These are outlines and notes of the field of Conlangs and Linguistics. Both are intertwined disciplines.

Key Terms

Many of these terms are from the book The Art of Language Creation.

• Conlang: a constructed language, a language that is consciouly created by one or more individuals—a fully functional linguistic system.
• Natlang: languages that exist in the world that have evolved naturally. This includes spoken, creole, and signed.
• Fictional Language: a language that exists in a given fictional context.
• Real Language: exists in the world regardless of status, constructed or not.
• Fake Language: gives the impression of a real language in a context without being a real language. In other words, made up bullshit. There is no underlying system.
• Code: hides meaning behind a system, and requires some type of cipher in order to decrypt.
• Jargon: extensions of vocabulary, a subset if you will, that is part of an already existing language. They work within the context of a language and are not an entire language in-and-of-themselves.
• Dialect: instantiation of a language, i.e. language in real use. Everyone speaks a dialect of their native language.
  • Idiolect: your own particular version of your language.
• Artlang: conlang created for aesthetic, fictional, or otherwise artistic purposes.
• Auxlang: conlang created for international communication.
• Engelang: “engineered language”, which is created to create some type of linguistic affect.
• A Priori: a conlang that has no grammar or vocabulary not based on an existing language.
• A Posteriori: a conlang whose grammar and vocabulary are drawn from an existing source, like Esperanto.
• Translation: the practice of rendering the content of a clause from one language into a different one, the rendering of meaning in one language into another.
• Transcription: the practice of taking the text of one language and putting it into a form that’s readable by a person who speaks a language that uses a different orthography—or into a neutral orthography (like the romanization system, or IPA).
• Gloss/Interlinear: gives the reader an idea of what each word in a clause means or what role it plays in the sentence. Helps determine what data in another language means but also how it means what it means.
  • For example: 哪里哪里 means “what are you talking about?” While the gloss is “where where”.
• International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA): alphabet used by linguists to transcribe any and all sounds made with the human vocal tract, regardless of native spelling systems.
• Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis:
• Glossopoeia: “the creation of languages(s)”
• Glossopoeic: “of or pertaining to the creation of languages(s)”
• Glossopoeist: “one who creates language(s)“

Things to Note

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that language affects the way we perceive the world. This concept makes rounds in the linguistics community and discourse because of its opinionated implications: are languages that are less complex mean the practitioner has a “lesser-than” thinking capacity? Or perhaps does a language that is less complex mean that the practitioner has more headroom to think about greater, more important things, rather than allocating time and energy to managing the intricacies of the language?

It is a hypothesis because it is not proven to be true.

A priori

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Conlangs

Conlangs (constructed languages) originate from reason. There is always an answer to the question of “why” a particular language is created and formed to be. A conlang’s genisis exists in reasoning, and this reasoning dictates their category.

Constructed Languages can be divided into three general categories:

• Auxilary
• Artistic
• Engineered

These categories are fluid. And so, the suffix -lang can be put to any particular topic and so therefore a new category can be created.

Auxilary

Artistic

Engineered

Arguments

The field consists of two opposing arguments. The first is that all languages are constructed languages. The opposition states that there is a divison between the two.