Thoughts on Auxlang Marketing

May 14, 2024 - Published

This one will be a less formal article, because marketing auxlangs is an issue that hasn't really been solved. Despite some conlangs being generally well-known, there are none that, in my opinion, have escaped the niche to become something to be learned by the general public. I hadn't heard of Esperanto before my research on conlangs, and most of the people around me hadn't either. I was vaguely aware of people speaking a language from Star Trek, but I had never watched the series and the general consensus seemed to be that the people who spoke it were like, big-time nerds. Which of course, that's totally fine (anyone reading this article right now is automatically a big-time nerd, including me), but I don't think that makes the idea incredibly appealing to the general public -- an issue when the idea of auxlangs is to be universally accepted, even if that's considered a pipe dream by most conlangers.

I am not an expert on this subject, but I do have experience in general marketing concepts since I'm a Youtuber who also had to advertise the release of my video game, even if that's not exactly the same as marketing a language. I'll also be using my experience as a relative newcomer to conlangs (as of time of writing, I've only been researching conlangs for a bit over a year) to explain how I perceive these concepts. Since this will focus on the marketing aspects, it will ignore any features of the conlang itself, especially since I already went over my thoughts on those in my other article.

But enough talk. Have at you!

The Bare Minimum

1) If you don't have a document detailing how your language works, your conlang doesn't exist.

2) If your conlang isn't publicly available on the internet, your conlang doesn't exist.

These are the two ABSOLUTE bare minimum things you have to do for your auxlang. I don't even have any auxlangs to critique for these points, because if they're missing either of these two things, I've literally never heard of them.

The first point is very literal. Ideally, your document is in a widely spoken language (English is pretty unarguably the best option right now) and goes into great detail, since at some point of popularity there will be actual linguists that look into your document and critique every bit of it -- I've seen this firsthand. However, both of those aren't technically required; Solresol is pretty well-known in the conlang community, despite the fact that I'm pretty sure it was originally published solely in French by someone who wasn't a linguist. Still, having a document that's unfinished or isn't sufficiently detailed will generally mean that your language cannot be fully learned, and therefore can't really have speakers, which will kind of hurt its marketability.

The second point is less literal, but if your goal is to create an international auxiliary language, then posting your language on the internet is essential for making it internationally accessible. While there are some auxlangs with publicity made before the internet, it's essential nowadays due to all the competition. I say "publicly available" because putting it up on a Google Doc makes it technically online, but it might as well not exist if it's not accessible from a Google search. If I have to message someone to see your documentation, or buy a book, or fly to a different country, then I will simply not read your documentation, and that applies to the vast majority of the population. This should be obvious, but it brings me to my next point.

The Level Above the Bare Minimum

3) If you don't have an central website, your conlang isn't official.

4) If you don't have a basic learning guide, people will not learn your language.

The first two points were the actual bare minimum, but in my opinion, this is the bare minimum in practice -- and there are some languages that fail this part! Ido was a language I studied that I was shocked to not find a proper central website, despite being very well-known among conlangers. There were some websites that taught the language, and one that feels like a central Ido website, but it doesn't feel official based on the URL (https://nekredebla.wordpress.com/). It might seem silly to say "it isn't called Ido.com, so people won't click on it," but in marketing, this is the sort of thing that companies will pay MILLIONS of dollars for. 

If you don't have a proper website that acts as the hub for everyone to go to, then there is essentially nowhere for people to easily find your language. I could read through the entirety of the Nekredebla website if I wanted to, but the questions will remain: is all the information here correct? Are the links all legitimate? Do they actually lead to the best resources? The website doesn't even have to be fancy, but as long as it gives itself legitimacy (feels official, doesn't use a strange URL) and follows the basics of web design (easy to navigate, works on mobile, etc.), it should work perfectly fine.

Even languages created before the internet like Esperanto have their own official website, so there aren't many excuses for skipping this step. Even if all you can afford is a free Wordpress website, and even if you aren't the creator of the language (though obviously you should get the creator's permission if possible), having an official website is very important . The ideal website will have many links for tutorials, content, and community, and have a nice-looking aesthetic that isn't hard on the eyes. In my opinion, the Elefen website should be the gold standard, and you'll understand what I mean if you give it a look: https://elefen.org/  

The other point is having a learning guide. This learning guide doesn't need to go over more than the basics, but it needs to exist because not everyone is going to read through the official documentation. The goal of the official documentation is to make sure that your language has a thorough and indisputable resource for how it works; the learning guide exists so people can easily access and understand the basics of how your language works/functions. There can be some overlap between these two documents, but they have decidedly different goals, so you will often see these as two separate pages on well-made conlang websites (see how the Elefen website has both "Introdui" and "Gramatica completa" near the top). The learning guide also tends to be nice to get the "feel" of a language. When I'm exploring new conlangs, I often try to find beginner guides and sample texts partly to see if I enjoy how the language looks/sounds, which can be a big factor in whether I decide to keep learning it.

Reaching a Wider Audience

Now that we have passed the bare minimum, things become a lot more subjective. If you are the creator of the language, I would say that's all you had to do! It would be great to do other things, like creating stories in your language, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to hand those off to interested members of the community. Let's go over some more important points.

5) Libraries of stories and readings legitimize the language.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I don't actually find having a lot of written content as extremely pressing. Languages are primarily a form of allowing people to speak to other people. However, having stories approved by the creator (e.g. by having them linked from the website) allow for multiple things. One is setting examples for learners to see how the language functions in practice, outside of the textbook-like grammar documentation and the classroom-like learning guide. Another is the fact that it legitimizes the language. A language can work in theory, but it is only by applying it through stories and conversation that it can prove to people that it's usable. Without a decent library, many conlangers will see it as "just another conlang" and pass up on it until it gains more of a following.

6) Online communities are necessary for speakers.

Similarly, languages need communities. This may change in the future, but right now, the two most important places for communities are Reddit and Discord -- the official toki pona website even uses these community sizes to judge online conlang popularity. Reddit is important because it's publicly available, visible, and allows people to create discussion easily. Discord is important because they're essentially chatrooms, which allow for more real-time conversations. It is no exaggeration to say that a conlang's activity on Reddit and Discord currently roughly correlates to how "alive" the conlang is. Again, this may change in the future, but other platforms like Telegram may have dead group chats even if the language isn't that dead. Even if it's not made by the creator, an auxlang MUST have these platforms, though the creator's activity should always positively affect the activity; more on that later.

7) Video content does a ton for accessibility.

Finally, video content. Again, proper documentation technically doesn't require any audio content for a language (the IPA exists), but it would be VERY nice to anyone learning it. There is also an ENORMOUS number of people that highly prefer video content over written content, and even for those that don't strictly choose one over the other, all of us have been lazy at some point and wanted to learn something by video. There is a significant portion of the population to whom something will not exist unless it's on Youtube. Ideally videos will include a beginner's tutorial, some info about the language's goals / possibly history, and the language being spoken at least semi-fluently. I've been genuinely shocked at how many conlangs don't have a simple tutorial on Youtube. While videos are understandably not the most easy thing to produce, I would say that searching up tutorials on Youtube have to be at least one of the top 3 ways people are introduced to a language. Scratch that, one of the top 3 ways people learn ANYTHING that's learnable. If this is something that a language is lacking, I highly recommend doing it, as it will often give people an easy way to access the rest of the learning materials.

This Would be Nice

This auxlang now has complete documentation, a good official website, a learning guide, a sizable library of things to read, a living community of real people that found and learned the language, and videos that teach and present the language. Ideally, most of these are also accessible to people who speak languages other than English. That's pretty good! Better than most auxlangs, in fact. This is a genuine achievement that can be celebrated, in my opinion.

However, there is a sizable chance that this auxlang will fall out of relevance, with equally as many ways for it to grow. It is fully possible for the language to be kept alive by sheer effort of people just speaking and enjoying the language, but how do you increase the chances of keeping the community alive?

8) Activity from the creator creates faith in the language.

This first one is an idea I thought I remembered picking up from this article, though I couldn't find the exact line. When a creator is enthusiastic and participates often with the community, it helps drive activity in a way that's more difficult for other people to. Sonja Lang is a great example as the creator of toki pona, who not only regularly interacts with different conlang communities, but has also been releasing toki pona-related books for the community to look forward to. As the creator, you not only become a sort of minor celebrity, but can also definitively settle any disputes related to the language. The other side to this point is that an inactive creator can often kill interest in a language. The most direct example of this is the death of a creator, which has happened to multiple conlangs (most notably Ido), but obviously the creator doesn't have to die for this to happen.

EDIT: Something semi-related that I may have overlooked is the influence of a language's ideology. While it may just be correlation, something Esperanto and toki pona (the current most successful conlangs) have in common is a strong ideology -- Esperanto's creator pushed the idea of uniting the world by language for world peace, and toki pona famously has a strong philosophy about simplifying life and language for more positive thinking. I consider this important because it influences people's drive to learn a language; it was most likely a factor to many conlang communities running out of steam. While I think Mini-Linga is a very well-designed language, for example, I expect people lost interest since the only pull was really "this is a minimalistic language better at being an auxlang than toki pona" with no deeper goal or idea for people to latch onto. I encourage conlang creators to push their philosophy and make it clear when presenting their language.

9) New things in different types of media keep the language alive.

One of the things the community has the most control over is the creation of media. Creating music, or Youtube videos, or stories, or anything related to the language can bring different types of people to the community. It not only creates exclusive content that can convince people to learn the language to participate, but the advertisement of the content itself can also be considered advertisement for the language. While the latter is only semi-related, I would argue that media and general word-of-mouth are two of the most powerful ways to market an auxlang across this entire list. I can hear about a language, but I will often not search it out until I hear people say good things about it. Always support the community!

10) Well-managed communities are the strongest ones.

It should come without saying, but if a community is managed well, it'll encourage people to join and stay active. This means having good moderation, fostering good behavior, and generally managing the platform itself properly. I'm not sure exactly how Reddit works, but big Discords will usually require many channels to separate discussion, along with roles to manage visibility. Either way, it definitely requires a working team of people who know what they're doing.

Pipe Dream

With all that working for a language, everything is set. If all that has been accomplished, the language can honestly be considered pretty "popular," especially within the conlang community, and it'll basically just be up to the community as a whole to keep the language alive and running.

There is only one more step to take from here, and it's introducing the language to the general population. No auxlang, other than possibly Esperanto to a degree, has successfully breached this step. This is the pipe dream that all auxlangers can only imagine will happen.

11) Real-life meetings and communities speak the language.

There is a big Esperanto convention, but it might not be big enough to be a true marketing strategy for non-Esperantists. There are also multiple real-life Esperanto communities, but none that I'm aware of that are notably-sized (i.e. as big as an entire town). A big reason that people learn natural languages is to fit into a community that they physically move into, but there isn't really a conlang equivalent of that -- I haven't even seen it happen very often online. Having an equivalent of that may create strong reasons for people to learn a conlang.

12) Large, big-budget productions include the language spoken at length.

As for big-budget productions, I've only read about Esperanto being more of an easter egg in big-budget movies, and I doubt they're notable enough for people to be interested if they don't already know Esperanto. Movies, games, TV shows, etc. would be great publicity for a language, and may convince people to learn it so they can enjoy it more genuinely. This happens a lot for natural languages that we know -- there are uncountable people who want to learn Japanese because of anime.

13) The language is taught in schools.

 This actually did happen for Esperanto! From what I know, it's actually still being taught in some universities, and may have been more common in the past due to Europe's government involvement with Esperanto, though I couldn't secure a source for that information. An auxlang being taught in more schools would obviously gain much more recognition for the language, even if not everyone would commit to it after classes ended.

14) The language is adopted as official by a country.

Finally, the language becoming an official language for a country. There have been attempts for Esperanto, but none officially went through, either not counting as a country or not counting as an official language, from my understanding. While a country holding it as an official language wouldn't automatically create more speakers, it would probably break the news and gain a ton of momentum for the legitimacy of auxlangs, which would be huge for the community.

I think that's about the best summary I can make. A lot of this is obviously a lot more difficult and complex in practice than in theory, but there are a lot of concrete things that the creator and community can do to increase their chances of making their auxlang well-known with a thriving community.

• Vecderg