CAVEATS FOR CONSTRUCTED AUXLANGS

August 10, 2026 - Published

- last edited August 14, 2026

This is honestly a big pet peeve of mine, but for the sake of this article I will try to keep this mostly free of a biased tone.

Speaking to people, both auxlangers and non-auxlangers, I would often get critique or arguments against specific auxlangs for specific reasons. Of course, there are a wide range of these, but I've realized that replying to a lot of them essentially comes down to the same answer from me.

This is because when we're talking about having a constructed auxlang, there are inherent caveats that must be assumed.

What do I mean by this? Well, let's say we were going to do something like replace Windows with the "most perfect Linux system ever." Regardless of how it's done, there are certain things that the premise implies.

First are incredibly obvious things that don't even need to be said. It needs to be an operating system, and it needs to be able to run on computers.

There are other things that people generally seem to understand as part of the premise. People will have to learn this new system in order to use it, and it would have to be accessible to people across countries.

On the other side, there are things that are NOT part of the premise, but people assume them to be. In some cases these are things that would still be nice to have as an end result, but is technically not a requirement, while in other cases would actually imply further things that would be very bad. This would be things like the system being able to run any program from Windows/Mac/Linux, or the system being functional on mobile devices.

Finally, there are things that are part of the premise that people don't seem to realize are part of the premise. For example, since this is a desktop operating system, and some people don't enjoy using a desktop operating system, it is a requirement to make an operating system that some people will not like. This sounds incredibly obvious, but...

Anyway, I have an extended intro this time because the premise of this article is incredibly simple: all my points are implied by this one singular statement. Ready?

If someone makes an auxlang, then they've made a unique language.

Of course, this statement is so incredibly mind-numbingly obvious, but it's where we have to start, because nobody can disagree with this statement. If you understand and agree with this statement, then we can get to my points.

#1: If a language is a unique language, then it has a unique vocabulary.

(This point is to counter arguments similar to "this auxlang doesn't have an exact equivalent for this word!")

If you make an auxlang that does not have a unique vocabulary, then you've instead made some type of relex or cipher, which most people would not consider to be an auxlang.

By making a unique vocabulary, you inherently have to change the meanings of existing words. That means that, regardless of one's native language, this auxlang's vocabulary cannot have 1:1 meaning with another language's entire vocabulary.

As a simple example, English's word for "know" is split into 2 words in Spanish, that being "saber" and "conocer." The former is more about knowing a fact, while the latter is more about being acquainted with something or someone. If your auxlang only has 1 word then it favors English, and if it has 2 words then it favors Spanish.

These small differences are multiplied across the entire language, and it means that regardless of how the auxlang is designed, all speakers will have to learn something new about the vocabulary.

Esperanto has "saber" as "scii" and "conocer" as "koni," so English speakers will have to essentially learn a new verb (yes, we have "acquainted with" but requiring a preposition means it works differently grammatically).

toki pona (which wasn't designed as an auxlang but I'm still using it as an example because it's well-known) has "sona" as generally meaning both, so Spanish speakers will have to condense their understanding of 2 words into 1 word. This sounds easier, but this is also the cause of a lot of people's issues with toki pona -- when I was a beginner, I had a lot of trouble with "ante" meaning both "different" and "change," among other things.

Regardless, this is something that people have to deal with when learning both natlangs and conlangs, and is not something that should be seen as a flaw with an auxlang.

#2: If a language is a unique language, then it will not translate into other languages perfectly.

(This point is to counter arguments similar to "this auxlang doesn't translate this sentence perfectly!")

I've been genuinely shocked at the number of people who seem to wave around a language "imperfectly translating" as a sign of a badly-made auxlang. A language not being able to translate perfectly into another language is, in fact, the sign of a language being a unique language in general.

This could be a whole separate article for me, but the easiest proof for this is wordplay. The English word "punny" is a joke that literally does not translate into most other languages at all, and you'll notice its absence in most if not all auxlangs.

Of course, this point extends to many other words, especially those with special nuances. Japanese pronouns are always a helpful example because they're well-known to Japanese beginners while also being full of nuance.

ぼく can be translated into English as "I" or "me," but that misses the nuance of it being "slightly informal and sounding boyish, coming off as tomboyish when used by females and coming off younger when used by older males." Of course, there is no direct equivalent for this in English, nor is there one in Spanish, French, Italian, German, Mandarin Chinese, etc. and so you'll notice that this is also rather absent from most if not all auxlangs.

There is, essentially, a guarantee that an auxlang will remove a lot of nuance from existing languages. In my opinion, that is not something to bemoan or see as a flaw -- that is an inherent requirement when making a usable language at all, because creating a language that has carries the nuance of all languages would very likely be nigh (if not fully) unlearnable.

#3: Considering the other 2 points, every auxlang will require something new to be learned by every speaker.

(This point is to counter arguments similar to "this auxlang has a sound that some people won't have in their native language!")

As it's so often cited, let's make up a phonology that everyone can use based on the website Phoible, starting from the top where the most-used sounds are.

Let's see... the most-used sound across all languages is [m], which is represented by 96% of all languages. Well, that's speakers of 4% of languages where people don't have the sound [m]! I guess we simply can't have any sounds in our language!

Now, as the creator of multiple minimalistic languages, I get it. We want an auxlang to be as easy to learn as possible by as many people as possible. However, the line has to be drawn somewhere, and I would like it if more people would understand that it's a tradeoff.

If your auxlang only has 3 vowels, then yes, the phonology will be more accessible to more people, but it also limits the number of words that you can create. If you understand the limitations of having a smaller vocabulary and still support it then that's perfectly fine, but I've seen a surprisingly large number of people support a smaller version of toki pona as an auxlang and not seem to understand that that'd be a tradeoff rather than an inherent upgrade.

If your auxlang has SVO word order, then that's only familiar to 42% of languages. If you choose SOV word order, that's only 45%. If you allow multiple word orders, then that will be unfamiliar to languages with a strict word order.

There is literally no way to make an auxlang that is 100% familiar to speakers of all languages, and I personally think people should really be more interested in learning about why certain tradeoffs were made rather than being argumentative about why someone chose the 42% option over the 45% option.

#4: If a language is a unique language, then it will take a significant amount of time to learn.

As far as I understand, there is no language, natural or constructed, that takes a trivial amount of time to learn.

toki pona, being a very small minimalistic language with lots of very good learning resources and a helpful community, will still take at least months to become proficient at, even if it's difficult to get a good estimate.

While this point isn't at direct odds with any specific argument, I did want to note it because, ultimately, every auxlang has a base level of friction to become implemented. The difference between becoming proficient at toki pona compared to Esperanto is probably only a few months at most, and I imagine that most people interested in learning a language for e.g. 4 months would not mind studying for 6 months.

Assuming that there is this large of a difference (again, we're not sure due to the multifaceted difficulty of estimating proficiency of language), the tradeoff of making a minimalistic language for easier learning only amounts to that much at most, and I think that's worth considering when comparing minimalistic and non-minimalistic auxlangs.

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Do you still think minimalistic auxlangs are worth learning and making? That's fine! I entirely agree, but it's important that we consider all options and understand the tradeoffs being made. As a comparison, there are reasons we still use decimal as our primary numeral system despite binary being simpler and base 60 being more efficient.

Binary may require less memorization, but the number 999 would require 10 digits in binary at minimum, making it clunkier. Meanwhile, base 60 could represent it in 2 digits, but imagine having to memorize a multiplication table that was 6x bigger!

Though, I still remember a non-conlanger reply from one of my studies saying that they'd prefer an auxlang featuring essentially every word from every language pressed together into some type of mega-language with the understanding that it'd require memorizing millions of words.

Like, obviously I don't quite think that'd be the ideal auxlang, but I still just think it's awesome that someone would fully understand the tradeoffs and still commit to it fully. I don't need people to agree with me, I would just like people to be both respectful and attempt to understand exactly what it is they suggest.