Once angry with people for the construction of the Tower of Babel, the Lord mixed all languages, depriving humanity of the opportunity to negotiate. But this was not enough for people: in addition to existing dialects, they constantly invent new ones. Is it really in order to completely stop understanding each other?
The language of heavenly angels
True, one of the first artificially created languages was not intended for human conversations - it was supposed to help communicate with angels. Elizabeth Tudor's personal astrologer and occultist, John Dee, with Edward Kelly once announced that they had made contact with celestial entities. Using an obsidian mirror and a crystal ball for divination, Dee and Kelly conducted hundreds of conversations with the angels, the results of which were scrupulously recorded. According to them, in this way the mediums were taught the basics of the language called Enochian (after the biblical character Enoch, who owned the angelic speech of the last of the human tribe).
The heavenly dialect had a unique alphabet of 21 letters, its own grammar and syntax. Angels informed the occultists that magical practices using their dialect would provide the human race with superpowers, change the history of Europe, and even be able to announce the timing of the beginning of the apocalypse. It is natural to assume that, having received the key to such power, Dee and Kelly immediately rushed to test it in action.
However, no traces of their respective rituals have been preserved in the pages of history. What prevented the two magicians from comprehending angelic knowledge? It turns out that they had to wait for permission to conduct the rituals from their heavenly mentors, but they never received it even after many years. Historians who have studied the Enochian records are inclined to believe that the angels did not intend to give such permission: they simply used two mortal men as tools to convey information to the rest of humanity.
The Enochian language is also highly respected among modern occultists. Experts say that this is the oldest of the world's dialects, the fundamental principle of all other languages that have ever existed on our planet. Many believe in its enormous magical potential and consider it the only way to fully communicate with otherworldly entities. Skeptics, however, point out that the grammatical rules of the angelic language are suspiciously reminiscent of Dee and Kelly's native English. There is an opinion that the angels did not take part in the creation of the Enochian dialect - it was invented only as a code that is convenient to use in espionage cases.
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Medieval Slavic globalization
It is worth looking into the past, and it becomes clear that the ideas of globalization did not appear in the 20th century, but much earlier. Already in the middle of the 17th century, Croat Yuri Krizhanich arrived in Moscow to the place of his new service, and the goals of this move were truly global for his era. The most educated man of his time, Krizhanich cherished the dream of uniting all Slavic peoples into one community, headed by the great Russian state.
Unfortunately, the scientist arrived in Muscovy at the wrong time: a religious war, known as the schism, was raging in the country. Therefore, for the very first public discussions about the benefits of church union between Catholics and Orthodox Christians, he was immediately exiled to the Siberian town of Tobolsk. There, a staunch supporter of Pan-Slavism stayed for 16 years, receiving, however, a salary of 90 rubles per annum from the treasury. Apparently, his days were not filled with business, since Krizhanich devoted all his time to the creation of a common Slavic language - after all, choosing the language of only one people for the Slavic community meant giving it a deliberate privilege over the rest.
The number of world languages is about 7000, but 2500 of them are on the verge of extinction today. About a quarter of the existing languages are spoken by less than a thousand native speakers, and they will soon disappear.
The main idea of creating a new dialect was to get rid of any foreign words. The common Slavic speech was based on words that are common or at least similar among all Slavs (there were up to 60% of them). And if a common word was not found, then the concept was taken from a certain language, depending on the degree of its prevalence. As a result, a completely unique type of language was formed, which united and transformed Slavic speech. If necessary, it was possible to create new words, which Krizhanich did on a grand scale. This is how ljudoderstwo (tyranny), samowladstwo (autocracy) and many other verbal constructions were born. At the same time, the linguist also corrected grammar, remaking, for example, masculine words with a "feminine" ending: a drunkard in Krizhanich was replaced by a drunkard, a driver appeared, and so on.
The scientist himself widely used his own brainchild, which extremely complicates the work of his modern biographers - the fact is that the talented Croat remained the only carrier of the common Slavic language.
The dream of musical natures
At the beginning of the 19th century, those who dreamed of giving the ponderous human speech at least a little lightness and harmony finally found what they wanted. A passionate music lover, Frenchman Jean François Sudre sincerely believed that it was the best means of communication, and therefore invented a language based on seven notes. Oral and written communication in Solresol - as the new language was called - involves a variety of ways.
Words made from the names of notes can be simply pronounced aloud, performed with musical instruments or sung; deaf-mute sign language is also suitable for conversation. Correspondence can be carried out using musical notation, the first seven Arabic numerals or the first seven letters of the Latin alphabet, and even draw words using the seven colors of the rainbow spectrum. All the words of Solresol are simple combinations (about 12 thousand in total) of seven musical notes.
For convenience, words are divided into semantic groups. Those that begin with "before" refer to a person, his personal qualities or skills (domifado - "person", domisolfa - "mind"). And those with “salt” at the beginning mean words associated with art (solmisolre - “music”, solladola - “painting”). One word in the musical dialect includes all synonyms at once: solla is both "permanent" and "endless" and "continuously" and "always". And in order to choose an antonym for a “note word”, you just have to read it the other way around: so simila means “easy”, and lamisi means “difficult”. Thus, solresol should be considered a fairly easy language to learn. This is probably what caused its initial popularity.
Having completed the linguistic rules of Solresol, Syudr with his students and admirers went on a "linguistic tour" across France. To the delight of the audience, he spoke, read, played and sang in his amazing language. A few years later, Syudr also offered his creation to the Ministry of Defense: with his help, it was supposed to transmit data during battles with the sounds of a trumpet. Europe appreciated the works of Sudre: at the Paris exhibition he received a large cash prize, and in London - an honorary medal. However, after several decades of fame, Solresol lost its primacy to its "younger brothers" - Volapuk and Esperanto.
The best
Despite the endless variety of artificial languages, the most famous of them to this day remains Esperanto - the creation of the Polish doctor Ludwik Zamenhof. He grew up in multinational Bialystok, where Poles, Russians, Germans, Jews were in the same linguistic space, and sometimes it was not easy for them to come to an agreement.
It was then that the young man first came up with the idea to create a language that is equally understandable to all peoples of the world. It took about 10 years to implement the idea, and in 1887 Zamenhof, under the name Esperanto ("hopeful"), published the first textbook of his linguistic creation. The pseudonym of the author came to the liking of the readers and soon became the name of the language.
Esperanto is the only artificial language that not only quickly won the hearts of many fans, but also retained its popularity in the world for over a century. Nowadays, according to various estimates (from pessimistic to the most rosy), from 100 thousand to eight million people in different parts of the world communicate on it. Experts say that only 150 teaching hours are enough for the initial study of Esperanto.
It is based on borrowings from common European languages: Latin, French, German, English, Russian, Polish and Greek. The Esperanto alphabet is based on Latin and consists of 28 letters. There are no genders in it, and the word order in the sentence can be whatever. This allows speakers of different languages to build their speech in the way they are used to, and at the same time not stop speaking the correct Esperanto.
Critics of this language find a number of shortcomings in him: among them they name insufficient euphoniousness, discrepancies in teaching materials from different countries and the presence of unspoken rules that should be constantly remembered in conversations and correspondence. However, Esperantists around the world are constantly talking about the great benefits of the dialect, allowing you to find friends in different countries. They believe that 130 years is too little time for the spread of the language, and one day Esperanto will certainly conquer the whole world.
Source: "Secrets of the XX century"