5 ms·

How do conlangs ignore that, and what's the outcome then?

Kednicma 6y ago
Languages in the Loglan family, notably Lojban, have an explicit audio-visual isomorphism which maps phonemes to/from letters. In theory, this should allow people to learn to read and write long after they have learned how to listen and speak; in practice, it seems to lead to many alternative orthographies and a fragmentation of readability.
ooobit2 6y ago
I presume conlangs ignore this by design as fixed language. They are formed and mostly governed by rules, but the anthropological component of language never makes it into the design because there is no timeline of evolving usage. And again, presuming here, but the outcome is a language that fails to adapt to the culture(s) that depends on it, and thereby becomes useless. Language, as we know it, evolved over an expansive period of time, from the first association of sounds to objects, now all the way to complex written grammar that includes some half-dozen tenses, some gendered, singulars/plurals, etc. We can describe things with written language that are otherwise indescribable with physical or spoken language, like the Portuguese saudade (a physical and emotional state of intense, fixated longing for someone or something that is absent, or which existed previously in a different state).
- zhengyi13 6y ago
  > but the anthropological component of language never makes it into the design because there is no timeline of evolving usage. Not true. A lot of folk in the conlanging community, perhaps inspired by the world-building of Tolkien, very deliberately set their languages in a physical world, and a historical continuum. As a concrete example, have a look at Biblaridion's video about Ilothwi here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpXsrBd2xn8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpXsrBd2xn8
jhbadger 6y ago
Most conlangs aren't like Blisssymbols -- they have normal words that are made out of roots that can be understood either within the context of the language, or as in the case of languages like Esperanto and Interlingua, use roots from other languages so that word meanings can be guessed from knowledge of other languages.

Languages in the Loglan family, notably Lojban, have an explicit audio-visual isomorphism which maps phonemes to/from letters. In theory, this should allow people to learn to read and write long after they have learned how to listen and speak; in practice, it seems to lead to many alternative orthographies and a fragmentation of readability.

ooobit2 6y ago

I presume conlangs ignore this by design as fixed language. They are formed and mostly governed by rules, but the anthropological component of language never makes it into the design because there is no timeline of evolving usage. And again, presuming here, but the outcome is a language that fails to adapt to the culture(s) that depends on it, and thereby becomes useless. Language, as we know it, evolved over an expansive period of time, from the first association of sounds to objects, now all the way to complex written grammar that includes some half-dozen tenses, some gendered, singulars/plurals, etc. We can describe things with written language that are otherwise indescribable with physical or spoken language, like the Portuguese saudade (a physical and emotional state of intense, fixated longing for someone or something that is absent, or which existed previously in a different state).

zhengyi13 6y ago
> but the anthropological component of language never makes it into the design because there is no timeline of evolving usage. Not true. A lot of folk in the conlanging community, perhaps inspired by the world-building of Tolkien, very deliberately set their languages in a physical world, and a historical continuum. As a concrete example, have a look at Biblaridion's video about Ilothwi here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpXsrBd2xn8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpXsrBd2xn8

jhbadger 6y ago

Most conlangs aren't like Blisssymbols -- they have normal words that are made out of roots that can be understood either within the context of the language, or as in the case of languages like Esperanto and Interlingua, use roots from other languages so that word meanings can be guessed from knowledge of other languages.