Text from the book, pages 7-9.
It was after reading Umberto Eco’s The Search for the Perfect Language (1995) that I was inspired to invent a new language. This was in spite of the impression one takes away from the book that invented languages are mostly folly, intellectual curiosities with little practical value, and usually falling well short of their brief.
Nature of the project
The motivation for the project had several parts. First, it would be a rewarding challenge to design a system which was both complex enough and convenient enough to express human thoughts effectively. Second, there were clearly many foolish and ineffective examples, and I might do no worse. Third, the task would be unmoderated and exploratory, and my individual skills, knowledge and enthusiasm might lead to a creation as unique (if not as worthy) as the wisest and most effective examples. Fourth and most importantly, the languages we speak every day are inventions – how does that work?
Many examples of invented languages (especially in recent times) are mere variations of natural languages, where existing sounds and grammatical rules are altered to suit a new and particular æsthetic. I felt this approach would not be satisfying. It was a safe and unquestioning option, relying on linguistic solutions which had developed communally over many millenia. It also relied heavily on modern linguistic theory, which explains the solutions after the fact without suggesting what is fully possible for human communication. The challenge I saw was in creating something new, from first principles, in a naïve and organic manner, which would attempt to solve problems of expression and communication directly, and not through the filter of learnt and accepted analyses.
So this meant I would be involved with that other kind of invented language called a priori. Alas, there has not been much success with this approach. There are many charming creations full of intellectual insight and rigour, but they are mostly too awkward or too dull to be speakable, and artificial to the point of being inhuman. Yet one reference to this kind of language stuck in my mind — adamic, which I imagined to mean “designed by the first man, in a state of intelligent curiosity.” I completely bypassed the religious and cultural connotations of this term, and started wondering about an ‘innocent language’, where a human has just their vocal apparatus, ears and imagination to guide in its creation.
Welcome to SIGIL
At an early stage I had thrown some ideas together, and gave this project its working title, the acronym SIGIL. This stood for Scenic Intuitive Glomerating Ideal Language, each word here describing some important aspect of the project.
- It would be within a sequence of miniature Scenes, rather than as pre-ordained, abstract parts of speech, that words would have meaningful roles.
- The method of arriving at a linguistic solution had to be Intuitive (or at the very least fully-justified within the system) and not arbitrary.
- Since speech is a linear and accumulating effect, there had to be a proper Glomeration of data, and a minimal structure for the encoding of scenes and trains of thought.
- By its nature an a priori language is Ideal, free of petty external social and political influence, and founded on universal principles. In a sense, ‘ideal’ may also refer to the adamic situation where pure thought uses archetypal language and words of semi-divine origin, whatever they might be. If an ideal (or optimal) language could be hinted at or glimpsed in the quest for a reasonably effective, original language, then as a bonus interesting avenues of speculation could open up. On this note, sigil is appropriate – a magical glyph or spell having a rich, compressed content and a curious calligraphic design, by which a scene or action may be conjured; the plural is sigilla.
In any case, I intended this new language to be useful, pleasant to speak and hear, and attractive to write and read – for in addition I was bringing my interest in orthography and exotic scripts to the project, and this written aspect would grow in parallel with the spoken language, often distractingly so (see Orthographies).
Indeed, the language grew iteratively and organically over eight years, as phonological constraints battled semantics and clarity of meaning. The nature of the language (whose unique demands are perhaps not yet imaginable) meant that the very first word of its lexicon—let alone sentence—was confirmed in only the last few months of this period. And the easy-going, poetic simplicity first envisaged for the ‘grammar’ became naturally more complex, but no more than was inevitable; the limitations of the vocal apparatus and of metaphorical association perhaps make many details of language inevitable.
Considering its artificial ancestry and associated sense of folly, I will be happy if, in its sound, look and feel, the language once called SIGIL is ever mistaken for a natural one.
Whate’er the talents, or howe’er design’d,
We hang one jingling padlock on the mind
—Alexander Pope