J.A. Lindon was a skilled wordplay artist of the mid-twentieth century, whose work attracted attention and praise from luminaries in that field like Martin Gardner, Howard W. Bergerson, and Dmitri Borgmann. In “Ten Logotopian Lingos,” a two-part series running through issues #3.4 and #4.1 of Word Ways, he discussed some different species of constrained writing. His tongue in cheek, he labeled these new languages, or Logotopian Lingos.
Some of these would already be familiar to the word lover. The first, Palindromian, is just a “language” in which every line is a palindrome. Spoonerian involves the frequent use of spoonerisms, Transposian of anagrams. Nosetailian is more or less a variant of Pig Latin that omits the ending “ay.”
Liquidian and Explodian are lipophones—just as lipograms are constrained in what letters they use, so lipophones are constrained in what sounds they use. Liquidian can use any vowel sound but is limited to the consonant sounds of l, w, and r. Explodian uses the explosive consonants—the sounds of b, p, k, g, d, and t—and the “short” vowel sounds found in the phrase “that pen is not much good.”
You may have noticed that the words “Liquidian” and “Explodian” themselves do not obey those constraints. But just as we English-speakers say “Spanish” and “French,” not “Español” and “Français,” the names are for our benefit, not the theoretical native speakers.
Two other languages are derived from George Orwell’s 1984. First is Newspeak, the language of Oceania, where good is correctful and bad is doubleplusungood. Dodecanian seems to be a shaved-down, sexualized version of Doublespeak, with only twelve root words.
This leaves Lindon’s two most inventive “lingos.” One, Frascarian, is formed from a variant of word squares. Consider the grid below. Read it first as a series of four across bars, then as a series of four down bars:
The square reads the same across and down: FOLLOW, LOYAL NAG. (Presumably this address is to a horse, not a critic.) This is the “Mixian dialect” of Frascarian, whereas the Purist version ends a word with every bar of the square. Examples:
Lindon’s most inventive system, spurred by his interest in recreational mathematics as well as recreational linguistics, was Numbo-Carrean. This difficult “language” consists of words that turn into perfect squares when their letters are replaced with their number values—the numbers that represent their order in the alphabet.
Few natural words in English meet that criterion, though there are a few that do: a (1), I (9), and by (2-25—225). To get a wide vocabulary, though, Lindon has to stretch the rules of spelling and hyphenation pretty far. Here’s a sample of a Numbo-Carrean passage and its English translation.
The idea behind this one led others to propose similar math-based constraints.
There are other systems to work with in similar spirit. Dense rhyme and/or rhymed poetic structures are classics. I’ve discussed lipograms and rules involving word length and alliteration. I’ve seen characters who can only speak in song titles. A comprehensive list of such constraints is probably more than I should attempt right now. And even if I made one, novel thinkers like Lindon would probably push the envelope into some territory I missed!