What’s the Point?

People create constructed languages for a number of reasons. Artistic languages are often included in fictional works: for example, Tolkien’s Quenya in The Lord of the Rings or Klingon in Star Trek. International auxiliary languages (auxlangs) are intended for communication between people of different native languages, usually to prevent one being elevated over others or to making learning easier; some famous examples are Esperanto, Ido, and Interlingua. Logical and philosophical languages are used to test linguistic (and other) theories; Loglan and Lojban are well-known examples of the former, and Suzette Haden Elgin’s Láadan is an example of the latter — which she incorporated into the Native Tongue series of novels.