In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build A Perfect Language

I have been waiting to read this one ever since I first heard of it—a book devoted to all the languages that have been created by other people. Everyday languages are organic: they have no real inventor but time and culture. These things shape the way we talk about the world and express ourselves. But someone had to sit down and invent Esperanto, to compose Klingon, to shape the way that Loglan works. These languages were created for many reason, but the main one seems to be so that people of different nationalities and cultures could finally communicate with one another. Arika Okrent’s In the Land of Invented Languages explores the rich history of those people who tried (and ultimately failed) to create a single language that all show more of humanity could use. And along the way, she reveals what little truth in contained in language, and how that reflects on us as language’s users.

Over the last nine hundred years, approximately nine hundred language have been artificially created. They come in bursts, though. After Hildegard von Bingen composed Lingua Ignota in the twelfth century, it was three hundred years before Muhyi-I Gulseni created Balaibalan. The last two centuries have been the heyday for language creation, with some 470 documented new languages. Okrent’s tour through language creation hits the highlights, from Wilkin’s Philosophical Language (1668) to Schleyer’s Volapuk (1879) to Zamenhof’s incredibly popular Esperanto (1887) and even to the modern-day tussles over Klingon.

Her investigations of these languages talk about whether language can ever truly represent ideas, how we perceive and classify the physical and metaphysical world, and if the rules of spoken language can ever really be made simple. Many languages, once invented and released into the “wild,” change radically, serving the needs of the speakers rather than the rulebooks of the inventors (much to the chagrin of the inventors). James Cooke Brown lost control of Loglan much like C. K. Bliss could not tolerate the changes made to his Blissymbolics.

As a language nut, I really enjoyed this book. Okrent’s joyful attitude towards language and grammar speaks to her background as a linguist. She whole-heartedly immerses herself in contemporary artificial languages, hoping to find one that both fun to learn and follows more rules than the others. What she does find, however, are groups of people so enamored with the communities that new languages create, that sometimes it doesn’t really matter if you can’t understand each other. Simply the act of trying to communicate is all you need to bring people together. And perhaps also a dictionary. A quick and fun book. show less

I love love love this book! I've been fascinated with language since... well, since as far back as I can remember having language. I don't have the requisite gifts to hack it as a linguist, but my fascination and delight in language is no less for that.

And delight is was makes this book so enjoyable. The author's intelligence and expertise are obvious - her conclusions about language and culture are spot-on. But it's her sense of humor and the joy she takes in the material that make this book utterly compelling! I never would have thought that a book about language, written by a linguist, could make me laugh out loud. But this one did - more than once!

Anyone who is even slightly interested in the nature and workings of language should show more read this book! show less

This book was the perfect balance of everything: humor, information, history, thought-provocation, etc. And the exact book I needed to get me out of the rut of non-reading I've been in the last 2 months.

It's a look into the amusing world of invented languages, ones invented by a single person as opposed to a language arising organically through a community of users who create it on the fly, evolving it to their needs. And there have not been a shortage of them: an estimated 900 in the last 900 years. Almost all of these are complete failures, if you define a failure of a language as one that isn't used by anyone. But what drives these people to create them in the first place, against all odds of mass adaption?

Well, first of all, it show more takes a hell of an eccentric to come up with a language and have the guns to stick with the laborious task of creating a full vocabulary, rules, syntax, etc. These folks are usually dreamers. They were unsatisfied with natural languages for various reasons: inconsistencies, illogicality, difficulty, imprecision, etc. so they set out to create a language of their own that would be free from these flaws.

This book follows five main invented languages as well as covering many other competing ones in lesser detail: Wilkin's Philosophical Language, Esperanto, Blissymbolics, Loglan, and Klingon. Each one had a different history, a different ideal that the inventor wanted to achieve, and a different outcome in terms of real world use.

But what makes this book head and shoulders above most other books that cover a fascinating subject is…

1.

Unlike some books written by a journalist who has dabbled in a weird subculture, Arika Okrent is herself a linguist that just happens to be a really good writer, and so she is more than equipped to bring out subtle insights (without getting too technical for the layman)... things like what made this language unique, and why did it succeed/fail? I particularly enjoyed the section on why the many flaws and imperfections in natural languages are actually necessary and/or good for certain things (usability for example). And she's more than just a distant academic voice, throughout the book she makes a good effort to learn each language that she talks about, and when available, immerses herself in the subculture of its speakers (Esperanto, Klingon). Even though she is an academic, there is no sober stuffiness here, her enthusiasm for her subject is evident on every page.

2.

The book is hilarious! I laughed through many parts of it, especially the part where she described going out to a restaurant with a bunch of Klingon speakers who have sworn to speak only Klingon that day, and how she died of shame as they started to order in their made-up language, pointing and grunting at the menu despite the poor waiter's confusion.

But the humor isn't a cheap one. It would be easy to just poke fun all day at this cast of characters (they definitely give her plenty of material). But because she relates to them (to a degree), she sees through to what drives them, what makes them devote so much time to such a futile enterprise. And so the humor is very good natured, very balanced and genuine, and in a way, it's as if she's having a good chuckle at herself at times.

3.

She doesn't just highlight these languages and the people behind them, providing factoids and interesting tidbits good for dinner-party conversations. No, at the beginning of each chapter she gives a timeline of the key events before and after. This allows you to see that these languages weren't invented in a vacuum, but that they represented a real continuity sprung from a certain context. These inventors were idealists, but idealists within their time, and so the languages they invented reflected these dreams: the need for an ultimate order to the world for example (Wilkins), or the need to circumvent the duplicity of words (Blissymbolics). She's somehow able to tell very human stories through the medium of linguistics. show less

Very interesting study on invented languages, such as Esperanto, Tolkien's languages in his books, Klingon, etc. Fun and compelling. Makes you want to learn some to get the mind-expanding experience that some people have.

Arika Okrent does an excellent job of explaining why language invention is an interesting subject apart from 14or if one can get over 14any prejudices one might have against such projects. While critics have always had mild objections to earnest attempts to construct artificial languages, the appearance on the scene of out-and-out charlatans like Webster Edgerly, a.k.a., Edmund Shaftesbury, a.k.a., Dr. Ralston, have positively poisoned many people's opinion on the subject. (Edgerly 19s Adam-Man Tongue, introduced in 1903, 1Cis nothing more than a bizarre-looking English. 1D)

But among the earnest contingent of language inventors, there is as much to be admired as there is to critique. Yes, these inventors are often laboring under show more illusions that lofty goals such as world peace can be reached through their efforts, and yes, they often have illusions about how language works that get in the way of their construction process, but some of them are both admirably sincere and admirably willing to sacrifice a great deal of comfort and success to pursue their dream (or 1Csecret vice 1D as JRR Tolkien 14himself an inveterate language inventor 14called it). Creating a language is hard work. After studying so many invented languages, Okrent inevitably asks herself whether she has any interest in trying to invent one. 1CI guess I don 19t have it in me, 1D she concludes (page 290); she is 1Cnot a language creation artist 1D but 1Ca language creation appreciator, which in itself takes a certain amount of work and background knowledge. The more you know about language and linguistics in general, the better you can enjoy the truly elegant or complex idea, and the better you can tell the good stuff from the lazy stuff, the mature solutions from the beginners 19 mistakes. 1D Note well the use of the word "artist" because Okrent thinks that many of the best language inventors are really exhibiting artistry whether this is incidental to their avowed purpose, as in the case of Esperanto, or deliberate, as in the case of Dritok, a language that mimics chipmunk noises invented by Dan Boozer, a librarian from Cleveland, who apparently has no agenda/ambition for his language other than to impress/entertain language creation appreciators like Okrent.

There are a variety of motives for inventing a language, and these motives say something very intriguing about humankind 19s ingenuity, imagination, strivings, longings, and also about the sociology of movements around novel ideas and their often charismatic and even difficult innovators. And, yes, artificial languages even have something to teach us about natural languages.

As to the various motives we can point these out in typical exemplars: John Wilkins (17th century) created his Philosophical Language and James Brown (20th century) created Loglan in order to give the world hyper-logical languages; Ludwik Zamenhof (19th century) created Esperanto as an easy-to-learn lingua franca that he hoped would promote world peace (and nothing more ambitious than that); Marc Okrand (twentieth century) created Klingon for entertainment purposes.

There can be mixtures of purpose. For example, Brown originally offered Loglan as part of a proposal to launch experiments with language learning to see how it affects the learner 19s ability to be logical; but in his last published work on Loglan, he betrayed his heretofore hidden grandiose ambition for his constructed language as a consciousness transformer, 1Ca treatment of a disease we didn 19t know we had 26 18logical language limitation 19 26or 26 18unnecessarily narrowed minds 19 26. Loglan would be seen as ideal in the role of that international auxiliary language, the first language to be taught to the world 19s school children, the one slated to be everybody 19s second tongue 26. The mind-expander, 26 and perhaps also the medium of intercultural mediation, a culture-spanning bridge to a more tolerant and peaceful world. 1D (quoted by Okrent, pages 228-229) Mind you, the remarkable thing about this gushiness is that up until this 1989 passage, Brown, who first revealed Loglan in 1960, had kept these idealistic hopes to himself.

Zamenhof introduced some features that were supposed to make Esperanto more logical, but, as Okrent points out, 1CThe best hope a language inventor has for the survival of his or her project is to find a group of people who will use it, and then hand it over and let them ruin its perfection. 1D Indeed, this appears to be happening to Esperanto as the million or so people who speak it 14including those who actually have learned it as their first language 14are already changing it in ways that have introduced potential irregularities. (See pages 258-259, which are probably based on the reference on page 328: B.K. Bergen, 1CNativization Processes in L1 Esperanto, 1D Journal of Child Language 28 [2001], pp. 575-595.)

I love languages and linguistics although I am a rank amateur. (I speak only one language and that one not as well as I'd like. I only know smatterings of other languages that I have begun to study but not followed through on.) If you are fascinated by language, this book might be for you. If you are fascinated by people, this book might also be for you because Okrent takes a very human approach to her subject, often interviewing the people involved if they are still alive, or if invented languages have communities of speakers who still get together. She explores the motives of people and looks at the messiness of personal relationships that inevitably affected the development and use of each artificial language. She also looks at these languages subjectively, evaluating both her personal reactions to them and her professional evaluation. (She has a Ph.D. in linguistics.)

The book contains appendices that include samples of the same texts written in different artificial languages and a list of 500 artificial languages dating back to the twelfth century; there are actually more artificial languages than that, but Okrent decided to cut it off at 500! show less

This is a terrifically entertaining read for language-nerds. It's essentially a guided tour of artificial languages and the personalities behind them, ranging from Hildegard von Bingen's 12th century Lingua Ignota, through Esperanto and Klingon, to the hair-splitting logic of Lojban. Besides grouping the languages into broad types (philosophical languages, humanist languages, symbolic languages, logical languages and so on), Okrent narrates her experiences learning something of them and getting to know the communities that support them. She gets her basic certification in Klingon, attends an Esperanto congress, dabbles in translating Borges into John Wilkins' philosophical language, and scrutinizes Loglan poetry.

But perhaps the most show more satisfying aspect of the book is Okrent's close attention to both the intentions and fates of these invented languages. Many were supposed to unite humanity and foster peace, or become an easily learned lingua franca, or serve as the language of fictive realms, from Middle Earth to the Star Trek universe. The vast majority failed to thrive, surviving only in forgotten tomes. Some became useful in unexpected ways: helping children with cerebral palsy to communicate, being adapted for the blind, or simply creating a community for avid language lovers. When Suzette Haden Elgin invented a feminist language in her 1984 sci-fi novel, Native Tongue, she hoped it might find speakers interested in further adapting it to better express female experience. Instead, only the novel survives as an example of the intersection between science fiction and feminist utopias.

This is not a book for hard-core linguists who want to immerse themselves in the various grammars of the invented languages, but rather for lay readers interested in surveying the history of language invention and meeting some of the personalities engaged in this Sisyphean undertaking. show less

"In the Land of Invented Languages" was written for the average reader but shows a solid foundation in linguistics often missing in popular books on language. (Indeed, Okrent's explanation of the relationship between the writing systems of Mandarin, Cantonese, and Japanese is one of the clearest I've seen in any linguistics text.) Add to that a fascinating group of stories spanning several hundred years and this book gets a rare 5-star rating from me.