logical language - Developers

semantics. Another comparable predecessor in a simplistic sense is the musical language, Solresol,
created by Jean François Sudre and published in 1866.
A Brief History of the Language’s Development
The design of Ithkuil has slowly and painstakingly evolved from my early attempts as a teenager
(following my introduction to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and Charles Fillmore’s seminal 1968 article
on case grammar) to explore beyond the boundaries of Western Indo-European languages to a complex,
intricate array of interwoven grammatical concepts, many of which are wholly of my own creation,
others of which have been inspired by such obscure linguistic sources as the morpho-phonology of
Abkhaz verb complexes, the moods of verbs in certain American Indian languages, the aspectual system
of Niger-Kordofanian languages, the nominal case systems of Basque and the Dagestanian languages,
the enclitic system of Wakashan languages, the positional orientation systems of Tzeltal and Guugu
Yimidhirr, the Semitic triliteral root morphology, and the hearsay and possessive categories of Suzette
Elgin’s Láadan language, not to mention ideas inspired by countless hours studying texts in theoretical
linguistics, cognitive grammar, psycholinguistics, language acquisition, linguistic relativity, semantics,
semiotics, philosophy, fuzzy set theory, and even quantum physics. The writings of the American
cognitive linguists George Lakoff, Ronald Langacker, Gilles Fauconnier, and Len Talmy have been
particularly influential on Ithkuil’s design.
The Ithkuil writing system likewise derives from both original and inspired sources: it employs a unique
“morpho-phonemic” principle of my own invention, its logical design borrows from the mutational
principles underlying the Ethiopic and Brahmi scripts, and its aesthetic visual design bears a superficial
resemblance to Hebrew square script and the various Klingon fonts.
The first version of Ithkuil was originally posted to the Internet in early 2004. A second, alternative
version of the language called Ilaksh was posted during mid-2007, designed specifically to address the
many requests for a version of the language with a simpler phonology (sound system). During the
course of modifying the original version of Ithkuil into Ilaksh, I realized there were many aspects of
Ilaksh design that could be incorporated back into Ithkuil without the constraints of Ilaksh on the
number of consonants and vowels. This would (hopefully) allow the language to be more euphonic to
the ear while maintaining its morpho-phonological conciseness. Additionally, hindsight has caused me to
re-think a few fine points of the grammar, which this latest design allows me to incorporate into the
language.
Introduced in July 2011, this third incarnation of the language (which shall retain the name “Ithkuil” out
of convenience and continuity with the original version), reflects these ideas and now constitutes what I
consider to be the definitive (or “official”) version of the language. The name of the language is an
anglicized form of the word iţkuîl, which means more or less “hypothetical representation of a
language” in the original version of Ithkuil.