Portal:Constructed languages/Language of the month/November 2013

Zaum (зáумь) is a word used to describe the linguistic experiments in sound symbolism and language creation of Russian Futurist poets such as Velimir Khlebnikov and Aleksei Kruchenykh.

Coined by Kruchenykh in 1913, the word zaum is made up of the Russian prefix за "beyond, behind" and noun ум "the mind, nous" and has been translated as "transreason", "transration" or "beyonsense" (Paul Schmidt).

Kruchenykh, in Declaration of the Word as Such (1913), declares zaum "a language which does not have any definite meaning, a transrational language" that "allows for fuller expression" whereas, he maintains, the common language of everyday speech "binds". He further maintained, in Declaration of Transrational Language (1921), that zaum "can provide a universal poetic language, born organically, and not artificially, like Esperanto." Find out more...