The Utopian language is the language of the fictional land

Fictional country

A fictional country is a country that is made up for fictional stories, and does not exist in real life, or one that people believe in without proof....

 of Utopia, as described in Thomas More

Thomas More

Sir Thomas More , also known by Catholics as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman and noted Renaissance humanist. He was an important councillor to Henry VIII of England and, for three years toward the end of his life, Lord Chancellor...

's Utopia

Utopia (book)

Utopia is a work of fiction by Thomas More published in 1516...

. A brief sample of the constructed language

Constructed language

A planned or constructed language—known colloquially as a conlang—is a language whose phonology, grammar, and/or vocabulary has been consciously devised by an individual or group, instead of having evolved naturally...

 is found in an addendum to More's book, written by his good friend Peter Giles

Pieter Gillis

Pieter Gillis , known by his anglicised name Peter Giles and sometimes the Latinised Petrus Ægidius, was a humanist, printer, and registrar for the city of Antwerp in the early sixteenth century...

. Pretending to be factual, the book does not name the creator of the language; both More and Giles have been alternately credited, with Giles often thought to have designed the alphabet.

Phonology

Utopian seems to be pronounced just like Ecclesiastical Latin

Ecclesiastical Latin

Ecclesiastical Latin is the Latin used by the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church in all periods for ecclesiastical purposes...

 (the dominant form of Latin in Thomas More's time).

Morphology

The available corpus of Utopian texts allows us to identify at least three cases for nouns (nominative, accusative, and ablative), and at least two tenses for verbs (present and past). It is likely, however, that Utopian nouns have all six cases found in Latin, and verbs also have a future tense, if not others as well.

Syntax

The usual word order is SVO, as in English and generally in Ecclesiastical Latin.

Examples

The only extant text in Utopian is a quatrain written by Peter Giles in an addendum to Utopia:

Vtopos ha Boccas peula chama polta chamaan.
Bargol he maglomi baccan ſoma gymnoſophaon.
Agrama gymnoſophon labarem bacha bodamilomin.
Voluala barchin heman la lauoluola dramme pagloni.

It is translated literally into Latin as:

Utopus me dux ex non insula fecit insulam.
Una ego terrarum omnium abs-- philosophia
Civitatem philosophicam expressi mortalibus
Libenter impartio mea, non gravatim accipio meliora.

This, in turn, is translated into English as follows:

The commander Utopus made me, who was once not an island, into an island.
I alone of all nations, without philosophy,
have portrayed for mortals the philosophical city.
Freely I impart my benefits; not unwillingly I accept whatever is better.

Armed with these translations, it is possible to deduce the following vocabulary:

Vocabulary of the Utopian Language

Utopian	English
agrama	city (cf. Sanskrit grāmam, village)
baccan	of all
barchin	I impart
bargol	one, the only
boccas	commander
bodamilomin	for the mortals
chama	island (ablative)
chamaan	island (accusative)
dramme	I accept
gymnosophaon	philosophy (ablative)
gymnosophon	philosophical (accusative)
ha	me
he	I
heman	(that which is) mine
la	not
lavoluola	unwillingly (la + voluala)
maglomi	of the lands
pagloni	that which is better; better things
peula	not (ablative)
polta	made
soma	without
Utopos	Utopus (mythical founder of Utopia)
voluala	freely, willingly

More's text also contains Utopian "native" terms for Utopian concepts.

External links

• ZX-Utopian - Free font with Utopian alphabet.