She partially described the language in a work titled "Ignota lingua per simplicem hominem Hildegardem prolata", which survived in two manuscripts, both dating to ca. 1200, the Wiesbaden Codex and a Berlin MS (Lat. Quart. 4º 674), previously Codex Cheltenhamensis 9303, collected by Sir Thomas Phillipps. The text is a glossary of 1011 words in Lingua ignota, with glosses mostly in Latin, sometimes in Middle High German; the words appear to be a priori coinages, mostly nouns with a few adjectives. Grammatically it appears to be a partial relexification of Latin, that is, a language formed by substituting new vocabulary into an existing grammar.