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Minimalism is one side, but having fun is another side. Having a small number of words also lends itself a lot to hieroglyphic systems - people love inventing

Minimalism is one side, but having fun is another side. Having a small number of words also lends itself a lot to hieroglyphic systems - people love inventing new writing systems (also number systems...) for it.

sneak 7y ago
I think by sticking to latin1, adding directional words and arabic numerals officially, this could stand to be a major global auxiliary language, with all the associated human benefits. Fragmenting the readership and writership with an alternate writing system robs it of that potential, in my view. I like your device and post, fwiw. I just think that languages are a tragic waste if they are not used and learned, and fragmentation harms both of those.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- thesuperbigfrog 7y ago
  Blissymbols (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blissymbols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blissymbols) were created to address such a need. Radiolab has a great episode (https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/bliss https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/bliss) that gives the backstory of the creation of Blissymbols and why they did not get as widely adopted as their creator hoped.
  - Cyberdog 7y ago
    It's a noble idea, but a problem with writing-only constructed languages is that they can only map one-to-one for natural languages if the word order is the same. The example sentence in that article is a good mapping to the English form of the sentence "I want to go to the theatre," but what if your native language is Japanese and you're used to saying "theatre to want to go" (with the personal pronoun implied)? You have to learn new rules about word ordering in sentences, and at that rate you might as well go ahead and learn the full new language. Perhaps Bliss has considered this issue and has an answer for it (can the symbols be written in any order according to the writer's native language?) but I don't see a solution for it mentioned in that Wikipedia article.
- flatline 7y ago
  I’ve been learning it over the last week or so since I saw it pop up here. I think it could make a worthwhile pidgin for people without a common language, it is so simple. The heavy contextual dependence and simplicity make it harder to justify as a language proper. We are so complex in our modern cultures, and toki pona is so simple! That was the point, after all - “pona” means both good and simple. I haven’t yet seen non-english speakers really using it online but I admit to not looking all that hard.

sneak 7y ago

I think by sticking to latin1, adding directional words and arabic numerals officially, this could stand to be a major global auxiliary language, with all the associated human benefits. Fragmenting the readership and writership with an alternate writing system robs it of that potential, in my view. I like your device and post, fwiw. I just think that languages are a tragic waste if they are not used and learned, and fragmentation harms both of those.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
thesuperbigfrog 7y ago
Blissymbols (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blissymbols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blissymbols) were created to address such a need. Radiolab has a great episode (https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/bliss https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/bliss) that gives the backstory of the creation of Blissymbols and why they did not get as widely adopted as their creator hoped.
- Cyberdog 7y ago
  It's a noble idea, but a problem with writing-only constructed languages is that they can only map one-to-one for natural languages if the word order is the same. The example sentence in that article is a good mapping to the English form of the sentence "I want to go to the theatre," but what if your native language is Japanese and you're used to saying "theatre to want to go" (with the personal pronoun implied)? You have to learn new rules about word ordering in sentences, and at that rate you might as well go ahead and learn the full new language. Perhaps Bliss has considered this issue and has an answer for it (can the symbols be written in any order according to the writer's native language?) but I don't see a solution for it mentioned in that Wikipedia article.
flatline 7y ago
I’ve been learning it over the last week or so since I saw it pop up here. I think it could make a worthwhile pidgin for people without a common language, it is so simple. The heavy contextual dependence and simplicity make it harder to justify as a language proper. We are so complex in our modern cultures, and toki pona is so simple! That was the point, after all - “pona” means both good and simple. I haven’t yet seen non-english speakers really using it online but I admit to not looking all that hard.