Which types of conlangs are the most popular to construct? [closed]

Question

For example, can it be shown that there are more auxiliary than artistic conlangs? Note that I'm not talking about use, but about which type is more popular to create. The answer can address any level of specificity; i.e. it could address types, subtypes, very broad generalizations, etc. (I'm afraid I don't know very specific categorizations to be more clear; feel free to edit or suggest better words in the comments.) I would prefer answers focused on conlangs from more "modern" times; say, starting with the introduction of Tolkien's languages forward.

If no answer is possible because the data doesn't exist or isn't organized in a way that allows for such an inventory to be taken, that is also acceptable.

Answer 1

This is a hard to answer question, as there isn’t any statistically useful database. CALS has a bunch of data, but only a small subset of conlangers have ever entered their data there. There, there seems to be a clear preference for the creation of Artlangs, i.e. creating languages simply for the sake of creating art, not to fulfill any purpose. A priori langs seem to be favoured over a posteriori, likely because the latter is quite a bit more work-intensive (every new vocabulary item needs to be researched if one wants to do a good job at it…).

A larger sample size can be found on reddit. However, there are no statistics there, and the sample is skewed in favour of beginner conlangers (only few experienced conlangers ever frequent it. source: personal experience as a moderator). To get an idea of the data, we can use Google search results. With the added restriction site:reddit.com/r/conlangs here are some results (first number total of following search results):

Auxlangs: 893

• Auxlang: 469
• Auxiliary Language: 212
• IAL: 212

Artlangs: 430 (this number is problematic because this category appears to be taken as the default by many, yielding no search results)

• Artlang: 191
• Artistic Language: 239

A priori: 1'170
A posteriori: 328

Naturalistic: 363

“Romance” languages: 1'403

• romlang: 363
• romance: 1'040

“Germanic” languages: 1'210

• germanic: 1'210

Indo-European: 730

Creole: 364

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As you can see, on reddit, taking inspiration from existing European language families is very common. From personal experience, among more experienced conlangers there are very few people trying to create auxiliary languages, most people striving to either create naturalistic languages or to push the boundaries of linguistics in some way or another. But I cannot provide any data for this.

Answer 2

My experiences are largely the same as those of Adarain, though I have access to a data-set that perhaps better shows the predominance of artlangs, as I moderate a moderately sized discord server in which users can request roles that show what kind of languages they make and at the same time get a fancy-coloured name. Many users have more than one roles and the roles are not mutually exclusive either. The first number is the amount of people who have the role, the second number is the amount of people who have it as their primary colour:

• A posteriori: 24, 8
• A priori: 73, 19
• Artistic: 66, 43
• Auxiliary: 11, 8
• Engineered: 16, 16
• Joke: 8, 4
• Secret (for secret communication): 12, 4

These numbers clearly show the dominance of a priori artistic languages. Additionally, all but one of the people with auxiliary as their main colour are relative beginners, though this a rather small sample and it may come down to server culture as much as anything.