Artificial languages

By 1600 Latin was falling into disuse as a universal language of scholarship

Europeans sought to find a replacement.

"The curse of Babel is worse than we thought"

In 1629 the French philosopher Rene Decartes proposed a scheme to replace languages with a universal system of numbers representing words and notions.  

Since then, more than 700 artificial languages have been created

a priori artificial languages:  attempts to express concepts directly, without regular phonology and grammar;  used numbers, pictures, musical notes, etc.

Example:  In 1800's, Jean François Sudre invented Solresol, based on combinations of the musical scale do, re, mi, etc.

    2-note combinations made function words:  si--yes, dore--I; domi--you. 

    Common content words used 3-note combinations:  doresol month; doredo time. 

    Semantic opposites reversed the order of syllables:  misol good - solmi evil.

   4- note combinations were divided into different semantic classes: the note 'la' appeared in words dealing with finance and commerce.

All a priori languages were failures

      too cumbersome to learn or too or monotonous to remember

      boundaries between concepts arbitrary rather than universal.

a posteriori languages: patterned on real languages, but with simplified phonology and grammar, lacking exceptions.

Volapuk (1880); patterned after English and German; 8 vowels, 20 cons.

Esperanto (1887) invented by the Polish oculist Zamenhof

    5 vowels, 23 cons, mostly West European lexicon, Slavic influence on syntax and spelling

La inteligenta persono lernas la interlingvon Esperanto rapide kaj facile.

Esperanto is the most successful artificial lang., with several million speakers.  But no art. lang. has succeeded in becoming a universal language.

Why?

AL's lack cultural and ethnic heritage

AL's are still based on certain languages rather than others.

AL's still take effort to learn, and the effort is not worth it for most people.

AL's develop dialects.  IDO - is a breakaway dialect of Esperanto

Today, a network of several world languages are used as lingua francas

AL's started out as a way of reducing linguistic diversity

Today, AL's are mostly learned or invented to increase diversity

1634 - novelist Francis Godwin writes History of the Man in the Moon,

invents "lunarian"

Since 1930, many Al's have been created to increase linguistic diversity. 

J.R.R. Tolkein - The Hobbit (1936), The Lord of the Rings (1953)

    Elvish, Dwarvish, Orkish, etc.

Mark Okrand - invented Klingon for Star Trek

"Babel" increasingly viewed as a blessing rather than a curse

Today, language preservation is becoming a major goal