Buzz
The notion of people inventing their own language might seem strange, but as we will explore, it's not as unusual as it sounds. Some languages were created to bring together speakers of different tongues, while others emerged for academic reasons. In at least two cases, speakers unintentionally developed a new language, unaware of what they had created. There's even one instance where the language was supposedly made to communicate with extraterrestrials. This is a bit contentious since the creator denied designing the language, claiming instead that an alien had taught it to him.
The journey to develop a new language has been quite a challenge. Many of these languages never gained widespread use. Some are still evolving and being refined, while one has survived and is now officially recognized as a language.
10. aUI
aUI (pronounced a-OO-ee) was introduced to Earth by John W. Weilgart, who claimed it was taught to him by a green, elf-like alien. Weilgart believed that aUI, made up of various symbols, would eventually replace complex natural languages like English. In aUI, outer space is symbolized by a circle, 'inside' is a circle with a dot in the center, and power is represented by a lightning bolt. New words are formed by combining these symbols.
In 1968, Weilgart published a book called “aUI: The Language of Space,” which detailed the symbols that made up the language, along with their origins. Weilgart recommended that all humans learn to speak aUI before aliens who spoke the language arrived on Earth. He also proposed that we should engage in peaceful negotiations with these extraterrestrials when they arrive, and avoid any kind of conflict.
9. Lingua Ignota
Around a thousand years ago, Hildegard von Bingen, a scholar, composer, and nun, created a language and an alphabet. While no one knows the name she gave to the language, it has come to be known as Lingua Ignota. She included it in the Reisen Codex, where she listed names she assigned to various divine beings, humans, plants, and objects. For example, she spelled God as “Aigonz,” angels as “aiegenz,” and humans as “inimois.” In her vocabulary, father is “peueriz,” mother is “maiz,” and wife is “kaueia.”
Linguists believe that Lingua Ignota was based on Greek, with possible influences from Cyrillic, Latin, and German. It appears that Bingen had a preference for the letter “z,” which is common in German. The way Bingen wrote Lingua Ignota follows Roman Cursive, though it also resembles Zodiac symbols. The reasons behind her creation of the language remain unexplained.
8. The Language of Poto and Cabengo
Grace and Virginia Kennedy were twin sisters who, in the 1970s, naturally created their own language. They used it in daily conversations and even adopted new names, Poto and Cabengo. Alarmingly, they could not speak any other language. Their father misunderstood their communication as nonsense and thought they were mentally ill, choosing not to send them to school. It wasn't until a visit to a speech therapist that anyone realized the girls had invented their own language.
A typical exchange between the two sisters sounded like this:
“Pinit, putahtraletungay” (Finish, potato salad hungry) “Nis, Poto?” (This, Poto?) “Liba Cabingoat, it” (Dear Cabengo, eat) “la moa, Poto?” (Here more, Poto?) “Ya” (Yeah)
Linguists and speech therapists faced great difficulty in understanding the language. It took them months to decipher that “pinit” meant “finished,” “buda” was “butter,” and “toolenis” referred to “spaghetti.” One significant challenge linguists encountered was the rapid pace at which the girls altered their word pronunciations. For example, they pronounced “pandaydooz” in 26 different ways in just fifteen minutes.
It was later revealed that isolation played a key role in the development of the language. The girls spent much of their early years with their grandmother, who rarely spoke to them. When she did, it was in German, even though they lived in the United States. Both girls were eventually ‘cured’ of their unusual language, but they continued to struggle with speech issues even more than 20 years later.
7. Nicaraguan Sign Language
In 1977, Nicaragua opened its first school for the deaf. Initially, there were no plans to teach the students sign language. Instead, the focus was on teaching Spanish and lipreading, neither of which the students could comprehend. However, something unexpected occurred: the students developed their own language, now known as Idioma de Señas de Nicaragua (ISN) or Nicaraguan Sign Language. Linguists were fascinated by this as it marked the first time they observed the natural creation of a language.
The language began with deaf students creating signs for everyday objects and activities. Over time, they added more signs, and eventually, they developed a grammatical structure to govern the language's use. All of this happened naturally, without any planned effort. Some linguists have used Nicaraguan Sign Language to support the Universal Grammar theory, which argues that humans have an inherent ability to create new languages when necessary. This theory is still under debate and inconclusive today.
6. Loglan
Loglan (short for logical language) was created by James Cooke Brown in 1955. Brown designed the language to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which proposes that the structure of a language limits the cognitive abilities of its speakers. In essence, the language a person speaks determines the highest level of intellectual development they can achieve. Thus, individuals can never surpass the limitations imposed by their language.
Brown developed Loglan to explore whether it could influence people's thinking and thereby overcome the limitations imposed by their previous language. Unlike natural languages such as English, Loglan is free of ambiguity. It has no words with multiple meanings or that sound alike when spoken. For example, it avoids the confusion between 'ice cream' and 'I scream.' The structure of the language is based on Predicate Calculus, a branch of mathematical logic, although you don’t need to understand mathematics to speak Loglan.
Loglan currently has a vocabulary of about ten thousand words, with around one thousand of them in regular use. New words are created by combining existing Loglan words or borrowing terms from other languages, particularly the International Scientific Vocabulary. Many Loglan speakers believe the language is ideally suited to become the world's official language someday.
5. Lojban
Lojban was created by the Logical Language Group (LLG) in 1997, although their work on it began in 1987. It evolved from Loglan, with the LLG having studied Brown’s works in detail. Lojban is based on a core vocabulary of 1,350 words, derived from six of the world’s most spoken languages: Chinese, English, Hindi, Spanish, Russian, and Arabic. The group intentionally avoided ambiguous words such as 'bank,' which has multiple meanings, or homophones like 'your' and 'you’re,' and 'its' and 'it’s,' which differ only in punctuation.
In Lojban, spelling is entirely phonetic. Words are pronounced exactly as they are written. They are also easy to identify, as the usage of a word indicates its part of speech. Lojban is spoken worldwide, with the largest communities in Australia, Israel, and the United States. Speakers often note that the language has a sound similar to Italian.
4. Folkspraak
Folkspraak was designed as a universal language intended to be understood by speakers of all Germanic languages. These languages, which originated from a now-extinct common ancestor, include English, German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Faroese, and Gothic, among others. However, the main languages used for Folkspraak today are English, Dutch, German, Danish, Norwegian, Bokmål, and Swedish.
Folkspraak is still under development by a group of enthusiasts who collaborate through a Yahoo group. The project has faced numerous challenges, particularly due to the absence of a standardized method for creating new words. As a result, some words are borrowed from other Germanic languages like Frisian, Low German, and Norwegian Nynorsk. Disagreements over syntax, vocabulary, and grammar have led to the emergence of various dialects, which might eventually result in multiple distinct languages.
3. Lingwa de Planeta
In 2010, a team of linguists led by Russian psychologist Dimitri Ivanov developed a language called Lingwa de Planeta. Though still in progress, the team hopes it could become the global lingua franca one day. Lingwa de Planeta draws its vocabulary from the ten most widely spoken languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.
Ivanov's team selected ten languages as the foundation for Lingwa de Planeta because they sought to avoid favoring any single language. They also aimed to ensure that the language would be easily understood by speakers of all ten languages. Ivanov and his colleagues believe that the rise of the internet will soon make a single global language necessary, as the internet continues to bring people together in unprecedented ways.
2. Medžuslovjansky
The quest to create a universal language for all Slavs dates back to 1666 when Juraj Križani developed a language called Ruski. Although it never gained widespread use, it inspired numerous attempts to develop a common language for speakers of all Slavic languages, including Belorussian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Macedonian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, and Ukrainian.
Most efforts to establish a universal Slavic language failed because the Pan-Slavists behind them typically based their proposals on their own native Slavic language. Some Russian Pan-Slavists even suggested that other Slavs adopt Russian as the universal Slavic language, since it is spoken by 65-70% of Slavs. Others proposed using Old Church Slavic, the liturgical language linked to the common ancestor of all Slavic tongues, but this idea faltered because Old Church Slavic lacked modern vocabulary and was seen as too archaic.
Today, all efforts to create a universal Slavic language have been consolidated into Interslavic. At a conference in July 2017, Interslavic was used for the first time in public, bringing together various movements advocating for a single Slavic language. Following the conference, Novoslovienskij and Slovianski-N—two major languages that contributed to Interslavic—were merged to create Medžuslovjansky.
1. Tutonish
Tutonish was an endeavor by Elias Molee to create a universal language for those who spoke Germanic languages. It was rooted in English and German but was structured similarly to all Germanic tongues. In Tutonish, the first three lines of the Lord's Prayer are expressed as follows:
"vio fadr hu bi in hevn" (Our Father, who art in heaven) "holirn be duao name" (hallowed be thy Name) "dauo reik kom" (thy kingdom come)
The quote lacks upper case letters because Tutonish was written entirely in lowercase. Molee advocated for his language through several books, where he called for the simplification and unification of all Germanic languages. Some of his works were reviewed by the New York Times, and he even presented his language to King Haakon VII of Norway. Reflecting on the encounter in his autobiography, he wrote, "e king ws very friendly t me" (The king was very friendly to me). Eventually, he renamed the language Alteutonish, but it never gained popularity.
