Discouraging Words
Invented languages and their long history of failure.
Written by Filed under Arts & Entertainment, History, Life
The flag of Esperanto, the most widely spoken invented language in the world.
Of the 900 or so languages invented in the past 900 years, almost all can be considered failures. Sure, there are exceptions, like Esperanto (which was designed to facilitate communication between people of different nations and cultures), and Klingon (created for the alien race that inhabits the Star Trek universe, now spoken—forcefully—by Trekkies from our world). But for every invented language you might have heard of, there are hundreds of others that have never been spoken by anyone—and never will.
Thanks to linguist Arika Okrent, author of “In the Land of Invented Languages” (Spiegel & Grau), any inquisitive reader can now take a tour through the whimsical world of language inventors and their always eccentric, sometimes exasperating creations. Covering everything from the first documented invented language (Lingua Ignota, by Hildegard von Bingen, a twelfth century German nun) to cartoonish efforts like Toki Pona (which “uses only positive words [and] is intended to promote positive thinking”), Okrent’s endearing and mostly accessible book gives language inventors more ink than they’ve had in years—maybe ever.
Following is Failure’s interview with the multilingual Okrent, which, for expediency’s sake, was conducted in plain-old American English.
What is the definition of an invented language?
All languages are in some sense invented in that people create them, but generally people do this as a group without being conscious of what they are doing. The invented languages I’m talking about are those where someone sat down and built a brand-new language from scratch.
What compels an individual to create a new language?
For most of history it’s been dissatisfaction with natural languages. They see problems like irregular verbs or words that aren’t specific enough in terms of what they mean, and decide that they could do better.
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