Case 4: Conlangs through History, center

Early Conlangs and Universal Languages: From Ancient Greece to 20th-Century America

 

Conlangs did not come into existence with Zamenhof’s Esperanto, Okrand’s Klingon and Tolkien’s Elvish. Language creation has been around since the first humans began connecting the sounds they uttered to things in the real world. The relationship between words and their meanings has been analyzed by philosophers for ages. Numerous authors long before Tolkien added constructed languages to their works to provide verisimilitude to their imaginary worlds. Many people have theorized and even created languages to be used as international, neutral forms of communication including Volapük, Interlingua, Ido, Latino sine Flexione, Novial, Occidental, and many more. These are the founders, philosophers, writers, and visionaries who laid the groundwork for the conlangers of today.

 

An Historical Timeline from Plato to Swift

 

360 B.C.E.

Plato

Cratylus

 

early 3rd century C.E.

Athenaeus of Naucratis

The Deipnosophists (Banquet of the Philosophers)

 

12th century

Hildegard of Bingen

“Lingua Ignota”

 

1516

Sir Thomas More

De Optimo Reipublicae Statu deque Nova Insula Utopia

(More's work, commonly referred to simply as Utopia, includes information on the Utopian language)

 

1532

François Rabelais

Gargantua and Pantagruel

 

1580s

Dr. John Dee & Edward Kelly

Diaries

(Edward Kelly would enter trance states and receive messages from the Angels in their language, Enochian. Dr. John Dee faithfully transcribed all that Kelly would relate.)

 

1622

Paul Guldin

Problema aritmeticum de rerum combinationibus

(calculated the number of possible locutions generated by 23 letters)

 

1629

Marin Mersenne

Harmonie universelle

(wherein Mersenne considers the idea of a universal language)

 

1629

René Descartes

Letter to Marin Mersenne

(expressed a critical opinion of a universal language submitted anonymously to Mersenne; Descartes advocated a universal language built on philosophical principles)

 

1638

Francis Godwin

The man in the moone or A discourse of a voyage thither by Domingo Gonsales

(the first English science fiction; describes the “musical” Lunar language)

 

1647

Francis Lodwick

A common writing: whereby two, although not understanding one the others language, yet by the helpe thereof, may communicate their minds one to another

(the first universal language scheme to be published)

 

1652

Sir Thomas Urquhart

Ekskubalauron, or the Discovery of A most exquisite Jewel, more precious then Diamonds inchased in Gold, the like whereof was never seen in any age ...

(includes Urquhart's "Introduction to the Universal Language")

 

1657

Cave Beck

The universal character: by which all the nations in the world may understand one anothers conceptions, reading out of one common writing their own mother tongues.

(Beck's universal language and script were based primarily on the use of numbers)

 

1659

Dr. Meric Casaubon

True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Yeers between Dr. John Dee and Some Spirits

(Enochian)

 

1661

George Dalgarno

Ars signorum

(Dalgarno can be credited with devising the first universal language based on a systematic categorization of reality, from animals, humans, and plants to thoughts, feelings, and beyond. This idea would be refined further by John Wilkins in 1668)

 

1663

Athanasius Kircher

Polygraphia nova et universalis

(Kircher's language failed to catch on as a universal language, but was a pioneering work in cryptography)

 

1676

Gabriel de Foigny

La Terre Australe Connue

 

1677

Denis Vairasse d'Alais

Les Sévarambes

 

1668

John Wilkins

(brother-in-law of Oliver Cromwell)

An essay towards a real character and a philosophical language

(lays out a detailed categorization of reality accompanied by a universal languages based on this classification)

 

1669

John Webb

An Historical Essay Endeavoring a Probability That the Language of the Empire of China Is the Primitive Language

(proposes Chinese as the language spoken before the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel)

 

1726

Jonathan Swift

Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts by Lemuel Gulliver

(Brobdingnagian, Laputan, and Houyhnhnm languages)

 

(Bottom) The Ban

For years, the subject of the origin of language AND the construction of universal languages was officially banned in academic circles. The 1866 constitution of the Société de linguistique de Paris bluntly stated...

 

[l]a Société n'admet aucune communication concernant, soit l'origine du langage, soit la création d'une langue universelle.

 

"The Society does not accept papers on either the origin of language or the creation of a universal language."

 

In 1872, the London Philological Society followed suit. Almost a century later, Noam Chomsky would echo this skepticism of research into the prehistory of language, and this would be enough to stifle this subject in academia for decades.

 

Luckily, the origin of language has now become a topic of serious academic research by noted linguists like Steven Pinker, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, and Simon Kirby. The First Word by Christine Kenneally does a wonderful job of presenting the history of this debate and the current state of research.

 

In the realm of conlangs, the Internet has provided an unsurpassed opportunity for artificial languages to flourish. Entire web sites, forums, and listservs dedicated to (and written in) Esperanto, Klingon, and thousands of other personal and international languages are now commonplace online.

Done