There are about 6,000 languages in the world, of which 80 percent are endangered: one language dies every 15 days.
In a hundred years, between 500 and 3,000 languages will remain on earth. UNESCO made such an alarming forecast. "97 percent of the world's population speaks 4 percent of the world's languages. This means that the linguistic heterogeneity of humanity is provided by a tiny minority of the world's population," the report says expert group UNESCO on Endangered Languages.
Experts cannot yet clearly explain what kind of danger is posed by such a rapid disappearance of languages. Many even see this as a natural process that does not threaten humanity in any way. However, the facts indicate that the threat still exists. First: the impoverishment of linguistic turns and the disappearance of cultures. After all, neither English nor French can boast of such opportunities that, for example, the Eskimo language has more than twenty words just to describe snow. And none of the modern giant languages is able to take on all the world's variety of songs, poems and literature that exist among small disappearing peoples.
Second: with the disappearance of languages, a huge layer of exclusive knowledge about nature and environment. Just imagine that we owe the discovery of a drug against HIV type 1 to the Samoan language and its speakers who are familiar with medicinal properties Homalanthus Nutans plants.
Third: modern science about the environment is based on the experience of ancestors who speak rare languages. For example, the entire world homeopathy exists only thanks to the natural knowledge of small peoples and the knowledge of their languages.
Interestingly, along with the disappearance of rare languages, there is a process of creating new artificial languages. Their number has already exceeded a hundred, but none of them has been able to gain worldwide popularity and become the language of everyday communication between people. The correspondent of "RG", calculated that for 20 recent years 28 artificial languages appeared, among them there is even the language "Slovenski", created for international communication Slavic peoples. However, oddly enough, he is not even known in the territory of these peoples.
Comment
Zinaida Strogalshchikova, expert at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues:
None of the new artificial languages, unfortunately, could play the role for the development of culture and science, which is played by the disappearing and disappeared languages. Moreover, new languages themselves are actually at risk, since without native speakers they cannot exist.
The worst thing is that the disappearance of languages and the transition of representatives of small peoples to communication in a language foreign to them leads to the impoverishment of the creative potential of people. Psychologists have long noted that creative people, finding themselves in a foreign language environment, cannot create: write books, compose music, draw pictures. To remedy this, a number of countries have adopted the methodology of the "language nest", invented by UNESCO. For example, in nordic countries parents send their children to kindergartens, where educators communicate only in the language of national minorities. This is how rare languages are preserved. And don't think it's artificial process because it is natural and normal for a person to value their culture, language and history.
Experts now note another interesting process - the robbery of the natural knowledge of endangered peoples. This is when the so-called scientists do not spend their efforts on studying nature, do not conduct experiments and analyzes, but simply find little-known observations and knowledge of small peoples and pass them off as their own. This mainly happens in the field of medicine based on knowledge. healing properties herbs and their effects on different ethnic groups - after all, some plants have healing effect only on the population living in the same habitat as the given grass.
It is dangerous to think that if the language is not needed by the majority, you can give up on it. After all, if you follow this logic, then one day those languages \u200b\u200bthat are now not threatened by anything may be at risk. Think for yourself what you will lose if your native language disappears.
To many, the very phrase “artificial language” may seem extremely strange. Why "artificial"? If there is "artificial language", then what is "natural language"? And finally, the most important thing: why create another new language when there are so many living, dying and ancient languages in the world?
Artificial language, unlike natural language, is not a product of human communication resulting from complex cultural, social and historical processes, but created by man as a means of communication with new characteristics and capabilities. The question arises, is it not a mechanical product of the human mind, is it alive, does it have a soul? If we refer to languages created for literary or cinematic works (for example, the language of the Quenya elves, invented by Professor J. Tolkien, or the language of the Klingon empire from the Star Trek series), then in this case their reasons are clear. The same applies to computer languages. However, most often people try to create artificial languages as a means of communication between representatives of different nationalities, for political and cultural reasons.
For example, it is known that all modern Slavic languages are related to each other, like all modern Slavic peoples. The idea of their unification has been in the air since ancient times. The complex grammar of Old Church Slavonic could not have made it the language of interethnic communication of the Slavs, and it seemed almost impossible to opt for any particular Slavic language. Back in 1661 he was nominated Kryzhanich Pan-Slavic language project who laid the foundations of Pan-Slavism. It was followed by other ideas of a common language for the Slavs. And in the 19th century, the common Slavic language, created by the Croatian educator Koradzic, became widespread.
The projects of creating a universal language were occupied by the mathematician Rene Descartes, the enlightener Jan Amos Comenius, and the utopian Thomas More. They were all driven by the alluring idea of breaking down the language barrier. However, most artificially created languages have remained the hobby of a very narrow circle of enthusiasts.
The first language to achieve more or less noticeable success is considered to be Volapuk, invented by the German priest Schleir. It had a very simple phonetics and was built on the basis of the Latin alphabet. language had complex system verb formation and 4 cases. Despite this, he quickly gained popularity. In the 1880s, newspapers and magazines were even published on Volapuk, there were clubs of its lovers, and textbooks were published.
But soon the palm passed to another much easier language to learn - Esperanto. The Warsaw eye doctor Lazar (or, in the German manner, Ludwig) Zamenhof published his works for some time under the pseudonym "Doctor Esperanto" (hoping). The works were devoted just to the creation of a new language. He himself called his creation "internacia" (international). The language was so simple and logical that it immediately aroused the interest of the public: 16 uncomplicated grammar rules, no exceptions, words borrowed from Greek and Latin - all this made the language very convenient for learning. Esperanto remains the most popular artificial language to this day. It is interesting to note that in our time there are also speakers of Esperanto. One of them is George Soros, whose parents once met at an Esperanto congress. The famous financier is originally bilingual (his first native language is Hungarian) and a rare example of how an artificial language can become native.
In our time, there are a great many artificial languages: this and lolgan, designed specifically for linguistic research, and created by a Canadian philologist Toki Pona language, and edo(reformed Esperanto), and slovio(Pan-Slavic developed by Mark Gutsko in 2001). As a rule, all artificial languages are very simple, which often evokes associations with Newspeak described by Orwell in his novel 1984, a language that was originally designed as a political project. Therefore, the attitude towards them is often contradictory: why learn a language in which great literature is not written, which is not spoken by anyone except a few amateurs? And, finally, why learn an artificial language when there are international natural languages (English, French)?
Regardless of the reason for the creation of this or that artificial language, it is impossible for them to replace the natural language equally. It is deprived of a cultural and historical base, its phonetics will always be conditional (there are examples when Esperantists from different countries hardly understood each other due to the huge difference in the pronunciation of certain words), it does not have a sufficient number of speakers to be able to "plunge" into their environment. Artificial languages, as a rule, are taught by fans of certain works of art where these languages are used, programmers, mathematicians, linguists or just interested people. It is possible to consider them as an instrument of interethnic communication, but only in a narrow circle of amateurs. Be that as it may, the idea of creating a universal language is still alive and well.
Kurkina AnaTheodora
Today, there are a considerable number of artificial languages in the world. Some of them are well known, others are known only to small groups of people. But none of them has yet become really popular. And can they even become a substitute for natural languages?
The dream of a universal language appeared among people for a very long time. And it would seem, what could be easier? Create a language with a very simple but concise grammar and sufficient vocabulary. Such that it could be without special efforts to study a person who is sure that he does not have any abilities in mastering languages. But, as practice has shown, this is not enough.
There are hundreds of similar languages. Some of them were intended for communication of people from all over the world (,), while others - only for individual social groups( , ). There have also been attempts to create languages based entirely on the logic (). Other creators of artificial languages \u200b\u200btreated this matter as a kind of creativity (). Move people and other motives.
But the result remains the same - none of the artificial languages has yet managed to become popular enough so that with its help it would be possible to communicate freely in various parts of the Earth. Usually everything is limited only to a narrow circle of interested people. The only exception is Esperanto, which can boast of speakers who consider this language their mother tongue (these are children born in international families). According to some estimates, Esperanto is spoken by about 2 million people around the world. However, many linguists are sure that this figure is very overestimated.
For the widespread dissemination of a planned language (that is, an artificial language for international communication), it is not enough just that it be simple. On its way, there will be many other obstacles, the existence of which the creators of the first artificial languages did not even think about. After all, language is more than just a means of communication. There is a theory that a person perceives the world through a prism mother tongue, which determines his consciousness and directly affects the type of his thinking.
Flag of artificial languages.
It depicts tower of babel with the rising sun in the background.
Why are there individual people - languages determine the consciousness of entire peoples. It is not for nothing that all conquerors always strive to belittle the value of the native dialect of the people they conquered (typical examples are and). Language is also a whole layer of culture. Unless, of course, it's artificial.
In addition, in order for a language to become really popular, it must be of interest to a large number of people to please them. It is simply impossible to take and make any language a means of international communication.
There is another problem. In order for the planned language to remain valid universal tool international communication, it is necessary that there are no dialects in it. And the appearance of each new word should be considered by special commissions. And this, you see, is not an easy task at all.
There are other difficulties as well. However, despite them, new artificial languages will be constantly created in the future. Mostly for needs and sometimes. Languages will also appear, the purpose of which is simply a language game, entertainment. But as far as languages for international communication are concerned, it is doubtful that anyone today will seriously hope to create something like that. It just doesn't make sense - today it copes well with such a task, the popularity of which is constantly growing. Let's not forget that English is relatively easy to learn. Yes, and with the cultural layer everything is in order here.
Does it make sense to learn any artificial language? Given enough time, definitely yes! But only as a hobby. This is a great warm-up for the mind, a way to learn a lot of new things, get acquainted with unusual shapes expressions of various other ideas. Also, it is a way to get to know interesting people from all over the world who are also interested in your chosen language. The famous Hungarian polyglot expressed an excellent idea, according to which, "language is the only thing that is useful to study even poorly." Learning any language will only bring benefits.
Esperanto is the world's most widely spoken artificial language. Now, according to various sources, it is spoken by several hundred thousand to a million people. It was invented by the Czech ophthalmologist Lazar (Ludwig) Markovich Zamenhof in 1887 and got its name from the author's pseudonym (Lazar signed in the textbook as Esperanto - "hoping").
Like other artificial languages (more precisely, most of them), it has an easy-to-learn grammar. The alphabet has 28 letters (23 consonants, 5 vowels) and is based on Latin. Some enthusiasts have even nicknamed it "Latin of the new millennium".
Most Esperanto words are made up of Romance and Germanic roots: roots borrowed from French, English, German and Italian. There are also many international words in the language that are understandable without translation. 29 words are borrowed from Russian, among them the word "borscht".
Harry Harrison spoke Esperanto and actively promoted this language in his novels. Thus, in the cycle "The World of the Steel Rat", the inhabitants of the Galaxy speak mainly Esperanto. About 250 newspapers and magazines are published in Esperanto, and four radio stations broadcast.
Interlingua (occidental)
Appeared in 1922 in Europe thanks to the linguist Edgar de Wahl. In many ways it is similar to Esperanto: it has a lot of borrowings from the Romano-Germanic languages and the same language construction system as in them. The original name of the language - Occidental - became a hindrance to its spread after the Second World War. In the countries of the communist bloc, it was believed that after the pro-Western language, anti-revolutionary ideas would also creep in. Then Occidental became known as Interlingua.
Volapyuk
In 1879, God appeared to the author of the language, priest Johann Martin Schleyer, in a dream and ordered him to invent and write down his own language, which Schleyer immediately took up. All night he wrote down his grammar, word meanings, sentences, and then whole verses. Volapyuk became the basis German, Schleyer boldly deformed the words of English and French, transforming them into new way. In Volapuk, for some reason, he decided to abandon the sound [p]. More precisely, not even for some reason, but for a very specific one: it seemed to him that this sound would cause difficulties for the Chinese who decided to learn volapuk.
At first, the language became quite popular due to its simplicity. It published 25 magazines, wrote 316 textbooks in 25 languages, and operated 283 clubs. For one person, Volapuk even became their native language - this is the daughter of Professor Volapuk Henry Conn (unfortunately, nothing is known about her life).
Gradually, interest in the language began to decline, but in 1931 a group of Volapukists led by the scientist Ary de Jong reformed the language, and for some time its popularity increased again. But then the Nazis came to power and banned everything in Europe foreign languages. Today, there are only two or three dozen people in the world who speak Volapuk. However, Wikipedia has a section written in Volapük.
Loglan
Linguist John Cooke coined loglan (log ical lan guage) in 1955 as an alternative to conventional, "imperfect" languages. And suddenly a language that was created for the most part for scientific research found its fans. Still would! After all, it does not have such concepts as tense for verbs or number for nouns. It is assumed that this is already clear to the interlocutors from the context of the conversation. But there are a lot of interjections in the language, with the help of which it is supposed to express shades of emotions. There are about twenty of them, and they represent a spectrum of feelings from love to hate. And they sound like this: wow! (love), wow! (surprise), wow! (happiness), etc. And there are no commas or other punctuation marks. Miracle, not language!
Designed by Ohio priest Edward Foster. Immediately after its appearance, the language became very popular: in the first years, even two newspapers were published, manuals and dictionaries were published. Foster managed to get a grant from the Association of International auxiliary language. main feature Ro language: words were built according to a categorical scheme. For example, red is bofoc, yellow is bofof, orange is bofod. The disadvantage of such a system: it is almost impossible to distinguish words by ear. This is probably why the language did not arouse much interest among the public.
Solresol
Appeared in 1817. French creator Jean-Francois Sudre believed that everything in the world can be explained with the help of notes. Language, in fact, consists of them. It has a total of 2660 words: 7 one-syllable, 49 two-syllable, 336 three-syllable and 2268 four-syllable. To denote opposite concepts, the mirroring of the word is used: fall - good, lafa - bad.
Solresol had several scripts. It was possible to communicate on it by writing down the notes on the stave, the names of the notes, the first seven digits of the Arabic script, the first letters of the Latin alphabet, special shorthand symbols and the colors of the rainbow. Accordingly, it was possible to communicate in solresol not only by pronunciation of words, but also by playing musical instrument or singing, as well as in the language of the deaf and dumb.
The language found a lot of fans, including among famous people. Famous followers of Solresol were, for example, Victor Hugo, Alexander Humboldt, Lamartine.
Ithkuil
A specially designed language to communicate in philosophical themes(however, this can just as well be done in any other language, it will still be incomprehensible!). The creation of the language took its author John Quijada almost 30 years (from 1978 to 2004), and even then he believes that he has not yet finished with a vocabulary set. By the way, there are 81 cases in Ithkuil, and the meanings of words are transmitted using morphemes. Thus, a long thought can be conveyed very briefly. As if you wanted to archive the words.
tokipona
The simplest artificial language in the world was created in 2011 by Canadian linguist Sonia Helen Kisa (real name, however, Christopher Richard). There are only 118 words in the tokipon vocabulary (each of which has several meanings), and it is generally assumed that speakers will understand what is being said from the very context of the conversation. The creator of the tokipona believes that he has come close to understanding the language of the future, which Tyler Durden spoke about in Fight Club.
Klingon
Linguist Mark Okrand invented Klingon by order of Paramount Pictures, it was supposed to be spoken by aliens in the Star Trek movie. They actually talked. But besides them, numerous fans of the series have adopted the language, and currently there is the Klingon Language Institute in the USA, which publishes periodicals and translations of literary classics, there is Klingon-language rock music (for example, the Stokovor band performs its death metal songs exclusively in Klingon) , theatrical performances and even a section of the Google search engine.
It would seem that English today is the language of world communication, why do we need something else? But linguists don't think so. The first known artificial language appeared in the world at the end of the 19th century, it was called Volapuk. In 1880, the first Volapuk language textbook was published. True, Volapyuk did not take a strong position and disappeared simultaneously with the death of his creator. After that, many new artificial languages appeared in the world. Some of them are popular, such as Esperanto, and some are spoken and written only by their creator (it would be more correct to call such artificial languages “linguo projects”).
Moreover, there are even invented artificial languages, the creators of which came up not only with the name of the language and the people who use this language, but also with grammar and vocabulary. The most famous and prolific creator of invented artificial languages is Tolkien (yes, the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Ring). He invented more than a dozen Elvish languages, created a logical structure for their origin and development, distribution, and even thought out the grammar and lexical structure of each of the languages (with varying degrees of detail).
Tolkien, as a professional linguist, specialized in the ancient Germanic languages. This is what helped him in the creation of his famous Elvish languages. In his books, Tolkien used the languages he created for names and titles, even writing poems and songs in them. So much is known about the Quenya language invented by Tolkien that you can even learn to speak it, there is a Quenya textbook. Another thing is that you can speak Quenya only with ardent fans of Tolkien, in real life language is unlikely to be helpful.
Let's now recall some artificial languages (otherwise they are called "planned languages") that are used in the world.
Constructed Languages: Esperanto
Esperanto is the best known and most widely used artificial language in the world. Like Volapuk, it appeared at the end of the 19th century, but this language was much more fortunate. Its creator is the doctor and linguist Lazar Markovich Zamenhof. Today Esperanto is spoken by 100 thousand to several million people, there are even people for whom the language is native (usually children from international marriages, in which Esperanto is the language of family communication). Unfortunately, exact statistics for artificial languages are not kept.
Constructed language Ido (edo)
Ido is a kind of descendant of Esperanto. It was created by French Esperantist Louis de Beaufron, French mathematician Louis Couture and Danish linguist Otto Jespersen. Ido was proposed as an improved version of Esperanto. It is estimated that up to 5,000 people speak Ido today. At the time of its creation, about 10% of Esperanto speakers switched to it, but the Ido language did not gain worldwide popularity.
Constructed Languages: Slovian
We, Russian people, cannot fail to mention such interesting project like slovenian. This is a new language, it appeared in 2006 as a language for international communication of the Slavs. The creators of the language set themselves the task: the language should be understandable without translation to most speakers of Slavic languages (and this group includes not only us, Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. There are also Czechs, and Croats, and Bulgarians, and other peoples).
There are other planned or artificial languages that are not so famous and popular: Interlingua (appeared in the middle of the 20th century), Tokipona (one of the simplest artificial languages, several hundred users, appeared in 2001), Quenya (the most popular and developed elvish language, the number of people who know it to some extent reaches several thousand), Klingon language (the language of one of the alien races in the Star Trek series, a magazine is published on it, there are songs in Klingon and even Klingon Google!) . In fact, the number of artificial languages is difficult to determine: only more or less well-known artificial languages are about forty. And here is a link to a long list of artificial languages: