Artificial language

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An artificial language is a language created by a person or a group of people for a certain purpose, usually when this purpose is hard to achieve by using a natural language. Such a language can be based on an existing vocabulary or can create a new vocabulary.

If an artificial language does not serve the purpose of general-purpose communication (as natural languages do), then it is necessarily a second language.

Examples of artificial languages include:

• Constructed languages ease inter-human communication, bring realism to fictional worlds, and allow for linguistic experimentation. Esperanto, Tolkien's Quenya, and Lojban are examples of these three broad types.
• Formal languages are tools in the field of mathematical logic and computer science where meaning (semantics) and grammar (syntax) are very precisely defined.
• Computer languages are formal languages used by humans to communicate with computers or for communication among computing devices. Programming languages and [[[markup language]]s are subtypes.

It should be noted that the above categorization is not exclusive; for example, it is reasonable that a computer language can be constructed for a fictional work or that a linguistic experiment can be used to instruct a computer.

[edit] See also

• Language translation
• Knowledge representation