| • Science | • People | • Locations | • Timeline |
| Contents | ||
The synonym planned language is sometimes used when referring to international auxiliary languages, and by those who may object to the more common term "artificial". Speakers of Esperanto, for example, have argued that "Esperanto is an artificial language like an automobile is an artificial horse". However, the term planned language is rarely used outside the Esperanto community.
Constructed languages are often divided into a priori languages, in which much of the grammar and vocabulary is created from scratch (using the author's imagination or automatic computational means), and a posteriori languages, where the grammar and vocabulary are derived from one or more natural languages.
Fictional and experimental languages can also be naturalistic, in the sense that they are meant to sound natural and, if derived a posteriori, they try to follow natural rules of phonological, lexical and grammatical change. Since these languages are not usually intended for easy learning or communication, a naturalistic fictional language tends to be more difficult and complex, not less (because it tries to mimic common behaviours of natural languages such as irregular verbs and nouns, complicated phonological rules, etc.).
In light of the above, most constructed languages can broadly be divided as follows:
A constructed language can have "native" speakers, if children learn it at an early age from parents who have learned the language. Esperanto has a considerable number of native speakersNative Esperanto speakers come to be in families in which Esperanto (and usually other languages) are spoken. Often one or both parents choose to use Esperanto as the main language in communicating with the children, who thus acquire the language in the w, variously estimated to be between 200 and 2000. A member of the Klingon Language InstituteThe Klingon Language Institute is an organization devoted to studying and teaching the Klingon language. It was founded in 1992, and publishes a quarterly journal called HolQeD . Each year it holds a qep'a (meeting) that is open to all members. External l, d'Armond Speers, attempted to raise his son as a native KlingonThe Klingon language (in Klingon, tlhIngan Hol is a constructed language created by Marc Okrand for Paramount Pictures and spoken by Klingons in the fictional Star Trek universe. He designed the language with Object Verb Subject word order to give an alie speaker, but found that at that time the Klingon vocabulary was not quite large enough to express the large number of objects normally found in the home, such as "table" or "bottle".
Proponents of particular constructed languages often have many reasons for using them. Among these, the famous but disputed Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is often cited; this claims that the language one speaks essentially controls the way in which one thinks. Thus, a "better" language should allow the speaker to reach some elevated level of intelligence, or to encompass more diverse points of view. Many question the validity of this claim.