Constructed Languages (Conlangs)

At first, it may seem preposterous... Constructed languages? Who has the time to make up a whole language, complete with grammar, vocabulary, and all those intricacies that make up a language? Most languages today have been evolving for thousands of years, but the interesting phenomenon of Constructed languages definitely don't fit that description. There are many reasons for one to decide to create a language. Authors and TV show writers often create one when they make a world in which a different language needs to be spoken for it to be authentic. The largest examples of these are Sindarin(Lord of the Rings) and Klingon(Star Trek). There are actually quite a few speakers of these languages, and Shakespeare's Hamlet has been translated into Klingon! Another category of artificial languages stems from a completely different reason. Some people wanted to solve the problem of people not understanding each other because of linguistic problems, and so wanted to create a universal language using elements from many common languages. The most famous of these, created by LL Zamenhof in 1887, is known as Esperanto. There are about 2,000 native speakers, and up to 2 million speakers in total, spread out in 115 countries. The language combines Romance, Germanic, and Slavic components. Another one of these is Ido, which is largely based on Esperanto, but has some differences.