Parent Category: Lower-Intermediate News Lessons

Category: Education Lessons

Written by Chris Cotter

People learn languages all of the time and for many different reasons. For example, you may study English for a different reason than your peers. But have you ever considered creating a new language?

There has been an increase in made-up languages recently because of "Lord of the Rings" and other fantasy movies and books. There are websites, discussion boards, and chat rooms that teach people how to create a language, and other sites that share new languages, and even sites that have people collaborate together to make new languages.

It takes a lot of time and energy to develop a new language. A person has to think about grammar rules, vocabulary, word order, and so on. There's also rhythm and intonation when the language is spoken. If the language is invented for non-humans in a movie or book, how does the biology of the creature change the sound? How does the language link to the culture of the people who speak it? All of these points are important, so even a simple language can take years to finish.

Although people create languages for many reasons, these new languages don't have the same sticking power of real languages like English or Japanese. At the moment, only the artificiallanguage Esperanto has been around for any length of time. Created in the 19th century for people to easily speak internationally, there are now about two million speakers.