Jörg Rhiemeier's Conlang Pages

What is a conlang?

Conlang is an abbreviation for constructed language. Another frequently used word is artificial language. A conlang is thus a language for human (or other sapient) beings that was designed by a single individual or a work group, rather than being the product of centuries of cultural evolution as "natural" languages (natlangs) are. The art of making conlangs is called conlanging, or, in a more sophisticated way, glossopoeia (Greek for 'making of tongues', often attributed to J. R. R. Tolkien, but that does not seem to be correct). Programming languages and similar systems, though undoubtedly constructed, are usually not considered conlangs, because they aren't languages in a stricter sense of the word.

You probably already heard of Esperanto, or of Quenya. These two languages are the most famous representatives of the two main branches of conlanging. Esperanto is an international auxiliary language, or IAL or auxlang in short; it is meant as a tool for international communication. Quenya is an artistic language, or artlang in short; it is a piece of art. While you can learn and use it, it is not meant as a tool for international communication, but exists for the sake of itself. In the case of Quenya, it is the national language of a fictional nation (the High Elves of Middle-earth); this is often the case with artlangs, hence such languages are sometimes referred to as fictional languages.

The line between auxlangs and artlangs is not always as clear as one may think. There are languages that lie somewhere in between. And there is indeed a third pole on the continuum. These are the engineered languages or engelangs: languages designed to meet objectively testable criteria (while the design criteria of artlangs are more subjective notions).

Auxlangers and artlangers tend to dislike each other. Artlangers are for the most part put off by the proselytizing characteristic of the auxlang movement and the constant debate which of the various proposals is best. Auxlangers, on the other hand, consider artlanging a geekish waste of useful resources - they say that instead of desiging languages nobody would ever speak, the artlangers should help promoting an international auxiliary language.

My own interest lies primarily in artlangs, especially naturalistic ones (i.e., ones that resemble natural languages in their richness and complexity). In my opinion, the race between the auxlangs is already as good as decided - and English is the winner.

Essays and resources

The art of conlanging

A brief history of conlanging.
The Art of Conlang Classification. How to get order into the vast universe of conlangs.
What's wrong with euroclones? Why it isn't always bad to follow European linguistic patterns.
International auxiliary languages. A peep across the fence.
But isn't it all meaningless? A comment on Wittgenstein's "private language" argument.
The Conlangers' Jargon File. A dictionary of jargon commonly used in the online community.
Farewell to romlangs. Why I no longer do Romance conlangs.
Why oligosynthesis probably fails, and why taxonomic and arithmographic languages probably fail, too.

Natlangs

The Caucasian languages. There are quite a few interesting languages over there.
The Celtic languages. Another bunch of interesting languages.
Standard Average European. Often considered uninteresting, but what makes a language SAE?

Miscellaneous

Ars Glossopetica [PDF]. A Festschrift for Raymond A. Brown on occasion of his 80th birthday.
Some of my posts to the CONLANG Mailing List. Various ideas and comments on conlangs and conlanging.

My conlangs

Languages of Atla

Atla is the framework in which most of my conlangs exist. The name is Old Albic for 'world'; think of it as a set of fictional languages in the real world.

Hesperic languages

Hesperic is my main conlang family. The Hesperic family is an early divergent branch of Indo-European even more archaic than Anatolian.

Proto-Hesperic (work in progress)
Proto-Albic, ancestor of the Albic ("Elvish") languages of Atla (work in progress)
Old Albic, language of the classical Elvish civilization (work in progress) Script sample

Razaric languages

Proto-Razaric, ancestor of the Razaric ("Dwarvish") languages of Atla (work in progress)

Krelian languages

Proto-Krelian, ancestor of the languages of Neolithic Central Europe which exerted a substratum influence on Hesperic (work in progress)

Languages of Akana

Akana is a collaborative conworld to which I have contributed three languages.

Çetázó, a Western language.
Proto-Dumic, the protolanguage of a collaborative family.
Trinesian, a descendant of Proto-Dumic.

Obsolete conlangs

Within my life, I made several conlangs which I later discontinued because I was disaffected with the language, the world setting or both.

League of Lost Languages

The League of Lost Languages (LLL) was a collaborative framework for fictional languages in a world otherwise the same as the real world. It is now defunct. Some of the languages I made for it are now part of Atla, but the languages listed here are not.

Roman Germanech, a Romance language of Germany.
Modern Vandalic, an East Germanic language spoken in Tunisia; never finished.
Attidian, a fragment of a Hesperic language of ancient Italy.

Miscellaneous

Nur-ellen, a descendant of Sindarin which was later to be reworked into Albic.
My conlang juvenalia - what I remember of the conlangs of my youth.

Links

Note: I am not responsible for the contents of the sites listed here.

General resources

The Language Construction Kit by Mark Rosenfelder.
How to create a language by Pablo Flores.
The Conlanger's Library - a vast collection of useful resources.
Fiat Lingua - monthly journal on conlanging.
David Peterson's Web Thing with useful resources and his self-motivated conlangs (for his works for hire, see here). Also check out his new site.
Jan van Steenbergen's home page with some useful stuff.
A Primer in SF Xenolinguistics - discusses clichés to avoid and other matters concerning alien languages.
Omniglot, a collection of the world's writing systems, with a page listing scripts for conlangs.
Constructed Language stuff by Jim Henry.
Universal Language Dictionary by Richard Harrison, a useful list of basic vocabulary items.
BabelMap - virtual Unicode keyboard.
Unicode Text Analyzer gives you the Unicode code points of characters you feed into it.
i2Speak - virtual IPA keyboard.
List of self-segregating morphology methods. If you want your engelang morphemes to be self-segregating.
Wikipedia Constructed Languages Portal (Please don't peddle your conlang on the Wikipedia. It is a general encyclopedia that can't cover everything down to the most minute detail. Most readers won't be interested in your conlang. Use one of the conlang-oriented wikis instead.)

Linguistics

Ethnologue. A catalog of all known living languages (or so it says).
The World Atlas of Language Structures. An awesome collection of maps displaying typological information on hundreds of languages worldwide.
Linguistic Maps. More typological maps.
Linguistic Maps - this time showing families and dialects - amazingly detailed.
Grammar Watch - grammars from all parts of the world.
Index Diachronica - sound changes for hundreds of languages.
Proto-Indo-European Lexicon compiled by Sam McCabe - an indispensable resource for any Indo-European conlanger! The original MS Excel file (can be used off-line) can be downloaded here.
Typological tools for field linguists (and conlangers ...)
Leipzig Glossing Rules for interlinear glosses.
Wikipedia Language Portal. Lots of useful articles on languages and linguistics - only a few mouseclicks away.
Speculative Grammarian - journal of satirical linguistics. Have fun!

Community

Language Creation Society
CONLANG Mailing List. Can get rather technical sometimes, but worth subscribing.
Zompist Bulletin Board. An online conlanging and worldbuilding community. An older incarnation of this board can still be seen here.
Conlanger Bulletin Board. Another online community, similar to the above.
FrathWiki, a wiki for the conlanging and conworlding community.
Linguifex, another wiki for conlangs.
Conlang Wiki @ Fandom.com. Yet another wiki for your conlangs. Ugly and full of advertising.
AUXLANG Mailing List. For discussing IALs. It was founded to get auxlang advocacy out of the CONLANG list, but now is a rather quiet place.

Selected conlangs

Artlangs

~~Akana~~, a collaborative conworld by ZBB members, with many conlangs. (Currently, the site is broken.)
Almea is an immensely detailed fictional world by Mark Rosenfelder, with many well-developed conlangs.
Alurhsa, a very complete conlang by Anthony Harris.
ámman îar is another classic - a Tolkien fanlang by the late David Bell.
Ardalambion. The best starting point for learning about Tolkien's languages.
Ayeri. A beautiful, Austronesian-inspired language by Carsten Becker.
Ill Bethisad is a collaborative alternative history with many conlangs, such as Brithenig (Romance with Welsh-like sound changes, by Andrew Smith, the starting point of it all), Kerno (the Romance language of Cornwall, by Padraic Brown), Breathanach (Romance with Gaelic-like sound changes, by Geoff Eddy), Wenedyk (Romance with Polish-like sound changes, by Jan van Steenbergen), or Arvorec [archived] (a Celtic language, by Deiniol Jones).
Britainese, a hypothetical British Romance language by Raymond A. Brown, a response on Brithenig, taking a different approach.
Dritok [PDF], an interesting non-human language using both sound and gesture, by Donald Boozer.
To Áneu Klísi Ellēnikó by Raymond A. Brown is Greek stripped of its inflections, inspired by G. Peano's Latino sine flexione.
Feorran by Brad Coon, a language of fictional indigenous people of Antarctica.
Henrik Theiling's conlangs.
Itlani [PDF], a classic conlang by James E. Hopkins.
Kash, a classic fictional language by the late, lamented Roger Mills.
Kēlen, by Sylvia Sotomayor, is one of the most beautiful conlangs I have ever seen. It also features an interesting grammar without verbs as we know them.
The Klingon Language Institute. Klingon, developed by Marc Okrand for Star Trek, is probably the most widely-spoken conlang except Esperanto - like it or not.
Novegradian is a very, very well-designed fictional Slavic language, designed by Martin Posthumus. Rock'n'roll!
Okuna by Matthew Pearson, one of the most celebrated conlangs of our time. An older version named Tokana is found here.
The Languages of David J. Peterson which he made for Hollywood; older self-motivated conlangs of his can be found on his old site.
Rikchik by Denis M. Moskowitz is an alien sign language with an interesting syntax, using tentacles.
Silindion, a gorgeous "Elvish" conlang by Elliott Lash.
The Alien Languages of Star Trek [archived] - a guide to the languages of Star Trek, not all canon.
Teonaht, the classic conlang by Sally Caves.
Tsolyani, a classic fictional language by M.A.R. Barker.
Twin Aster is a fictional world by Galen Buttitta, with many conlangs.
The Voynich Manuscript is a mysterious undeciphered codex, dated to the early 15th century, which may be an early example of conlanging.

Engelangs

The Briefscript Project by Raymond A. Brown, an attempt at a language with shorter words. Interestingly, he doesn't use a huge phoneme inventory like most designers of maximally concise languages - to the contrary: he uses such a small phoneme inventory that he can use the Latin alphabet as a syllabary.
Ithkuil by John Quijada, designed for high efficiency, with highly complex phonology and grammar.
Láadan, the feminist language by Suzette Haden Elgin.
Lojban, the most popular logical language, a descendant of Loglan. There is a Wikipedia in Lojban.
Toki Pona, a minimalistic language by Sonja Elen Kisa - the yang to the yin of Ithkuil.

Auxlangs

Ceqli, an interesting auxlang by Rex May, with self-segregating morphology.
Esperanto, invented by L. Zamenhof in 1887. You may like it or not, it is the most popular conlang worldwide, and perhaps the only one with native speakers (in the real world, I mean). See also my criticism of it. There is also a Wikipedia in Esperanto.
Ido, built by Louis de Beaufront and Louis Couturat and published in 1907, is essentially a streamlined version of Esperanto, and one of the more successful IAL proposals, even if it never achieved the popularity of Esperanto. It has a Wikipedia.
Latino sine flexione is, as its name implies, Latin stripped of (most of) its inflections, proposed by Giuseppe Peano in 1903.
Novial, an elegant auxlang by Danish linguist Otto Jespersen (1928). Novial-Informatione by James Chandler. There is also a Wikipedia in Novial.
Volapük, released by J. M. Schleyer in 1879, was the first IAL to find thousands of adherents, before Esperanto eclipsed it.