Language is one of the most mysterious and fascinating abilities had by living beings. Throughout the centuries, philosophers, scientists and laymen have delved into the analysis of their deepest essence in order to try and decipher the secrets of their origins, by what mechanism they developed and even their evolution in the future. Despite the large number of questions to be answered, they all seem to coincide in the fact that the communication enabled by this language has been and is transcendental for the relationships of a group of individuals between them and with their surroundings. Some animals communicate via sounds (such as birds), chemicals (i.e., pheromones, such as ants), or visually (such as frogs) or by other means. These let them interact with different goals, such as: mating, marking territory, establishing group behavior, raising their young and other possibilities depending on their needs for survival and social interaction, if they have any. In the case of human beings, the power of language is materialized in the act of speech, a complex communication system based on the articulation of sounds in order to form units of meaning which, by convention, allow a specific meaning to be extracted. Furthermore, due to the expansion of human beings around the world, different languages came about in the different communities of civilizations, which were developed until they became the ones that we speak today. Effectively, the words we use every day are the tender green buds that spring from an older branch growing in an ancient tree with dense roots buried in the beginnings of human communication. These would come to be known as natural languages.
However, as time passed throughout history, these same philosophers, scientists, philologists and laymen asked themselves about the infinite number of languages existing in our world, as well as the difficulties that this causes for interpersonal relationships between different cultures. Not everyone has access to learning a second language (ideally, for dissemination) nor is it possible to bring translation services to every corner of the planet. For this reason, movements were started that sought the creation of a single language for common use. It is clear, as thought by many, that this term is becoming a concept that must be thought of in plural terms, since today we know them as artificial languages(although they have other names such as constructed languages, conlangs or ideolanguages). They receive this name because they do not have an origin conventionally shared by a group of speakers which has evolved over time. On the contrary, these are creations from scratch, which can select elements from other existing languages, created by a person or a small group of people for a specific purpose and in which, obviously, there are no native speakers.
The creation of these artificial languages may be due to aesthetic reasons (when a language is invented to be used in fiction, such as High Valyrian in Game of Thrones, Nadsat in The Clockwork Orangeand Na’vi in Avatar); experimental reasons (such as Toki Pona or Lojban); and auxiliary reasons, in other words, enabling communication between towns by means of a language in common. Among all of these, the most popular ones are:
ESPERANTO
This language came about in 1887, and its creation is attributed to the Polish ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof. As a child, he already played around with modifying Latin and Greek until, later on, he started working on a project for a universal language which, after it was finished, he gave to his father to save it for him until he finished his studies in medicine. His father burned his work and Zamenhof was forced to work on a new version of the language. To do so, he based his work on Romance, Germanic and Slavic languages, selecting vocabulary and developing a system of prefixes and suffixes in order to create verbal categories in a simple and intuitive manner. Today, this language does not enjoy official status in any country, but it has a growing community of speakers who strive to make their community even larger. Not in vain, the name of the language, Esperanto, means “one who hopes”.
INTERLINGUA
Interlingua is another large artificial language project. Unlike Esperanto, it was not intended to be used around the world, but rather is focused on the European continent. In fact, whoever reads and compares the same text in Esperanto and in Interlingua will find that they can decipher content of the text translated to the latter much more easily. This project began halfway through the 20th century, and, unlike Esperanto, it does not envisage the invention and composition of new words coming from other languages, but rather it intends to analyze the factors between them and extract the vocabulary in common in the most comprehensible manner. Like the first language, it also does not enjoy official status in any country, but it has a community who tries to make its use and the advantages it provides more visible.
BRITHENIG
This artificial language, although it was not conceived to be used as a common interlinguistic resource on an international level, it does deserve to be mentioned for how original the experiment proposed by its author, Andrew Smith, was. He proposed exploring how the English language would have evolved if the influence of Latin had made it into a Romance language, moving it away from the Celtic and Germanic influences that predominate in its real state. This is an artificial language respected in the world of artificial languages and, of course, it created an authentic precedent so that similar experiments could be performed with other alternative evolutions. Where would Spanish have evolved towards if it had kept receiving influence from the Arabic language?
However, even though they are curious, well-done and attractive, these artificial language projects never became as successful as the creators wanted. It is quite complicated to make a language popular when it is not associated with any specific culture the study of which should be required on a large scale and be proposed in the long term in order to have it be integrated in a common manner in the global community. It seems like these languages have a long road ahead, something that will definitely keep the peace in a sector focused on translating between different existing languages.
