by Neil Buckley

Created on: February 08, 2007   Last Updated: May 22, 2008

became interested in artificial languages about fourteen years ago when I first learnt about Esperanto. Esperanto was devised about a century ago and now has more than a million speakers. It is even taught in a few universities!

Artificial languages are known as "constructed languages" or "planned languages", as well as a host of more precise terms, which descibe what type of artificial language it is, as well as its purpose.

People invent their own languages for a variety of reasons. One of the main reason is simplification of speach. This can mean one of two things - either recreating a particular language in order to remove all of its irregularities, or creating a new languages, which is similar to two or more other languages, thus facilitating communications between cultures.

A second major reason for creating artificial languages, and I have to say that this is my favoured reason, is simply for the sake of it! The most popular constructed language of this variety that comes to mind is Klingon. This comes under the particular variety of "Star Trek Language" or "Alien Language", and was invented for the Star Trek motion pictures beginning in the late 1970's. Although Klingon is based partly on Russian, it is completely alien, and its words are unlike anthing else on Earth.

If you look around the internet, you will find lots of constructed languages, invented by normal people simply for their own enjoyment. I, myself, have invented my own language called Neelan. I began working on this eight years ago. It started with a few simple words and phrases, like "I have a dog" ("Vyl bey-l-Owh."), but it is now a very complex languages. Please take the time to learn it. The various websites over the years dedicated to Neelan have had tens of thousands of visits, and I would like to think there are a few Neelan speakers in the world beside me.

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