This page explains some jargon used by the conlanger community. The following notes detail the conventions used on this page.
Entries should appear in alphabetical order.
To avoid ambiguity, we distinguish multiple meanings with a numbered list, showing the part of speech (noun, adjective, verb, etc.) if the term is ambiguous. See conlang for an illustration of these points.
The stress pattern of some of these words, e.g. conscript, differs subtly from earlier words with the same spelling, and may be shown in angle brackets < >, using:
For example, <'con-"script> has a stronger stress or emphasis on the syllable <script> than <'con-script> does.
Normally, an English word has no more than one primary stress; if an utterance seems to have two primary stresses, we write it as two separate words, e.g. compare 'fast 'food with 'milk-"shake.
Whilst the expressions in angle brackets do show syllables and stresses, they are not pronunciations.
artlang: (noun) an art language; a conlang created for artistic or aesthetic purposes.
auxlang: (noun) an (international) auxiliary language; a conlang created to help people communicate better, whatever their L1. Also see interlang.
conlang:
conlanger: (noun) a person who conlangs.
conscript:
context:
engelang: (noun) an engineered language; a conlang designed to test some theory about how languages work. On the web: See the English Wikipedia page on Engineered languages at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_language
interlang: (noun) an auxiliary language; a conlang created to help people communicate better, especially between two or more natlangs. Also see auxlang.
L1: (noun) <"L-'one> a person's first language, usually a natlang.
loglang: (noun) a logic(al) language; a conlang created to increase the clarity and precision of expression, reasoning and argument.
natlang: (noun) a natural language, such as English, Arrernte or Spanish. The word natlang was coined to distinguish these languages from conlangs. These "natural languages" are thought by some to have evolved, by a process of "natural selection", akin to Charles Darwin's notion by which new species of living organisms arise through innovation of new forms, competition amongst alternative forms, and survival of the fittest forms.
Shavian: (adjective, noun) a conscript for English, which won a prize established in the will of the playwright, George Bernard Shaw, for a new writing system which would make English spelling logical, phonetic and unambiguous.