Classification Of Conlangs

People who collect information about planned languages sometimes need a quick way to describe them. The classification on this page was designed for use when the usual terms (such as a priori, philosophical, etc) are too long-winded or not specific enough.

This system classifies a language strictly on the basis of one criterion: the source of the majority of words in the vocabulary. Granted, there is a lot more to a language design than that one factor, but it seemed like a reasonable hook on which to hang a system of classification.

Source: http://www.langmaker.com/mlclass.htm

• 1. a posteriori
  • 1.1 modified or revived single natural languages
    • 1.1.1 Latin
    • 1.1.2 Modern English
    • 1.1.9 others
  • 1.2 modifications of single a posteriori artificial languages
    • 1.2.1 Esperanto reform projects
    • 1.2.9 others
  • 1.3 combinations of closely-related artificial languages
  • 1.4 blends of closely-related natural languages
    • 1.4.1 pan-(Indo-)European vocabularies
      • 1.4.1.1 Romance vocabularies
      • 1.4.1.2 Germanic vocabularies
      • 1.4.1.3 Romance-Germanic mixtures
      • 1.4.1.4 Slavic vocabularies
      • 1.4.1.9 other
    • 1.4.2 Uralic vocabularies
    • 1.4.3 Sino-Tibetan vocabularies
    • 1.4.4 Afro-Asiatic (Hamitic-Semitic) vocabularies
    • 1.4.5 Niger-Kordofanian and Nilo-Saharan vocabularies
    • 1.4.9 other
  • 1.5 combinations of heterogenous natural languages
    • 1.5.1 words essentially unaltered
    • 1.5.2 words filtered or modified by phonotactic/morphological rules
• 2. a priori and mixed type
  • 2.1 speakable languages
    • 2.1.1 philosophical languages (categorical vocabularies)
    • 2.1.2 a priori but non-categorical vocabularies
    • 2.1.3 mixed type (a priori-a posteriori) vocabularies
  • 2.2 unspeakable projects
    • 2.2.1 pasigraphies (symbol/icon languages)
    • 2.2.2 number languages
    • 2.2.3 pasimologies (gesture languages)
    • 2.2.9 others