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I wish that conlangs were more popular. There are many bad natural languages that could need replacement. I live in Europe, and the languages is one of the thin

I wish that conlangs were more popular. There are many bad natural languages that could need replacement. I live in Europe, and the languages is one of the things that annoys me the most about this continent. For example, languages like Dutch, German and Spanish use guttural sounds. Normally, when you try get rid of slime from your throat, you make guttural sounds - why on earth do people use that to communicate with? It's ugly. Or take some of the grammar of natural languages, like the das, der and die in German. I think "the ticket" in German can be called der Farhschein, die Fahrkarte or das Ticket - it makes no sense. Maybe I should put my feet where my mouth is, and start learning Esperanto or something...

eivarv 11y ago
The way I see it, the "natural" languages don't make sense because they aren't planned. But as with other things, I find that the perceived weirdness of other languages often comes from what we're used to. You might, for instance, make a similar argument regarding normal use of the sound for the alveolar trill [0]. As for the German grammar you mention, English is really the odd one out here - grammatical gender is fairly common. German is a weird language, though:P I think what really makes German weird is the [0] grammatical case. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alveolar_trill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alveolar_trill [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_case#German https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_case#German
veddox 11y ago
While I second your wish that conlangs were more popular (I learnt Toki Pona some time back), I would ask you to refrain from such subjective language criticisms as "it's ugly". I speak English and German natively, and I can't stand it when people criticize the other language on such personal grounds. As for your take on the redundancy of natural languages, I would point out that it is perfectly natural and can probably be found in just about any language. (Otherwise, there would be no such thing as a thesaurus...) To stick with your example, you could also talk about "the boarding pass" instead of "the ticket" in English. Indeed, the redundancy of words and vocabulary forms much of the beauty of a language. Especially in English much of poetry is the art of choosing the right word. I love the way T.S. Eliot puts it towards the end of his poem "Little Gidding": And every phrase And sentence that is right (where every word is at home, Taking its place to support the others, The word neither diffident nor ostentatious, An easy commerce of the old and the new, The common word exact without vulgarity, The formal word precise but not pedantic, The complete consort dancing together) So please, if you want to criticize a language at all, let's stick to the objective side as far as possible. German grammar is difficult, English pronunciation can be utterly confusing - I'll grant that. But let's not talk about any "bad natural languages". Because there is beauty to be found in every tongue.
- jensen123 11y ago
  Actually, I don't mind redundancy. I meant to criticize the lack of logic and consistency. If it was logical and consistent, it should have been das Farhschein, das Fahrkarte and das Ticket :-)
  - veddox 11y ago
    I understand where you're coming from, but your solution wouldn't actually be logical and consistent either. "Fahrschein" comes from the root "Schein" (engl. "slip (of paper)"), which is masculine ("der Schein"); "Fahrkarte" comes from "Karte" (engl. "card"/"map"), which is feminine ("die Karte"), and "Ticket" is, afaik, an anglicism (which are often designated as neuter)... So in order to achieve consistency across these three words, one would have to break consistency with their roots - a bit of a catch 22...
  - jhanschoo 11y ago
    It isn't illogical or inconsistent. The notion that grammatical gender is illogical comes from a misunderstanding of the purpose of grammatical gender. We learn in schools that words are either masculine, feminine, or neuter. Gender is useful for several things: think of it as a technology with multiple applications, some more obvious than others. The most obvious would be to indicate whether a pronoun is male, female, or inanimate. One of the more important uses for gender is for agreement. Agreement in gender helps to denote which noun an adjective belongs to. Of course, it's not foolproof, but it's good enough. In addition to agreement, genders increase the information redundancy of words, which is useful when communicating in a noisy, lossy medium. Admittedly, genders that actually correspond to the natural gender of the things they refer to may not detract from the purpose of information redundancy and of agreement, but as with many things in life, good enough is sufficient cause to adopt the status quo. What I'm trying to say is, under the supposition that genders should reflect natural gender, they do indeed appear illogical and inconsistent. But genders do indeed have practical purposes and do indeed develop according to certain rules, and if we judge genders by these criteria instead, their development does indeed follow rules and is consistent.

eivarv 11y ago

The way I see it, the "natural" languages don't make sense because they aren't planned. But as with other things, I find that the perceived weirdness of other languages often comes from what we're used to. You might, for instance, make a similar argument regarding normal use of the sound for the alveolar trill [0]. As for the German grammar you mention, English is really the odd one out here - grammatical gender is fairly common. German is a weird language, though:P I think what really makes German weird is the [0] grammatical case. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alveolar_trill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alveolar_trill [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_case#German https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_case#German

veddox 11y ago

While I second your wish that conlangs were more popular (I learnt Toki Pona some time back), I would ask you to refrain from such subjective language criticisms as "it's ugly". I speak English and German natively, and I can't stand it when people criticize the other language on such personal grounds. As for your take on the redundancy of natural languages, I would point out that it is perfectly natural and can probably be found in just about any language. (Otherwise, there would be no such thing as a thesaurus...) To stick with your example, you could also talk about "the boarding pass" instead of "the ticket" in English. Indeed, the redundancy of words and vocabulary forms much of the beauty of a language. Especially in English much of poetry is the art of choosing the right word. I love the way T.S. Eliot puts it towards the end of his poem "Little Gidding": And every phrase And sentence that is right (where every word is at home, Taking its place to support the others, The word neither diffident nor ostentatious, An easy commerce of the old and the new, The common word exact without vulgarity, The formal word precise but not pedantic, The complete consort dancing together) So please, if you want to criticize a language at all, let's stick to the objective side as far as possible. German grammar is difficult, English pronunciation can be utterly confusing - I'll grant that. But let's not talk about any "bad natural languages". Because there is beauty to be found in every tongue.

jensen123 11y ago
Actually, I don't mind redundancy. I meant to criticize the lack of logic and consistency. If it was logical and consistent, it should have been das Farhschein, das Fahrkarte and das Ticket :-)
- veddox 11y ago
  I understand where you're coming from, but your solution wouldn't actually be logical and consistent either. "Fahrschein" comes from the root "Schein" (engl. "slip (of paper)"), which is masculine ("der Schein"); "Fahrkarte" comes from "Karte" (engl. "card"/"map"), which is feminine ("die Karte"), and "Ticket" is, afaik, an anglicism (which are often designated as neuter)... So in order to achieve consistency across these three words, one would have to break consistency with their roots - a bit of a catch 22...
- jhanschoo 11y ago
  It isn't illogical or inconsistent. The notion that grammatical gender is illogical comes from a misunderstanding of the purpose of grammatical gender. We learn in schools that words are either masculine, feminine, or neuter. Gender is useful for several things: think of it as a technology with multiple applications, some more obvious than others. The most obvious would be to indicate whether a pronoun is male, female, or inanimate. One of the more important uses for gender is for agreement. Agreement in gender helps to denote which noun an adjective belongs to. Of course, it's not foolproof, but it's good enough. In addition to agreement, genders increase the information redundancy of words, which is useful when communicating in a noisy, lossy medium. Admittedly, genders that actually correspond to the natural gender of the things they refer to may not detract from the purpose of information redundancy and of agreement, but as with many things in life, good enough is sufficient cause to adopt the status quo. What I'm trying to say is, under the supposition that genders should reflect natural gender, they do indeed appear illogical and inconsistent. But genders do indeed have practical purposes and do indeed develop according to certain rules, and if we judge genders by these criteria instead, their development does indeed follow rules and is consistent.