Welcome to the Glossopoeia pages

Introduction

Glossopoeia /glɒsə'piːə/ is the construction of fictional languages; such languages are commonly known today as "conlangs" (← construtted langages). Probably the most well known are Esperanto, Klingon and J.R.R. Tolkien's elvish languages, Sindarin and Quenya. But ever since the 16th century, at least, quite literally hundreds - possibly now thousands - of these have been created by enthusiastic glossopoeists or "conlangers."

At one time I was much involved with the online word of conlanging; but one of the problems with being a polymath is that one has too many interests and as I get older I would like more time to follow up some of these rather more than I have been doing.

In May 2024 (at the age of 85) I more or less 'froze' these pages; now, just over a year later, I am removing some of the pages. Those interested in finding them will have to search on the Wayback Machine.

Indeed, it may be that in a year or so that will be the only way to find any of my pages; or, please God, it may be another ten years or more before that eventuality.

 
Please feel free to use any of the ideas, if you wish, found within the Britainese, Briefscript Project, TAKE or Plan Dee pages, whether found here or on the Wayback Machine, on condition that:

1. You acknowledge your source, which it would be polite to do, and you do not imply that I endorse your own project.
2. You do not call your project/ language by the names Britainese, 'briefscript', BrSc, BrScA, BrScB, Piashi, Bax, TAKE, Το Ἄνευ Κλίσι Ἑλληνική, Plan Dee or any name so similar as to cause confusion with my own unfinished or abandoned schemes.
3. You show respect for anyone else who may be adapting any of my ideas.
4. You do not presume to claim to know my mind or to be doing what I would have done.

Outidic, however, is a personal language; please leave it as it stands.
 

About the Glossopoeia & Glossopoeic Languages page

This page gives the origin of the term "glossopoeia" (often wrongly attributed to Tolkien) and discusses the different types of glossopoeic languages, defining them broadly in terms of:

• auxlangs (artificial auxiliary languages)
• artlangs, i.e. art-languages which are concerned with "a question of taste, a satisfaction of personal pleasure, a private sense of fitness." [J.R.R. Tolkien, "A Secret Vice"]
• engelangs, i.e. engineered languages which are designed to specific objective criteria, and engineered to meet those criteria.

About the Conlangs

Listed in reverse chronological order of date of origin:

Britainese: A proposed British Romance language - Since March 2013

Britainese grew out of discussion on the Conlang list of February 2013 on the creation of "altlangs", i.e. languages in an alternative timeline, and subsequent discussion on private emails.

Work has progressed slowly over the past eleven years; it has become more and more clear to me that to do this project properly we need, as Tolkien observed with his Elven languages, a culture and civilization in which there is a people who speak the language. In other words, we need to develop the history of BART from the sketches given in Preliminary Considerations and to develop the history and language into a work of fiction. This is a life-time's work if one is to do this properly; it needs someone much younger to develop this. It is beyond the scope of someone who is already in his 86th year.

I may from time to time add more; but treat these pages as a sketch of the way I would set about developing a British Romance language in an alternative timeline.

Outidic Dr Outis' "Lingua Communis" - Since March 2012

Outidic in many ways is a spin off from TAKE. It is a fictional Greek-based 17th century auxlang, which I began work on in the Spring of 2012. Unlike TAKE, however, Outidic could well have existed in our world without affecting history one little bit.

Why did I create it? Unlike TAKE, Plan D, the Briefscript Project or, indeed, Britainese (see below), Outidic was created purely for fun.

TAKE (Το ῎Ανευ Κλίσι ῾Ελληνική) - February 2006 to March 2012

TAKE grew out of a discussion on the Conlang list of February 2006 on what ancient Greek might be like if stripped of its inflexions in a manner similar to Giuseppe Peano's Latino sine Flexione. It became, for various reasons, simply a intellectual exercise in producing an analytic language from a fusional language such as Ancient Greek.

These pages, except for the introductory page, have been removed; anyone who is interested should search the Wayback Machine.

Dee ("Plan D") - September 2005 to April 2006

This project was intended as an engelang after a discussion on the Conlang list in September 2005 about Jeff Prothero's "Plan B: Design and Implementation of a Near-optimal Loglan Syntax" (May 1990) and Jacques Guy's satirical response "Cee" (10th September 1992). However, it became apparent to me, at least, that Jacques Guy's observations were entirely justified.

In any case, the idea of making any sort of conlang near optimal and simple enough to be parsed by a couple of hundred lines of straightforward C is somewhat dated now.

I have removed all except the syllabary I proposed in response to Jacque Guy's remark "And I, poor sod, who thought a strict CV(V) language would do it!", as this may still be of interest to some.

The Briefscript Project - Late 1950s till April 2013

This began with my learning Speedwords in the 1950s. Over the years the language has undergone various different 'incarnations' under different names, and this is explained in more detail on its Introduction page; besides that I have retained the link to the 1951 Speedwords Dictionary (as far as I know the last one to be published), and links to the phonologies and writing systems of the various incarnations as they contain novel ways of using the Roman alphabet (including as syllabaries) and may be of interest to other conlangers.

Appendix: A Few Conlang Resources

• Conlang mailing list
• Language Creation Society
• FrathWiki: a source of information for the conlanging and linguistics community