Laura Romig, Brown University Class of 2025, Language Ambassador
Is there such thing as a fictional language? The idea of a constructed language, or conlang, is probably most familiar in the context of epic works of fantasy and science fiction, where a few ambitious authors have painstakingly designed an entirely new language for use in their constructed world. Valyrian and Dothraki were created by linguist David Peterson for the show Game of Thrones, for example, and J.R.R. Tolkien famously constructed and often kept personal writing in the language Quenya, which was spoken by elves in his Lord of the Rings series.
But epic fantasy isn't the only source of constructed languages; creating an auxiliary language for international communication is another motivation to build a new language. Rather than oblige just one nation's diplomats and representatives to learn the other's language, based on an arbitrary precedent, a constructed language would allow both parties to arrive on an equal standing, because each would have to learn. Or would it? Constructing a new language based on the existing Romance languages, for example, would most likely allow for an easier learning experience for French speakers than, say, speakers of Japanese. The constructed auxiliary language Esperanto - which now has native speakers - is heavily based on Romance languages, and rings familiar with native speakers of those languages.
The process of constructing a language is also much more than choosing grammatical structures and vocabulary words. In the case of languages for fictional worlds, creators often design a fictional history for their language, imagine its fictional creation, and construct dialects and nuances to the spoken language. This sort of work is almost a constructed linguistic anthropology, done in order to make the language seem more authentic. At the same time, connections between conlangs and existing languages can walk a fine line. The fictional Fremen languages spoken in Frank Herbert's Dune were explicitly based on colloquial Arabic, and the fictional culture he created has strong foundations in Muslim culture and religion. Whether Herbert presented a fair, fictionalized picture of Arabic and Muslim culture is up for debate; the tendency of adaptations to hide these roots, by changing the language and the representation of actors, is also an important part of the story.
Outside of the fictional worlds, conlangs are also useful as an object of linguistic study, and a tool to use in classrooms. For example, this course at MIT seeks to help students understand the commonalities between human languages, while also introducing students to less commonly known linguistic projects - and the students eventually get to design their own conlangs. Constructed languages can also serve cultural purposes, such as the Interslavic language, which was designed to be mutually intelligible between all Slavic languages.
Constructed languages, especially the most rigorously built ones, often grow far beyond their limited initial use. But after the grammar, structure, and vocabulary of a constructed language have been defined, can it ever become more than a "fictional" language? Is it possible for a constructed language to become, simply, a language? To answer this question probably requires trying to define what makes a language a language, which is another question entirely. But conlangs offer an intriguing glance into the world of linguistics, the cultural usage of languages, and the process, even if "artificial," of how languages are formed.