From Elvish to Klingon

Why do we make up languages?

From a piece in Time Magazine...

How many invented languages are there, and how do you count them?

We look at the remains of the languages, from books and pamphlets and manuscripts, so it’s probably a very partial count. There are about a thousand of them if you count the ones like Elvish or Esperanto that you could actually, fully use as a language because they have grammar and enough vocabulary. But that doesn’t count revitalized languages, like Hawaiian; or Na’vi, the language of Avatar; or languages from video games or novels like 1984. If you start to add all those up, you come up with more invented languages than we have natural languages in the world.

Why do people invent languages?

The basic reason is some dissatisfaction with the languages that are around us. Then that branches off. In Tolkien’s case, it had something to do with beauty and what was personal to him. He thought he could produce something that you couldn’t find naturally in the world. Other people, like the folks who are [trying to] revitalize a language, are doing it to preserve an ethnic identity. Or building a national identity. In the case of Modern Hebrew, you’re bringing old language into the modern world, where it has to respond to things like toaster ovens. For games, they’re invented partly to make money and partly for the experience of playing the game, creating that integral reality that is so satisfying to players.