In their own words, why invented language is fun

By Cary Darling
Knight Ridder Newspapers

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For anyone speaking in any of the more than 1,000 artificial tongues — languages carved out of someone's word-wise imagination — these are very good times.

"The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" gives wide exposure to the elf languages of Quenya and Sindarin — collectively known as "Elvish" — concocted by "Ring" author and linguist J.R.R. Tolkien.

Klingon, the guttural tongue of war and weaponry from "Star Trek," is the subject of a new documentary, "Earthlings," to be shown at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

And later this year, the Esperantomobilo — a team of six speakers of Esperanto, one of the oldest invented languages and the most widespread — will be barnstorming the country extolling the joy of saying "saluton," their version of "hello."

It's just a little taste of sweet victory for invented-language fans, many of whom are linguists, philologists or amateur enthusiasts who've encountered everything from curiosity and ribbing from onlookers to government censure. Esperanto was banned in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and, until recently, China. And then there are the visions of that infamous "Saturday Night Live" sketch where William Shatner, playing himself appearing at a "Star Trek" convention, exhorts the gangly crowd to throw off their geek chains.

"I don't live in my parents' basement. I'm 44 years old. I've been married. I have a real job," says Lawrence Schoen, a Pennsylvania psychologist and director of the Klingon Language Institute. "I think I successfully dispel most of those (geek) criteria."

"Most of my family said I should spend time with an actual language," concedes college student and Klingon speaker Michael Roney Jr. of Plano, Texas. "Putting Klingon on an application doesn't get you in any doors."

But thanks to the Internet and Tolkien, exposure and respect may slowly be dawning.

Of course, artificial languages didn't begin with "The Lord of the Rings" movies or Tolkien's hobbit tales, which he began to create in the 1930s. As long as there's been conversation, people have made up words and phrases, from pig Latin to Snoop Dogg's "izzle"-speak slanguage.

But a true artificial language has more of a complete sense of grammar and syntax. Perhaps not the oldest such tongue but the most well-known is Esperanto, created in 1887 by a Polish doctor, Ludwig Zamenhof, as an easy-to-learn, politically neutral, global tongue that could bridge cultural barriers.
 
A popular pastime

An estimated 2 million to 8 million people worldwide speak it today and, in a synchronous blend of artificial-language unity, the Esperanto translations of "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" have sold out, according to Joel Brozozski, office director at the Esperanto League of North America, a group with about 700 paying members.

The "Star Trek" universe put artificial languages into pop-culture warp drive when the warlike, today-is-a-good-day-to-die Klingons became fan favorites. The Klingon language, created by linguist Marc Okrand, has all the grace of a kung-fu kick to the head.

"Even when you're telling someone they have nice hair, it sounds like you're cursing them," says Roney.

And it was Klingon's leap from fiction to reality — Shakespeare has been translated into Klingon, iambic pentameter intact — that attracted filmmaker Alexander Philippe to make "Earthlings."

"About three years ago, I was at the Denver airport and went to the bookstore and found a copy of the Klingon 'Hamlet,' which was pretty much the strangest thing I'd ever seen. The idea popped into my head that I had to do something about this."

Why? For many reasons

The big question all artificial-lingo fans get peppered with can be summed up in one very real, English word: Why?

After all, these languages can be used only with others who speak them, and that means mostly at conventions or online. (And, according to Elvish enthusiasts, their Middle-earth-inspired language — unlike Esperanto and Klingon, which incorporate modern concepts — is particularly unsuitable for contemporary conversation.)

Some note that natural languages represent the culture and politics that birthed them and that an artificial language is more of a blank slate. This was certainly the case for Euless computer programmer and Esperanto League Vice President Philip Dorcas: "The basic idea of the language is politically and religiously neutral."

"One of the problems with non-constructed languages is the political and mental baggage they come with," agrees University of Texas at Austin linguistics major Doug Bigham, who speaks some Esperanto and Klingon. "As far as linguistics goes, if we want to test any theories, testing them on natural languages is problematic because of these political things."

Dallas business consultant Anita Mills was attracted to Esperanto for its simplicity: "It's exceedingly regular. I have a booklet, 20 pages long, that I carry with me to hand out. You could take this booklet and learn the language."

Others say learning a constructed language can make getting a grip on a natural language — with all of its grammatical irregularities and cultural biases — easier because an interest has been sparked in how words work together. Klingon speaker Roney is also studying French and Hawaiian because his fiancée is from Hawaii.

Elvish fan Ben Hamill switched majors at Texas from music to linguistics because of his interest.

University of Rochester professor Sarah Higley, who teaches Old English, is creating her own language, Teonaht, and is working on a book about invented languages. For her, studying an artificial language is a hobby akin to model-ship building or painting.

"People have no idea how common inventing languages is. Unless you are Tolkien or the inventor of Klingon, you don't get any press," she says. "A lot of people are highly skilled in linguistics or are computer programmers."

"It's an odd hobby," admits Jeffrey Henning of langmaker.com, a Web site about artificial languages, "but you do learn a lot about language. Most people want to know: How do we come up with words? Most people are a little curious about how language came about."

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company