Conlang terminology

Conlang stands for constructed language, in contrast to natlang for "natural language".

There are various types of conlang:


 * Engineered languages (engelangs ), further subdivided into philosophical languages, logical languages (loglangs) and experimental languages; devised for the purpose of experimentation in logic, philosophy or linguistics
 * Auxiliary languages (auxlangs) &mdash; devised for international communication (also IALs, for International Auxiliary Language)
 * Artistic languages (artlangs) &mdash; devised to create aesthetic pleasure or humorous effect

This classification system grew out of discussions on the CONLANG mailing list in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Ray Brown explains it on his web site in terms of the "Gnoli triangle"; many conlangs are not at the vertices of the triangle (pure engelang, auxlang, or artlang) but somewhere along the lines or in the space in the middle.

Other terms used for describing or classifying conlangs include:


 * Personal language, hermetic language, or heartlang, a language someone creates for personal use; the latter two terms emphasize that they try to become fluent in their language to use it in expressing their private thoughts in a way that natlangs or other conlangs aren't suitable for. Javant Biarujia's Taneraic is probably the most famous such hermetic language; Paul Burgess's mna Vanantha was recently discussed at length in Sarah L. Higley's Hildegard of Bingen's Unknown Language.
 * Romlang, a naturalistic artlang derived from Vulgar Latin or Proto-Romance; usually set in an alternate history where the Roman Empire's linguistic influence was stronger in some area than it was in our own history. Andrew Smith's Brithenig is the granddaddy of romlangs.
 * Altlang, a more general term for an alternate-history artlang, especially naturalistic diachronically derived artlangs such as romlangs
 * Fauxlang, a conlang with the design criteria of an auxlang but without the political goals of an auxlang ("the same thing we do every night, Pinky... try to take over the world!"). Some fauxlangs are also altlangs, auxlangs created by a fictional serious auxlanger in an alternate history; e.g. Rex May's Texperanto (created by a Zamenhof who immigrated to the Republic of Texas), and Ray Brown's Ελληνικό άνευ Κλίσι, a Greek-empire-timeline version of Peano's Latine Sine Fleksione
 * Exolang, a language spoken by fictional nonhuman aliens, especially if it also violates human language universals. Quenya is spoken by fictional nonhumans, but probably wouldn't be called an exolang because it looks like a typical human language.  Admired exolangs include Sylvia Sotomayor's Kelen and Jeffrey Henning's Fith.  This term seems to be most used on the Conlang Relay list; elsewhere "alien language" might be more common.
 * Relex, a term of criticism saying that someone has naively or unreflectively imitated their native language too closely in creating a conlang. Many conlangers' first attempts at conlanging are relexes of their native language on one level or another.
 * Kitchen sink conlang, a term of criticism saying that someone has thrown in too many features in their conlang without considering how they work together or what the overall ethos of the conlang should be. Sai Emrys doesn't use the term in his Conlang Evaluation essay, but he probably has this kind of thing  in mind in saying "Somebody’s been learning new things in Linguistics class again..."  Many conlangers' second attempts at conlanging are kitchen sink collections of all the neat features they've been reading about lately and the spiffy phonemes they've just learned to pronounce.
 * Maggelity, a term used mostly on the CONLANG mailing list to describe the quality of conlangs with extreme degrees of irregularity even beyond what's found in natlangs; from Christophe Grandsire's conlang Maggel and its baroque orthography and grammar.
 * Euroclone, a term used primarily on the AUXLANG list but also elsewhere, is used generally to refer to auxlangs that more or less resemble Western European models. Some use the term more restrictively for a narrow set of auxlangs like Interlingua; some a bit more broadly to include more schematic European-based auxlangs like Esperanto and Ido.  The term is pejorative as used by some speakers, particularly those who think an ideal auxlang should be based on worldwide rather than primarily or exclusively European sources.
 * Worldlang, a term primarily used on the AUXLANG list; sometimes to mean an auxlang intended for global use in contrast to one intended for regional (e.g. Europe only) use, more recently used to refer to auxlangs that take their vocabulary from a variety of natlangs of different language families, not just Western European languages. Some users of the term seem to emphasize globally accessible lowest-common denominator phonology and grammar, as well (e.g., CV syllables with a small phoneme inventory; little or no mandatory inflectional categories).
 * Hagiolang or ritlang, terms coined on the CONLANG list but rarely used as yet, a conlang devised for religious or ritual purposes (prayer, meditation, worship, etc.)