Conlangs (Constructed Languages)

[SweNedGuy]

Among the contructed languages, Esperanto is the only one having its roots in the 19th century. Its designer, Lazaro Ludoviko Zamenhof was a Warsaw based Ophtalmologist of Jewish descent. You can read about the origin or Esperanto, its supporters and opponents on the Wiki page. The page also contains the basic elements of pronunciation and grammar.

Derived from Esperanto is 'Ido'. Interlingua and Novial are two alternatives. None of these other constructed languages gained any comparable notoriety and their number of speakers is limited to a few thousand at most.

Duolingo offers Esperanto from English and Spanish, but beta courses also exist from Portuguese and French.

High Valyrian is a fictional constructed language used in 'Game of Thrones'.

Klingon is another fictional constructed language used in the SF series 'Star Trek'.

J.R.R Tolkin, author of 'Lord of the Rings, invented Elvish for the Elves, who dwelled the Middle Earth. As far as I know, Elvish never got used beyond the film setting.

Duolingo offers Esperanto, High Valyrian and Klingon from English. This last course is still in Beta.
Following table gives an idea on the number of skills, vocabulary and lessons for those courses. Yet also the number of DuoLingo subscriptions, DuoMe active users and those above level 10, at 25 and owls are included.

Esperanto has a high number of DuoMe active users among its Duolingo subscriptions. Moreover its percentage of owls (12.5% of DuoMe active users) is in line with many other languages. Both characteristis compare favourably to High Valyrian and Klingon.
Imho, esperanto usually is not the first language of choice of Duolingo learners. After actively learning their first target language, DuoMe inclusion gets more probable (it's a matter of streak). Subsequently, any esperanto subscription may be added to their DuoMe profile more rapidly.
High Valyrian and Klingon don't enjoy this tailwind. Are they less popular among experienced language learners? Apparently so.

[panyamnyenyekevu]

Unlike High Valyrian and Klingon, you can study Esperanto from several other languages on duolingo.

A few interesting things about Esperanto and the history of Esperanto from wikipedia (quotes from site linked at bottom):

• Esperanto has been targeted by repressive regimes most notably by Hitler and the fascists.

“Esperanto attracted the suspicion of many states.
Repression was especially pronounced in Nazi
Germany, Francoist Spain up until the 1950s, and
the Soviet Union under Stalin, from 1937 to 1956.

In Nazi Germany, there was a motivation to ban
Esperanto because Zamenhof was Jewish, and due
to the internationalist nature of Esperanto, which
was perceived as "Bolshevist". In his work, Mein
Kampf, Adolf Hitler specifically mentioned Esperanto
as an example of a language that could be used by
an international Jewish conspiracy once they
achieved world domination.[29] Esperantists were
killed during the Holocaust, with Zamenhof's family
in particular singled out to be killed. [30] The efforts
of a minority of German Esperantists to expel their
Jewish colleagues and overtly align themselves with
the Reich were futile, and Esperanto was legally
forbidden in 1935. Esperantists in German
concentration camps did, however, teach Esperanto
to fellow prisoners, telling guards they were teaching
Italian, the language of one of Germany's Axis allies.”

• The inventor wanted an “international language” that would reduce time and energy studying languages.

“According to Zamenhof, he created the language to reduce the ‘time and labor we spend in learning foreign tongues’, and to foster harmony between people from different countries: ‘Were there but an international language, all translations would be made into it alone ... and all nations would be united in a common brotherhood.’

[but to combine or borrow elements of just Germanic, Slavic and Romance languages seems more Eurocentric than International - panya]

• The first World Esperanto Congress was held in 1905 and since there has been a World Esperanto Congress every single year except during WWI, WW2 and the 2020 covid pandemic! With an average of 2,000 participants and maximum of 6,000.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto

[SweNedGuy]

Unlike Lenin and Trotzki, who had been supporting Esperanto as a means of communication, Stalin opposed Esperanto and forbid its use under the same pretext Hitler did. As Poland was invaded by both belligerent empires in 1939, there was nowhere to flee to: not for the Polish officers who were killed by their communist 'brothers' in Katyn, not for the Esperantists and even less for Jews.

[panyamnyenyekevu]

Just want to recycle this post here since the heading is conlangs. A favorite article and a favorite and very inspirational conlang. Ithkuil. Hope you don’t mind!

viewtopic.php?p=1154#p1154

[panyamnyenyekevu]

High Valyrian and Klingon don't enjoy this tailwind.

Just while we’re on the subject of conlangs and duolingo, I want to share that one of my favorite speeches from Duocon 2020 was that of David Peterson. He invented Valyrian and helped implement the High Valyrian course. Here is a link to it:

I also have an idea for a duolingo course that implements a new conlang through storytelling. So that as you complete the courses, a story unfolds. This idea was partly inspired by some of the very colorful sentences one encounters in these fantasy derived conlang duolingo courses. Who wants to alpha test it? (I kid. I’m nowhere close to going beyond a merest conception.)

[LICA98]

Unlike High Valyrian and Klingon, you can study Esperanto from several other languages on duolingo.

yeah this is so ridiculous that they have 4 Esperanto courses while lots of real languages are still missing

(and hopefully nobody starts the debate "but but Esperanto is a real language too")

[SweNedGuy]

(...)

Duolingo offers Esperanto from English and Spanish, but beta courses also exist from Portuguese and French.

(...)

(...)

The course from Spanish has some 173K learners; the beta courses from Portuguese (152K) and French (100K) are somewhat lower. Combined with the 300K in the course from English, we get 725.000 learners. The course from Spanish has a lower active learners percentage on DuoMe: 1.72%; I expect no better for the beta-courses. The 4.9% for the Esperanto course from English is really exceptional.

[panyamnyenyekevu]

High Valyrian and Klingon don't enjoy this tailwind.

Just while we’re on the subject of conlangs and duolingo, I want to share that one of my favorite speeches from Duocon 2020 was that of David Peterson. He invented Valyrian and helped implement the High Valyrian course. Here is a link to it:

Btw around 30:40 - 31:00 David mentions Ithkuil as a suggested metalanguage all scripts should be written in to eliminate possible ambiguity.

[panyamnyenyekevu]

J.R.R Tolkin, author of 'Lord of the Rings, invented Elvish for the Elves, who dwelled the Middle Earth. As far as I know, Elvish never got used beyond the film setting.

[mention]SweNedGuy[/mention] your post inspired me to look up Elvish and immediately came across this astonishing passage:

J. R. R. Tolkien constructed many Elvish languages; the best-known are Quenya and Sindarin. These were the various languages spoken by the Elves of Middle-earth as they developed as a society throughout the Ages. In his pursuit for realism and in his love of language, Tolkien was especially fascinated with the development and evolution of language through time. Tolkien created two almost fully developed languages, and a dozen more in various beginning stages as he studied and reproduced the way that language adapts and morphs. A philologist by profession, he spent much time on his constructed languages. In the collection of letters he had written, posthumously published by his son, Christopher John Tolkien, he even stated that he began his stories that were within this secondary world, the realm of Middle-earth, not with the characters or narrative as one would assume, but with a created set of languages. The stories and characters serve to be the conduits to make those languages come to life. Inventing language was always a crucial piece to Tolkien's mythology and world-building. As Tolkien has stated:

The invention of languages is the foundation. The 'stories' were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elvish_ ... dle-earth)

[Explorer]

For those interested in Sindarin I recommend the book Gateway to Sindarin by David Salo. Edited by the University of Utah, it's the most comprehensive grammar book ever written on this conlang.

[SweNedGuy]

During one of the Inter-Romance languages Duolingo classes (they are getting rare), somebody spoke Interlingua. If you speak any Romance language and understand one more, you will fully understand Interlingua.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlingua

There are but few Interlingua speakers, but several hundreds of millions native Romance language speakers will understand.
With over 50% of the English vocabulary being of French or Latin origin, native English speakers with a decent knowledge of any Romance language, should also understand Interlingua.