A Brief History of Artificial Languages. List of constructed languages

It would seem that English today is the language of world communication, why do we need something else? But linguists don't think so. The first known artificial language appeared in the world at the end of the 19th century, it was called Volapuk. In 1880, the first Volapuk language textbook was published. True, Volapyuk did not take a strong position and disappeared simultaneously with the death of his creator. After that, many new artificial languages ​​appeared in the world. Some of them are popular, such as Esperanto, and some are spoken and written only by their creator (it would be more correct to call such artificial languages ​​“linguo projects”).

Moreover, there are even invented artificial languages, the creators of which came up not only with the name of the language and the people who use this language, but also with grammar and vocabulary. The most famous and prolific creator of invented artificial languages ​​is Tolkien (yes, the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Ring). He invented more than a dozen Elvish languages, created a logical structure for their emergence and development, distribution, and even thought out the grammar and lexical structure of each of the languages ​​(with varying degrees detail).

Tolkien, as a professional linguist, specialized in the ancient Germanic languages. This is what helped him in the creation of his famous Elvish languages. In his books, Tolkien used the languages ​​he created for names and titles, even writing poems and songs in them. So much is known about the Quenya language invented by Tolkien that you can even learn to speak it, there is a Quenya textbook. Another thing is that you can speak Quenya only with ardent fans of Tolkien, in real life language is unlikely to be helpful.

Let's now recall some artificial languages ​​(otherwise they are called "planned languages") that are used in the world.

Constructed Languages: Esperanto

Esperanto is the best known and most widely used artificial language in the world. Like Volapuk, it appeared at the end of the 19th century, but this language was much more fortunate. Its creator is the doctor and linguist Lazar Markovich Zamenhof. Today Esperanto is spoken by 100 thousand to several million people, there are even people for whom the language is native (usually children from international marriages, in which Esperanto is the language of family communication). Unfortunately, exact statistics for artificial languages ​​are not kept.

Constructed language Ido (edo)

Ido is a kind of descendant of Esperanto. It was created by French Esperantist Louis de Beaufron, French mathematician Louis Couture and Danish linguist Otto Jespersen. Ido was proposed as an improved version of Esperanto. It is estimated that up to 5,000 people speak Ido today. At the time of its creation, about 10% of Esperanto speakers switched to it, but the Ido language did not gain worldwide popularity.

Constructed Languages: Slovian

We, Russian people, cannot fail to mention such an interesting project as Slovianski. This new language, it appeared in 2006 as a language for international communication of the Slavs. The creators of the language set themselves the task: the language should be understandable without translation to most speakers of Slavic languages ​​(and this group includes not only us, Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. There are also Czechs, and Croats, and Bulgarians, and other peoples).

There are other planned or artificial languages ​​that are not so famous and popular: Interlingua (appeared in the middle of the 20th century), Tokipona (one of the simplest artificial languages, several hundred users, appeared in 2001), Quenya (the most popular and developed elvish language, the number of people who know it to some extent reaches several thousand), Klingon language (the language of one of the alien races in the Star Trek series, a magazine is published on it, there are songs in Klingon and even Klingon Google!) . In fact, the number of artificial languages ​​is difficult to determine: only more or less well-known artificial languages ​​are about forty. And here is a link to a long list of artificial languages:

Linguists, there are about 7,000 languages. But this is not enough for people - they come up with new ones over and over again. In addition to such famous examples as Esperanto or Volapuk, many other artificial languages ​​have been developed, sometimes simple and fragmentary, sometimes extremely ingenious and elaborate.

Mankind has been creating artificial languages ​​for at least a couple of millennia. In antiquity and the Middle Ages, "unearthly" language was considered divinely inspired, capable of penetrating into mystical secrets universe. The Renaissance and Enlightenment witnessed the emergence of a whole wave of "philosophical" languages, which were supposed to link all knowledge about the world into a single and logically flawless structure. As we approached modernity, more popularity gained auxiliary languages which were supposed to facilitate international communication and lead to the unification of mankind.

Today, when talking about artificial languages, the so-called artlangs- languages ​​that exist within works of art. These are, for example, Quenya and Tolkien's Sindarin, the Klingo language of the inhabitants of the Star Trek universe, the Dothraki language in the Game of Thrones, or the N'avi language from James Cameron's Avatar.

If we take a closer look at the history of artificial languages, it turns out that linguistics is by no means an abstract field where only intricate grammars are dealt with.

Utopian expectations, hopes and desires of mankind were often projected precisely into the sphere of language. Although these hopes usually ended in disappointment, there are many interesting things to be found in this story.

1. From Babylon to the angelic language

The diversity of languages, which complicates mutual understanding between people, was often interpreted in Christian culture as a curse of God sent to mankind as a result of the Babylonian pandemonium. The Bible tells of King Nimrod, who set out to build a gigantic tower whose top would reach to the very sky. God, angry with proud mankind, confused their language so that one ceased to understand the other.

It is quite natural that the dreams of a single language in the Middle Ages were directed to the past, and not to the future. It was necessary to find a language before confusion - the language in which even Adam spoke with God.

The first language that mankind spoke after the fall was Hebrew. It was preceded by the same language of Adam - a certain set first principles from which all other languages ​​originated. This construction, by the way, can be quite correlated with the theory of generative grammar of Noam Chomsky, according to which any language is based on the deep structure c general rules and principles of construction of statements.

Many church fathers believed that the original language of mankind was Hebrew. One of the notable exceptions is the views of Gregory of Nyssa, who was ironic about the idea of ​​God as a school teacher showing the first ancestors the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. But in general, this belief was preserved in Europe throughout the Middle Ages.

Jewish thinkers and Kabbalists recognized that the relationship between an object and its designation is the result of an agreement and some kind of convention. It is impossible to find anything in common between the word "dog" and a four-legged mammal, even if this word is pronounced in Hebrew. But, according to them, this agreement was made between God and the prophets, and therefore is sacred.

Sometimes arguments about the perfection of the Hebrew language go to extremes. The 1667 treatise A Short Sketch of the True Natural Hebrew Alphabet demonstrates how the tongue, palate, uvula, and glottis physically form the corresponding letter of the Hebrew alphabet when it is pronounced. God not only took care to hand over the language to man, but also imprinted its structure in the structure of the organs of speech.

The first truly artificial language was invented in the 12th century by the Catholic abbess Hildegard of Bingen. A description of 1011 words has come down to us, which are given in a hierarchical order (in the beginning there are words for God, angels and saints). Previously, it was believed that the language was conceived by the author as universal.

But it is much more likely that it was a secret language intended for intimate conversations with angels.

Another "angelic" language was described in 1581 by the occultists John Dee and Edward Kelly. They named him Enochian(on behalf of the biblical patriarch Enoch) and described the alphabet, grammar and syntax of this language in their diaries. Most likely, the only place where it was used was the mystical seances of the English aristocracy. Things were quite different just a couple of centuries later.

2. Philosophical languages ​​and universal knowledge

With the beginning of the New Age, the idea of ​​a perfect language is experiencing a period of upsurge. Now they are no longer looking for it in the distant past, but they are trying to create it on their own. This is how philosophical languages ​​are born that have an a priori nature: this means that their elements are not based on real (natural) languages, but are postulated, created by the author literally from scratch.

Usually the authors of such languages ​​relied on some kind of natural science classification. Words here can be built according to the principle chemical formulas when the letters in the word reflect the categories to which it belongs. According to this model, for example, the language of John Wilkins is arranged, who divided the whole world into 40 classes, within which separate genera and species are distinguished. So, the word “redness” in this language is conveyed by the word tida: ti is the designation of the class “perceived qualities”, d is the 2nd kind of such qualities, namely colors, a is the 2nd of the colors, that is, red.

Such a classification could not do without inconsistencies.

It was over her that Borges was ironic when he wrote about animals “a) belonging to the Emperor, b) embalmed, h) included in this classification, and) running like crazy”, etc.

Another project to create a philosophical language was conceived by Leibniz - and eventually embodied in the language of symbolic logic, the tools of which we still use today. But it does not claim to be a full-fledged language: it can be used to establish logical connections between facts, but not to reflect these facts themselves (not to mention using such a language in everyday communication).

The Age of Enlightenment put forward a secular ideal instead of a religious one: new languages ​​were supposed to become assistants in establishing relations between nations and contribute to the rapprochement of peoples. "Pasigraphy" J. Memieux (1797) is still based on a logical classification, but the categories are chosen here on the basis of convenience and practicality. Projects for new languages ​​are being developed, but the proposed innovations are often limited to simplifying the grammar already existing languages to make them more concise and clear.

However, the desire for universalism is sometimes revived. IN early XIX century, Anne-Pierre-Jacques de Vim develops a project of a musical language similar to the language of angels. He suggests translating sounds into notes, which, in his opinion, are understandable not only to all people, but also to animals. But it never occurs to him that the French text encrypted in the score can only be read by someone who already knows at least French.

A more famous musical language was given a melodic name solresol, the draft of which was published in 1838. Each syllable is labeled with a note name. Unlike natural languages, many words differ by only one minimal element: soldorela means "to run", lyadorel means "to sell". Opposite meanings were indicated by inversion: domisol, a perfect chord, is God, and the opposite solmido denotes Satan.

It was possible to transmit messages to solresol using voice, writing, playing notes or showing colors.

Critics called solresol "the most artificial and most inapplicable of all a priori languages". In practice, it was really almost never used, but this did not prevent its creator from receiving a large cash prize at the World Exhibition in Paris, a gold medal in London and gaining the approval of such influential people as Victor Hugo, Lamartine and Alexander von Humboldt. The idea of ​​human unity was too seductive. It is precisely this that the creators of new languages ​​will persecute at a later time.

3. Volapuk, Esperanto and the unification of Europe

The most successful linguistic construction projects were not designed to be divine mysteries or the device of the universe, but in order to facilitate communication between peoples. Today this role has been usurped by English. But does this not infringe on the rights of people for whom this language is not native? It was precisely this problem that Europe faced by the beginning of the 20th century, when international contacts intensified, and medieval Latin had long since fallen out of use even in academic circles.

The first such project was Volapuk(from vol "world" and pük - language), developed in 1879 by the German priest Johann Martin Schleyer. Ten years after its publication, there are already 283 Volapük clubs around the world - a success never seen before. But soon there was no trace of this success.

Unless the word "volapyuk" has firmly entered the everyday lexicon and began to denote speech, consisting of a hodgepodge of incomprehensible words.

Unlike the "philosophical" languages ​​of the previous formation, this is not an a priori language, since it borrows its foundations from natural languages, but not quite a posteriori, since it subjects existing words to arbitrary deformations. According to the creator, this was supposed to make Volapuk understandable for representatives of different language groups, but in the end it was incomprehensible to anyone - at least without long weeks memorization.

\the most successful linguistic construction project was and remains Esperanto. The draft of this language was published in 1887 by the Polish ophthalmologist Ludwik Lazar Zamenhof under the pseudonym Dr. Esperanto, which in the new language meant "Hopeful". The project was published in Russian, but quickly spread first to the Slavic countries, and then throughout Europe. In the preface to the book, Zamenhof says that the creator of an international language has three tasks to solve:

Dr. Esperanto

from the book "International Language"

I) To make the language extremely easy, so that it can be learned in jest. II) So that everyone who has learned this language can immediately use it to explain with people of various nations, it does not matter whether this language is recognized by the world and whether it finds many adherents or not.<...>III) Find means to overcome the indifference of the world and to induce it as soon as possible and en masse to start using the proposed language as a living language, and not with a key in hand and in cases of extreme need.

Enough in this language simple grammar, consisting of only 16 rules. The vocabulary is made up of slightly modified words that have common roots for many European peoples to facilitate recognition and memorization. The project was a success - today the carriers of experanto, according to various estimates, are from 100 thousand to 10 million people. More importantly, a certain number of people (about a thousand people) learn Esperanto in their first years of life, and do not learn it at a later age.

Esperanto attracted a large number of enthusiasts, but the language of international communication, as Zamenhof hoped, did not become. This is not surprising: a language can take on such a role not due to linguistic, but to the economic or political advantages that lie behind it. According to the famous aphorism, "a language is a dialect that has an army and a navy," and Esperanto had neither.

4. Extraterrestrial intelligence, elves and Dothraki

Among more recent projects stands out loglan(1960) - a language based on formal logic in which every proposition must be understood the only way, and any ambiguity is completely eradicated. With its help, the sociologist James Brown wanted to test the hypothesis of linguistic relativity, according to which the worldview of the representatives of a particular culture is determined by the structure of their language. The check failed, since the language, of course, did not become the first and native for anyone.

In the same year, the language appeared lincos(from lat. lingua cosmica - "cosmic language"), developed by the Dutch mathematician Hans Freudenthal and designed to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligence. The scientist assumed that with its help any intelligent being could understand another, based on elementary logic and mathematical calculations.

But most of the attention in the 20th century received artificial languages ​​that exist within the framework of works of art. Quenya And Sindarin, invented by professor of philology J. R. Tolkien, quickly spread among the writer's fans. Interestingly, unlike other fictional languages, they had their own history of development. Tolkien himself admitted that language was primary for him, and history was secondary.

J.R.R. Tolkien

from correspondence

Rather, "stories" were written to create a world for languages, rather than vice versa. In my case, the name comes first, and then the story. I would generally prefer to write in "elvish".

No less famous is the Klingon language from the Star Trek series, developed by linguist Mark Okrand. A very recent example is the Dothraki language of the nomads from Game of Thrones. George Martin, the author of a series of books about this universe, did not develop any of the fictional languages ​​in detail, so the creators of the series had to deal with it. The task was undertaken by the linguist David Peterson, who later even wrote a textbook about it called The Art of Inventing Languages.

At the end of the book Designing Languages, linguist Alexander Pipersky writes: it is quite possible that after reading you will want to invent your own language. And then he warns: “If your artificial language aims to change the world, most likely it will not succeed, and only disappointment awaits you (there are few exceptions). If it is needed in order to please you and others, good luck!”

The creation of artificial languages ​​has a long history. At first they were a means of communication with other world, then - an instrument of universal and exact knowledge. With their help, they hoped to establish international cooperation and achieve mutual understanding. IN Lately they have become entertainment or become part of fantasy art worlds.

Recent discoveries in psychology, linguistics and neurophysiology, a virtual reality and technological developments such as the brain-computer interface may revive interest in artificial languages. It is quite possible that the dream that Arthur Rimbaud wrote about will come true: “In the end, since every word is an idea, the time for a universal language will come!<...>It will be a language that goes from soul to soul and includes everything: smells, sounds, colors.

To many, the very phrase “artificial language” may seem extremely strange. Why "artificial"? If there is "artificial language", then what is "natural language"? And, finally, the most important thing: why create another new language when there are already a huge number of living, dying and ancient languages ​​​​in the world?

Artificial language, unlike natural language, is not a product of human communication, which arose as a result of complex cultural, social and historical processes, but was created by man as a means of communication with new characteristics and capabilities. The question arises, is it not a mechanical product of the human mind, is it alive, does it have a soul? If we refer to languages ​​created for literary or cinematic works (for example, the language of the Quenya elves, invented by Professor J. Tolkien, or the language of the Klingon Empire from the Star Trek series), then in this case the reasons for their appearance are clear. The same applies to computer languages. However, most often people try to create artificial languages ​​as a means of communication between representatives of different nationalities, for political and cultural reasons.

For example, it is known that all modern Slavic languages ​​are related to each other, like all modern Slavic peoples. The idea of ​​their unification has been in the air since ancient times. The complex grammar of Old Church Slavonic could not have made it the language of interethnic communication of the Slavs, and it seemed almost impossible to opt for any particular Slavic language. Back in 1661 he was nominated Kryzhanich Pan-Slavic language project who laid the foundations of Pan-Slavism. It was followed by other ideas of a common language for the Slavs. And in the 19th century, the common Slavic language, created by the Croatian educator Koradzic, became widespread.

The projects of creating a universal language were occupied by the mathematician Rene Descartes, the enlightener Jan Amos Comenius, and the utopian Thomas More. They were all driven by the alluring idea of ​​breaking down the language barrier. However, most artificially created languages ​​have remained the hobby of a very narrow circle of enthusiasts.

The first language to achieve more or less noticeable success is considered to be Volapuk, invented by the German priest Schleir. It had a very simple phonetics and was built on the basis of the Latin alphabet. The language had a complex system of verb formation and 4 cases. Despite this, he quickly gained popularity. In the 1880s, newspapers and magazines were even published on Volapuk, there were clubs of its lovers, and textbooks were published.

But soon the palm passed to another much easier language to learn - Esperanto. The Warsaw eye doctor Lazar (or, in the German manner, Ludwig) Zamenhof published his works for some time under the pseudonym "Doctor Esperanto" (hoping). The works were devoted just to the creation of a new language. He himself called his creation "internacia" (international). The language was so simple and logical that it immediately aroused the interest of the public: 16 uncomplicated grammar rules, no exceptions, words borrowed from Greek and Latin - all this made the language very convenient for learning. Esperanto remains the most popular artificial language to this day. It is interesting to note that in our time there are also speakers of Esperanto. One of them is George Soros, whose parents once met at an Esperanto congress. The famous financier is originally bilingual (his first native language is Hungarian) and a rare example of how an artificial language can become native.

In our time, there are a great many artificial languages: this and lolgan, designed specifically for linguistic research, and created by a Canadian philologist Toki Pona language, And edo(reformed Esperanto), and slovio(Pan-Slavic developed by Mark Gutsko in 2001). As a rule, all artificial languages ​​are very simple, which often evokes associations with Newspeak described by Orwell in his novel 1984, a language that was originally designed as a political project. Therefore, the attitude towards them is often contradictory: why learn a language in which great literature is not written, which is not spoken by anyone except a few amateurs? And, finally, why learn an artificial language when there are international natural languages ​​(English, French)?

Regardless of the reason for the creation of this or that artificial language, it is impossible for them to replace the natural language equally. It is deprived of a cultural and historical base, its phonetics will always be conditional (there are examples when Esperantists from different countries hardly understood each other due to the huge difference in the pronunciation of certain words), it does not have a sufficient number of speakers to be able to "plunge" into their environment. Constructed languages, as a rule, are taught by fans of certain works of art where these languages ​​are used, programmers, mathematicians, linguists, or simply interested people. It is possible to consider them as an instrument of interethnic communication, but only in narrow circle lovers. Be that as it may, the idea of ​​creating a universal language is still alive and well.

Kurkina AnaTheodora

Artificial languages ​​are created for different purposes. Some - to give credibility to a fictional space in a book or film, others - to obtain a new, simple and neutral means of communication, while others are designed to comprehend and reflect the essence of the world. It is easy to get confused in the variety of artificial languages. But there are a few of the most "unusual among the unusual."

The development and "durability" of each language also varies greatly. Some, such as Esperanto, have been “living” for several centuries, while others, having originated on Internet sites, exist through the efforts of their authors for a month or two.

For some artificial languages, sets of rules have been developed, while others consist of several tens or hundreds of words, designed to demonstrate the unusualness and dissimilarity of the language to others and do not form harmonious system.

Lincos: a language for communicating with aliens

The Lincos language (lingua cosmica) was invented for contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. It is impossible to speak it: there are no “sounds” as such in it. It is also impossible to write it down - it also does not contain graphic forms (“letters” in our understanding).

It is based on mathematical and logical principles. It has no synonyms and exceptions, only the most universal categories are used. Messages on the linkos need to be transmitted using pulses of different lengths, for example, light, radio signal, sound.

The inventor of the linkos, Hans Freudenthal, proposed establishing contact by first passing on the main signs - a dot, "greater than" and "less than", "equal to". The number system was explained next. If the parties understood each other, then communication could be complicated. Lincos - language initial stage communication. If earthlings and aliens would want to exchange poetry, this would have to come up with a new language.

This is not a “ready-made” language, but a kind of framework - a set ground rules. It can be changed and improved depending on the task. Some of the principles of lincos were used to codify messages sent to the stars. solar type.

Solresol: the most musical language

Even before the explosion of the popularity of artificial languages, the French musician Jean-Francois Sudre invented the language "solresol", based on combinations of seven notes. In total, it contains about twelve thousand words - from two-syllable to five-syllable. The part of speech was determined by the position of the stress.
You can write texts on solresol with letters, notes or numbers, they can be drawn in seven colors. You can communicate with it using musical instruments(playing messages), flags (as in Morse code), or just singing or talking. There are methods of communication on Solresol designed for the deaf and blind.

The melodiousness of this language can be represented by the example of the phrase “I love you”: in solresol it will be “dore dear domi”. For brevity, it was proposed to omit the vowels in the letter - “dflr” means “kindness”, “frsm” - a cat.

There is even a solresol grammar with a dictionary. It has been translated into Russian.

Ithkuil: Knowing the World Through Language

One of the most difficult in terms of grammar and writing is the Ithkuil language. It refers to philosophical languages ​​created for the most accurate and fast transmission. large volumes information (the principle of "semantic compression").

The creator of Ithkuil, John Quijada, did not set out to develop a language close to natural. His creation is based on the principles of logic, psychology and mathematics. Ithkuil is constantly improving: Quijada until today makes changes to the language he constructed.

Ithkuil is very complicated in terms of grammar: it has 96 cases, and a small number of roots (about 3600) is compensated by a significant number of morphemes that clarify the meaning of the word. A small Ithkuil word can only be translated into natural language with a long phrase.

Texts in Ithkuil are proposed to be written using special characters - several thousand can be made from the combination of four basic characters. Each combination indicates both the pronunciation of the word and the morphological role of the element. You can write text in any direction - from left to right, and from right to left, but the author himself suggests writing with a vertical "snake" and reading from the upper left corner.

At the same time, the Ithkuil alphabet was created on the basis of Latin. A simplified writing system was also built in Latin, which allows typing texts on a computer.

In total, this artificial language has 13 vowels and 45 consonants. Many of them are easy to pronounce separately, but in the text they form combinations that are difficult to pronounce. In addition, Ithkuil has a system of tones, as, for example, in Chinese.

Ithkuil does not joke, do not create puns and ambiguity. The language system obliges to add special morphemes to the roots, showing exaggeration, understatement, irony. It's almost perfect "legal" language - no ambiguity.

Tokipona: The Easiest Constructed Language

A significant proportion of artificial languages ​​are deliberately designed to be simplified so that they can be learned quickly and easily. The champion in simplicity is "tokipona" - it has 14 letters and 120 words. Tokiponu was developed in 2001 by Canadian Sonia Helen Kisa (Sonia Lang).

This language is almost the exact opposite of Ithkuil: it is melodic, it has no cases and complex morphemes, and most importantly, every word in it is very ambiguous. The same construction can mean completely different things. For example, "jan li pona" is " good man” (if we are just pointing at a person) or “a person is fixing” (pointing at a plumber).

The same thing in tokipon can also be called differently, depending on the speaker's attitude towards it. So, a coffee lover might call it "telo pimaje wawa" ("strong dark liquid”), and the hater - “telo ike mute” (“very bad liquid”).

All terrestrial mammals in it are denoted by one word - soweli, so a cat can be distinguished from a dog only by directly pointing to the animal.

This ambiguity serves reverse side the simplicity of tokipony: words can be learned in a few days, but it will take much more time to memorize the already established stable turns. For example, "jan" is a person. "Jan pi ma sama" - compatriot. And "roommate" is "jan pi tomo sama".

Tokipona quickly gained a following – the Facebook community of Tokipona has several thousand people. Now there is even a Tokipono-Russian dictionary and grammars of this language.

The Internet allows you to learn almost any artificial language and find like-minded people. But in real life, artificial language courses are almost non-existent. The exception is Esperanto, the most popular international auxiliary language today.

And then there is the sign language, and if someone finds it too complicated,
know - there is .

Natural languages, everyone knows. And if he doesn’t know, then at least he guesses - after all, all the people of our planet speak them. But in order to avoid confusion, we can give them such a definition - this is the fruit of communication between people, which has arisen and improved over the centuries, has been influenced by cultures, traditions, and almost all languages ​​​​are natural: these are Russian, and English, and Chinese, and German , and Indian, and many others. They can be both simple and complex; both common and rare; both international and used only in their own homeland.

But what are artificial languages? Why are they called that? How did they come about? What are they needed for?

Artificial languages ​​were created by man and were not influenced by cultural traditions And historical events. When creating such a language, a dictionary can be formed both from words that do not exist anywhere else, and from words from various natural languages. Its use is possible only for a relatively small circle of people who have taken up the study of such a linguistic neoplasm, and the rules in it are often complex. Comprehension of the secrets of such languages, as a rule, is carried out by very, very few, mainly linguists.

However, they have artificial languages ​​and their advantages: they can be used by cryptographers, it is convenient to talk about something secret with them, with their help you can completely immerse yourself in the world of the work if the characters there speak in a similar style.

To date, there are many languages ​​artificially created by man. But only five are considered the most famous.

Volapuk, one of the first artificial languages, was invented by a German. Due to its simplicity and unusualness (all the words of this language were invented by the author), Volyapyuk quickly became widespread, for some time it was not only spoken, but also published in newspapers.

Esperanto, like Volapuk, appeared in the 19th century and was even more popular than the first. In Esperanto, words are borrowed from several natural languages, more specifically from the groups of Slavic, Romance and Germanic languages. Esperanto is still spoken to this day, even by people for whom it is native. This happens in international families, where spouses speak Esperanto among themselves, and children learn it from childhood.

Ido is an analogue of Esperanto, improved by the Frenchman Louis Couture and the Dane Otto Jespersen. However, Ido did not win such popularity as Esperanto.

Quenya - the so-called invented world famous writer Tolkien. It was created on the basis of ancient groups. Quite popular among fans of his work.

Slovianski is a very young language created in 2006 to facilitate international communication between Slavs. Slovian is a language that is reasonably understandable by almost all speakers of Slavic languages, including Russians, Ukrainians, Croats, Czechs, Bulgarians, and Belarusians.

Thus, using the example of Esperanto and Slovene, we can conclude that artificial languages ​​can bring tangible benefits when communicating with speakers of different languages.

However, this is not the end of the conversation about languages. IN separate categories it is necessary to single out not only natural and artificial languages, but also artificially revived ones.

So, in the Czech Republic at the end of the 18th century, almost the entire population of the country spoke German, and Czech was forgotten. His dialects were spoken in countryside, and even then the peasants from different villages could hardly understand each other. Realizing the sad fate of their native language, the native Czechs set about restoring it, in which they were very successful. Another thing is that to this day the Czech colloquial and Czech literary are, although related, but completely different languages.

A similar story happened with Hebrew, which almost no one spoke in the 19th century. No, it was not forgotten - newspapers were printed on it, Jews from different countries used it for communication, but it was not used in everyday life, and therefore there were simply no many words in it. Therefore, in order to revive this language, it was necessary not only to make people remember it, but also to invent new words.

An attempt at artificial restoration was also made in relation to another language, almost unknown to anyone now - Kafarevus, but it was unsuccessful.