James Dawe


If you find that no language speaks to you, your first stop is the Language Creation Society (conlang.org), where "conlangs" -- constructed languages -- are tabulated. They range from games and artistic follies (Tolkien's Sindarin, the Na'vi spoken in Avatar) to Esperanto and Lojban.

Arika Okrent, author of In the Land of Invented Languages, advises: "Do it to fulfil a vision. Don't do it to cure natural language. In the 900-year battle of man against language, language always kicks man's ass." Here are a few pointers (with thanks to David J Peterson of the LCS).

Don't translate literally

The way we say things in English isn't always logical or interesting. In English, you smoke a cigarette; in Turkish, you drink it. Find out about the weird ways languages work. As Okrent says, "Clones of European languages are vanilla."

You don't just speak a language -- you hear it

For learning, words are better short (ever wonder why German never took off as the world's lingua franca?); for hearing, it's more important for the words to sound different.

Avoid irregularity

Plurals, past tenses, superlatives, genitives, adverbs -- give them all simple, unvarying rules. But be warned: once people are speaking your language, they'll quickly break any rules that you make. Live with it.

Reward the speaker

The most popular conlangs aren't the easiest, they're the ones that give people a reason to invest time and effort, because they come with a community (see Klingon). Try to give your speakers a world -- a website, a game. It'll be zarjaz*.

*Betelguesian for "Excellent"


  1. Umberto Eco hace muy buena crítica del esperanto en su obra "La búsqueda de la lengua perfecta". Se muestra claramente favorable al esperanto, igual que Arika Okrent en varios aspectos.  

    Tony Sar
    Apr 28th 2010

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