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.

Now (May 2024) at the age of 85 I am more or less 'freezing' these pages, but am keeping the pages online for those interested or who may wish to follow up any of the ideas contained in them.

There may occasionally be a bit more added to the Britainese pages and from time to time I may add to the Outidic lexicon and, indeed, possibly add more texts in Outidic. But work on the Briefscript Project and on TAKE has ceased and Dee ("Plan D") has been abandoned.

 
Please feel free to use any of the ideas found within the Britainese, Briefscript Project, TAKE or Plan Dee pages if you wish, 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 Britainese pages

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.

About the Outidic pages

Outidic in many ways is a spin off from TAKE (see below). It is a fictional Greek-based 16th 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, Outidic was created purely for fun.

About the Briefscript Project pages

This began with my learning Speedwords in the 1950s. Over the years the language has undergone various different 'incarnations' under different names. On the Conlang list and one or two other lists it was for a time known as BrSc, before branching off into two different directions known as BrScA and BrScB. In 2005, these abbreviations were dropped: BrSc became a generic term 'briefscript', BrScA became Bax and BrScB became Brx. Work was discontinued on Brx, and Bax was developed as Piashi before being abandoned in 2009.

In August 2011, however, the Briefscript Project was revived; but development on Brx virtually ground to a halt in May 2012 and the language was formally abandoned in April 2013.

About the TAKE (Το ῎Ανευ Κλίσι ῾Ελληνική) pages

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 began as a fictional auxlang in an alternative time-line in which there had been no Roman Empire and no Romance languages and where Greek had become the dominant language; but this also made important differences in the development of the two worlds and I had no desire to create an alternate 2000+ years of history. So TAKE became simply a intellectual exercise in producing an analytic language from a fusional language such as Ancient Greek.

Although it the syntax could be developed further, the language has been developed enough to give some sample translations. I shall not myself be developing it further.

About the Dee ("Plan D")? pages

This project was intended as a loglang after a discussion on the Conlang list in September 2005 about Jeff Prothero's 'Plan B' and Jacques Guy's satirical Cee. However, it became apparent to me, at least, that Jacques Guy's observations were entirely justified and that any reform of 'Plan B' would make the whole thing collapse; as the old nursery rhyme goes: "A, B, C, tumble-down D."
Dee ("Plan D") was not so much abandoned; rather it simply collapsed.

Appendix: A Few Conlang Resources

• Conlang mailing list
• Language Creation Society
• FrathWiki: a source of information for the conlanging and linguistics community
• Richard Kennaway's Constructed Languages List. Although not updated since 7th January 2005, this remains a useful list.