Tower of Babel against a rising sun
A constructed language (shortened to conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, instead of having developed naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a work of fiction. A constructed language may also be referred to as an artificial, planned or invented language, or (in some cases) a fictional language. Planned languages
(or engineered languages/engelangs) are languages that have been
purposefully designed; they are the result of deliberate, controlling
intervention and are thus of a form of language planning.
The expression planned language is sometimes used to
indicate international auxiliary languages and other languages designed
for actual use in human communication. Some prefer it to the adjective artificial, as this term may be perceived as pejorative. Outside Esperantoculture, the term language planning
means the prescriptions given to a natural language to standardize it;
in this regard, even a "natural language" may be artificial in some
respects, meaning some of its words have been crafted by conscious
decision. Prescriptive grammars, which date to ancient times for classical languages
such as Latin and Sanskrit, are rule-based codifications of natural
languages, such codifications being a middle ground between naïve
natural selection and development of language and its explicit
construction. The term glossopoeia is also used to mean language construction, particularly construction of artistic languages.
Conlang speakers are rare. For example, the Hungarian census of 2011 found 8,397 speakers of Esperanto, and the census of 2001 found 10 of Romanid, two each of Interlingua and Ido and one each of Idiom Neutral and Mundolinco. The Russian census of 2010 found that there were in Russia about 992 speakers of Esperanto (on place 120) and nine of the Esperantido Ido.
Planned, constructed, artificial
The terms "planned", "constructed", and "artificial" are used differently in some traditions. For example, few speakers of Interlingua
consider their language artificial, since they assert that it has no
invented content: Interlingua's vocabulary is taken from a small set of
natural languages, and its grammar is based closely on these source
languages, even including some degree of irregularity; its proponents
prefer to describe its vocabulary and grammar as standardized rather
than artificial or constructed. Similarly, Latino sine flexione (LsF) is a simplification of Latin from which the inflections
have been removed. As with Interlingua, some prefer to describe its
development as "planning" rather than "constructing". Some speakers of Esperanto and Esperantidoj
also avoid the term "artificial language" because they deny that there
is anything "unnatural" about the use of their language in human
communication.
By contrast, some philosophers have argued that all human languages are conventional or artificial. François Rabelais's fictional giant Pantagruel, for instance, said: "It is a misuse of terms to say that we have natural language; languages exist
through arbitrary institutions and the conventions of peoples. Voices,
as the dialecticians say, don't signify naturally, but capriciously."
Furthermore, fictional or experimental languages can be considered naturalistic if they model real world languages. For example, if a naturalistic conlang is derived a posteriori from another language (real or constructed), it should imitate natural processes of phonological, lexical, and grammatical
change. In contrast with languages such as Interlingua, naturalistic
fictional languages are not usually intended for easy learning or
communication. Thus, naturalistic fictional languages tend to be more
difficult and complex. While Interlingua has simpler grammar, syntax,
and orthography than its source languages (though more complex and
irregular than Esperanto or its descendants), naturalistic fictional
languages typically mimic behaviors of natural languages like irregular verbs and nouns, and complicated phonological processes.
Overview
In terms of purpose, most constructed languages can broadly be divided into:
Auxiliary languages (auxlangs) or IALs (for International Auxiliary Languages), devised for interlinguistic or international communication;
Artistic languages (artlangs),
devised to create aesthetic pleasure or humorous effect (secret
languages and mystical languages are also usually classified as
artlangs).
The boundaries between these categories are by no means clear. A constructed language could easily fall into more than one of the above categories. A logical language created for aesthetic
reasons would also be classifiable as an artistic language; one created
with philosophical motives could include being used as an auxiliary
language. There are no rules, either inherent in the process of language
construction or externally imposed, that would limit a constructed
language to fitting only one of the above categories.
As soon as a constructed language has a community of fluent
speakers, especially if it has numerous native speakers, it begins to
evolve and hence loses its constructed status. For example, Modern Hebrew and its pronunciation norms were developed from existing traditions of Hebrew, such as Mishnaic Hebrew and Biblical Hebrew following a general Sephardic pronunciation, rather than engineered from scratch, and has undergone considerable changes since the state of Israel was founded in 1948 (Hetzron 1990:693). However, linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann argues that Modern Hebrew, which he terms "Israeli", is a Semito-European hybrid based not only on Hebrew but also on Yiddish and other languages spoken by revivalists. Zuckermann therefore endorses the translation of the Hebrew Bible into what he calls "Israeli". Esperanto
as a living spoken language has evolved significantly from the
prescriptive blueprint published in 1887, so that modern editions of the
Fundamenta Krestomatio, a 1903 collection of early texts in the
language, require many footnotes on the syntactic and lexical
differences between early and modern Esperanto.
Proponents of constructed languages often have many reasons for using them. The famous but disputed Sapir–Whorf hypothesis
is sometimes cited; this claims that the language one speaks influences
the way one thinks. Thus, a "better" language should allow the speaker
to think more clearly or intelligently or to encompass more points of
view; this was the intention of Suzette Haden Elgin in creating Láadan, a feminist language embodied in her feminist science fiction series Native Tongue. Constructed languages have been included in standardized tests such as the SAT, where they were used to test the applicant's ability to infer and apply grammatical rules. By the same token, a constructed language might also be used to restrict thought, as in George Orwell's Newspeak, or to simplify thought, as in Toki Pona. However, linguists such as Steven Pinker argue that ideas exist independently of language. For example, in the book The Language Instinct,
Pinker states that children spontaneously re-invent slang and even
grammar with each generation. These linguists argue that attempts to
control the range of human thought through the reform of language would
fail, as concepts like "freedom" will reappear in new words if the old
words vanish.
Proponents claim a particular language makes it easier to express
and understand concepts in one area, and more difficult in others. An
example can be taken from the way various programming languages make it easier to write certain kinds of programs and harder to write others.
Another reason cited for using a constructed language is the
telescope rule, which claims that it takes less time to first learn a
simple constructed language and then a natural language, than to learn
only a natural language. Thus, if someone wants to learn English, some
suggest learning Basic English first. Constructed languages like Esperanto and Interlingua are in fact often simpler due to the typical lack of irregular verbs
and other grammatical quirks. Some studies have found that learning
Esperanto helps in learning a non-constructed language later (see
propaedeutic value of Esperanto).
One constraint on a constructed language is that if it was
constructed to be a natural language for use by fictional foreigners or
aliens, as with Dothraki and High Valyrian in the Game of Thrones series, which was adapted from the A Song of Ice and Fire
book series, the language should be easily pronounced by actors, and
should fit with and incorporate any fragments of the language already
invented by the book's author, and preferably also fit with any personal
names of fictional speakers of the language.
A priori and a posteriori languages
An a priori constructed language is one whose features (including vocabulary, grammar, etc.) are not based on an existing language, and an a posteriori language is the opposite. This categorization, however, is not absolute, as many constructed languages may be called a priori when considering some linguistic factors, and at the same time a posteriori when considering other factors.
A priori language
An a priori language (from Latina priori,
"from the former") is any constructed language of which all or a number
of features are not based on existing languages, but rather invented or
elaborated so as to work in a different way or to allude to different
purposes. Some a priori languages are designed to be international auxiliary languages
that remove what could be considered an unfair learning advantage for
native speakers of a source language that would otherwise exist for a posteriori languages. Others, known as philosophical or taxonomic languages,
try to categorize their vocabulary, either to express an underlying
philosophy or to make it easier to recognize new vocabulary. Finally,
many artistic languages,
created for either personal use or for use in a fictional medium,
employ consciously constructed grammars and vocabularies, and are best
understood as a priori.
An a posteriori language (from Latina posteriori, "from the latter"), according to French linguist Louis Couturat, is any constructed language whose elements are borrowed from or based on existing languages. The term can also be extended to controlled versions of natural languages, and is most commonly used to refer to vocabulary despite other features. Likewise, zonal auxiliary languages (auxiliary languages for speakers of a particular language family) are a posteriori by definition.
While most auxiliary languages are a posteriori due to their intended function as a medium of communication, many artistic languages are fully a posteriori in design—many for the purposes of alternate history. In distinguishing whether the language is a priori or a posteriori, the prevalence and distribution of respectable traits is often the key.
Grammatical speculation dates from Classical Antiquity, appearing for instance in Plato's Cratylus
in Hermogenes's contention that words are not inherently linked to what
they refer to; that people apply "a piece of their own voice ... to the
thing".
Athenaeus tells the story of two figures: Dionysius of Sicily and Alexarchus:
Dionysius of Sicily created neologisms like menandros "virgin" (from menei "waiting" and andra "husband") for standard Greek parthenos; menekratēs "pillar" (from menei "it remains in one place" and kratei "it is strong") for standard stulos; and ballantion "javelin" (from balletai enantion "thrown against someone") for standard akon.
Alexarchus of Macedon, the brother of King Cassander of Macedon, was the founder of the city of Ouranopolis.
Athenaeus recounts a story told by Heracleides of Lembos that
Alexarchus "introduced a peculiar vocabulary, referring to a rooster as a
"dawn-crier", a barber as a "mortal-shaver", a drachma as "worked
silver", ... and a herald as an aputēs [from ēputa "loud-voiced"].
"He [Alexarchus] once wrote something ... to the public authorities
in Casandreia ... As for what this letter says, in my opinion not even
the Pythian god could make sense of it."
While the mechanisms of grammar suggested by classical philosophers were designed to explain existing languages (Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit), they were not used to construct new grammars. Roughly contemporary to Plato, in his descriptive grammar of Sanskrit, Pāṇini
constructed a set of rules for explaining language, so that the text of
his grammar may be considered a mixture of natural and constructed
language.
Early constructed languages
Page 68r of the Voynich manuscript. This three-page foldout from the manuscript includes a chart that appears astronomical.
A legend recorded in the seventh-century Irish work Auraicept na n-Éces claims that Fénius Farsaid visited Shinar after the confusion of tongues, and he and his scholars studied the various languages for ten years, taking the best features of each to create in Bérla tóbaide ("the selected language"), which he named Goídelc—the Irish language. This appears to be the first mention of the concept of a constructed language in literature.
The earliest non-natural languages were considered less "constructed" than "super-natural", mystical, or divinely inspired. The Lingua Ignota, recorded in the 12th century by St. Hildegard of Bingen, is an example, and apparently the first entirely artificial language. It is a form of private mystical cant (see also Enochian). An important example from Middle-Eastern culture is Balaibalan, invented in the 16th century. Kabbalistic grammatical speculation was directed at recovering the original language spoken by Adam and Eve in Paradise, lost in the confusion of tongues. The first Christian project for an ideal language is outlined in Dante Alighieri's De vulgari eloquentia, where he searches for the ideal Italian vernacular suited for literature. Ramon Llull's Ars Magna
was a project of a perfect language with which the infidels could be
convinced of the truth of the Christian faith. It was basically an
application of combinatorics on a given set of concepts. During the Renaissance, Lullian and Kabbalistic ideas were drawn upon in a magical context, resulting in cryptographic applications.
Perfecting language
Renaissance interest in Ancient Egypt, notably the discovery of the Hieroglyphica of Horapollo, and first encounters with the Chinese script directed efforts towards a perfect written language. Johannes Trithemius, in Steganographia and Polygraphia, attempted to show how all languages can be reduced to one. In the 17th century, interest in magical languages was continued by the Rosicrucians and alchemists (like John Dee and his Enochian). Jakob Boehme in 1623 spoke of a "natural language" (Natursprache) of the senses.
17th and 18th century: advent of philosophical languages
The 17th century saw the rise of projects for "philosophical" or "a priori" languages, such as:
Francis Lodwick's A Common Writing (1647) and The Groundwork or Foundation laid (or So Intended) for the Framing of a New Perfect Language and a Universal Common Writing (1652)
Sir Thomas Urquhart's Ekskybalauron (1651) and Logopandecteision (1652)
John Wilkins' Essay towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language, 1668
These early taxonomic conlangs produced systems of hierarchical classification that were intended to result in both spoken and written expression. Leibniz had a similar purpose for his lingua generalis
of 1678, aiming at a lexicon of characters upon which the user might
perform calculations that would yield true propositions automatically,
as a side-effect developing binary calculus.
These projects were not only occupied with reducing or modelling
grammar, but also with the arrangement of all human knowledge into
"characters" or hierarchies, an idea that with the Enlightenment would ultimately lead to the Encyclopédie. Many of these 17th–18th centuries conlangs were pasigraphies,
or purely written languages with no spoken form or a spoken form that
would vary greatly according to the native language of the reader.
Leibniz and the encyclopedists realized that it is impossible to
organize human knowledge unequivocally in a tree diagram, and
consequently to construct an a priori language based on such a classification of concepts. Under the entry Charactère, D'Alembert critically reviewed the projects of philosophical languages of the preceding century. After the Encyclopédie, projects for a priori languages moved more and more to the lunatic fringe.
Individual authors, typically unaware of the history of the idea,
continued to propose taxonomic philosophical languages until the early
20th century (e.g. Ro), but most recent engineered languages have had more modest goals; some are limited to a specific field, like mathematical formalism or calculus (e.g. Lincos and programming languages), others are designed for eliminating syntactical ambiguity (e.g., Loglan and Lojban) or maximizing conciseness (e.g., Ithkuil).
Already in the Encyclopédie attention began to focus on a posteriori auxiliary languages. Joachim Faiguet de Villeneuve in the article on Langue wrote a short proposition of a "laconic" or regularized grammar of French. During the 19th century, a bewildering variety of such International Auxiliary Languages (IALs) were proposed, so that Louis Couturat and Léopold Leau in Histoire de la langue universelle (1903) reviewed 38 projects.
The first of these that made any international impact was Volapük, proposed in 1879 by Johann Martin Schleyer;
within a decade, 283 Volapükist clubs were counted all over the globe.
However, disagreements between Schleyer and some prominent users of the
language led to schism, and by the mid-1890s it fell into obscurity,
making way for Esperanto, proposed in 1887 by L. L. Zamenhof, and its descendants. Interlingua, the most recent auxlang to gain a significant number of speakers, emerged in 1951, when the International Auxiliary Language Association published its Interlingua–English Dictionary and an accompanying grammar. The success of Esperanto did not stop others from trying to construct new auxiliary languages, such as Leslie Jones' Eurolengo, which mixes elements of English and Spanish.
Loglan (1955) and its descendants constitute a pragmatic return to the aims of the a priori languages, tempered by the requirement of usability of an auxiliary language. Thus far, these modern a priori languages have garnered only small groups of speakers.
Robot Interaction Language
(2010) is a spoken language that is optimized for communication between
machines and humans. The major goals of ROILA are that it should be
easily learnable by the human user, and optimized for efficient
recognition by computer speech recognition algorithms.
Artists may use language as a source of creativity in art, poetry, or
calligraphy, or as a metaphor to address themes as cultural diversity
and the vulnerability of the individual in a globalized world.
Some people prefer however to take pleasure in constructing,
crafting a language by a conscious decision for reasons of literary
enjoyment or aesthetic reasons without any claim of usefulness. Such artistic languages begin to appear in Early Modern literature (in Pantagruel, and in Utopian contexts), but they only seem to gain notability as serious projects beginning in the 20th century. A Princess of Mars (1912) by Edgar Rice Burroughs was possibly the first fiction of that century to feature a constructed language. J. R. R. Tolkien developed families of related fictional languages and discussed artistic languages publicly, giving a lecture entitled "A Secret Vice" in 1931 at a congress. (Orwell's Newspeak is considered a satire of an international auxiliary language rather than an artistic language proper.)
By the beginning of the first decade of the 21st century, it had
become common for science-fiction and fantasy works set in other worlds
to feature constructed languages, or more commonly, an extremely limited
but defined vocabulary which suggests the existence of a
complete language, or whatever portions of the language are needed for
the story, and constructed languages are a regular part of the genre,
appearing in Star Wars, Star Trek, The Lord of the Rings (Elvish), Stargate SG-1, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Game of Thrones (Dothraki language and Valyrian languages), The Expanse, Avatar, Dune and the Myst series of computer adventure games.
Ownership of constructed languages
The
matter of whether or not a constructed language can be owned or
protected by intellectual property laws, or if it would even be possible
to enforce those laws, is contentious.
In a 2015 lawsuit, CBS and Paramount Pictures
challenged a fan film project called Axanar, stating the project
infringed upon their intellectual property, which included the Klingon language,
among other creative elements. During the controversy, Marc Okrand, the
language's original designer expressed doubt as to whether Paramount's
claims of ownership were valid.
David J. Peterson, a linguist who created multiple well-known constructed languages including the Valyrian languages and Dothraki,
advocated a similar opinion, saying that "Theoretically, anyone can
publish anything using any language I created, and, in my opinion,
neither I nor anyone else should be able to do anything about it."
However, Peterson also expressed concern that the respective
rights-holders—regardless of whether or not their ownership of the
rights is legitimate—would be likely to sue individuals who publish
material in said languages, especially if the author might profit from
said material.
Furthermore, comprehensive learning material for such constructed
languages as High Valyrian and Klingon has been published and made
freely accessible on the language-learning platform Duolingo—but those courses are licensed by the respective copyright holders. Because only a few such disputes have occurred thus far, the legal consensus on ownership of languages remains uncertain.
The Tasmanian Aboriginal Center claims ownership of Palawa kani,
an attempted composite reconstruction of up to a dozen extinct
Tasmanian indigenous languages, and has asked Wikipedia to remove its
page on the project. However, there is no current legal backing for the
claim.
Modern conlang organizations
Various papers on constructed languages were published from the 1970s through the 1990s, such as Glossopoeic Quarterly, Taboo Jadoo, and The Journal of Planned Languages.
The Conlang Mailing List was founded in 1991, and later split off an
AUXLANG mailing list dedicated to international auxiliary languages. In
the early to mid-1990s a few conlang-related zines were published as
email or websites, such as Vortpunoj and Model Languages. The Conlang mailing list has developed a community of conlangers with its own customs, such as translation challenges and translation relays,
and its own terminology. Sarah Higley reports from results of her
surveys that the demographics of the Conlang list are primarily men from
North America and western Europe, with a smaller number from Oceania,
Asia, the Middle East, and South America, with an age range from
thirteen to over sixty; the number of women participating has increased
over time.
More recently founded online communities include the Zompist
Bulletin Board (ZBB; since 2001) and the Conlanger Bulletin Board.
Discussion on these forums includes presentation of members' conlangs
and feedback from other members, discussion of natural languages,
whether particular conlang features have natural language precedents,
and how interesting features of natural languages can be repurposed for
conlangs, posting of interesting short texts as translation challenges,
and meta-discussion about the philosophy of conlanging, conlangers'
purposes, and whether conlanging is an art or a hobby.
Another 2001 survey by Patrick Jarrett showed an average age of 30.65,
with the average time since starting to invent languages 11.83 years.
A more recent thread on the ZBB showed that many conlangers spend a
relatively small amount of time on any one conlang, moving from one
project to another; about a third spend years on developing the same
language.
Interlinguistics, also known as cosmoglottics,
as the science of planned languages has existed for more than a century. Formalised by Otto Jespersen in 1931 as the science of interlanguages, in more recent times, the field has been more focused with language planning,
the collection of strategies to deliberately influence the structure
and function of a living language. In this framework, interlanguages
become a subset of planned languages, i.e. extreme cases of language
planning.
Otto Jespersen is commonly regarded as the founder of the field of interlinguistics.
The hybrid term was first coined in French (as Interlinguistique) by the Belgian EsperantistJules Meysmans.
The main historical periods of interlinguistics are:
first, the pioneer era (1879–1911), when its basis was put forth;
secondly, the foundational era (1911–1951), when the
interlinguistics wars took place to decide the most appropriate form of
an auxiliary language;
thirdly, the school era (1951–1990), when independent
Interlinguistics schools formed in different countries, mainly Germany,
Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland, each with particular
attention to Esperanto;
lastly, the current era of language policy
(1990–today), during which interlinguistics is more tightly integrated
with other disciplines, mainly linguistics and various social and
political sciences, particularly via the topics of globalism, linguistic justice, management of multilingualism, and new forms of mobility.
At the Institute of Linguistics of AMU there is the extramural
Interlinguistic studies program. Over the course of three years these
studies provide the students with a basic knowledge of general
linguistics, interlinguistics, international and intercultural communication
with a focus on the linguistics, culture and movement of the
internationally dispersed and naturally functioning planned language Esperanto. Every third year the Interlinguistic Studies program also organizes an international interlinguistic symposium.
At the University of Amsterdam there is also a chair of interlinguistics and Esperanto.
Field of studies
The field of interlinguistics is concerned with international planned languages [also called 'constructed languages', 'auxiliary languages', or 'artificial languages'] as Esperanto, and with the relationship between planned languages and language planning.
Increasingly, undergraduate courses in planned languages are expanding
to embrace not only the history of languages planned for international
use, but also the field of imaginary and fictional languages. Interlinguistics is also concerned with investigating how ethnic and international planned languages work as lingua franca and with the possibilities of optimizing interlinguistic communication.
The term Interlinguistics can be interpreted in at least two ways:
Study of interlinguae, i.e., of interlanguages that serve for interlinguistic communication - not to be confused with the interim languages of language learners, which also came to be called "interlanguages" by some authors.
Study of phenomena that can be observed inter linguae 'between languages'.
Among these interpretations, the first one is by far the most well established, while Mario Wandruszka had only the second one in mind.
The term appears first to have been used in French (interlinguistique) by Jules Meysmans in 1911 in a text concerning international auxiliary languages. It became more widely accepted subsequent to an address by the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen
to the 2nd International Congress of Linguists in 1931. According to
Jespersen, interlinguistics is "that branch of the science of language
which deals with the structure and basic ideas of all languages with the
view to the establishing of a norm for interlanguages, i.e.
auxiliary languages destined for oral and written use between people who
cannot make themselves understood by means of their mother tongues".
According to this definition, investigations that are useful for
optimizing interlinguistic communication are central to the discipline,
and the purpose may be to develop a new language intended for
international use or for use within a multilingual country or union.
Research of this kind has been undertaken by the International
Delegation, which developed Ido (1907), and by the International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA), which developed Interlingua (1951).
Valter Tauli considered interlinguistics as a subdiscipline of language planning. The principles recommended by him for language planning
applied to the guided development of national languages are also, and
more liberally so, applicable to constructed interlanguages. It is
noteworthy that these principles have close counterparts among Grice's conversational maxims.
These maxims describe how effective communication in conversation is
achieved, and in order to function well, a language must be such that it
allows respecting these maxims, which languages not always do.
Most publications in the field of interlinguistics are, however, not so constructive, but rather descriptive, comparative, historic, sociolinguistic, or concerned with translation by humans or machines. As for Esperanto,
which is the most widely used constructed interlanguage, there is a
relatively abundant literature about the language itself and its philology (see Esperantology).
Only a few of the many constructed languages have been applied practically to any noteworthy extent. The most prosperous were Volapük (1879, Johann Martin Schleyer), Esperanto (1887 Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof), Latino sine flexione (1903, Giuseppe Peano), Ido (1907, Louis Couturat), Occidental-Interlingue (1922, Edgar de Wahl) and Interlingua (1951, IALA and Alexander Gode), with Esperanto being the one gathering the most significant community of active speakers at present. Here, the Bliss symbols (1949, Charles K. Bliss)
deserve also to be mentioned. These were intended for international
communication, but have found their field of application elsewhere,
namely as an aid for persons who lack an adequate ability of using
ordinary language, because of motorical or cognitive handicaps.
Kinds of interlanguages
The following table lists only one representative for each type explicitly.
Among constructed languages, it is usual to distinguish between a priori languages and a posteriori languages.
The latter are based on one or, more often, several source languages,
while this is not evident for a priori languages, e.g., the philosophical languages of the 17th century, Solresol and the logical languages of the 20th century, such as Loglan and Lojban. Spontaneously arisen Interlanguages are necessarily a posteriori or iconic (using imaging or imitating signs).
Bibliography
On the initiative of Klaus Schubert, Detlev Blanke's
1985 book "Internationale Plansprachen (Eine Einführung)"
["International Constructed Languages (An Introduction)"], still the
standard German work on interlinguistics, is now available online. It can be downloaded, as scanned pages in a PDF file (250 MB in size), from the German National Library.
Gobbo, Federico, 2020, Introduction to Interlinguistics. Munich: GRIN Publishing
Schubert, Klaus (Ed.): Interlinguistics. Aspects of the Science of Planned Languages. Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1989.
Кузнецов, С.Н. (1987). Теоретические основы интерлингвистики.
Москва: Издательство Университета дружбы народов. [Kuznetsov, S.N.
(1987). Theoretical Foundations of Interlinguistics. Moscow: University
of peoples friendship]
David J. Peterson.
(2015), The art of language invention: From horse-lords to dark elves,
the words behind the world-building, New York: Penguin, 292 pp.
External links
(plulingva) Language Problems and Language Planning
(LPLP) is een 'peer-reviewed international and multilingual journal
devoted to the study of multilingualism and language policy' en heeft
geregeld een rubriek Interlinguistics / Interlingüística / Interlinguistik / Interlingvistiko