The idea of people creating their own language might sound bizarre, but there are many fascinating times people have actually done it. Sometimes the motive was to unite speakers of different tongues, other times it was pure curiosity or even a claim of alien instruction. Below we count down the most intriguing examples.
When Times People Invented Languages
From medieval mystics to modern linguists, the urge to craft a new mode of speech has sparked some truly odd and brilliant projects. Let’s dive into each case, starting with the most recent and moving back to the earliest attempts.
10 AUI
aUI (pronounced a‑OO‑ee) arrived on Earth courtesy of John W. Weilgart, who swore a green, elf‑like alien taught him the symbols. Weilgart imagined aUI as a universal replacement for the tangled mess of natural languages like English. In his system, a circle represents outer space, a circle with a dot stands for “inside,” and a lightning bolt denotes power. New words emerge by stitching these symbols together.
1968 saw the publication of aUI: The Language of Space, a book that laid out the entire symbol set and their etymologies. Weilgart urged humanity to master aUI before the extraterrestrials arrived, insisting that peaceful negotiations would be easier if everyone spoke the same alien‑friendly code.
9 Lingua Ignota
Around a thousand years ago, Hildegard von Bingen—a renowned abbess, composer, and scholar—conceived a secret language complete with its own alphabet. Though we don’t know what she called it, scholars refer to it as Lingua Ignota. She recorded it in the Reisen Codex, assigning unique names to divine beings, humans, plants, and objects. For example, God became “Aigonz,” angels were “aiegenz,” and humans were “inimois.” Family members received special labels too: father as “peueriz,” mother “maiz,” and wife “kaueia.”
Linguists suspect Lingua Ignota draws heavily from Greek and possibly Cyrillic, with hints of Latin and German influence. Bingen seemed enamored with the letter “z,” a staple of German orthography. Her script mirrors Roman cursive while also echoing zodiac symbols. The purpose behind this cryptic creation remains a mystery.
8 The Language of Poto and Cabengo
In the 1970s, twin sisters Grace and Virginia Kennedy spontaneously invented a private tongue they called Poto and Cabengo. The girls communicated exclusively in this language, even renaming themselves. Their father dismissed their chatter as nonsense, assuming the twins were mentally unstable, and never sent them to school. It wasn’t until a speech‑therapist intervened that the world learned the twins had crafted a full‑blown language.
Sample dialogue goes something like this:
- “Pinit, putahtraletungay” – Finish, potato salad hungry
- “Nis, Poto?” – This, Poto?
- “Liba Cabingoat, it” – Dear Cabengo, eat
- “la moa, Poto?” – Here more, Poto?
- “Ya” – Yeah
Deciphering their speech proved a nightmare for linguists. After months of analysis they uncovered that “pinit” meant “finished,” “buda” meant “butter,” and “toolenis” stood for “spaghetti.” The twins’ pronunciation shifted wildly—one word was uttered in 26 different ways within fifteen minutes.
Researchers later traced the cause to extreme isolation: the girls spent early years with a grandmother who rarely spoke, only offering occasional German words. Eventually the twins were “cured” of their idiosyncratic tongue, though speech challenges lingered for decades.
7 Nicaraguan Sign Language
Nicaragua opened its first school for the deaf in 1977, but the curriculum focused on Spanish lip‑reading rather than sign language. The students, left to their own devices, began inventing gestures for everyday objects and activities. Over time these signs coalesced into a fully fledged grammar, giving birth to Idioma de Señas de Nicaragua (ISN), better known as Nicaraguan Sign Language.
This organic emergence offered linguists a rare glimpse into the birth of a natural language. Some have leveraged ISN to argue for Universal Grammar—the idea that humans possess an innate capacity to generate language structures when needed. The debate remains lively, but ISN stands as a testament to humanity’s linguistic ingenuity.
6 Loglan
Loglan (short for “logical language”) sprang from the mind of James Cooke Brown in 1955. Brown’s goal was to test the Sapir‑Whorf hypothesis, which posits that the structure of a language limits the way its speakers can think. By crafting a language free of ambiguity—no homophones like “ice cream” vs. “I scream”—Brown hoped to see whether speakers would think differently.
Loglan rests on predicate calculus, a branch of mathematical logic, yet you don’t need a math degree to learn it. Its vocabulary now boasts roughly ten thousand words, with about a thousand in common use. New terms emerge by fusing existing Loglan words or borrowing from the International Scientific Vocabulary. Some enthusiasts even envision Loglan as the future global lingua franca.
5 Lojban
Lojban emerged in 1997 courtesy of the Logical Language Group (LLG), building on Brown’s Loglan foundations. The LLG painstakingly curated a core lexicon of 1,350 words drawn from the six most‑spoken languages: Chinese, English, Hindi, Spanish, Russian, and Arabic. Ambiguous terms like “bank,” “your/you’re,” and “its/it’s” were deliberately omitted to keep the language crystal‑clear.
Spelling is strictly phonetic—words sound exactly as they’re written. The grammar lets speakers identify a word’s part of speech just by its placement. Lojban enjoys a modest but vibrant community, especially in Australia, Israel, and the United States, with many describing its cadence as reminiscent of Italian.
4 Folkspraak
Folkspraak aims to become a universal bridge for speakers of Germanic languages—English, German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, and the like. Its creators convene in a Yahoo‑group, swapping words from English, Dutch, German, Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, and Swedish to forge a shared lexicon.
The project is still a work‑in‑progress, hampered by disagreements over word‑creation methods and grammar. Without a single, agreed‑upon system, Folkspraak has already sprouted several dialects, hinting at the possibility of multiple offshoot languages.
3 Tutonish
Elias Molee’s Tutonish was another bid to unify Germanic speakers. Blending English and German, Molee fashioned a grammar that echoed all Germanic tongues. He even rendered the opening lines of the Lord’s Prayer in Tutonish:
“vio fadr hu bi in hevn” (Our Father, who art in heaven)
“holirn be duao name” (hallowed be thy Name)
“dauo reik kom” (thy kingdom come)
Molee promoted his creation through books, once presenting it to King Haakon VII of Norway. He later renamed the language Alteutonish, but despite the publicity, it never gained traction.
2 Medžuslovjansky
The quest for a pan‑Slavic tongue dates back to 1666 with Juraj Križani’s “Ruski.” Though that effort fizzled, it inspired later scholars to chase a universal Slavic language encompassing Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Macedonian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, and Ukrainian.
Many proposals faltered because their creators leaned heavily on their native Slavic dialect—some even suggested adopting Russian as the lingua franca for all Slavs. Others championed Old Church Slavonic, but its archaic vocabulary proved impractical.
Today, the movement has coalesced into Interslavic. In July 2017, a conference showcased the language publicly for the first time, merging the two major precursors (Novoslovienskij and Slovianski‑N) into what is now called Medžuslovjansky.
1 Lingwa de Planeta
In 2010, a multinational team of linguists led by Russian psychologist Dimitri Ivanov unveiled Lingwa de Planeta. Still evolving, the language draws its core vocabulary from the ten most‑spoken tongues on Earth: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Hindi, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.
The team deliberately avoided privileging any single language, hoping the resulting hybrid would be instantly recognizable to speakers of all ten source languages. Ivanov argues that as the internet continues to shrink our world, a single, inclusive lingua franca will become inevitable.
Will Lingwa de Planeta become the global bridge we need? Only time will tell, but its ambitious, collaborative spirit certainly earns a spot on our list of the most fascinating times people have crafted their own language.