Types of conlangs

 The first step one must take to create a language, before even putting pen to paper, is to ask yourself, "What is the purpose of the language I am going to create?"
 This is an important question because it will influence what your language looks, sounds, and feels like to both the speakers and to others.
 There are many different types of languages, most of which are labled down below. Read each one carefully, and decide what kind of conlang yours is out of the group:


Auxillary Language (AuxLang)
  An auxillary language, or auxlang for short, is a language created for international use. One that is meant to break the language barrier so everyone can learn it and have a clear communication.
 The most popular auxillary language is Esperanto, created by L. L. Zamenhof. Esperanto is the most successful constructed language in the world. It has a simple grammar, sounds easy for everyone to make, and words borrowed from the six most used languages of the time it was created.
 These are all traits of auxlangs: simple grammar, sounds, and lexicon. If you are creating an auxlang, you'll want to keep this in mind. You don't want a language that everyone is supposed to speak be complicated and hard to learn!

Fictional Language
 A fictional language is one that exists in a fictional world, such as for a book or movie. Languages like Elvish, Klingon, and Dothraki are all fictional languages. Fictional languages should sound like where there coming from. To explain, Marc Okrand, the creator of Klingon, made the language have strange sounds most human languages don't have, because the beings that supposedly speak the language are not humans.
 This sort of thing should go into consideration when creating a fictional language.

Engineered/Philosophical Language (Engelang)
 A philosophical language is a language that is created to test a certain linguistic idea. For example, the language Loglan, created by James Cooke Brown, was created to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. This stated that the structure of a language determines or greatly influences the thoughts and behaivor of the ones using it.
 Most engelangs wouldn't make sense to be natural languages, or ones that evolved over time, because they are just to test or mess around with a concept.

Artistic Language (Artlang)
 An artistic language or artlang is created for aesthetic, fictional, or otherwise artistic purposes. Fictional languages are a sort of sub-group to artlangs. These languages, along with philosophical languages, do not have to be based upon something, though an artlang must have an artistic piece to it to be an artlang.

Secret Language (Stealthlang)
 A secret language is one created to be used between a group of small people. These kinds of languages are almost the opposite of auxlangs, as they should not be easily understood. To explain, in an auxlang, most words are borrowed or derived from other languages, so you could get a basic idea of what people are saying.
 In a stealthlang, you do not want this to happen. A stealthlang should have a medium-level complexity grammar, and words should be unique. Note that this doesn't mean a stealthlangs has to be hard to figure out, it just makes sense that it is given it's purpose.

Personal Language
 Last, but definitely not least, is the personal language. This category catches languages that don't fall into the other ones. A personal language is just a conlang created for yourself. Created for your pleasure, use, etc.
 It can sound and look however you want, because the only person meant to be using it, is you!