The great thing about human beings is that we like to make stuff. We build, we construct, we create. That’s pretty much the major difference, aside from feeling sorry for ourselves, which separates us from the animal/plant/fungal kingdoms, and look how far it’s gotten us? I’m writing this, and you’re reading this, on a thing that a walking ape made with its paws. Think about it.

This obsession with making stuff extends to language, too. We’re not the only creatures with language – ask your local dolphin expert – but we are the only creatures who, not satisfied with the 6,500+ organically-developed languages to choose from, have consciously decided to invent our own. The resulting tongue is called an “artificial,” “planned,” or “constructed” language, or a conlang if you’re into the whole brevity thing (nobody liked my idea of calling them “planguages”). Conlangs are created for all sorts of reasons. Some are made with an aim to improve communication, others to give a computer something to talk with, others to breathe life into fictional worlds of elves, demons and so forth, to better aid in distracting their fans from reality.

Here’s a quick cheat sheet – your guide to a few of the various planguages – sorry, conlangs out there in the world.

Esperanto

Probably the granddaddy of all conlangs, and not because it was the first (that honor apparently goes to Lingua Ignota, a baffling language invented by a 12th-century Christian mystic), Esperanto is something we at Transparent know a little bit about. Created in the 1880s by a Polish idealist named L. L. Zamenhof, Esperanto was meant to create harmony between the peoples of the world by uniting all languages under one, universal, super-easy-to-learn lingua franca. This has gone pretty well, all things considered, as it now enjoys roughly 2 million speakers worldwide and an entire culture. William Shatner even starred in a 1966 Esperanto-language film called Incubus, which you can watch online in its entirety for free. You’re welcome.

Critics of Esperanto point to its heavy use of European grammar and vocabulary, which doesn’t make it very “universal.” This has led to some splinter groups within the Esperanto community, creating a whole host of variations, such as Riism, or even totally new languages such as Ido, although none are nearly as popular as the original.

The other noteworthy international auxiliary language (IALs, or languages with a stated goal of making communication easier) is Interlingua, spoken by just a few hundred but theoretically comprehensible by hundreds of millions. Even YOU!

Quenya and Sindarin

If you or anyone you know is a nerd, then you’re probably already familiar with the languages that infamous nerd-kingpin J. R. R. Tolkien created to put in the mouths of his little elves and spiders and ogres and what have you. Or did he create the stories to justify the language? Chicken and egg. Tolkien was a linguistic professor, and must have taken some joy in the detailed engineering of his fantasy languages, or he wouldn’t have created fifteen of them. Quenya and Sindarin are two of the Elvish languages and the most complete in terms of how extensive their grammar, vocabulary and syntax are.

Artistic languages, or artlangs, are notable because unlike IALs, they deliberately attempt to recreate the inconsistencies, irregularities and other infuriations of natural languages – the better that they might pass as actual languages, and suck their audiences further into the abysses of their fictional universes.

Other notable artlangs include Klingon, an alien language from Star Trek and the Na’vi language from James Cameron’s blockbuster Avatar film, both of which are fully developed, usable languages. For nerds.

Loglan and Lojban

The third type of conlang, aside from auxiliary and artistic languages, is the engineered language, and Loglan and its successor Lojban are perhaps the best-known examples of this type. Loglan was created in the 1950s by Dr. James Cooke Brown to test the Sapir–Whorf Hypothesis – that is, the theory that the construction of a language spoken by a person actually affects the way that they see the world (so, like, California English makes me more, like, totally airheaded? WhatEVER). Loglan was made so purposefully weird that whoever learned it would have to be affected by it.

Because Brown wanted to own Loglan, however, and didn’t want others using it in their experiments, some other linguistic scientists went off and made their own clubhouse under the banner of Lojban, which was effectively the same idea, but free for anyone to use. Both Loglan and Lojban were created to reflect as closely as possible the principles of logic, and certain speakers of Lojban have reported that they think more logically. Those people are not robots (yet).

C++

Hey! Programming languages do not count, buddy, because conlangs, strictly speaking, are languages spoken between PEOPLE. Unless you think C++ is a speakable language, it doesn’t belong in this article. Now get out of here.

DiLingo

Believe it or not, a joke language (yes, that would be a jokelang) is a thing that exists. Essentially, jokelangs are languages which are totally pointless in every way except that they might make you laugh. DiLingo is one such language, and its official website made me laugh, so I guess that fits the bill. It is a rhyming language filled with as many silly-sounding words as possible, passive-aggressive verbs, “moods” such as “interrogative” and “bad,” and the “redundofuture dejaperfect” tense, “for describing actions that were never meant to almost be, again.” I am in love with this language. I’m going to raise my kids to speak DiLingo natively.

What’s your favorite planguage? Can you speak one? Are you learning any?