An artificial or constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language that has been made by a person or small group, instead of being formed naturally as part of a culture. Some constructed languages are designed for use in human communication (like the common Esperanto). Others are created for use in fiction, linguistic experiments, secret codes, or simply because the maker likes to play language games.
Constructed languages can be split into a priori languages, which are made from scratch, and a posteriori languages, which borrow words and grammar from existing languages.
Constructed languages can also be split into groups by purpose. These groups are:
Some constructed languages also have constructed scripts to write them.
Joel Engel
Joel S. Engel is an American scientist. He was the Head of Research at Bell Laboratories (Belltel) in 1973. He was born on February 4, 1936 in New York City, New York. In 1973, Martin Cooper made the first mobile phone call to him whilst walking the streets of New York City.
Engineered languages
An Engineered language is a constructed language used to help experiment in logic, philosophy, and linguistics.
There are three types of Engineered language:
Pronghorn
The pronghorn ("Antilocapra americana") is an even-toed ungulate mammal, the only living member of the family Antilocapridae. It is a small ruminant mammal which looks a bit like an antelope. The pronghorn lives in North America. It lives in the prairies, but sometimes also in the desert and the Rocky Mountains.
The antilocaprids evolved in North America, where they filled a niche similar to that of the bovids that evolved in the Old World. During the Miocene and Pliocene, they were a diverse and successful group, with many different species. Some had horns with bizarre shapes, or had four, or even six, horns.
The pronghorn has a yellowish-brown to reddish-brown colored fur with a white underside, and white stripes on the neck and around the mouth. Male pronghorns also have black markings on the neck and face. The males have horns that are up to 25 cm long. Females usually have no horns; if they have horns they are very short.
Pronghorns can be active at any time during day or night, but they are mostly active during twilight. Pronghorns eat grass, but also leaves and herbs. Pronghorns have the ability to digest poisonous plants. This is due to their excessively oversized liver, which helps in the filtering of toxins.
In summer, adult male pronghorns fight with other males for a territory. In this territory the male keeps a group of females with which he mates in September. Adult males go to the extremes in fighting each other to win over the female by fatally injuring the other pronghorn and determining which male is stronger. Young males that do not yet fight for a territory form small groups, and old weak males live alone. Females live in groups of about 20 animals. When the female is close to giving birth, it leaves the group for a time to give birth to its offspring.
After a pregnancy of 8½ months the female gives birth to 1-2 babies, seldom 3. The babies hide for three days, and after a week they can run with their mother. A pronghorn baby has grey fur, and after 3 months it has the adult fur coloring. They drink milk for 5-6 months, and start to eat grass after three weeks. Females become mature when they are 15-16 months old, and males become mature when they are 24 months old.
Graphical user interfaces and consoles
Computers can display information and let the user give commands to it using two methods: a command line interface (CLI) or a graphical user interface (GUI).
In a command line interface, the user types commands using the keyboard to tell the computer to take an action. For example, the more command available in most operating systems will display the contents of a file. Sometimes people call CLI “Console”, but consoles can be GUI, too.
In a graphical user interface, the user can use the computer mouse to click on buttons. For example, your web browser probably has a Print icon to print this page.
Graphical user interfaces are generally thought more easy to use than command lines. Command lines are faster than graphical user interfaces and can be used to give special commands to the computer. It also allows users to run more than one program at the same time.
List of operating systems with graphical user interfaces and command-line interfaces:
Water deer
The water deer ("Hydropotes inermis") is an even-toed ungulate mammal of the deer family. It is the only member of the subfamily Hydropotinae. There are two subspecies: the Chinese water deer ("Hydropotes inermis inermis") and the Korean water deer ("Hydropotes inermis argyropus").
Water deer are small deer: they are about 90 cm long and about 50 cm high. They weigh about 13 kg. The water deer has yellowish-brown fur, with a white chin and throat. Both males and females do not have antlers. Males have long upper canine teeth (called tusks), which can be up to 5 cm long.
The water deer originally lived in China and Korea. Today there are also small wild populations in England and France. Water deer live close to water: in swamps and on the shores of rivers and lakes.
Water deer eat grasses and reeds. They also eat grains and vegetables from fields.
Water deer live alone, but sometimes they form small groups.
After a pregnancy of 200 days the female gives birth to 2-4 babies. A water deer baby has white dots and stripes on its fur, which disappear after 8 weeks. They drink milk for 3 months. When the young water deer are 6 months old they are independent and leave their mothers. They become mature when they are 1 year old.
Orchestration
Orchestration in music can have two meanings:
People who want to compose music for orchestras need to study orchestration. They can do this by reading books about orchestration, but also they can do this by studying orchestral scores and listening to orchestras in concerts or on CDs. Students at music colleges will also practise orchestration by taking piano music and arranging it for orchestra.
The word instrumentation means almost the same thing as “orchestration”. “Instrumentation” means: understanding each instrument and knowing about all the sounds they can make. It can be about any music with instruments, whereas “orchestration” refers to the orchestra from its beginnings in the 17th century to the present.
Orchestration is all about understanding how to write well for different instruments, how to combine them so that they sound well together and balance well.
Sometimes composers leave the orchestration of their works to other people. Leonard Bernstein is famous as the composer of "West Side Story", but although he composed all the notes he left it to other people to orchestrate. The composer Maurice Ravel took a piano piece called "Pictures at an Exhibition" by Modest Mussorgsky (who had died forty years earlier). He arranged it for orchestra. Most people know this version rather than Mussorgsky’s piano version.
Hector Berlioz and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov are two famous composers who were particularly brilliant at writing for orchestra. They both wrote books on orchestration which are still very useful today.
Blockbusters
Blockbusters was a game show that aired from 1980 to 1987.
One team of two people plays against a solo person to see if two heads are better than one. The team is represented by the color white while the solo player is represented by the color red. There is a game board with letters inside spaces shaped like a hexagon. A player picks a letter on the board, and host Bill Cullen asks a question to see how much the players know. Whoever rings in first and gets the answer right gets their color put on the board in the space where the corresponding letter once was. If the team makes a connection from left to right, they win. If the solo player makes a connection from top to bottom, he/she wins.