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An artificial language is a language created by a person or a group of people for a certain purpose, usually when this purpose is hard to achieve by using a natural language. Such a language can be based on an existing vocabulary or can create a new vocabulary.

If an artificial language does not serve the purpose of general-purpose communication (as natural languages do), then it is necessarily a second language.

Examples of artificial languages include:

• Constructed languages ease inter-human communication, bring realism to fictional worlds, and allow for linguistic experimentation.
• Formal languages are tools in the field of mathematical logic and computer science where meaning (semantics) and grammar (syntax) are very precisely defined.
• Computer languages are formal languages used by humans to communicate with computers or for communication among computing devices. Most prominently, Programming languages control the behavior of a computing machine.
• Some languages are developed to express an existing language in an alternate form (most languages only define a written and spoken form):
  • Manually Coded Languages are invented representations of spoken languages in a gestural-visual form.
  • Written forms were developed in modern times for some natural languages like Hawaiian.
  • Inventions like character encodings for information storage or transliteration and transcription (linguistics) for international communication serve similar purposes.

It should be noted that the above categorization is not exclusive; for example, it is reasonable that a computer language can be constructed for a fictional work or that a linguistic experiment can be used to instruct a computer.

See also

• Language translation
• Knowledge representation

An artificial language is a language created by a person or a group of people or for a certain purpose. If an artificial language does not serve the purpose of general-purpose communication (as natural languages do), then it is necessarily a second language. It must have a grammar, phonology, and vocabulary.

Examples of artificial languages include:

Constructed languages ease inter-human communication, bring realism to fictional worlds, and allow for linguistic experimentation. Tolkien's elvish languages and Klingonese are excellent examples. Formal languages are tools in the field of mathematical logic and computer science where meaning (semantics) and grammar (syntax) are very precisely defined. Computer languages are formal languages used by humans to communicate with computers or for communication among computing devices. Most prominently, Programming languages control the behavior of a computing machine.

Esperanto, Hawaiian Pidgin and various trade languages are examples of artificial languages. (Hawaiian is a natural language of indigenous Hawaiians.)

Inventions like character encodings for information storage or transliteration and transcription such as text messaging(linguistics) for international communication serve similar purposes are not artificial languages because they simply use acronyms and abbreviations.