Portal:Constructed languages/Language of the month/June 2006

Lingua Ignota (Latin for unknown language) was a language described by Hildegard of Bingen, abbess of Rupertsberg, in the 12th century, apparently for mystical purposes. Hildegard used an alphabet of 23 letters, the litterae ignotae, to go with the language.

Hildegard partially described the language in a work titled Lingua Ignota per simplicem hominem Hildegardem prolata, which survived in two manuscripts, both dating to ca. 1200, the Wiesbaden Codex and a Berlin MS. The text is a glossary of 1011 words in Lingua Ignota, with glosses mostly in Latin, sometimes in German; the words appear to be a priori coinages, mostly nouns with a few adjectives. Grammatically it appears to be a partial relexification of Latin, that is, a language formed by substituting new vocabulary into an existing grammar. Find out more...