Why are artificial languages created always by individuals and not by international institutions?

Question

Do linguists and scientist have some international coordinated program/authority where the goal is to create the artificial language for all peoples on this planet?

As far as I know, this was always done by individuals instead of organisations.

E.g.:

Esperanto - L. L. Zamenhof (1887)
Loglan - James Cooke Brown (1955)
Slovio - Mark Hučko (1999)

and even Lojban and others were created by small groups of people.

Why big organisations such as UN or I don't know European Parliament or big linguistic institutions and schools are not involved?

Why is creating a common language such a big problem?

There are so many linguists and if they work together in teams across the whole planet, I think that in 10 years or less we have the best auxiliary language.

Or am I wrong and are there such international collaborations in progress?

Answer 1

One of the possible answers is that conlangs are arts, and to make art, you have to be creative. Being creative, in turn, implies living in comfort, and it has always been easier to create individual comfort than to make some comfort for an institution, or for a society.

Answer 2

First of all, this goal is seen as somewhat utopic today.

If it was ok about 100-130 years ago for Johann Martin Schleyer (the inventor of Volapük, the first constructed language that become relatively widespread), and possibly for Zamenhof (inventor of Esperanto) too* nowadays the goal of introduction a neutral, constructed language for international communication seems to be absolutely unrealistic. Every language is backed by the economy of the state it comes from and there is no any neutral organisation (like UNO, for example) which would have a distantly similar influence to economy of English, Chinese or Spanish speaking countries.

*- even though there are some allegations that Esperanto was just a part of his philosophy, hillelism (later changed to homaranism), and potentially aimed only at Jews.

By the way, the original goal "to become a second language for all people in the world", that Esperanto movement (not the language!) claimed during its early development (so-called "Fina venko", the final victory) has been superseded by another concept, described in the "Manifest of Raumo" and therefore called raumism. It "emphasizes instead the fact that the Esperanto-speaking community has itself become a culture, worthy of preservation and promotion for its own sake." (Wikipedia).

Second, the language were not "created" by individuals, in Esperanto they prefer to use the word "proposed", or "initially proposed". The original project of Esperanto language, as proposed by Zamenhof, was (slightly) reformed during the first years to adapt it to real usage (most dramatic change was the changes to correlatives). This is true for other language projects as well, they often evolved dramatically over time and the language was re-tailored once some practical gaps became evident.

And, thirdly, there are also languages which were from the very beginning created by many (at least >2) people, for example:

• Interlingua -- created by International Auxiliary Language Association.
• Ido -- was developed by Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language.

Both languages were created not only by group of people, they were created by professional linguists (in contrast to oculist Zamenhof, pastor Schleyer, naval officier de Wahl (occidental/interlingue) etc.). But this didn't help much for them to become popular and widely used.

Answer 3

Why would an organization want to create a language? For what purpose would it be used? Who would pay for it?

If you're thinking of a language that would suit as a lingua franca, we already have one, it's called English. Best is not the issue here, a language needn't be "good" in order to be popular.

Just making a language, by committee or not, won't make it be used as a means of communication. It must have something extra, like a community of some sorts, which for instance Esperanto has.

Having some organization decree that some specific language is to be used instead of some other language rarely ends well. It has been used as an important and integral part of indoctrination and wholesale destruction of local and indigenous culture for centuries. Did you know there once were "schools for the primitives", in at least the US (american indians), Australia (aborigines) and even my own country Norway (sami). Kids were taken from their parents and punished harshly for using their mother tongues and/or keeping to their parents beliefs and customs. Another tried and tested technique is a little more direct: genocide. Both methods have proven to work splendidly when the goal is to replace one language with another.

What organization in its right mind would risk that blemish on its reputation today?

Besides, the purpose of linguistics is not to create language but to study it. While there are linguist that dabble in language construction, it is generally not to create the final and best language to replace all other languages, just as botanist aren't in the business of making the one, true plant to supercede all other plants. Linguists do not weight features up against each other and attempt to prove that, say, three tenses is better than five. Linguists describe, they do not prescribe.

Answer 4

One powerful husband and wife couple had created an organization before Interlingua was formalized. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Vanderbilt_Morris

Answer 5

Please read the UNESCO minutes in 1954,which recommended (recognised) the use of Esperanto. It is because the leaders of many countries are selfish to control the people for letting the people the literacy, thus they don't make Esperanto as a subject in the school. However, Esperanto was researched in 1921 and to be the best language in business. All people know the French government halted this project as they thought French is going to stay forever but they are wrong and now the English is another ['dying language'][3]. However, Indonesia government, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has decided to make Esperanto a subject for the young diplomats.

Brazil made Esperanto as an elective subject in 2009.

Answer 6

You are talking about mental design.

Looking at Esperanto, and its initial creator, the non-linguist Zamenhof. He actually took years playing with notions (not entirely alone), and there are many ideas in the language, that are worth essaying on. For instance endings -a (adj), -e (adv), -o (n) and suffixes -in- -ist- -ebl- have the feature starting with a vowel, so they are chainable.

Unknown to many, even Esperanto speakers, Zamenhof first played with a proto-version, trying out other vowels for endings. Though the pronunciation of "..io" more involves a stop than a y transition, he refrained from "..ijo..".

Zamenhof also chose very short consonant cut-off monosylabic digits (except for 1): unu du tri kvar _kvin_ ses sep _ok_ naŭ dek. This helps with counting (aloud), an area where a foreign speaker often reverts to his native language.

So a commitee not necessarily is better suited for such initial design work. The large manco of Esperanto is its undocumentedness. And - beside the more passive Akademio de Esperanto - one would have hoped for more productive linguistic commitees.

Consider Interlingua, which is linguistically based, and community oriented. The language has other merits, but I find its concept certainly not better funded. I would rather delve into Lingua Franca Nova; but I am very biased to my Esperanto.

Answer 7

There are languages created by groups, but they aren't international and they're more like dialects of existing languages. For example, Mandarin, New Norwegian, and Modern Hebrew; these are all successful constructed languages (or dialects) but I doubt they were made by a single person. You can also argue that languages like French or Icelandic, which almost always create all new words instead of taking loanwords for new ideas and things, are artificial (this is done by groups and organizations too).

But for a world-wide language project, the people who want to create a good international language have no money, therefore no support, advertising, clout, etc. The existing organizations, like the UN, which by all means should create their own language or use some kind of bridge language like Esperanto, don't want to do so because it means "change" (they're scared of changing stuff and then failing even more than they are now, on the language issue). For example, ANY language no matter if constructed or not, would get big if it sent abroad as many movies as the USA does; likewise, anyone would try learning a language if they were given a fistful of cash in order to do so (meaning, learn it and we'll pay you extra to act in a movie for it).

However the people who do have this kind of money don't care one bit, for example, many rich Americans donate extremely little money to charity compared to, for example, rich Swedes - and creating or sponsoring an international language is just like a form of charity. Otherwise, organizations actually look for solutions in the wrong area without even considering the constructed language idea, ex. simply telling everyone to learn whatever is the biggest language at the time (French, Latin, English, Chinese), simply spending more money on translators, simply trying to have kids learn 3 foreign languages in school, etc.

The last aspect is English itself, basically English-speakers are much less likely to learn other languages and they're much more likely to force their language on others (McDonald's advertises in English here in Sweden, for example). This is true whether it's the UK or the US, but the problem is that those countries are where a LOT of money is, a lot of organizations, and so on - and they live in such an English-speaking bubble that they don't actually realize how much of a language problem exists for the rest of the world. The basic idea that most countries nowadays have is, if the English-speaking population doesn't like something, it's not going to get enough money or support for it to become a world-wide success (which isn't true at all, but it's the psychology that matters).

Answer 8

While this may not be an answer to your question exactly your question is one I've asked myself before. But this is what I settled on.

The curious and beautiful anomaly of Hangul. Korean didn't have a unified writing system at first. But in the 13th century a writing system was devised. The beauty of it is that the symbols themselves show how to pronounce the sounds. Even the stacking system follows the same pattern if I recall correctly. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. To me this seems to be a beautiful blend of art and science.

I think there have been bits of this repeated. Klingon and Vulcan were created in a collective way. Vulcan has an especially beautiful calligraphy. But a lot of the sounds are reported to be the creation of James Doohan by his mere observation of the actors speaking their parts in English. It was only later "beefed up" by the linguist Marc Okrand.

Personally I feel the terms Constructed Languages/Artificial Languages are a misnomer. All languages were developed at some point. We might have more "universal" sounds for some biological functions otherwise.

I never found an answer myself but rather chose to just accept that all language is art and virus. :)