Why aren't there any new languages being developed?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon_language

There are.

Others are evolving.

Pidgin Languages are a good example of some quick developing languages. It’s kind of like new species in nature, they don’t just sprout from thin air, they evolve gradually from existing communication.

@ragingloli Took my answer!

There’s already about 6,000!!! Why do you want more??

Thought of another answer. English evolves so much it is almost like a new language every 10 years.

@zen Would your new language be simpler or more complex? What exactly are you looking for?

Simpler, simpler. Something that would be either simpler, or more simple – but not have the option of both, for one. It is very confusing to learn as a second language.

Just take comparatives and superlatives, as an example.

No love for Esperanto? :(

What about Ebonics and Textspeak?

It’s a bit like asking, Why aren’t the continents moving? or Why don’t the constellations change? In these cases the time scale is so slow that it’s difficult or impossible to directly see change over the span of a human lifetime (and in many cases, even over recorded history). As a historical science, most evidence is indirect or inferred. Yet a consistent picture can be built.

Here’s where I wish I had a better linguistics background. I think the emergence of a “new language” (not just a regional dialect, an argot, etc.) is a complex social and cultural phenomenon that plays out over many generations, even when it occurs relatively rapidly. Not counting computer languages! There’s an obvious analogy to evolutionary biology, where new species emerge over time that are distinct from their ancestors. Evolution involves changes, not to individuals, but to an entire interbreeding gene pool.

I don’t know how far to push the analogy, but my not-so-educated guess is that sounds and words and grammar are linguistically analogous to a gene pool (meme pool?), accruing change slowly until some kind of non-linear tipping point is reached, then a new language emerges over a few generations. Not sure if new language “speciation” is a continuous process versus punctuated equilibrium. where have I seen that before? ~

Because oral language is only 50–100,000 years old, and writing only 5–10,000 years old, I’d also guess that linguists don’t have the wealth of evidence that evolutionary biologists are accustomed to for constructing lineages. Extinct languages may leave fossils, so to speak, but I think it takes a lot of linguistic analysis to find them.

I’d be fascinated to hear details that are known by linguists & to confirm my hunches?. There’s a book called The Emergence of Pidgin and Creole Languages still on my Amazon wish-list.
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[addendum] @Zen: I just realized the key word is simple. So maybe Esperanto is closest to what you seek for some kind of simplified world-speak universal language. So far it’s been a flop, even in countries that use the Roman alphabet.

Languages are disappearing at a rate of one every other week or so, far faster than any languages are being created. Part of the reason is that the world is getting smaller. Local dialects and tribal languages are discouraged in favor of national languages.

Because Esperato turned out to be a failed experiment. Besides, living language renew themselves every day.

Languages evolve, just like living things, and take a while to separate sometimes. Québecois French, spoken by the descendants French folks who left for the New World a few hundred years ago, already sounds “archaic” to French-speakers who live in France. It might still be considered French, but give it time.

When you say ‘developed’, do you mean people actively creating languages or languages spontaneously forming? And when we’re talking about ‘new languages’ do you mean current languages altering significantly enough to be indistinguishable from their original form, or entirely new languages developing absent from the influence of current languages?

The answer to all of these things is: Actually, it is happening. People are actively creating languages. Languages are occasionally forming with strong influence from current languages. And, in some fascinating cases, languages spring up independently.

On the topic of the conlanging, I’m actually in the process of making several languages at the moment. If you want more information on that, I’d be happy to tell you more.

Mi kontemplis diri malĝentilan ion al tiuj, kiuj mokas Esperanton. Anstataŭe, mi pensas ke mi ignoros vin. Du milionoj da parolantoj sufiĉas por mi.