# Question
Title: Is there an existing constructed language that once was dead?
That means, are there any such conlangs that exist today but were once declared as dead or not in use by any community?

# Answer
> 11 votes
Since conlangs by their very nature don't start out with any speakers, and in most cases the author is not immediately a skilled user of the language, conlangs tend start out dead, and so under this definition almost any conlang with a speaker community would technically once have been dead.

However, going by "dying" as having a community, then losing it, reliable data is somewhat hard to find, as a small remainder of a community (which could be as little as two individuals' private postal correspondence) can be very hard to locate especially in pre-internet days, though it seems that *Idiom Neutral*, published in 1902, once had largely fallen out of use, but has recieved a recent revival by enthusiasts in a couple of internet usergroups and blogs.

# Answer
> 11 votes
My answer is a little biased, but I can speak for the history of Solresol. Solresol was invented in the early 1800s, grew in popularity over the next ~70 years, even after the death of its creator, and then (apparently) abruptly died out in the early 1900s, despite supposedly being at the peak of its popularity. There were only a few brief mentions of Solresol throughout the 1900s in books about universal language attempts. Then, in the 1990s, someone started a mailing list discussion about Solresol through reading one of those books, and the community has been slowly growing ever since, with a desire to further develop and promote the language.

Gufferdk makes a good point that it's difficult to prove the "death" of a conlang. There is no known documentation of Solresol being in use through most of the 1900s, but I cannot prove that more private communication did not exist.

---
Tags: history
---


# Question
Title: Why is the Lord's Prayer so common as a translation?
I'm an amateur conlanger, but I've seen multiple instances of people using the Lord's Prayer as a test or a way of showing off a translation of their conlang. I've even done it a couple times myself.

Why is this such a common practice among conlangers?

# Answer
It is a long standing tradition to use the Lord's prayer as a sample text for illustrating natural languages, for instance, the mid-16th century Cosmographia by Sebastian Münster contains the Lord's prayer in Finnish as an illustration of the Finnish language.

It has the advantage of being available in many languages, including otherwise ill-documented or dead languages.

Its disadvantages are the religious bias and the fact, that some very marked constructions tend to occur in this text (in German, there is a relative clause in the second person singular *..., der Du bist im Himmel, ...* a really rare beast).

In addidition, the Greek source contains a word whose meaning is not securely known, namely the word ἐπιούσιος (epiousios), for more information see this answer on linguistics.se.
> 20 votes

# Answer
Apart from the historical usage that Sir Cornflakes brings up, the *Pater Noster* is simply a short, relatively straightforward, universally well known text. Probably the other most common text is the Tower of Babel story. Again, short & straightforward. Perfect texts for the glossopoet whose language is not yet all that robust either lexically or grammatically. This one also touches kind of near to the heart of all glossopoets.

I don't see any particular religious bias in either text, so that's a ymmv (and anyway, not a good road to go down, please). As for that 2s relative clause in the German translation, of course, the same kind of rarity is in the English text. Good exercise for the nascent invented language! And good exercise for the glossopoet, having to think about and sort out curiosities of grammar right from the start!
> 8 votes

# Answer
Christians are quite firm in their beliefs and as such many pray the Our Father (Pater Noster) with great devotion. I would be very surprised if a Christian liturgical celebration did not recite the Our Father at their Sunday services. I know many who recite this prayer before meals.

Given the popularity of this prayer, I am not surprised that it is so commonly used as a translation tool. Even some private schools will pray the Our Father before class and that in turn will be said in the language of the class being taught: Pater Noster for Latin class and the Notre Pere for class in French.

It would be interesting to see if some Christian high school would recite the Lord's Prayer in Elvish in a Constructed Language course if one exists.

> The Quenya translation is by J.R.R. Tolkien (published in Vinyar Tengwar #43).
>
> Átaremma i ëa han ëa,
>
> na aire esselya,
>
> aranielya na tuluva,
>
> na care indómelya
>
> cemende tambe Erumande.
>
> Ámen anta síra ilaurëa massamma,
>
> ar ámen apsene úcaremmar
>
> sív’ emme apsenet tien i úcarer emmen.
>
> Álame tulya úsahtienna
>
> mal áme etelehta ulcullo.
>
> Násie.

As one can see the Our father is short enough to be memorized over a very short period of time and this prayer has immense value for a certain percentage of the population.

With all due respect let us remember that the Lord's Prayer was taught by Jesus Christ himself. For those who believe that is huge.
> 5 votes

---
Tags: translation
---


# Question
Title: What are some options for alternative contrasts in demonstratives?
Most languages contrast demonstrative in a "here/there/over there" distance system, with two to five grades (with some referring to the hearer's location too). I'm looking for a different concept for demonstrative contrast.

Does anyone have suggestions for me?

# Answer
As the linked WALS chapter already mentions, a common distinction is to contrast near speaker/near listener/distal rather than a simple distance constrast.

One way to make such as system more "interesting" can be to add additional usages or shades of meaning to the different demonstratives, for example having one be a neutral term and the other one that is only used when specific focus on the distance is desired, or alternatively having a neutral demonstrative in addition to ones overtly marked for distance (the WALS chapter again already has examples of this, mentioning modern Hebrew and Lithuanian respectively). Korafe (TNG, Oro Province PNG) has a 3 demonstratives *e, a, o* in a speaker/listener/distal system which additionally serve the function of showing emontional evolvement of the speaker in utterance, with *a* "near listener" being the neutral default, *e* "near speaker" showing a great deal of involvement and *o* "distal" showing a desire of the speaker to distance and dissociate him/herself from the utterance1 pp.75-77.

Variables may be paradigmatically overlaid on top of a distance system, e.g. a visibility contrast as seen in Malagasy(Astronesian, Madagascar), or may supplement it, for example by having a 3-way proximal/distal/non-visible contrast. Other contrasts than visibility are possible, for example in Fore(TNG, Eastern Higlands Province PNG), which has a 5-way speaker/listener/proximal/medial/distal system, with proximal and distal further exhibiting a 3-way same level/above/below vertical relationship, for a total of 9 different demonstratives.

Other than overlaying various such contrasts on a system there is also the possibility of instead having a large set of what may be called "positional stems", whith relatively specific semantics such as "up above", "on the beach" or "towards the Siberian mainland" which can then either be used as or derived into demonstratives. The various Yup'ik languages(Eskaleut, Bering Sea area) are an example of languages with a lot of these, and using various specialised and general nominal morphology allows forming demonstrative pronouns and adverbs with meanings such as "the ones up there" or "from the two entities upstairs/on the mountain", though I think there is a fair bit of variation in the actual meaning of the different stems between the different lects and langs. Section III.4 of this document covers them summarily as they are used in Gambell, St. Lawrence Island.

A somewhat similar in result but structureally different approach to this is exemplified by Nasioi(South Bougainville, Bougainville Province PNG), which rather than have a large inventory of deictic stems and a limited set of affixes instead has just one demonstrative stem *a~e* from which a large number of directional, as well as some nominalising and oblique affixes may derive different demonstratives such as *a-un-toom-peto* `DEM-NOM-down.north-near.movement_toward`"that down there, closer, ascending towards us from the north" or *e-eʔ-dan-to* `DEM-INSTR-seaward-far` "by going seaward far away (from us)".
> 6 votes

# Answer
I can imagine a system that is based on size/importance instead of one based on near me/near you/distant. In this system, one demonstrative would point to the larger, more massive, more important, less recently introduced etc., another would point to the smaller, less massive, less important, more recently introduced target. Various degrees of intermediates could be thought of between these two extremes (but I think just one intermediate would be the most obvious choice.

More practical examples:

* Two people talking about cars on a road. In a this/that system, one might say:

> I like that huge car.

while pointing at one. In the system I’m imagining, that would turn into:

> I like \[Demonstrative-important\] car.

without the need to point a finger. It would immediately imply the largest car to be seen.
* A discussion about which colour a dress should be. A blue one was introduced first, a red one second and now we are looking at a green one.

> I like \[Demonstrative-intermediate\] best.

Even though we may be looking at the green one and without turning any heads it would be clear that red is preferred. My train of thoughts here is that the first introduced object has been sitting around for a while in the discussion and thus acquired some sort of importance of the elder.
* It can even easily be applied to people. Depending on what the culture of your conlang values, I can imagine both mere height or age/respect factoring into the decision which one of two people would get the important demonstrative. In Japan, if the choice is between the young, tiny professor and the older, larger secretary, the professor would probably be labelled with \[demonstrative-important\]. But going by age or size alone may make more sense in other cultures.
* An interesting feature when applying it to people is that the demonstrative would change depending on who is a potential target. Comparing a teacher to their students would mean they receive \[demonstrative-important\]. However, if the headmaster is part of the group being talked about, the same teacher would suddenly be \[demonstrative-intermediate\] or \[demonstrative-unimportant\].

Of course, many more examples are possible.
> 5 votes

---
Tags: grammar, typology
---


# Question
Title: Does Lojban completely remove semantic ambiguity?
As a constructed, syntactically unambiguous language (Wikipedia), does Lojban also completely eliminate *semantic* ambiguity? If not, what are some examples?

# Answer
> 8 votes
Let's take an element of Lojban's grammar, and see if it's semantically ambiguous.
In lojban, *tanru* are basically two predicates in adposition. The first one semantically modifies the second one; and that's all.

Example:

* {`lo zdani gerku cu barda`}: The house dog is big.
* {`lo gerku zdani cu barda`}: The kennel is big.

Where {`zdani`} (roughly) means "home", {`gerku`} means "dog", and {`barda`} means "big (the rest is grammatical witchcraft, don't bother).

In the first example, {`zdani gerku`} is syntactically a *tanru*, and {`zdani`} modifies {`gerku`}. However, the *tanru* is primarily about {`gerku`}.
In the second one, it's the reverse. {`gerku zdani`} is also syntactically a *tanru*, but {`gerku`} modifies {`zdani`}; and the overall tanru is about {`zadni`}, not {`gerku`}.

However, it isn't possible to make assumptions about the overall meaning of a tanru. Though it's syntactically not ambiguous, it is semantically ambiguous.
I've chosen the english “house dog” and “kennel”, but it was just my intent, and english translates this way. Officially, it's not possible to infer the meaning from a tanru.

You can even read yourself in the last official reference grammar that “All tanru are ambiguous semantically.”

For a surer version:

* {`lo gerku poi ta'e zvati lo zdani cu barda`}: The dog that uses to live at the house is big
* {`lo zdani poi zukte ke'a lo nu stuzi lo gerku cu barda`}: The house that is aimed so that dogs could live in is big.

EDIT: added an explanation on how it's ambiguous, and the surer examples.

---
Tags: lojban, ambiguity
---


# Question
Title: What are common origins of accusative case markers?
What are the primary way(s) accusative case markers can develop?

The primary way of development of oblique case markers seems relatively straightforward, with attachment of adpositions (which can already be considered "case markers" under some definitions and which can in turn come from nouns or verbs) on the noun, then possible generalisation onto all elements of the NP as agreement. Ergative cases are a little less straightforward, but they very frequently have an oblique double function, hinting at origins such as reinterpretation of passive constructions or the generalisation of usage of e.g. instrumental or ablative case markers as markers of unexpected agency (e.g. via the occasional omission of agents in sentences like "\[the man\] opened the door **with** the key").

The emergence of accusative cases seem less straightforward to me though, and while reinterpretations of antipassives are a readily availible source that doesn't to me seem like a plausible origin for the majority of accusative markers, nor does it provide a way to go from no case marking to accusative (which seems like a thing that should be able to happen), and I'm not aware of any similar broad tendency of oblique double-function as seen in ergatives which could otherwise hint at origins. As such I particularly would like to know what oblique cases could reasonably be extended to accusative, and under what circumstances the original extension (from which further generalisation could be done) may occur under, and additionally if there are any reasons accusatives seem to have fewer double functions (even if this is just a result of me looking in the wrong places).

# Answer
> 10 votes
This is merely a marginal answer and I’m sure there’s a lot more data that might prove valuable, but in multiple Romance languages (at least Spanish and Romansh) the preposition *a* has developed into an accusative marker for particularly animate objects. This preposition derives from Latin *ad* “to(wards)” and is in both languages somewhat equivalent to English *to* or *at* in usage (in Romansh it is commonly used to mark the dative as well, as in French).

In general I would not be surprised to see allative or dative adpositions turn into accusative markers, there is quite a bit of overlap in the meanings (compare “I hit towards you” and “I hit you”).

---
Tags: morphology, diachronics, case
---


# Question
Title: Are there concrete examples of slang developing within a conlang?
One of the unique challenges of a constructed language, in my mind, is how they handle the way in which language longs to break rules. In other words, how does constructed language handle **slang**?

For the most part, the entire notion of underground language runs entirely contrary to the notion of *constructed* language, where the rules are strictly prescribed.

However, in unique cases where conlangs have had time to brew with native speakers, such as with Esperanto, have we seen specific examples of slang develop within the language? What conditions seem to prompt the development of slang terms in such circumstances?

# Answer
Wiktionary has a list of Esperanto internet slang but most of these I've never seen or heard used before (at least in the main esperanto chats on Telegram).

**Esperanto slang terms I've heard or used**

* krokodili - to speak in a language other than esperanto in a group of esperantists. No one really knows where it originated but the most popular story seems to be that it's because crocodiles have big mouths and small brains. "Ne krokodilu" is a very commonly used phrase.
* sal - hi (short for saluton)
* kvf - how are you (abbreviation of kiel vi fartas)
* mdr - lol (multe da ridoj)
* mns - idk (mi ne scias)

**Interjections**

* ho ve (occasionally just "ve") - oh geez
(according to this post on Esperanto SE the literal translation is "oh woe" but who says that)
* 8, ok, okej - k, ok, okay
("ok" is the word for eight in Esperanto, mdr.)
* ho - oh
* jes ja - yes, indeed
(according to this post on Esperanto SE "ja" can be used in other situations, but I have never heard or seen it used other than after "jes")
* Fek' - f\*ck
* Kio la fek - what the f\*ck
(This is an obvious anglicism and considered "grammatically incorrect" by many esperantists, who will tell you it's actually kio feke)
* Volap\*ko - "the v word". More offensive than all the offensive words you know combined.
> 18 votes

# Answer
In Esperanto, the word *knuflo* is mainly used by **young** people, who participate in local **meetings**, around the **dutch-speaking regions** of Flanders and the Netherlands. It is almost not used in international context, like on the Internet ("knuflo" esperanto gives less than 12 results with Google), outside of groups that are community specific. Outside of these groups, the word is not understood.

Knuflo is like hugging, but longer, with more parts of the body. It is like cuddling, but it is hard to describe. Users say you have to receive a *knuflo* to understand it, and you have to experience it to understand why the word is needed in the language.

So here, you have three factors. People sharing the same factor tend to speak together. When people speak mainly within their own community, slang appear.

* **Age** factor: Young people coin new words for the **new environment**, and for **concepts that are felt important for the social group**. It is exactly the same in Esperanto. But there is no clear barrier. Here is a footage of an older person using the word "knuflo".
* **Location** factor: Not all Esperanto-speakers participate regularly in Esperanto events, in fact only a minority do. There is an **event-slang**, with words such as "gufujo", "stelo (mono)", etc. Esperanto events are often attended by people from neighboring countries. This way local slang is shared among people of different countries and age. Because of this, you can sometimes hear "knuflo" in French-speaking Belgium and Germany (near the Netherlands). The word is also shared in huge international youth events like JES and IJK, where a consequent number of participants come from the knuflo-region.
* **Language** factor: "knuflo" comes directly from the Dutch verb "knuffelen". Dutch-speaking beginners who are not aware of similar words like "brakumo" "kareso" "dorlotado" are more likely to remember and understand "knuflo". This kind of **beginner-slang** tend to not go outside the local club, but "knuflo" is an odd exception. Maybe because some local experienced speakers think it brings new meaning.
> 13 votes

---
Tags: esperanto, language-change
---


# Question
Title: Are there conlangs which compel their users to speak with honesty?
George Orwell's novel *1984* introduced us to Newspeak, a language devised by authorities to be entirely misleading.

Languages that attempt to guide knowledge have been termed Orwellian and, more technically, *relativistic* or *Sapir-Whorf.*

Any examples of languages that are opposite of Newspeak, compelled to be genuine?

# Answer
> 12 votes
I don't think that languages, whether natural or constructed, have this power.

The fact is that there are numerous ways to be deceptive. You can straight out lie, you can speak as if there is uncertainty when really there is not, you can be deceptive through what you don't say, and you can be deceptive by saying true facts that are not actually strictly relevant, something called "paltering".

Like most linguists now, I think that the weak Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, that our language influences our thoughts and decisions, is surely true, but I am sceptical about the strong version, that language completely determines and limits our thought categories. Either way, I don't think it's really relevant to the aspect of human psychology which makes deception possible. Lying through omission or distraction is possible because our minds can generate multiple possible statements to make to others, each disclosing a different level of truth, but none of us are compelled to speak every thought that enters our minds.

Perhaps someone has invented an alien species with an alien psychology and an alien language to speak, and maybe in their universe their language does compel them to speak honestly. But what would it mean to prove such a thing, and how could anyone else present an argument to refute their claims? So for humans I say the answer is no, and for fictional creatures it's not a useful question for us to ask.

# Answer
> 7 votes
One example of this would be the massively more complex Ithkuil, whose author says this:

> As for a hypothetical community of Ithkuil-speakers, I do not think Ithkuil would serve the purpose of being the primary day-to-day language, as I agree the language would quickly degenerate into a “vulgar” form due to its complexity. **I see Ithkuil’s hypothetical usage as being a specialized language for specific purposes where exactitude and clarity of cognitive intention is called for, and to make deliberate obfuscation difficult, e.g., political debate, the teaching and discussion of scientific disciplines, the discussion of philosophy, the written presentation and preservation of history.** As such, it would be a “learned” language (like learning a computer programming language or the predicate calculus) whose structure would be consciously preserved by its speakers. An analogy might be the way that Classical Latin continued to be used for over a milennium after the death of its last native spearker for academic and religious purposes. A similar analogy is the use of Modern Standard Arabic (essentially a modernized version of Classical Arabic) in official and academic contexts.

emphasis mine

Due to the nature of the question, it's highly inconcievable that we could answer it exhaustively.

# Answer
> 7 votes
All languages, natural or constructed, must have verbal negation. So, in any language, it must be possible to say something and to negate that same thing:

> Sidney is in Australia.
>
> Sidney is not in Australia.

Since only one of these can be true, it follows that any language makes possible to say at least as many falseties as truths (in practice, many more, as we can lie that Sidney is in Russia, Gabon, or the Middle Earth). And so, no. A language cannot compel its speakers into honesty.

---
Tags: sapir-whorf
---


title: How do you pronounce the ":" in Wede:i?

text:
# Question
Title: How do you pronounce the ":" in Wede:i?
Looking at the zompist page for Wede:i, I don't see any instructions on how to pronounce the ":" that we see in the name of the language and other places.

Am I missing something? How are you supposed to pronounce the ":"?

# Answer
> 14 votes
The phonology table shows it quite simply, it modifies the `e` to indicate that it is a long vowel. I don't know why the vowel table shows the dipthongs `a:i` and `a:u` but not `e:i` (or any others).

Note that although this may seem to be a common colon, the actual IPA diacritic is two triangles, flat sides on the outside: U+02D0 `ː`. But as the colon doesn't have another meaning in the IPA and it's much easier to type, a lot of people just use it instead.

---
Tags: phonology, verdurian-languages
---


# Question
Title: Is the alien writing in "Arrival" really a language? Can we form custom sentences?
Here are few examples of words written in the alien language from "Arrival" (film):

Image source: Pinterest.

Does this alien writing have some logic in order to construct some custom meaningful sentences?

# Answer
The short answer: no, the language from *Arrival* is not a full conlang.

The logographs were designed by artists and designers, and, while some components of the logograms were assigned meaning, they did not define enough of its rules for it to be possible to make new symbols with definite meanings.

They did hire linguist Jessica Coon to consult on the film, and she annotated printouts of the logograms so the set designers would know what to put in the background and on the whiteboards (If I remember correctly, they consulted physicists for similar work as well). They also had Stephen and Christopher Wolfram provide some analysis and design the computer program used to analyze and generate the logograms in the film.

However, in the end, the movie was not for linguists or conlangers, so they did not design it as a fully fledged conlang—given that it's supposed to be a mystery they don't quite solve in the film, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.

These articles might interest you if you want more information.
> 18 votes

---
Tags: classification, writing-systems
---


# Question
Title: What is the difference between an Isolating and an Analytic language?
These two terms appear to be used nearly interchangeably to refer to languages with little morphology. However at the same time I sometimes see them contrasted with each other, but cannot identify a pattern.

# Answer
> 10 votes
Isolating languages do not use inflectional morphology, i.e., using affixes or other manipulations of roots to create words--all words are seperate, and none contain multiple morphemes. Vietnamese is an isolating language.

Here's an example: the word snowman. It has two morphemes: snow- and -man, and therefore has a morpheme-to-word ratio of 2:1. Or take Spanish corremos, we run, which has three corr-, -e-, and -mos, for the word, present tense, and person/number. (Please correct me if I am wrong--I don't know Spanish), so its ratio is 3:1. In an isolating language, this ratio approaches 1:1--words stand alone and cannot be separated (hence "isolating.") So, these concepts--"snowman" and "we are running"--would take multiple words to express, as each one would contain only a single morpheme. Isolating languages have no inflectional morphology and no derivational morphology.

However, analytical languages are a broader category; they have a low morpheme-to-word ratio as well, but--and here's the big but--they can have a derivational morphology. This means that while "we are running" would still be multiple single-morpheme words like in an isolating language, the word "snowman" could be a two-morpheme word.

Thus, isolating languages are actually a subset of analytic languages. Analytic languages cover languages with no *inflectional* morphology and a low morpheme-to-word ratio, while isolating languages have all that *and* no derivational morphology.

# Answer
> 3 votes
When I've seen a clear distinction made here, it has been the following:

* Isolating languages have a very low morpheme-per-word ratio
* Analytic languages have little inflection

However, this distinction is not made very consistently, so they're often used interchangeably. I have also seen a different distinction made, where analytic languages have a low morpheme-per-word ratio and isolating languages have a morpheme-per-word ratio of 1:1, though this one is less common in my experience. The fact that even with this distinction isolating languages end up being a proper subset of analytic languages only makes this problem worse. This has its origins in the definition of "synthetic", the category both of these are typically contrasted with, since it's used both as a description of languages with a high morpheme-per-word ratio and as a description of the superset of terms like fusional and agglutinative, both of which describe languages with lots of inflection.

In practice, conlangers seem to make too big of a deal out of these sorts of labels. They're there to be descriptive, so it's not a problem to discard them when they aren't, and they're often far less informative than most who use them think.

---
Tags: terminology, typology, isolating-languages
---


# Question
Title: Is there any research on the efficacy of intentionally designed linguistic relativity in conlangs?
Toki Pona is a language designed to shape the thought process of users. So is Loglan: According to Wikipedia, "Loglan was originally conceived as a means to examine the influence of language on the speaker's thought."

Has any research been done on how well these languages (and others with similar aims) achieved their goals?

# Answer
To gauge how well these languages have achieved their goals, we really need to quantify what exactly achieving those goals would entail, and what steps along that path we would consider progress. What constitutes success for Toki Pona or Loglan? A world of people thinking differently? A small group of speakers who have improved the way they think substantially based on learning the language? Without knowing that, we cannot say whether these languages have achieved their goals.

Additionally, when looking for research into linguistic relativity, the place to look would be linguistic research, and we're unlikely to see much research into Toki Pona's or Loglan's influence on the minds of their speakers. Why? Well, strong Sapir-Whorf is pretty much a settled question in linguistics -- the vast majority of the field agrees it's not the case -- and weak Sapir-Whorf is more likely to be tested on natlangs for many reasons, not least of which is the number of potential subjects. Even the most popular conlangs have much smaller speaker communities compared to most natlangs, and so even if conlangs and natlangs were equal in all other ways when it came to this research (and from a linguist's perspective, they really aren't), it would be far harder to gather subjects and conduct research for the conlangs.
> 10 votes

---
Tags: sapir-whorf
---


# Question
Title: In what ways are well-known a priori conlangs inadvertently eurocentric?
It’s well-known that among inexperienced conlangers¹, many times their conlangs turn out to be way more European than intended, often showing features found only rarely outside of European languages, because the creator is not aware there was even an option.

What I’m curious now is whether among the “big names” such as Klingon, Na’vi, Dothraki etc. there are any such accidental Europeanisms? We can disregard Tolkien’s works as he was actively taking inspiration from various European languages (such as Welsh or Finnish²). Obviously auxlangs meant to suit primarily Europe can also be excluded, and whatever Esperanto is meant to be I’m well aware of the situation there, so you can exclude that from answers as well.

---

¹ Who are native speakers of an European language, i.e. statistically probably English.

² While not Indo-European, Finnish does share many features with other European languages.

# Answer
> 21 votes
While it's true that languages like Na'vi and Klingon (can't speak for Dothraki) do contain quite a few explicitly non-SAE (Standard Average European) features, it's worth noting that both Paul Frommer and Marc Okrand have stated that they were deliberately using less common and lesser-known features in their respective conlangs to make them sound more alien. Since avoiding features that would be considered common or familiar to their audiences (typically comprised of speakers of English and other SAE languages) was a goal during their language creation. I'd argue that deliberately avoiding all SAE features to make your language sound "strange" and "alien" is a sort of eurocentrism (though perhaps a less obvious sort than unthinkingly including all SAE features) in that your language ends up very influenced by European languages and their features.

# Answer
> 10 votes
The Na’vi language for the movie *Avatar* was created from scratch by a linguistics PhD, Paul Frommer. In an interview available on Unidentified Sound Object, he details how the language was devised. The director, James Cameron, had created about 30 words many of which he needed as place names. These helped Frommer understand what kind of sounds Cameron had in mind. They discussed what the language would need to be and sound like in general and then Frommer was on his own. Most notably, the only input from the director was a set of isolated words and confirmation that the primary way to differentiate between them should be stress.

Frommer decided that he wanted to employ all sorts of features of various human languages in a unique combination. Thus:

* verbs are inflected by infixes, not the more common prefix or suffix models (suffix inflection is a feature of Standard Average European)
* the case system is tripartite, a feature which exists but is rarely found in natural languages; SAE would be nominative–accusative
* the language features ejective consonantes. Again, these are found in about 20 % of the world’s languages but only the Caucasian languages feature them in Europe

All in all, it seems like any features present in Na’vi that are also present in European languages would be a conscious design choice to not make it too non-European.

Furthermore, the interview also briefly mentions Klingon:

> USO: Is there a “gold standard” for constructed language that served as an inspiration to you?
>
> Frommer: In terms of “alien” languages, that would have to be Klingon, the language developed by linguist Marc Okrand for the **Star Trek** series. It’s a very impressive piece of work—a rough-sounding language with a complex and difficult phonology and grammar that now has a devoted base of followers. There are Klingon clubs all over the world where people meet to speak the language, and there’s even a translation of Hamlet into Klingon! If Na’vi ever came close to that kind of following, I’d be delighted.

This hints that Klingon, which was also developed by a linguist, would similarly be free from eurocentric bias.

# Answer
> 4 votes
I had a look through the conlangs in Wikipedia and listed which ones I could see morphologically marked TAME categories. There are sure to be some mistakes in here.

Tense: Atlantean, Dothraki, Esperanto, Glosa, Idiom Neutral, Interlingua, Kalaba-X, Kēlen, Kotava, Láadan, Langue nouvelle, Lingwa de planeta, Loglan, Mondial, Na'vi, Neo, Novial, Quenya, Sambahsa, Sindarin, Solresol, Sona, Syldavian, Universalglot, Uropi, Valyrian, Verdurian, Volapük, Wenedyk

Aspect: Kēlen, Esperanto (participles only), Ithkuil, Klingon, Na'vi, Quenya, Wenedyk?

Modality: Atlantean, Esperanto, Ithkuil, Kēlen?, Langue nouvelle, Solresol, Sona, Syldavian, Uropi, Valyrian, Wenedyk?

Evidentiality: Láadan

What's the verdict? Not only does this show that the conlang community has a strong Eurocentric bias, I think it shows it has a massive **Anglocentric** bias! Because it is English which is so strongly tense prominent. Most other current European languages also mark aspect or modality, but English doesn't even have a full aspect inflectional system, just the continuous *-ing*. Some European languages arguably don't even have tense, such as Koine Greek (for the last decade this has been a huge debate among Biblical scholars.) And evidentiality, which is present all around the world, including some European languages (some Slavic) was only present from what I could see in a single conlang! **If Anglocentric bias were not a factor I would expect to see conlangs with a much broader distribution of inflected TAME categories, but as it is, 80+% have tense**, maybe alongside aspect or modality.

In addition, many languages had muddled/fusional verb paradigms. You've probably seen them before: they include tense, aspect, the perfect, mood, utterance type (question or command), all in one table, each affix marking some combination of these semantic categories, but the combinations aren't very visible when they're listed one-dimensionally. Where are the agglutinative conlangs? Don't forget that European languages includes Turkish and several Uralic languages! (I found one conlang which is agglutinative in its verbal morphology: Einodo.)

Furthermore, often even when I judged a language to have aspect or modality it was because they had something called a "conditional" or a "subjunctive", rather than a core division between the prototypical categories: realis/irrealis, or perfective/imperfective. Now maybe some of those languages do actually have what should be analysed as the simple core categories, but they have been given alternate names by those describing them in Wikipedia. This reflects the Eurocentric and Anglocentric bias which is a big problem in descriptive linguistics. A helpful and short book about the importance of being aware of your biases in relation to TAM categories is *The Prominence of Tense, Aspect and Mood* by D.N.S. Bhat.

---
Tags: inspiration, eurocentrism
---


# Question
Title: Do any conlangs have verbs that change form depending on the object?
Are there any examples of constructed languages that have verbs with different forms depending on the object of the verb?

# Answer
> 20 votes
Yes.

I am not familiar with any “well-known” conlangs, but a quick search reveals that Klingon verbs inflect for both subject and object. This is a phenomenon called *polypersonal agreement* and it is very common in natural languages, and so it is only expected that it would also crop up in several conlangs. Among them, for example also my own, for which I just yesterday put up a puzzle that involves decoding the verbal system here.

I cannot currently think of any examples of a language which inflects for *only* the object, but it’s a rather low-hanging fruit and I cannot imagine that it has never been done before.

# Answer
> 12 votes
CALS lists 9 conlangs where the verb only agrees with P in transitives, 20 where it can agree with either A or P, and a further 127 where the verb agrees with both A and P, though of the ones listed, the only really well-known one is Klingon, which Adarian also mentioned. Including Mark Rosenfelder's langs (which aren't in CALS) in the at least relatively well-known bucket, Wede:i and Old Skourene both inflect the verb for both A and P to different extents (though note that Old Skourene works on an ergative basis).

Of the languages that mark P but not A, most of them are listed as having ergative agreement and so presumably agree with S as well, however two of them, 'Yemels and Snahhian are listed as accusative, and so presumably has the verb agree only with P.

Interestingly enough, despite conlangers often liking to solve problems by throwing affixes at them, a complete lack of personal agreement is actually overrepresented in CALS, when compared to WALS.

# Answer
> 1 votes
**Әřant** has a change that, while it may not be what you're asking for, does fit the question in that depending on the animacy valency of the object, the verb conjugates differently:

men xshanni - - tassu han-ne!

**it** drop.2S.IMPER - - thou.2S INTERJ-hey.EMPH

vs

san xshannos - - tassu han-ne!

**her** drop.2S.INDIC - - thou.2S INTERJ-hey.EMPH

The person has a higher animacy valency, so requires a (slightly) more polite idiom.

# Answer
> -4 votes
I believe your question conflates two related, but crucially distinct concepts, patients (a thematic relation and semantic concept) and objects (a verbal argument and syntactic concept).

By conventional syntactic definition, if only one argument is being agreed with, that argument is the subject. In that sense, it's **by definition impossible** for a verb to agree only with an object.

However, **the patient of a verb does not have to be its object!** In ergative languages, it's generally acceptable to analyze that the syntactic subject of a transitive verb is its patient.

In summary: it makes no sense to say that a verb agrees only with its object, because it would causes that object, by definition, to be the subject, merely reversing the agency alignment of the verb (cf. English *I like X* vs. Spanish *me gusta X*).

---
Tags: verbs, list-of-languages
---


# Question
Title: What are the main limitations of Lojban?
Suppose we want to translate the whole of Wikipedia from English into Lojban, what are the main known big limitations or concerns we should be aware of? In other words, does Lojban as a language have sufficient expressive power for being translated from English?

# Answer
# Length

A few things. First, Lojban often needs longer sentences to express something than it does in, for example, English.

# Vocabulary

Secondly, Lojban's vocabulary isn't that big, especially in the domain of sciences. Words would have to be calqued, adapted from English, French, etc. or completely re-invented.

# Loaning and naming

Thirdly, the English language (and many natural languages) loans words directly (for example, *champagne* could be \*shampain and *buoy* could be \*boy or \*boi) without changing spelling (a slight counterexample would be German, which often changes the letter c pronounced \[k\] to the letter k, like *Kanada* and *Vokabular*).

Lojban doesn't. *.romas.* is Rome (Italy), *.xavanas.* is Havanas (Cuba) and *.lidz.* is Leeds (UK). This makes it confusing in some cases. How would Lojban adapt Turra Coo or people like Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela? The name should stay recognisable but pronounceable.
> 13 votes

# Answer
One of Lojban's most famous features is, of course, its lack of syntactic ambiguity. While this is an advantage in some cases, it can also be a limitation. It wouldn't likely be an issue in something like Wikipedia, but does make certain kinds of wordplay impossible. Take for example this exchange from Lewis Carroll's *Through the Looking Glass*:

> 'Who did you pass on the road?' the King went on, holding out his hand to the Messenger for some more hay.
>
> 'Nobody,' said the Messenger.
>
> 'Quite right,' said the King: 'this young lady saw him too. So of course Nobody walks slower than you.'
>
> 'I do my best,' the Messenger said in a sulky tone. 'I'm sure nobody walks much faster than I do!'
>
> 'He can't do that,' said the King, 'or else he'd have been here first.'

In Lojban there is no way to conflate "nobody" meaning "no person" with "Nobody" meaning "someone named Nobody", because proper names are always preceded with the article "la". Other works that rely on wordplay based in syntactic ambiguity would also present major difficulties in translating to Lojban.

That said, there *is* a Lojban translation of *Alice in Wonderland*, so these difficulties aren't necessarily insurmountable.
> 11 votes

---
Tags: lojban, translation
---


# Question
Title: Do the ADVENT in XCOM 2 speak a real language?
In the game XCOM 2 ADVENT soldiers shout observations and commands to each other. Their words are not understandable, but context makes clear to the player what they're thinking.

Did the creators of XCOM 2 design a full conlang for ADVENT?

# Answer
In this article the dev team of XCOM 2 explain that they didn't have the time or resources to invent a full conlang, but instead made up gibberish that got across the sort of 'feeling' they wanted. In order to sound "darker and more ominous," they were deliberate in their choice of sounds for this gibberish, basing it on so-called "guttural languages" such as German and Dutch, and then they designed filters to make the voice actors sound more robotic.

> Steve helped shape the final sound by experimenting with the gibberish pronunciations that we came up with. In order to convey meaning to the player, we had to rely solely on the tone and delivery of the lines, with things like ‘Halt!’ Or ‘Enemy Spotted!’ coming across with more intensity than say a standard ‘I’m moving’ line. In the process I also tried to establish vocal patterns in each subset of lines to create some cohesion between the otherwise meaningless words the actors were reading.

A feat on the part of the sound designers and voice actors, to be sure, but not a proper conlang. Nothing stopping XCOM fans from expanding it into a full conlang, though!
> 9 votes

---
Tags: classification
---


# Question
Title: With the death of CSUR, has there been any new Unicode proposal for con-scripts?
The CSUR (ConScript Unicode Registry) is — or, rather, with its last update in 2008, was — a project "to coordinate the assignment of blocks out of the Unicode Private Use Area (E000-F8FF and 000F0000-0010FFFF) to constructed/artificial scripts, including scripts for constructed/artificial languages." As its authors do not seem to be involved with it anymore and the page suffering neglect, I can assume the project has stalled or died. Has anyone come up with a similar project since?

# Answer
There exists the UCSUR (Under-ConScript Unicode Registry) which was created as a sort of temporary holding place for proposals to avoid conflicts until the CSUR is once again active.
> 8 votes

---
Tags: unicode, writing-systems
---


# Question
Title: Self-reflexive verbs and pronouns in Vulcan language
I'm stumped - I'm sorta confused getting the proper phrasing svi'Vuhlkansu because the English grammar seems self-referencing for me to get the order right. The quote is:

> "The one self-knowledge worth having is to know one’s own mind." by FH Bradley

"worth having is" seems like three verbs in a row, then "one's own" seems like I could omit "one's" and *nam-tor* can be stated by describing the noun, is it

> Kerik ma fai-tukh t’shai goh fai-tor kashek t’du.

or am i missing it?

# Answer
I don't know Vulcan, however I might be able to help you with your interpretation of the English:

"worth having is" isn't quite the string of verbs you might think it is.

Firstly, "worth having" is modifying the preceding noun phrase, rather than being part of some grouping with "is". This can most easily be shown by rearranging the sentence as such:

> To know one's own mind is the one self-knowledge worth having.

Furthermore, "worth" here is an adjective¹. It might help to expand the phrase out to the following:

> "The one self-knowledge *that is* worth (one's) having."

---

¹ - "worth" is most commonly described as an adjective, however it does have some qualities which lead some to classify it as a preposition. For more detail see Joan Maling, 1983, "Transitive Adjectives: A Case of Categorial Reanalysis", pages 268-269.
> 6 votes

---
Tags: translation
---


# Question
Title: Is there a constructed language in existence that has graduated to "natural" status?
That is, are there any such languages in use today that are in use for day to day activities, or are formally recognized, etc?

# Answer
> 24 votes
For varying definitions of "conlang", yes:

1. The very most obvious example is **Esperanto** with a well-documented native speaker community. It has received limited official recognition, the most interesting of which currently seems to be PR of China's *El Popola Ĉinio* magazine and *China Radio International* in Esperanto. There are many more.
2. A less obvious example would be **Classical Sanskrit**, which was, arguably, constructed by Pāṇini, and is a Scheduled Language of India with some fifty thousand people speaking it in 1991; it is furthermore an official language of the Indian state of Uttarakhand, and reportedly the language of the majority in a village called Mathoor. It is used across all levels of education across India.
3. A more *controversial* example would be **Modern Hebrew**, one of the few successfully revived language in modern times. The page on Wikipedia gives a solid overview of the situation, and is fairly unbiased. Of the three mentioned here, Hebrew is arguably the most successful "graduated" language — if you consider it a conlang to begin with.

# Answer
> 8 votes
In addition to the examples given by Darkgamma, Damin, an extinct ritual "register" of Lardil and Yangkaal, which in the traditional mythology of the speakers is considered a conlang, and believed by linguists to have been invented by the elders of one of the tribes, was in addition to ritual contexts also used in day-to-day life between initiated members of the tribe.

---
Tags: classification
---


# Question
Title: Are there any small scale auxlangs that are actually used by a substantial amount of people?
International Auxiliary Languages are very, very ambitious, and probably bound to fail on a large scale. However, it seems plausible to me that there might be some corners of the world where an auxlang might be used to facilitate communication between more localized groups, much like English is used in many parts of Europe (and really, the world) for this purpose. But does this actually occur anywhere?

# Answer
The line between "conlang" and "supradialectal standard" can get incredibly fuzzy. You mention Rumantsch Grischun and Modern Hebrew yourself, something along similar lines, but much more successful in terms of number of speakers is Bahasa Indonesia. Any number of other supradialectal standards depending on how strict you are with drawing the line may fall under this category.

In addition to supradialectal standards, another thing that may or may not be considered a conlang is controlled languages, such as ASD STE-100 Simplified Technical English which see some use in various technical documents (but aren't really spoken).
> 7 votes

# Answer
I know of one very localized example myself:

Rumantsch Grischun is a constructed variety of the Romansh language which tries to unify the dialect continuum. It is the variety of the language used in official texts and also in some schools and media, but the population in general is rather unhappy about this status quo and prefers using either their own dialects, or Swiss German if that fails.

In addition, some consider Modern Hebrew a conlang, and it does serve as a lingua franca between various Jewish populations. But this is definitely a less prototypical example.
> 6 votes

---
Tags: auxlangs
---


title: How similar are Loglan and Lojban?

text:
# Question
Title: How similar are Loglan and Lojban?
Loglan is a predecessor to Lojban, and Lojban apparently directly grew out of Loglan.

How similar are the two languages at this point? Are they more like dialects of the same language, or more like Anglo-Saxon and English at this point?

# Answer
Lojban vocabulary was deliberately constructed from scratch, in an attempt to get around James Brown's copyright on Loglan (Brown was the creator of Loglan, but continued to retain control over it. The Logical Language Group was formed to reinvent the words, beginning in the late 1980s, while retaining Loglan's grammar.

The words LLG created are the *gismu*, the roots that make up Lojban. They generated over 1300 of them, taking source words from Chinese, English, Hindi, Spanish, Russian and Arabic and scored many potential gismu by their similarities with the source words. The highest-scoring gismu were used; from there, the rest of the vocabulary was generated.

Now, this was similar to Brown's original process, although he used Japanese, French and German as three more reference languages, while leaving out Arabic. This algorithm was quite similar to the one used to generate Lojban's gisme. Brown's scores - and, in a sense, the LLG's - were explicitly based on learnability, which is why these languages were used. However, the implementation of the Logban algorithm resulted in a completely new lexicon, due to different weightings, quantification of similarity, and the differing source languages.

Since the relexification, the grammar of Lojban has changed in certain ways. While it would have been easier for speakers of Loglan to learn shortly after its inception, it has now diverged enough that the two languages, while based on the same principles, are now very different. I think the analogy of Anglo-Saxon and English is a good one.
> 10 votes

# Answer
Lojban started as a relexification of Loglan but it has evolved independently from Loglan since that starting point. I don't think that the two languages can be considered dialects of each other because there is no mutual understandability left because every single word of Loglan was replaced with something different in Lojban (with the famous exception of the word *blanu* "blue").
> 5 votes

---
Tags: lojban, typology, loglan
---


title: Methods to avoid similarity in lexicons

text:
# Question
Title: Methods to avoid similarity in lexicons
When creating words I have often run into the problem that too many words sound similar even when I have allowed many different phonemes. Are there methods to avoid too much similarity between words, while making words similar enough to feel part on one language?

# Answer
> 6 votes
A modern approach to this problem is to generate the words automatically according to some formula describing allowed words. You can filter out words that are too close to already generated ones, but usually the randomness used by a computer program will be sufficient.

There are well-known examples of Conlangs with computer generated vocabulary. Loglan and Lojban used some vocabulary lists from natural languages as input for their vocabulary generating algorithm.

---
Tags: conlang-creation, vocabulary
---


# Question
Title: How to classify the language of "Uncleftish Beholding"?
The essay Uncleftish Beholding by Poul Andersen is written in a special kind of English without borrowings from Latin, French, and Greek. The gaps in the lexicon are filled with German style compounds (in fact, a lot of them, like *waterstuff* "hydrogen" or *sourstuff* "oxygen" are real calques from Dutch or German).

Is this piece of art written in a conlang? Or is it just a funny form the natlang English?

# Answer
> 9 votes
I wouldn’t personally call Anglish (that is, English without non-Germanic (or sometimes even non-Anglosaxon) vocabulary) a conlang. Taken at face value, it replaces English vocabulary 1:1 with coined words, which is basically the definition of a relex. Whether you want to consider relexes a subset of conlangs or an entirely different category (perhaps a subset of ciphers and codes) altogether is subjective.

As a note, Anglish can also just be stylistic in nature — favouring germanic word stems over loaned ones where possible, but in the context of the essay you posted this is clearly not the case.

# Answer
> 6 votes
I'm going to disagree with Adarain and say that Anglish might be a conlang in instances where it is used to as full an extent as in Uncleftish Beholding, though I think it pretty much straddles the line between relex and full conlang. In something where the preference for Germanic word stems is more of a preference than a hard-and-fast rule, it's definitely not a conlang, so those are disregarded for this discussion.

While it is true that Anglish is pretty damn relex-y and to my knowledge doesn't change any Modern English syntactic rules (although if it did, it would undeniably be a conlang), but I do think it does some things differently than more transparent relexes. The word "uncleftish" certainly breaks the rules of Modern English morphology, and extensions of sense, as in using "motes" to refer to particles, give opportunities for the semantic space to change quite a bit (I don't know to what extent the author took advantage of this, however). It depends a lot on an individual's use of the language whether it leans closer to being a conlang or a relex.

# Answer
> 3 votes
This has been called "Anglish", a type of **constrained writing**. As compounding is a productive force in English (ie, it happens frequently and is not limited to an existing set of words), I wouldn't say that this should be considered relexification. A relexification would have a strict set of German style compounds to use, but something that is just constrained writing would allow you to generate alternate synonymous compounds.

# Answer
> 0 votes
**Anglish** is neither invented language nor relex nor just a casual / funny "style".

It is, more than anything else, a *register*. The **Cambridge Dictionary** says of register: *We use the term ‘register’ to refer to particular varieties or styles of speaking and writing. Registers vary because the language is used for different purposes, in different contexts and for different audiences. For example, there is a legal register, a register of advertising, registers of banking and a register of weather forecasting. We commonly recognise registers because of their specialised vocabulary but also because of particular uses of grammar.*

Much like how we have registers for differing social contexts ("street talk" or "formal gatherings" or "liturgical worship"), Anglish is simply another register. In this case, I'd argue that the social context is one of distinct national identity vs worldwide loss of identity. Anglish is clearly a distinct variety or style of English --- it is *English* pure and simple! --- and it is used for the particular purpose of distinguishing English English (*Our English*) from World English (*Everyone's English*).

The **Anglish Moot** goes into some detail here. *The Anglish/New English project is intended as a means of recovering the Englishness of English and of restoring ownership of the language to the English people.*

In linguistics, a **register** is simply a "variety of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting." In the case of Anglish, the purpose is as stated: to communicate using a *restored & nativising* form of English.

As an artifact, it can't really be called an *invented language*, because it isn't really a thing "invented". And certainly not in the usually understood sense of the concept of an invented language. For it is already *English*.

It's not a **relex** in the conlinguistic sense because it is not a matter of "making up new words" and replacing the English words one for one. (In the linguistic sense, perhaps.) Anglish is a matter, simply, of bringing actual English words, older words, dialect words, disused words to the forefront along with some loan borrowing and calquing from other Germanic languages.

My vote is still for Anglish to be classified a **Register of English**.

---
Tags: classification, relexification
---


# Question
Title: How does mood relate to tense and aspect?
Moods are often intertwined with tense and aspect. In fact, the triad is commonly referred to in linguistics as tense-aspect-mood or just TAM. Aspect and tense are *relatively* straightforward, but how does mood relates to them exactly?

# Answer
(For tense and aspect in general, see this answer)

I'll summarize what Mark Rosenfelder says in *Advanced Language Construction*, pp. 146-156 (some of which referring back to *Mood and Modality*, F.R.Palmer 2001).

First we start with **modality**, which is concerned with the *status* of the proposition, i.e. "how true it is, and whether it's subject to obligations and intentions". In contrast tense (at its most basic degree, ignoring semantic expansion) is interested to whether it happens before or after now, and aspect with overall temporal relation (hence the possibility of contrast between tenses within a given aspect).

Rosenfelder describes Palmer's classification of modals like so:

* Factual
    + Epistemic: speculative, assumptive & deductive
    + Evidential: reported, sensory & deductive
* Deontic
    + External: obligative, permissive, commissive
    + Internal: abilitive & volitive

(Most discussions bundle all of the "factual" branch as one "evidentials" category because languages with evidentials tend to have only one of the two sub-branches, which is also why deductive is listed twice without being self-contradictory)

Basically working from that, a **mood** is *what happen when modality bundles up with tense*, and there it gets a little messy. Terminologically, Rosenfelder believes that indicative/subjunctive and realis/irrealis systems are separated more clearly by geography (specialists in given language families prefer one or the other) than grammatical reality.

In any case, realis/indicative applies protoypically to real events, irrealis/subjunctive to "less real" stuff. What is included in each category may vary considerably (future events and imperative may categorize in either one, for example, depending on individual languages). Conditionals are irrealis in virtually all systems, but in Indo-European linguistics are traditionally treated as a third mood separate from both indicative and subjunctive.

In practice, moods are often more of a semantic division within the verbal paradigm owing to the lack of a separate marker for them (in most European languages I'm aware of, for example). When an explicit irrealis marker exists, it often takes over separate marking for tense and aspect, that is, there will be no overt marking of the subcategories like future vs. imperative (both only irrealis) or past vs. present (both realis). Manam is such a language (how unusual this is is unclear from Rosenfelder's writing).
> 10 votes

---
Tags: tense-aspect-mood
---


# Question
Title: What is the difference between tense and aspect?
Many conlangs contain tense, some contain aspect as well or instead, and much of the recommended reading for conlangers assumes that you know what tense and aspect are and what the difference between them is. What actually is the difference, and how would a word or morpheme be classified as a marker of one or the other?

# Answer
When discussing tense, aspect, and mood, it's important to distinguish a given language's grammatical markers from the abstract concepts being described. Thus, linguists use the words **temporal reference** and **aspectual reference** to describe the abstract ideas being described, while the words **tense** and **aspect** are reserved for when such reference is marked grammatically.

The simplified explanation for tense and aspect usually given is that tense describes when an event occurs and aspect describes the internal temporal structure of an event. However, this doesn't give a ton of easy answers to "is this grammatical form marking tense, aspect, or both?" Formal semanticists actually have a relatively simple framework for how temporal reference and aspectual reference are defined, the basic concepts of which can be helpful when designing your conlang's own tense/aspect system.

## The Neo-Reichenbachian Model

Imagine a timeline:

```
Earlier                                  Later
<-------------------------------------------->

```

Now, imagine there are two spans on that timeline (the fact that they're spans is important -- nothing is truly instantaneous). The time when you make an utterance is called the **utterance time** (or UT), and the time that you're talking *about* is called the **topic time** (or TT).

**Temporal reference describes the relationship between the TT and UT**. Past temporal reference is when the TT precedes the UT; future temporal reference when the TT follows the UT; and present temporal reference when they overlap.

```
Past:
    <-------------------------------------------->
                |--TT--|          |--UT--|

Future:
    <-------------------------------------------->
          |--UT--|                  |--TT--|

Present:
                            |--UT--|
    <-------------------------------------------->
                     |-------TT-------|

```

This seems pretty intuitive -- if the section of the timeline you're talking about precedes the time you make the utterance, you'll use the past tense; if it follows it, you'll use the future; and if they overlap, you'll use the present. Simple, right?

But what of aspect? Well, aspectual reference isn't as transparent at that. To describe aspectual reference, we'll need to pick out a third span that timeline -- the time when the event being described actually happened. We'll call this the **eventuality time** (or ET).

"But wait!" you might object. "Isn't that the same as the topic time? If I'm describing something that happened, surely the time I was talking about is the same as the time that it happened." However, there is a difference, and it's exactly this difference that gives rise to aspectual reference. Consider the English past perfect in a sentence like the following:

> Yesterday he had gone to the store.

The English past tense includes past temporal reference, and we've established that this means that the topic time is before the utterance time -- something which is explicitly confirmed by the temporal adverb "yesterday" giving us a more specific topic time. But when does the him-going-to-the-store happen? Probably not yesterday, right? Well, this is because perfect† aspectual reference is when the *eventuality time* precedes the *topic time* -- **aspectual reference describes the relationship between the eventuality time and the topic time**. It for this reason that the past perfect is used by English speakers for the past-in-past.

```
Past Perfect:
    <-------------------------------------------->
          |--ET--|    |--TT--|     |--UT--|

```

But you can also have the present perfect, right? Well, let's combine our descriptions of the present tense and the perfect aspect and see what we come up with.

```
Present Perfect:
                            |--UT--|
    <-------------------------------------------->
        |--ET--|     |-------TT-------|

```

Here, the topic time and utterance time overlap, which is why you can't say something like "Yesterday he has gone to the store." However, the eventuality time precedes the topic time, so *you're describing an event that happened in the past in relation to the present*. And indeed, this is how we see the present perfect used in English.

This is far from the most interesting thing aspectual reference can do, however. Let's discuss the popular aspectual references, perfective and imperfect. For those who don't know, perfective and perfect are two different things. Perfective is often described as simply viewing an event as a point on a timeline, and imperfect as viewing it as a span. How do we define this as a relationship between eventuality time and topic time?

Well, a simple way people do it (ignoring a few other related thorny semantic problems that few here will care about) is by defining the perfective as when the eventuality time is contained within the topic time and the imperfect as when the topic time is contained within the eventuality time.

```
Past Perfective:
               |--ET--|
    <-------------------------------------------->
        |-------TT-------|        |--UT--|

Past Imperfect:
               |--TT--|
    <-------------------------------------------->
        |-------ET-------|        |--UT--|

```

This results, at least formally, in the same sort of perspective shift we try to intuitively describe as changing the event from a "point" to a "span".

Note that tense and aspect vary between languages a *lot*, and even related languages can't be counted upon to have the same semantics here. After all, the French passé composé, while very similar in form to the English present perfect, does not share the same semantics (it's more of a perfective). Additionally, while a given language's system of tense and aspect will often combine a tense and an aspect in a certain inflection (such as the perfective past tenses in many European languages), this doesn't mean the two are wed cross-linguistically.

In fact, I hope this answer has given some conlangers the tools to try and invent their own tenses, aspects, or combinations of the two that they haven't themselves encountered cross-linguistically. Be creative!

## In short:

* Temporal reference is the relationship between the utterance time (when you say something) and the topic time (the time relevant to the discussion at hand).
* Aspectual reference is the relationship between the topic time (see above) and the eventuality time (the time when the event being described actually occured).
* Tense is the grammaticalization of temporal reference.
* Aspect is the grammaticalization of aspectual reference.
* Things called "tenses" in natural languages (as well as in conlangs, to be honest) are often conflations of tense and aspect (and sometimes even mood, but we're not here to talk about that).

---

†When I refer to perfect aspectual reference, I'm actually more specifically describing what is known in semantics as the existential perfect. Perfect forms in English and many other languages include other types of perfect aspectual reference (universal, resultive, etc.) that differ subtly in their semantics, and other aspectual and temporal baggage as well; this is, however, probably not particularly interesting or relevant to most people here at this moment.
> 17 votes

# Answer
The difference is that tense refers to the time an action (or state or phenomenon) happened:

> I was slim.
>
> I am fat.
>
> I will be fatter.

while aspect refers to the way an action (or state, or phenomenon) develops along time:

> I eat sushi. (habitual)
>
> I am eating sushi. (continuous)

.

> I used to eat sushi. (habitual)
>
> I ate sushi. (perfect)
>
> I was eating sushi. (continuous)

.

> I will have eaten sushi. (perfect)
>
> I will be eating sushi. (continuous)

I don't know if someone has a complete list of possible aspects, but here are some possibilities:

1. The action was/is/will be finished (perfect)
2. The action is/was/will be ongoing (continuous)
3. The action is/was/will be continually performed (habitual)
4. The action is/was/will be going to start (inceptive)
5. The action is/was/will be intermitently performed (iterative)

That's the difference. Now comes the confusion - because that is what languages do, they confuse tense and aspect, in incoherent and incomplete systems that fail to either integrate or clearly separate those features.

One first source of confusion is that many languages operate not only with the simple distinction between tenses as outlined above - past, present, future - but also with dependent and independent tenses. For instance, I may say

> I used to eat sushi when Susan introduced me to Javanese food.
>
> I am eating sushi while the president threats nuclear war against North Korea.
>
> I will be eating sushi when they bring the wine.

in which one action is past, present or future regarding the time of the speech (Susan introduced me to Javanese food in the past, the president is threatening nuclear war in the present, they will bring wine in the future) while the other (me eating sushi) happens in the present - not the present regarding the time of speech, however, but the present regarding the other action.

And while this may be a source of confusion by itself, it expands to a further level of confusion because the interaction between dependent and independent action often has implications on the aspectuality of each of them. For instance, I say

> I eat sushi. - or
>
> I am eating sushi.

it is understood that these are different aspects: in the first sentence, I am saying that I do habitually eat sushi, not that I have a dish of sushi in front of me. In the second sentence, however, I am saying that I am actually eating sushi in the moment I am talking, so the sentences are not synonim to each other.

But if I say

> Go there and stop the president from doing bullshit while I eat sushi. - or
>
> Go there and stop the president from doing bullshit while I am eating sushi.

the phrase "eat sushi" loses its habitual aspect, and turn into continuous, and the sentences are effectively synonimous.

The there is the confusion that Sparksbet remarks, between "tense" as a grammatical form, and "tense" as a reference to actual time. As she says, "tenses" as grammatical forms are used to denote a mix of tense references and aspectual references.

Furthermore, while the tense and aspectual references can be several, their grammaticalization, or lack thereof, is much more constrained. For instance, neither English, nor any other Western European language that I know has verb inflections for iterative or inceptive aspects. They instead use either syntactical devices, or morphological derivation - and those often vary weirdly from lexical item to lexical item. Let's take for instance Portuguese:

> *Eu como sushi* (habitual)
>
> *Estou comendo sushi* (continuous)
>
> *Estou beliscando uns sushis* (iterative) (where a different verb is used to make the aspectual reference)
>
> *Eu bebo uísque* (habitual)
>
> *Estou bebendo uísque* (continuous)
>
> *Estou bebericando uísque* (iterative) (where a morphological derivation of "beber" is used to make the aspectual reference)

So, probably no natural language has a coherent tense-aspect system; the fact that some tenses seem to imply some aspects when put in relation to others probably means that, for reasons of economy, grammatical "tenses" will be used irregularly, given internal or even external context.

Could it be possible to build a conlang with a complete and coherent tense-aspect system? Perhaps, but I would say such coherence and completeness are only going to survive as long as the language is not effectively used by a human population.
> 5 votes

---
Tags: grammar, terminology, semantics, tense-aspect-mood
---


# Question
Title: Was Tolkien aware of the Voynich manuscript?
Looking at the Tengwar script designed by Tolkien I feel a certain similarity to the unknown script of the Voynich manuscript: Many characters look very similar to others of the same script, and there is a restricted set of penstrokes used in the characters. Repetition of strokes is used to derive other characters.

So I am wondering whether the Tengwar script could be influenced by the script of the Voynich manuscript. Was Tolkien aware of the Voynich manuscript? Or, to the opposite, was Tengwar already designed before the Voynich manuscript was rediscovered and publically known?

# Answer
> 11 votes
> Or, to the opposite, was Tengwar already designed before the Voynich manuscript was rediscovered and publically known?

The manuscript was rediscovered in 1912. Tolkien, according to Wikipedia, started developing Elvish in 1910 or 1911... *before* the Voynich manuscript was rediscovered.

---

There is at least one claim that he was *aware* of it, though, although it would have to be after he had already started developing the languages.

This is a transcript of a message sent to the Voynich mailing list, sent November 13, 2002:

> Hello
> I have "lurked" on this list for a while and finally have a comment to offer, albeit a very insignificant one.
>
> I wonder if the fact that Prof. JRR Tolkien apparently had an interest in (or at least knowledge of) the Voynich Ms has been discussed or indeed is of any interest at all?
>
> The thing is, a nagging feeling that I had once seen the VMs many years ago - long before my recent interest was sparked by that piece in The New Scientist - is resolved. I now recall it - and though the persons concerned having died long since makes my little anecdote mere hearsay and in no way veridical, I thought I'd forward it. An old friend, a retired military man with an amateur interest in codes and cyphers, once showed me a couple of not entirely distinct b&w copies of pages from a curious coded manuscript, which I now realise were a couple of folios of the VMs. I was not especially interested in them at the time, I think, but the reason that the incident made an impression was that he said that they had been given to him by Prof JRR Tolkien. At that time I had just discovered and was very much 'into' Tolkien so I was most envious of my friend's knowing him and pressed for details of the great man, though in the end I never achieved my longed-for personal introduction. So I now wonder if there might be any reference anywhere in the mass of Tolkien papers to our VMs, and is this of any possible slight significance? After all, JRRT knew a great deal about languages and artificial scripts of course and if he was interested enough to make and pass on copies to a friend, he might have devoted some time to the VMs himself. And the Voynichese script does have a Tolkien-ish look to it or vice versa: could it have influenced him?

(this was found through a link from CipherMysteries.com)

However, since his development started before the Voynich manuscript was discovered, I'd say that it's... kinda *unlikely* that he was inspired by it.

---
Tags: history, writing-systems, tengwar, voynich-manuscript
---


# Question
Title: What are the defining traits of a Euro-centric conlang?
I know that a Euro-centric conlang is a conlang based mostly on Indo-European grammar, or more generally a conlang that is written from a worldview (conscious or not) that the *"normal"* language is Indo-European, but what are the traits of a Euro-centric conlang? What are the things that are a dead giveaway that the language is Euro-centric?

It could be a grammatical curiosity specific to Indo-European, or maybe something like a conlang being based around one non-Indo-European language feature as a kind of "gimmick" (although these are just unfounded speculation, seeing as I don't know the answer).

# Answer
> 18 votes
The term "Standard Average European" (SAE) pretty much covers it, and has been around since the 1930s. Haspelmath listed a number of typical "Euroversals" in a portion of the 2001 book *Language Typology and Language Universals*. These are listed in a more readable-to-laymen way in the wikipedia article on the subject. Haspelmath included as true Europeanisms (that is, features that are part of the SAE Sprachbund) only features that fit the following requirements:

1. Most of the "core" European languages possess it.
2. Nearby languages (Celtic, Turkic, etc.) lack it.
3. Eastern Indo-European languages (Armenian, Iranian, Indic languages, etc.) lack it -- this prevents us from merely calling it a feature of the Indo-European language family as a whole.
4. It is not found in the majority of the world's languages.

The Europeanisms identified by Haspelmath that fit this criteria include:

* Definite and indefinite articles
* Post-nominal relative clauses with resumptive relative pronouns
* The (transitive) perfect formed with "have" plus a past participle
* Experiencers coded as nominative subjects
* Passive formed with a participle plus "to be"
* A preference for anticausatives over causatives.
* Dative external possession
* Negation with negative pronouns and positive verb forms (e.g., "Nobody comes" instead of "Nobody won't come.")
* Particle comparatives
* Relative-clause based equative constructions (e.g., "*tan* Z *como* X", "*so* Z *wie* X", "as Z as X")
* Subject person marking used strictly for agreement (i.e., the verb is inflected for the person/number of the subject but the subject cannot be dropped)
* Different forms for reflexives vs. intensifiers

He also identified several other features that were common among this Sprachbund but were not as well-documented as the above, such as the verb fronting of polar interrogatives (i.e., turning "I have done it" into "Have I done it?" to make a yes/no question), an inflectional marker for the comparative, and several others -- these are also included in the linked articles.

# Answer
> 11 votes
Expanding on Sparksbet's answer, additional features, from the conlanging point of view as listed by Mark Rosenfelder in *Advanced Language Construction* (pp. 30-31), that tend to pile up on top of the SAE elements. While many of these are not particularly rare at all cross-linguistically, the overall combination (especially combined with actual SAE features), shines a brighter light on the "Europeanness" of a language:

<sup>*(italics are my additions)*</sup>

* A phonology that explores little beyond European languages *(usually German, French or Spanish with a few sounds swapped or added)*
    + The "standard fantasy phonology" is English consonants + /x/ *and (usually) Spanish vowels. Rosenfelder notes in passing elsewhere that English's vowel system is unusual, and most budding conlangers seem aware of that.*
* Six distinct pronouns with gendered ones for third person only and usually with object forms
* Nouns paradigm with only singular/plural forms, and possibly case *(usually 5-8)*
* Adjectives are either invariable or decline like nouns
* Verbs conjugating by person *(a single one, too)* and number, with only three basic tenses (past/present/future) plus maybe a conditional *or irrealis/subjunctive*.
* Modality involves auxiliary verbs
* SVO word order + nominative/accusative alignment
* Questions and negatives are formed with some sort of particles
* The number system is decimal and the *kinship system is eskimo*
    + *Even SAE languages have significant non decimal elements: dozens and grosses in English, vigesimal elements in French, and Danish...*

# Answer
> 7 votes
Besides the traits of Standard Average European given in Sparksbet's answer, another defining feature is the phonology and basis of the lexicon.

Eurocentric conlangs draw their phonology and their words heavily from well-known (and sometimes less well known) European languages. Depending on the preference of the authors, the words are based on Latin or modern Romance, English, Greek, or Slavonic languages. They also inherit a lot of European phonological quirks, e.g., in the selection of allowed consonant clusters both word-initially and inside words.

Features that are absent or rare in European languages (like retroflex consonants, tone, initial use of /ŋ/) are absent from Eurocentric conlangs.

---
Tags: grammar, inspiration, eurocentrism
---


# Question
Title: Are there any grammatical aspects which do not have parallels in natural languages?
In Describing Morphosyntax, Payne uses a number of diagrams for visually explaining aspects and what they say about actions relative to time.

Payne outlines the following, all of which occur in natural languages.

**Perfective**

`[-----]` He wrote a letter.

**Imperfective**

`<----->` He writes letters.

**Perfect**

`-----|x` He has come from Aqaba.

**Pluperfect**

`---|DC---(now)` I had entered a congested zone.

**Completive**

`>-----|` She finished working.

**Inceptive**

`[----->` She began working.

**Continuative/progressive**

`>----->` He is writing letters

**Punctual**

`x` He sneezed.

**Iterative**

`>-x-x-x->` He is coughing.

**Habitual**

`<----->` He drinks.

---

Are there other Aspects that do **not** appear in natural languages which have been invented for conlangs, and could they be represented with a similar visual diagram?

# Answer
Well, y'know, ANADEW and all that, but...

As far as I know, there is no natural language with a grammaticalized *antiperfect* aspect--i.e., an aspect where the time of the action is *after* the reference point, rather than before.

Present Perfect: "He has come." Past Perfect (pluperfect): "He had come." Future Perfect: "He will have come."

In each case, the event occurs before the reference time defined by the tense. In the case of future perfect, this may or may not be before the present.

An antiperfect flips that around

Present Antiperfect: "He is going to come." / "He is about to come." (approximately) Past Antiperfect: "He was going to come." / "He was about to come." (approximately) Future Antiperfect: "He will be going to come." / "He will be about to come." (approximately)

The various English paraphrases all have some extraneous additional implications (e.g., "He was going to come" implies that he didn't actually, "about to" implies that the action is nearby) that are not inherent to the antiperfect aspect, if it were grammaticalized. The important thing is that the action occurs after the reference time, but not necessarily after the present. Thus, just like a future perfect action *could* have occurred in the past, a past antiperfect *could* occur in the future.
> 9 votes

# Answer
**Morotuncanian** has some verbal aspects that I rather doubt appear in natural languages of the primary world.

*Sedative* and *Excitative* verbal aspects. The former aspect expresses the nature of the action, through time, as calming and steady in nature. The latter aspect expresses the nature of the action, through time, as unsteady or agitated in nature, but not to the point of being considered iterative or incessant.

**bollahcctuerayas er som huomuram le ciwamauroyas : aa : bollahccendayas hasto curelloram le ollaloyas.**

*Youth fidgets whilst age naps.*

Or, literally, "Are sitting agitatedly with the earth the younglings while are sitting calmly, majestically towards chair the elders."
> 3 votes

---
Tags: grammar, morphology, semantics, tense-aspect-mood, unnatural-features
---


title: Greek-based altlangs

text:
# Question
Title: Greek-based altlangs
The Wikipedia article on Artistic languages says in its current version

> What if Greek civilization had gone on to thrive without a Roman Empire, leaving Greek and not Latin to develop several modern descendants?

But in the ongoing text no Greek based altlangs are mentioned.

What are examples of Greek based altlangs?

# Answer
* **TAKE** is Το Ἄνευ Κλίσι Ἑλληνική / Greek Without Inflexions. According to Ray Brown, "Graeca sine flexione" ... (considers) what Greek might be like if stripped of its inflexions in the manner similar to Giuseppe Peano's Latino sine Flexione... It should be pointed out that although Giuseppe Peano produced 'Latino sine flexione' as an international auxiliary language, I am NOT making a similar proposal for ΤΑΚΕ!
* **Outidic** is a kind of IAL for the learned, statesmen & merchants alike.

*These are both by Ray Brown of Conlang-L.*
* **Èskova Linga**
* **Engadinese** is a Greek-Romansch graftlang.
* **Atlo Greek** appears now to be entirely lost.
* **Rhaetian**

There may be others...
> 11 votes

# Answer
After a bit of searching, the only remotely Greek-based altlang I've found is Eressilian, which is mentioned only in the above Reddit post. It claims to be the result of the evolution of the Hittite language, after mixing with other languages in the region surrounding Asia Minor. These languages (notably Persian, Arabic, and Greek) mainly contributed loanwords, which were then modified and incorporated. Unfortunately, little information is given, and there's no substantial vocabulary list. The only supposedly "Greek" word given is *adelphotés*, which - matching sentences word for word - seems to have been turned into *elelpulush*. I haven't been able to determine its meaning or origin.

Some notes on Eressilian:

* The Hittite language was an Anatolian language, which may or may not be "daughter languages" in the Indo-European family. A competing hypothesis is that it is instead a sister language family, developing separately, rather than a branch.
* The modern Greek language is a Hellenic language, definitely Indo-European; Persian is also Indo-European, an Indo-Iranian language. Arabic, on the other hand, is an Afroasiatic language, not Indo-European. This means that there any purely Hellenic influence will be reduced.
* Eressilian's notable loss of grammatical gender is likely a Persian influence, not Greek.

In short, Greek influence on Eressilian is largely only through loanwords, and is not shown in grammatical structures. It's there, but it's minor.
> 4 votes

---
Tags: diachronics, list-of-languages
---


# Question
Title: Are constructed languages intellectual property? Do they ever stop being IP, once people use them?
Are conlangs intellectual property? Can they be copyrighted?

The second question is a little more complicated. Does a certain level of public, common usage cause a conlang to become public domain, even when the language was created by a select group?

I know there has been some debate over the Klingon language regarding this, especially since there are a few people who were raised with Klingon as a secondary natural language. But I'm not certain about its legal status.

For the purposes of location, consider the US generally. If a state is needed, in California.

# Answer
> 14 votes
The short answer is that there are no mechanisms in place by which one could credibly copyright, patent or otherwise secure ones language. Works you create about the language (such as a grammar document or a poem) of course fall under the same copyright laws as any other works of their kind and as such generally belong to you, but your language as of now is just as copyrightable as English.

For a long answer, I recommend watching this talk by Sai (founder of the LCS) about exactly this topic.

# Answer
> 7 votes
Everything you make up is your intellectual property, but that does not mean you could decide who gets to use it and how. Programming languages are actually quite similar in this regard. We need to distinguish several concepts about a conlang:

* name
* dictionary
* grammar
* texts

Inventing and **naming** the language, effectively means you are entitled to decide what counts as *$language* and what does not. You probably could even register a trademark for it in some jurisdictions. You cannot stop people from extending the dictionary or deriving a dialect, but they could probably not legally call it *$language* without your approval. They could still use a slightly different name even incorporating the original one, e.g. "*$dialect* of *$language*", and you could do nothing about it. (For instance, *Commonmark* initially was called *Standard Markdown* and was renamed after protests from the author of *Markdown* and coiner of that term, but this happened out of courtesy not out of legal obligations, and variants with names like *Github Flavored Markdown* or *Markdown Extra* remain unaffected.)

The **dictionary** most likely is subject to database laws which differ significantly between jurisdictions and can be rather strange. I remember a case where it was legal to read, manually type and publish a copy of a printed phone register, but the redistribution of a computer scan was prohibited. It's best to treat the word list as public domain.

The **grammar** is much like an algorithm in mathematics. That means it usually cannot be patented or otherwise protected.

**Texts** in or about the language are of course still copyrighted intellectual property of their authors. The inventor or maintainer of the language has no say in this.

# Answer
> -1 votes
I would say yes. If for example you own the copyright to a dictionary and a grammar guide for words that you made up, then people can only use those words within the "fair use" guidelines of copyright law. So they could write an original poem using your language without your permission, but would need to provide citations to your copyrighted works. But no one would be able to read or understand the poem unless they also had access to the copyrighted works, which would quickly stifle any use of the language. If you want as many people as possible to learn and speak your language, then the fastest way to disseminate the language would be by releasing all materials into the public domain so that they are freely accessible to everyone.

---
Tags: legal
---


# Question
Title: How common is it for the creator of a conlang to be fluent in that conlang?
This was one of my example questions but I now am actually interested in the answer. I am an amateur conlanger; I have one pretty complete language and a couple in the process. But I can't construct a sentence in any of my languages without referencing the lexicon and grammar. How common is it for the creator of a conlang to be fluent in that conlang? (especially for languages that are not meant to be spoken like all of Tolkien's, where there is not a very significant fluent community).

# Answer
> 24 votes
From personal experience (active member in a large server of avid conlangers) *very few* people ever learn to speak their own conlangs. Language learning is a very time-intensive progress and there is not much gained from learning a language no one else speaks. The occasional exception tends to be found in group projects, in which sometimes at least to a part “creating by using” is used as a technique, which naturally leads to at least rudimentary command of the language. Some languages have also been developed exclusively by using them, such as Viossa, but this is an exception.

You may also be interested in this talk at LCC6, held by Jim Hopkins *in his conlang* (with an interpreter, of course). Summary of the talk:

> In this presentation Jim Hopkins, creator of Itlani, will share his tips and techniques for recording, learning, and living the Language of your Soul. He will discuss the need for finding and ensuring stability in your language’s vocabulary and structure to facilitate easier learning, and how to immerse yourself in your language for mental and emotional engagement, even though you aren’t living full time among native speakers. The presentation will be done entirely in the Itlani language, with interpretation into English by Tony Harris.

# Answer
> 10 votes
It's probably a lot more common for a person to be fluent in his own conlang when dealing with auxiliary languages. Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua, etc. all have large communities of speakers (relative to most conlangs), and I assume their creators also spoke them.

This is likely because the languages were designed for communication, and because the vocabulary is usually designed to be easily recognizable to as many people as possible, which makes learning it easier than learning an *a priori* vocabulary and grammar.

An example of a relatively recent auxlang is Lingua Franca Nova, created in 1998, which already has a lot of speakers. By contrast, a systematic "engelang" (engineered language) like Ithkuil would be extremely hard for anyone to master, and its creator is not fluent in it.

# Answer
> 5 votes
Ignoring that fluency means a wide range of things (reading, writing, conversing, conversing at a college educated level, etc)--

This is really rare. Outside of Esperanto, which as L1 speakers, the number of people who get to the lower levels of fluency is in the low two digits. Klingon, Na'vi, toki pona have up to tens of people who have various levels of fluency. Getting solid data is also really hard, the numbers you see in wikipedia are often wild ass guesses.

As a thought experiment, you can look at how many languages are even potentially speakable, ie. is the specification complete to say most or all possible sentences? Is there a community? Before the internet, this was usually an insurmountable problem, finding anyone who'd want to learn your language. Are there any "poison pills" in the language put there by the designer specifically to discourage humans from trying to use it? (Pedophilia in the conculture and absurdly difficult pronunciations come to mind)

John Henry did a study of this, targeting more recent personal conlangs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1HJfOPLXVY

---
Tags: conlang-creation
---


# Question
Title: Has any nation ever employed a constructed language in the military as code talkers?
Esperanto was once used in the US army to realistically simulate the language situation when training. Has any nation ever employed other constructed languages in the military as code talkers?

From Wikipedia article:

> Code talkers are people in the 20th century who used obscure languages as a means of secret communication during wartime. The term is now usually associated with the United States service members during the world wars who used their knowledge of Native American languages as a basis to transmit coded messages. In particular, there were approximately 400–500 Native Americans in the United States Marine Corps whose primary job was the transmission of secret tactical messages. Code talkers transmitted these messages over military telephone or radio communications nets using formal or informally developed codes built upon their native languages. Their service improved the speed of encryption of communications at both ends in front line operations during World War II.

# Answer
> 7 votes
The Israeli military uses a relexification of Hebrew called "NADBAR", according to Conlang Wikibooks†. A relexification of a language remains the grammar (by definition) and writing system (in practice) but gains new words. Your first (semi-)conlang was probably a relexification of English or another language.

Many languages used in the military are not immediately conlangs; rather, they fall into the dome of cryptology and cryptography. Quote:

> Some use the terms cryptography and cryptology interchangeably in English, while others (including US military practice generally) use cryptography to refer specifically to the use and practice of cryptographic techniques and cryptology to refer to the combined study of cryptography and cryptanalysis.

The military also uses (forms of) signed languages. Here are some common signals:

Common army signals (link instead of image, for image is too big and distracting)

---

†Note: (from comment by b a):

> According to Hebrew Wikipedia, "Contrary to the popular notion, the goal of Nadbar is not concealing information" (so not really cryptography) See the corresponding English Wikipedia page for its use in the US military.

---
Tags: history
---