An artistic language (artlang) is a constructed language designed for aesthetic pleasure. Unlike engineered languages or auxiliary languages, artistic languages usually have irregular grammar systems, much like natural languages. Many are designed within the context of fictional worlds, such as J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth. Others represent fictional minority languages in a world not patently different from the real world, or have no particular fictional background attached.
There are several different schools of artistic language construction. The most prominent is the naturalist school, which seeks to imitate the complexity and historicity of natural languages. Others do not attempt to imitate the natural evolution of languages, but follow a more abstract style.
Read more about Artistic Language: Genres, Examples of Artistic Languages
Famous quotes containing the words artistic and/or language:
“The artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs.... Artists of a large and wholesome vitality get rid of their art easily, as they breathe easily or perspire easily. But in artists of less force, the thing becomes a pressure, and produces a definite pain, which is called the artistic temperament.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book—a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)