MORE than 5m people now hear a few words in Dothraki or Valyrian, the fabricated languages spoken in the television series “Game of Thrones”, each week—more than the number who hear Welsh, Irish Gaelic and Scots Gaelic combined. From the unsung (Babm and Brithenig) to the celebrated (Esperanto and Elvish), constructed languages, in various states of completion, now outnumber the world’s natural tongues. Fantasy literature, science-fiction films and video games have fuelled a demand for otherworldly tongues—and fans increasingly expect them to be usable. So how do you invent a language from scratch?

That depends on its purpose. Those making a brief appearance in a novel (Nadsat in “A Clockwork Orange”, and Newspeak in “1984”) require just a smattering of vocabulary. But those intended to be used more widely need strict grammar rules. Attempts to lift the curse of Babel took off in the 19th century with the first “international auxiliary languages”. Because their aim was to ease communication, their construction was intentionally simplified. François Sudré, a French violinist, invented Solresol. With seven syllables based on the seven notes of the musical scale, it can be written in musical notation, sung and understood by illiterates. Ludwig Zamenhof, a Polish doctor, created Esperanto to be a politically neutral language that would be easy to pick up. Its conjugation patterns are regular and its vocabulary mirrors existing European words. Languages specifically engineered out of some political or theoretical conviction, on the other hand, can be onerous to speak. Kēlen has no verbs. E-Prime, a version of English which excludes the verb “to be”, separates opinion from fact. Láadan is designed to express women’s feelings better (widazhad, for example, means “to be pregnant late in term and eager for the end”). Ithkuil packs as much meaning as possible into as short a space as possible; its fifty-eight distinct sounds make it almost impossible to pronounce. More.

See: The Economist

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