by Alexius Tan

Created on: May 22, 2008   Last Updated: February 17, 2012

Purposes in Developing a Constructed Language

What comes to your mind when you hear the phrase "artificial language"?
Is it some kind of writing in alien script and with alien pronunciations?
Yes, that is partly correct.

Construction languages came into the limelight again as the movie Avatar hits the box office. The language spoken by the people by Na'Vi, is an entirely constructed language. You may find support pages for help on the use of this "Alien" language, and you could even find people teaching the language on youtube! Amazing! Yet, have you even pause to wonder why people create new languages?

There are generally 6 purposes which artificial languages are created and used:

PURPOSE #1: Artificial language is for inter-racial/national communication.
We know that language differences are sometimes barrier to human communication. But when we have a politically neutral auxiliary language to be used between countries, a more direct communication with better understanding can be achieved. This is possible because an interpreter/translator is no longer required for the task, and translation might not fully get the same ideas across.

An example would be the language Esperanto, it was created to bridge communication among Europeans. There are quite a number of users for this language.

PURPOSE # 2: For linguistic research
Linguists sometimes create small languages to study the way people learn languages; from the ability and inability to learn it, conclusions could be drawn. These languages became the experimental instruments used by their creators.

PURPOSE # 3: Artificial language for artificial intelligence.
What do I mean here? Programming languages like C#, C++, Java and FORTRAN are some of the programming languages we use to give instructions to computers. We must understand those computers are unlike humans, instructions given to them must be in the programming languages for them to be able to execute the tasks correctly. There are many programming languages used today, some are similar in some sense that they could also be termed as "dialects" of a root language family.

PURPOSE #4: We are using it everyday! (that you don't realise it's artificial)
Plus, minus, times, divide, summation (Mathematical operators)
E=m*c*c, E=m*g*h, E=0.5*m*v*v (Energy equations) PV=nRT (gas law) & A (of circle) = Pi*R*R
Those above are some of the artificial languages we use. I still remember the benzene rings and organic compounds I drew in my college days. They are

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