Constructed Languages

You are inside the geodesic dome, and can still hear the crash of waves outside. Low, round tables are piled with books in various obscure tongues. If you concentrate, you can hear the low rhythm of a recording, apparently repeating the same message over and over in countless languages. Some of these have clicks, others sound tonal, they're fast and slow, high pitched, sometimes musical; many sound distinctly unearthly. A sign in a familiar language is set by where you walked in:

Eclipse here...
Conlangs, also known as Constructed Language or Artificial languages (Artlangs), are languages created consciously by people, often individuals, as opposed to Natlangs, Natural Languages, which.. well, that's obvious. ;)

There are many different varieties of conlangs, and many different reasons for making them. During the 19th century and before, I hear there were several made for philosophic reasons; currently there are more either with the intent of being international languages (IALs, or International Auxillary Languages), such as Esperanto, and also for fun, artistic expression, and science fiction.

A historical conlang of special interest to me is Solresol, a musical language that enjoyed some popularity during the 1800s.

My own conlang is a science fictiony project language, not very serious at all, but lots of fun. It has some loan-words from Hawaiian, but the similarity is mostly superficial.. I call it kika olelo.

There's a page here with links to many different conlangs on the web.

One of the other on-line ones that I'm particularly fond of is Zirien.
The sign/pictographic language of the Rikchiks is also very kewl.

Lastly, there's a lovely mailing list called, well, CONLANG.

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