ABSTRACT
Evidence of constructed auxiliary languages dates at least to the twelfth century when Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) invented a secret language recorded in two of the books found within her extensive body of work (Lerner 1993:4964), but the notion of constructed languages is much older. Hildegard’s work, for example, included studies on medicine influenced by the Graeco-Roman physician Galen (c. 130-200), who himself is reported to have envisioned an artificial language that ‘would remove all uncertainty from human communication’ (Pei 1958:142). The idea that such a language might have existed in the past or that it could be constructed for the future-but always that it would be somehow better, more perfect, or more suitable for communication than existing natural languages-over the centuries has attracted women and men from exceptionally diverse backgrounds and interests, among both those who have participated actively within the movement and those who, in recent times, have written about it in works ranging from popular to scholarly, from propagandistic to literary and historical (e.g., Pei 1958, Large 1985, Gopsill 1990, Yaguello 1991, Eco 1995).
