In the vast world of constructed languages (conlangs), most enthusiasts are familiar with the big names: Esperanto, aimed at international diplomacy; Quenya or Klingon, born from rich fictional distinct cultures; and Toki Pona, designed for minimalist philosophy. But lurking in the psychedelic fringes of linguistics history is a language that claims to be far more than a human invention.
Enter aUI (pronounced “ah-oo-ee”), the “Language of Space.”
Created—or, as he insisted, discovered—by Dr. John W. Weilgart in the mid-20th century, aUI presents itself as a semantic code for the universe. Whether you accept Weilgart’s claim that he learned the language from a telepathic alien being, or you view it as a brilliant exercise in a priori philosophical language design, aUI remains one of the most fascinating case studies in how we map sound to meaning.
Dr. John Weilgart was not your typical fringe theorist; he was a trained psychoanalyst and linguist who studied under Nobel laureates. However, his linguistic legacy is defined by a bizarre event he claimed occurred in the 1960s. Weilgart alleged that a being from space imparted to him the fundamental sounds of the cosmos. According to Weilgart, this alien spoke a language where sound and meaning were intrinsically linked to the laws of physics and biology.
While the extraterrestrial origin story often relegates aUI to the realm of pseudoscience or ufology, linguists look at the system and see something else entirely: a rigorous, oligosynthetic, a priori language. Unlike Esperanto, which borrows vocabulary from French, German, and English (a posteriori), aUI borrows from nothing but raw conceptuality.
The goal was lofty: “Peace through Communication.” Weilgart believed that human languages were cluttered with “semantic weeds”—ambiguities and irrationalities that led to misunderstanding and war. He proposed that if humans spoke a language perfectly aligned with the structure of reality, irrational thought (and violence) would become impossible.
At the heart of aUI is a set of roughly 31 primitive semantic roots (“primes”). You can think of these as the chemical elements of the language. Where English has hundreds of thousands of arbitrary words, aUI has a small toolkit of sounds that represent the fundamental building blocks of the universe.
Each phoneme (sound) corresponds to a basic concept. The language is built on the hypothesis of sound symbolism—the idea that the physical shape of the mouth or the quality of the sound reflects the wide concept.
In aUI, you do not memorize arbitrary vocabulary strings. Instead, you perform “semantic math.” You combine these atomic concepts to build molecules of meaning.
The most captivating aspect of aUI for linguists is its transparency. In English, the word “verb” gives you no clue as to what it entails unless you know the Latin root *verbum*. In aUI, if you know the elements, you can decode the universe.
To create complex words, you simply string the primes together. Let’s look at how this conceptual algebra functions.
One of the most poetic examples of aUI logic is the construction of spiritual concepts. How do you define “God” without cultural baggage? Weilgart’s formula combined the element for Light (i) with the element for Mind/Spirit (u). Thus, the concept of a supreme being is rendered as the “Spirit of Light” or “Light-Mind.” It strips away the anthropomorphic beard and throne, leaving a raw, philosophical definition.
Consider the word for “Time.” In physics, time is often defined in relation to movement through space. In aUI, the word for Time is ae.
Therefore, Time is literally “Space-Movement.”
How do we get to a “fruit”? In aUI, it might be constructed as io.
Plants and fruits are “Life from Light” (photosynthesis). To specify an “Apple”, you would add modifiers for shape (round), color (red), and position (above/tree), creating a compound word that describes exactly what the object is, rather than just giving it a label.
Why go through the trouble of reinventing language? The philosophy behind aUI is heavily reliant on a strong interpretation of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (Linguistic Relativity). This theory suggests that the structure of a language affects its speakers’ world view or cognition.
Weilgart believed that English and other natural languages were “slogan-ridden” and deceptive. For example, a politician can use the word “liberation” to describe an invasion. In natural language, the word “liberation” is an arbitrary symbol that can be twisted.
In aUI, you cannot lie effectively because the word describes the reality. If you wanted to say “war”, you have to use the primes that denote destruction or conflict against life. You cannot dress it up as “peacekeeping” because the semantic “elements” for peace and life would chemically clash with the reality of the action. It is a language designed to force honesty.
To further the universal nature of the language, aUI includes a writing system where the glyphs (symbols) represent the meaning directly. This makes it a “pasigraphy”—a system that can be read regardless of your spoken language.
This adds a third layer of reinforcement: you hear the meaning in the sound, you understand the meaning in the combination of elements, and you see the meaning in the symbol.
Despite Weilgart’s dedication, aUI never achieved the popularity of Esperanto or the cult status of Klingon. The “alien” origin story, while fascinating, likely alienated (pun intended) serious academic adoption during the 20th century. Furthermore, critics argue that the language is too reliant on Weilgart’s personal philosophical taxonomy—what he considers “good” or “essential” might not be universal across all human (or alien) cultures.
However, aUI survives today in the digital age as a curiosity for conlangers and a serious study in oligosynthesis. It predates modern minimalist languages like Toki Pona, which shares the goal of simplifying life through simplified language, by several decades.
Strictly as a linguistic mechanism, aUI is a triumph of structure. It challenges us to ask: Do we control our language, or does our language control us? By breaking speech down to the atomic level, Weilgart offered a glimpse of a world where we don’t just speak to one another—we speak the truth of the universe, one vowel at a time.
Whether it came from the stars or a psychiatrist’s study, aUI reminds us that language is the ultimate interface between the mind and reality.
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