What is the smallest (most minimalist) conlang in the world?

[Darkalcf08]

For some time now (for several years), I have been interested in conlangs.

A conlang (short for constructed language) is a language created by a person for a specific purpose, unlike natural languages, which developed historically and culturally. Conlangs are designed from scratch or based on eisting languages.

There are many conlangs, and they are all different. However, I wanted to explore the most minimalist ones, those consisting of the smallest number of words.

Perhaps the most famous is

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. This is a fairly simple language created in 2001 by Sonja Lang. Toki Pona is so well-known that it was included in the ISO standard as an international language. It consists of only 120–140 words (roots). Otherwise, I think it needs no further introduction.

But it is far from being the most minimalist language. The most minimalist one is considered to be the

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This language consists of a record-breaking 12 (!) root words. It is much less known than Toki Pona but has been mentioned online several times. In 2024, its revival began. Essentially, Sunuvoru is like a stripped-down Toki Pona, albeit with different rules for word and sentence construction, but its essence is similar to most other micro-languages.

Despite having only 12 root words, Sunuvoru includes three tenses (past, present, future), nouns, adjectives, and verbs, as well as articles, prefixes, prepositions, and suffixes. Thus, despite its size, it is formally a complete language. I believe it rightfully deserves to be called the most minimalist conlang (though this is just my opinion—I’m not sure if it is officially recognized as such).


But perhaps there are languages with even fewer words?

Post automatically merged: Nov 27, 2024

Sun sufir la nir.
Rim sufir.
Sun malru.
Rim hak.
Sun sufir tav.
Rim sufir nir.
Vor sufir.
Vor la sunu.

My attempt to learn Sunuvoru. Literal text:

Let the light shine in the person.
Let love be.
The light will be every day.
Love is the air.
Let the light shine on the path.
Let love be with the person.
Life will be full.
Life for you.

 

[Rowena]

 

[Darkalcf08]

I found a conlang that consists essentially of just one word –

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, and it’s simply a wonderful and very useful language. It’s designed to replace tons of useless text with just one phrase or word. Essentially, it’s a 'wrapper' for the 'fluff' in any text or conversation, reducing it to the minimum phrase. The basic form of such words is just 'ot'. This is incredibly useful in today's world – half of the articles on the internet could be replaced with phrases from this language.

Zo ot!

 

[Lurker]

This is interesting. Do you have an esoteric application in mind, such as using them for a magickal language, or is this a non-esoteric interest?

 

[Darkalcf08]

Actually, I’m considering using some kind of conlang for creating spells. But of course, it’s not about these languages. I’m just interested in the topic of minimalism for conveying information. Maybe I’ll try to create my own conlang for this purpose.

 

[Amadeus]

Thanks for sharing this. Today I learned. I've actually never heard about this word "conlang" before. Never heard about Toki Pona, Sunuvoru.
I've read a lot about languages on the encyclopedia websites but somehow never ended up on the conlang page Usually I go from page to page and end up god knows where.