An Historical Conlang Timeline from Plato to Swift
Links are to full text when available. Otherwise, supplemental information is available. Not everything is available on the Internet.
(Note: Arika Okrent, author of In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build A Perfect Language has posted an excellent timeline of conlangs from c. 1150 to 2007.)
- 360 B.C.E.
- Plato
- Cratylus
- early 3rd century C.E.
- Athenaeus of Naucratis
- The Deipnosophists (Banquet of the Philosophers)
- 12th century
- Hildegard of Bingen
- Lingua Ignota
- 1516
- Sir Thomas More
- De Optimo Reipublicae Statu deque Nova Insula Utopia
- (More's work, commonly referred to simply as Utopia, includes information on the Utopian language)
- 1532
- François Rabelais
- Gargantua and Pantagruel
- 1580s
- Dr. John Dee & Edward Kelly
- Diaries
- (Edward Kelly would enter trance states and receive messages from the Angels in their language, Enochian. Dr. John Dee faithfully transcribed all that Kelly would relate.)
- 1622
- Paul Guldin
- Problema aritmeticum de rerum combinationibus
- (calculated the number of possible locutions generated by 23 letters)
- 1629
- Marin Mersenne
- Harmonie universelle
- (wherein Mersenne considers the idea of a universal language)
- 1629
- René Descartes
- Letter to Marin Mersenne
- (expressed a critical opinion of a universal language submitted anonymously to Mersenne; Descartes advocated a universal language built on philosophical principles)
- 1638
- Francis Godwin
- The man in the moone or A discourse of a voyage thither by Domingo Gonsales
- (the first English science fiction; describes the musical Lunar language)
- 1647
- Francis Lodwick
- A common writing: whereby two, although not understanding one the others language, yet by the helpe thereof, may communicate their minds one to another
- (the first universal language scheme to be published)
- 1652
- Sir Thomas Urquhart
- Ekskubalauron, or the Discovery of A most exquisite Jewel, more precious then Diamonds inchased in Gold, the like whereof was never seen in any age...
- (includes Urquhart's "Introduction to the Universal Language")
- 1657
- Cave Beck
- The universal character: by which all the nations in the world may understand one anothers conceptions, reading out of one common writing their own mother tongues.
- (Beck's universal language and script were based primarily on the use of numbers)
- 1659
- Dr. Meric Casaubon
- True and Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Yeers between Dr. John Dee and Some Spirits
- (Enochian)
- 1661
- George Dalgarno
- Ars signorum
- (Dalgarno can be credited with devising the first universal language based on a systematic categorization of reality, from animals, humans, and plants to thoughts, feelings, and beyond. This idea would be refined further by John Wilkins in 1668)
- 1663
- Athanasius Kircher
- Polygraphia nova et universalis
- (Kircher's language failed to catch on as a universal language, but was a pioneering work in cryptography)
- 1676
- Gabriel de Foigny
- L'utopie hermaphrodite: La terre Australe connue
- 1677
- Denis Vairasse d'Alais
- Histoire des Sévarambes, peuples qui habitent une partie du troisième continent, communément appellé la Terre Australe
- 1668
- John Wilkins
- (brother-in-law of Oliver Cromwell)
- An essay towards a real character and a philosophical language
- (lays out a detailed categorization of reality accompanied by a universal languages based on this classification)
- 1669
- John Webb
- The antiquity of China, or An historical essay, endeavouring a probability that the language of the empire of China is the primitive language spoken through the whole world before the confusion of Babel. Wherein the customs and manners of the Chineans are presented, and ancient and modern authors consulted with. With a large map of the country.
- (proposes Chinese as the language spoken before the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel)
- 1726
- Jonathan Swift
- Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts by Lemuel Gulliver
- (Brobdingnagian, Laputan, and Houyhnhnm languages)
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