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> […] why limit yourself to representations that can be made in air by normal human beings? For a constructed language using non-human forms of expression, you

> […] why limit yourself to representations that can be made in air by normal human beings? For a constructed language using non-human forms of expression, you can check out Rikchik language, created by Denis M Moskowitz [0]. > No one is going to ever speak this language except the creator to himself. Well, it’s a hobby and an art form. Do you ask someone drawing still life compositions, why he/she is doing this, when photography is a thing? Besides, people DO use the language in this particular example, although more as an interesting pastime activity than a regular language. Granted, constructing languages makes an extremely niche hobby. Still, without it there probably wouldn’t be The Lord of the Rings (for Tolkien’s opinion on language creation, check [1]). There are still people learning Klingon, Lojban, toki pona, Dothraki, and so on. Esperanto and modern Hebrew (to some extent) are also more practical examples of this art. For a more elaborate insight into this hobby, there is the book “In the Land of Invented Languages” by Arika Okrent. [0]: https://www.suberic.net/~dmm/rikchik/rikchik.html https://www.suberic.net/~dmm/rikchik/rikchik.html [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Secret_Vice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Secret_Vice

okareaman 5y ago
> Well, it’s a hobby and an art form Understood. I think it's great. I was leading up to my question of why restrict yourself to the limits of spoken language when it will never be used for spoken communication. If communication efficiency is the goal then come up with a language that can express every human thought and emotion in the least amount of bits. Thanks for the links.
- mkotowski 5y ago
  Well, the idea was to create the most efficient and compact language for humans to use. Having a species with 3000 vocal chords and 30 arms for a bonus sign language elements would be easier to work with, but wouldn’t be usable by humans. And as in my previous comment, languages for non-humanoid species do exists if someone prefers to go in that direction. Similarly, toki pona was designed to contain only the most popular phonemes among human languages, because it was designed with humans in mind. Edit: I should stop starting the comments with “well”, shouldn’t I? :P Edit 2: The “spoken” aspect can be similar to why we use CSV and TSV file formats, while even ASCII had from the beginning assigned characters for record delimiter — humans grasp easier thinks they can see/hear.

okareaman 5y ago

> Well, it’s a hobby and an art form Understood. I think it's great. I was leading up to my question of why restrict yourself to the limits of spoken language when it will never be used for spoken communication. If communication efficiency is the goal then come up with a language that can express every human thought and emotion in the least amount of bits. Thanks for the links.

mkotowski 5y ago
Well, the idea was to create the most efficient and compact language for humans to use. Having a species with 3000 vocal chords and 30 arms for a bonus sign language elements would be easier to work with, but wouldn’t be usable by humans. And as in my previous comment, languages for non-humanoid species do exists if someone prefers to go in that direction. Similarly, toki pona was designed to contain only the most popular phonemes among human languages, because it was designed with humans in mind. Edit: I should stop starting the comments with “well”, shouldn’t I? :P Edit 2: The “spoken” aspect can be similar to why we use CSV and TSV file formats, while even ASCII had from the beginning assigned characters for record delimiter — humans grasp easier thinks they can see/hear.