4 ms·

Inventing a whole language

31 points by ghosh 10y ago

throwaway7645 10y ago
I actually like the idea of invented auxiliary languages like Esperanto. I've spent 10% of the time on it that I did on Spanish in HS and understand probably 5x as much due to the grammar. No gendered nouns, suffixes and prefixes on words to keep extraneous vocabulary down...etc. Also, having one sound per letter and no trilling R is nice.
- kmicklas 10y ago
  Really the biggest reason Esperanto is easy is that it doesn't have a whole culture constantly pumping in new slang and arcane idioms. You can see a word used once or twice and be reasonably certain that you are not missing some subtle nuance or alternative meaning.
  - throwaway7645 10y ago
    Well it does have a culture. Lots of conventions, original literature and music...etc, but yea even that isn't the same as a culture of millions.
    - kmicklas 10y ago
      The biggest difference isn't the raw number participating in the culture but rather that Esperantists mostly keep in mind the goals of semantic transparency and simplicity when coining new words and idioms.
- fusiongyro 10y ago
  Have you seen Interlingua? The idea behind it is to build a sort of simplified Romance language. It retains only features that occur in all of its control languages, so you do get some verb marking but nothing really out there grammatically. And it retains impressive word-building powers. It reads a bit like Latinized Spanish. http://www.interlingua.com/ http://www.interlingua.com/ I have found it easier to pick up than Lojban, but I haven't been able to maintain my interest.
  - throwaway7645 10y ago
    I've heard of it, but haven't looked into it in detail as Esperanto seemed good enough and is the most popular of the aux languages. I've played with Lojban, but honestly think it is just too hard for a human to be good with. It and its successor have been around in some part for decades, and yet nobody can really speak it fluently (I've heard less than 10 people). I really like the idea...just not sure about the implementation.
dmichulke 10y ago
An example that gave (and still gives) me the creeps: A guy seeing videos with lots of blood (vino) and a gang rape (the old in-out) And then, what do you know, soon our dear old friend, the red, red vino on tap, the same in all places like it's put out by the same big firm, began to flow. It was beautiful. It's funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen. Now all the time I was watching this, I was beginning to get very aware of like not feeling all that well, and this I put down to all the rich food and vitamins, but I tried to forget this, concentrating on the next film which jumped right away on a young devotchka who was being given the old in-out, in-out first by one malchick, then another, then another...When it came to the sixth or seventh malchick, leering and smecking and then going into it, I began to feel really sick. From Clockwork Orange
fusiongyro 10y ago
I have been learning Lojban off-and-on for a while. I think the core idea behind it is very interesting: sentences as logical predicates. The root word concept is powerful. But I feel like most of the rest of it is too complex. They could have would up with Prolog. Instead they wound up with C++, where everything they could think of wound up in the language. That said, it's still big and inspiring. But a lot of talk about Lojban turns into talking about whether a sentence is valid or not. The software ecosystem around it has grown up a huge amount in the last few years.
- BuuQu9hu 10y ago
  I feel that you are mischaracterizing us. Anybody who wants to learn Lojban can start with https://mw.lojban.org/papri/la_karda https://mw.lojban.org/papri/la_karda and come to #ckule on Freenode IRC. It takes a weekend to learn surface syntax and 2 to 3 months to get conversant.
  - fusiongyro 10y ago
    I apologize. I think there are different conceptions of complexity. Lojban is built on a rigorous definition of complexity and clearly much work has been put in to minimize it. My feeling from having spent time learning it is that the goals are interesting and clearly they are very close to achieving them, but they don't match up to my expectations for simplicity, from reading about linguistics and other constructed languages as a hobby. I am not trying to bag on Lojban. It's very interesting and worth spending time learning. I will definitely follow up on your resources—I have been reading la karda for the last week already actually. :)
- kmicklas 10y ago
  Lojban would have been infinitely more promising if it didn't force you to memorize a completely arbitrary argument template for each root and instead used standardized semantic role prepositions (destination, agent, reason, instrument, etc.).
  - schoen 10y ago
takk309 10y ago
Here is an episode of Lexicon Valley with an interview with David J. Peterson, the language creator for Game of Thrones. [1] The amount of depth that has been put into the Dothraki language is very impressive. [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2015/05/lexicon_valley_dothraki_and_valyrian_inventor_david_j_peterson_on_creating.html http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2015/0...
milesrout 10y ago
http://reddit.com/r/conlangs http://reddit.com/r/conlangs is a wonderful community of language creators (conlang = constructed language). It's surprisingly popular, there are many posts a day there. There are other forums and blogs and such as well.
JoeDaDude 10y ago
People interested in this topic will enjoy the book "In the Land of Invented Languages" by Akira Okrent [1]. It's an easy non-technical read. [1]http://inthelandofinventedlanguages.com/ http://inthelandofinventedlanguages.com/
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

31 points by ghosh 10y ago

I actually like the idea of invented auxiliary languages like Esperanto. I've spent 10% of the time on it that I did on Spanish in HS and understand probably 5x as much due to the grammar. No gendered nouns, suffixes and prefixes on words to keep extraneous vocabulary down...etc. Also, having one sound per letter and no trilling R is nice.

kmicklas 10y ago
Really the biggest reason Esperanto is easy is that it doesn't have a whole culture constantly pumping in new slang and arcane idioms. You can see a word used once or twice and be reasonably certain that you are not missing some subtle nuance or alternative meaning.
- throwaway7645 10y ago
  Well it does have a culture. Lots of conventions, original literature and music...etc, but yea even that isn't the same as a culture of millions.
  - kmicklas 10y ago
    The biggest difference isn't the raw number participating in the culture but rather that Esperantists mostly keep in mind the goals of semantic transparency and simplicity when coining new words and idioms.
fusiongyro 10y ago
Have you seen Interlingua? The idea behind it is to build a sort of simplified Romance language. It retains only features that occur in all of its control languages, so you do get some verb marking but nothing really out there grammatically. And it retains impressive word-building powers. It reads a bit like Latinized Spanish. http://www.interlingua.com/ http://www.interlingua.com/ I have found it easier to pick up than Lojban, but I haven't been able to maintain my interest.
- throwaway7645 10y ago
  I've heard of it, but haven't looked into it in detail as Esperanto seemed good enough and is the most popular of the aux languages. I've played with Lojban, but honestly think it is just too hard for a human to be good with. It and its successor have been around in some part for decades, and yet nobody can really speak it fluently (I've heard less than 10 people). I really like the idea...just not sure about the implementation.

dmichulke 10y ago

An example that gave (and still gives) me the creeps: A guy seeing videos with lots of blood (vino) and a gang rape (the old in-out) And then, what do you know, soon our dear old friend, the red, red vino on tap, the same in all places like it's put out by the same big firm, began to flow. It was beautiful. It's funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen. Now all the time I was watching this, I was beginning to get very aware of like not feeling all that well, and this I put down to all the rich food and vitamins, but I tried to forget this, concentrating on the next film which jumped right away on a young devotchka who was being given the old in-out, in-out first by one malchick, then another, then another...When it came to the sixth or seventh malchick, leering and smecking and then going into it, I began to feel really sick. From Clockwork Orange

fusiongyro 10y ago

I have been learning Lojban off-and-on for a while. I think the core idea behind it is very interesting: sentences as logical predicates. The root word concept is powerful. But I feel like most of the rest of it is too complex. They could have would up with Prolog. Instead they wound up with C++, where everything they could think of wound up in the language. That said, it's still big and inspiring. But a lot of talk about Lojban turns into talking about whether a sentence is valid or not. The software ecosystem around it has grown up a huge amount in the last few years.

BuuQu9hu 10y ago
I feel that you are mischaracterizing us. Anybody who wants to learn Lojban can start with https://mw.lojban.org/papri/la_karda https://mw.lojban.org/papri/la_karda and come to #ckule on Freenode IRC. It takes a weekend to learn surface syntax and 2 to 3 months to get conversant.
- fusiongyro 10y ago
  I apologize. I think there are different conceptions of complexity. Lojban is built on a rigorous definition of complexity and clearly much work has been put in to minimize it. My feeling from having spent time learning it is that the goals are interesting and clearly they are very close to achieving them, but they don't match up to my expectations for simplicity, from reading about linguistics and other constructed languages as a hobby. I am not trying to bag on Lojban. It's very interesting and worth spending time learning. I will definitely follow up on your resources—I have been reading la karda for the last week already actually. :)
kmicklas 10y ago
Lojban would have been infinitely more promising if it didn't force you to memorize a completely arbitrary argument template for each root and instead used standardized semantic role prepositions (destination, agent, reason, instrument, etc.).
- schoen 10y ago

takk309 10y ago

Here is an episode of Lexicon Valley with an interview with David J. Peterson, the language creator for Game of Thrones. [1] The amount of depth that has been put into the Dothraki language is very impressive. [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2015/05/lexicon_valley_dothraki_and_valyrian_inventor_david_j_peterson_on_creating.html http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2015/0...

milesrout 10y ago

http://reddit.com/r/conlangs http://reddit.com/r/conlangs is a wonderful community of language creators (conlang = constructed language). It's surprisingly popular, there are many posts a day there. There are other forums and blogs and such as well.

JoeDaDude 10y ago

People interested in this topic will enjoy the book "In the Land of Invented Languages" by Akira Okrent [1]. It's an easy non-technical read. [1]http://inthelandofinventedlanguages.com/ http://inthelandofinventedlanguages.com/

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]