Is Russian a constructed language?

Question

It is regulated directively by authorities even more strictly than programming languages!

E.g. During the reform of 1918 they just forbade letter Ъ аnd removed all those letters! In some cases letter Ъ was still needed, and they were replacing it by apostrophe during some period.

I think you would have been repressed if you had written something in the old Russian orthography...

Answer 1

First of all, a language reform can be controversial, not widely accepted and even authoritarian in its implementation and even stupid - it still doesn't make the language constructed.

Second, the roots of the reform we are talking here can be found in proposals of Russian linguistic society that precedes revolution for more than a decade. It was a common understanding in linguistic circles that this way or another Russian spelling should me modernised. For God sake, up to that moment students and pupils were memorising by heart usage of "ѣ" because for them there were no logic behind it at all.

Third, even if we will consider this particular spelling reform as inefficient or redundant (which it wasn't) - there was no attempts to regulate by it how people are actually talking and which grammar rules they are using. It remained exactly the same language it was before the revolution.

This is not a constructed language by the very definition of a constructed language.

Also you are very wrong about how transition of Turkish to the Latin alphabet was generally approved. It wasn't and some people were quite opposed to it. Ironically, the example provided by you is closer (but it's still not) to a constructed language in that sense that Osmanic and modern Turkish differs way more than pre- and post-Revolution Russian.

Answer 2

No, this is language reform.

• In 1928, the Turkish government replaced the entire alphabet in use with a modified Roman alphabet, abandoning the previous Arabic-based alphabet. Vocabulary reforms (mostly purism) were also introduced at this time.
• In the late 19th century, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda introduced reforms (simplifications, neologisms) in the Hebrew language to make it suitable for modern use.
• The government of the People's Republic of China introduced Simplified Chinese characters starting in the 1950's with a goal of improving literacy.

None of these activities are normally considered conlanging.