Portal:Constructed languages

Introduction

The Conlang Flag, a symbol of language construction created by subscribers to the CONLANG mailing list, which represents the Tower of Babel against a rising sun

A constructed language is a language for communication between humans (i.e. not with or between computers) which, unlike most languages that naturally emerge from human interaction, is intentionally devised by a person or group for a particular purpose. The term constructed language is often shortened to conlang and, as a relatively broad term, it encompasses subcategories including: fictional, artificial, engineered, planned and invented languages. Conlangs may include aspects reminiscent of natural language including phonology, grammar, orthography, and vocabulary. Interlinguistics includes the study of constructed languages. (Full article...)

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The Naʼvi language (Naʼvi: Lìʼfya leNaʼvi) is the constructed language of the Naʼvi, the sapient humanoid indigenous inhabitants of the fictional moon Pandora in the 2009 film Avatar. It was created by Paul Frommer, a professor at the USC Marshall School of Business with a doctorate in linguistics. Naʼvi was designed to fit James Cameron's conception of what the language should sound like in the film, to be realistically learnable by the fictional human characters of the film, and to be pronounceable by the actors, but to not closely resemble any single human language.

When the film was released in 2009, Naʼvi had a growing vocabulary of about a thousand words, but understanding of its grammar was limited to the language's creator. However, this has changed subsequently as Frommer has expanded the lexicon to more than 2200 words and has published the grammar, thus making Naʼvi a relatively complete, learnable and serviceable language.

The Naʼvi language has its origins in James Cameron's early work on Avatar. In 2005, while the film was still in scriptment form, Cameron felt it needed a complete, consistent language for the alien characters to speak. He had written approximately thirty words for this alien language but wanted a linguist to create the language in full. Find out more...

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Did you know...

...that the auxiliary languages Ido and Esperanto both have their own versions of Wikipedia?
...that Newspeak, used by George Orwell in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, is interpreted as a hidden critique against universal languages by some?
...that Sequoya, a Cherokee silversmith, created the Cherokee syllabary, despite being illiterate at the time?

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You are invited to participate in WikiProject Constructed languages, a WikiProject dedicated to developing and improving articles about constructed languages.

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Several articles about constructed languages have been deleted for lack of verifiability, independent resources or notability. If you think one of the following subjects meets Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, don't hesitate dig it up from the graveyard, but don't forget to add proper references: