19
votes
Accepted
Is there anyone that has a conlang as their first/only language?
Yes. According to Wikipedia, Esperanto has 350 native speakers (data 1996). There is also a story about a linguist only speaking to his son in Klingon, but even though the child picked it up somewhat, ...
- 1,743
19
votes
Accepted
What has the impact of Star Trek: Discovery been on the development of Klingon?
The language still has Okrand's guidance, and he trusts Robyn to do it correctly.
From IndieWire:
Before Stewart initially took the “Discovery” job, she did check in with Okrand himself to make sure ...
- 2,129
18
votes
Accepted
What is the oldest known constructed language?
The oldest language whose creator set out to actually invent a language (as opposed to Pāṇini, who wanted to create a classical standard out of an already extant language) was probably Lingua Ignota. ...
- 1,444
16
votes
Is there a middle-written language?
The best possible approach to a writing system "from the middle" is probably a text spiralling outwards.
One famous artefact, the Phaistos Disk, shows a spiral layout of the text, but is is unknown ...
- 11.3k
15
votes
Accepted
Is Tolkien's Dwarvish really based on Hebrew?
Yes.
According to this interview with Tolkien, he really did design it to be Semitic. He says,
The dwarves of course are quite obviously, wouldn't you say that in many ways they remind you of the ...
- 1,237
12
votes
Accepted
What is the influence of Russian on Tolkien's languages?
To begin with, Tolkien writes in letter 142 that
I love music but have no aptitude for it [...] Slavonic languages are for me almost in the same category. I have had a go at many tongues in my ...
- 769
11
votes
Was Tolkien aware of the Voynich manuscript?
Or, to the opposite, was Tengwar already designed before the Voynich manuscript was rediscovered and publically known?
The manuscript was rediscovered in 1912. Tolkien, according to Wikipedia, ...
- 2,129
11
votes
Is there an existing constructed language that once was dead?
My answer is a little biased, but I can speak for the history of Solresol. Solresol was invented in the early 1800s, grew in popularity over the next ~70 years, even after the death of its creator, ...
- 386
11
votes
Is there an existing constructed language that once was dead?
Since conlangs by their very nature don't start out with any speakers, and in most cases the author is not immediately a skilled user of the language, conlangs tend start out dead, and so under this ...
- 2,367
10
votes
International Auxiliary Language created by a Japanese person
Assuming that the OP misremembered a few facts, the language may be Babm, invented by the Japanese philosopher Rikichi [Fuishiki] Okamoto (1885–1963) and first published in 1962. It uses the Latin ...
- 219
10
votes
How developed is the Old Tongue in the Wheel of Time series?
From here on Theoryland:
Is there a complete language of the Old Tongue, and if so how long did it take you to develop it?
ROBERT JORDAN
There are basic 880 some words—maybe 900. I got a ...
- 1,375
10
votes
Conlangs based on Proto-Indo-European (PIE)?
Academia Prisca published Modern Indo-European as a revival of a late stage of the Indo-European language (Northwest Indo-European, billed as the ancestor of Italo-Celtic, Germanic and Balto-Slavic). ...
- 1,454
9
votes
Accepted
How does one determine the date a constructed language was invented?
For auxiliary languages it's usually publication date of the first grammar/dictionary released to the public or the first work dedicated to the language, whichever comes first.
For Esperanto this was ...
- 731
9
votes
Teaching children constructed languages
One guy taught his daughter Volapuk.
There is a contemporary case of someone teaching their kids their personal conlang, she used to be active on one of Facebook's conlang groups.
The revived ...
- 1,751
9
votes
Accepted
Is Loglan still alive?
Yes.
Loglan is continuously being developed and modified, as the website shows. There are new reports about changes to the language (and proposals to do so). The CEO of the Loglan Institute, Randall ...
- 653
9
votes
Accepted
How likely is it for conlangs to have verbs that have the same conjugation as another verb?
This is known as suppletion: when a particular verb, for whatever reason, is missing some of its forms, and they have to be filled in by another verb. This is why "go" and "went" ...
- 4,746
8
votes
How much Dwarvish did Tolkien actually devise?
As per this (cited by "An Analysis of Dwarvish" in Arda Philology 1: Proceedings of the First International Conference, with a very nice glossary of the language, which can be found here):
...
- 769
8
votes
Accepted
International Auxiliary Language created by a Japanese person
I have found the language again, it is named Zilengo and it was designed by OKA Asajiro in 1890. Apparently not much information about the language is preserved.
- 11.3k
7
votes
Is there a middle-written language?
There is something about language, which seems so obvious to us humans that it is rarely stated: Language is encoded in a linear, one-dimensional fashion.
The words you utter (and the sillables in ...
- 453
7
votes
Accepted
Has any nation ever employed a constructed language in the military as code talkers?
The Israeli military uses a relexification of Hebrew called "NADBAR", according to Conlang Wikibooks†. A relexification of a language remains the grammar (by definition) and writing system (in ...
- 1,743
7
votes
Is there anyone that has a conlang as their first/only language?
I’m going to try to avoid any kind of argument about politics, religion or what does or does not count as a “conlang,” and just give this as a historical case that I think is relevant to the spirit of ...
- 281
7
votes
Accepted
Did a majority of followers of Ido indeed switch over to Occidental?
I'm as pro-Occidental as they come (it's the only auxiliary language that I support) but I came across that article in 1928 during my typing up the archives of Cosmoglotta and that article is nothing ...
- 136
7
votes
Are there any Conlangs using Chinese characters?
Toki pona is a minimalist language with a ~125 word vocabulary that can be written using a proposed system of either Chinese or Japanese characters, although it is officially written in the Latin ...
- 71
7
votes
Are there any Conlangs using Chinese characters?
This may be a stretch and probably not what you’re looking for, but:
Essentially, that’s what Japanese did. Japanese and Chinese have nothing in common, yet when the Chinese writing system made it to ...
- 874
6
votes
Has any conlang ever replaced the use of a pidgin?
Basic English is minimal in that it limits the number of words in the language (though not as extremely as Toki Pona). It was intended to be an international auxiliary language (although it never ...
- 1,454
6
votes
Where do the words in Láadan come from?
Everything in this answer is taken from the website of the Láadan language (link to the page). I am by no means an expert, but this is directly from the mouth of Laáadan's creator. The following ...
- 1,375
6
votes
Which types of conlangs are the most popular to construct?
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 ...
- 2,367
6
votes
How to make names in a conlang?
Note that you as the conlang designer control both ends of the chain: The final wordform and the etymology. So you can play with both parts until the result meets your wishes.
So you can start with ...
- 11.3k
5
votes
Accepted
Which types of conlangs are the most popular to construct?
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 ...
- 3,522
5
votes
Teaching children constructed languages
There's a pretty badly written account (English translation) of someone's children learning Arka, though I have no idea if it's true.
There's also the better-known case of d'Armond Speers teaching ...
- 361
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