Relex

A relex (from relexification) is a type of cipher that replaces the words of an existing language with invented ones. Relexes seldom innovate new grammatical features unique from their source language. For example, A simple English relex may replace the words the, dog, bite, and man with meh, foo, bar, and baz, respectively. To form the sentence The dog bites the man, one simply replaces each word in the English sentence with its corresponding relexified form to make the sentence meh foo bar meh baz.

To the extent that new grammatical features are introduced, they often take the form of regularizing irregular inflected forms or ignoring inflection altogether, as is done in the example above. The semantics of words never deviate from the source language. The wordbaz from the above example would carry the meanings of male human, a human of either gender, and even the verb to man in the sense of to supply with a crew.

A conlanger's first conlang is, usually unintentionally, a relex of their native tongue or a second language they are currently studying. The word relex is often used pejoratively within the conlanging community. However, Lingua Ignota, often regarded as the first conlang ever, was as far as can be discerned a relex of Latin.