5 ms·

Ithkuil is an experimental constructed language. Nobody speaks it fluently

19 points by mromanuk 5y ago

1680168l 5y ago
Came across this a decade ago and it hasn't changed much since. It's more a piece of art than a language as it is not seriously meant to be spoken, written, read, or understood.
ggm 5y ago
regarding languages, does it really exist if nobody can speak it? Sort of like APL. I mean sure, I used a decwriter which had an APL keyboard. Everyone avoided it for a reason!
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  Not many Latin speakers remaining, outside obscure academia and religious orders. Dead languages abound, but constructed languages are slowly gaining ground. Esperanto has a dedicated following, and there's a surprising number of Klingon and Tolkien elvish speakers. To answer your question, though... Ithkuil seems like a very exotic tree falling in a strange forest.
snthpy 5y ago
Meaningful phrases or sentences can usually be expressed in Ithkuil with fewer linguistic units than in natural languages.[2] For example, the two-word Ithkuil sentence "Tram-mļöi hhâsmařpţuktôx" can be translated into English as "On the contrary, I think it may turn out that this rugged mountain range trails off at some point".[2] lol
ilaksh 5y ago
There used to be a variant called Ilaksh but I believe it got merged back in.
doodlebugging 5y ago
OT: I was instantly reminded of this old, short-lived search engine from way back in the day - Cuil. (In my small mind, Ithkuil ~ It's Cuil) Anyway, it was funny while it lasted. Here is a blast from the past for anyone that might have missed it: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/7da5i/police_raids_reveal_baby_farms/c06cqxb/ https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/7da5i/police_rai... I should read the Ithkuil wiki page instead of dragging up old reddit memes.
robbedpeter 5y ago
https://old.reddit.com/r/Ithkuil/comments/nnvuzn/welcome_to_the_ithkuil_subreddit_read_this_first/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Ithkuil/comments/nnvuzn/welcome_to_... Seems like the latest iteration of the language has stalled due to developer burnout, which makes sense, given the staggering scope. I wonder if machine learning or programming language developers could provide meaningful support? Maybe some mathematicians? Using English well can be a life's work - to create a language intended to improve the depth and nuance of expressed meaning is crazy ambitious. It doesn't seem TempleOS crazy - anyone have any firsthand experience of Ithkuil that can recommend for our against it?
akomtu 5y ago
I'm tempted to dismiss it as a product of hollow mental gymnastics, even though I admire the amount of effort put into it. Properly designed languages start with the careful choice of letters that simultaneously represent important ideas. For example, the Greek alpha is a circle and cross - a well known, even fundamental, symbol that can be understood by any sufficiently advanced nation, even if they live in another galaxy. Same for the capital alpha or A - the upward facing double triangle, another famous symbol of an important idea. Tau, O, I, X and so on follow the same rules. Once the set of symbols is chosen, they are assigned numbers, or an order. Words are ordered sequences of numbers represented by letters. In order to name a thing, it's assigned a number, sometimes randomly, sometimes based on its properties, and that number is encoded in a word with a certain traditional encoding scheme. This is similar to hexadecimal encoding: "a" means 10, with a positional scheme to encode bigger numbers. The advantage of this approach is that knowledge of the scheme allows to read, at least partially, unknown languages. For example, if you see YHNFIOI, you may not know the word, but if you know the alphabet, you can decode the word into e.g. 765. The number ambiguous, but using the first letter Y and the traditional interpretation of this symbol as a cue, you can correctly guess that the word means "mountain".
m0llusk 5y ago
Ithkuil was designed to enable the broadest possible range of language constructions. It wasn't really designed to be spoken, more to be studied as an interesting example of the phenomenon of linguistic communication.
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  It seems meditative to me, like a strictly mental version of Japanese calligraphy, shodo - effort and consideration are put into the construction of an idea, and the language provides the constraints by which you might make the idea artful.

19 points by mromanuk 5y ago

Came across this a decade ago and it hasn't changed much since. It's more a piece of art than a language as it is not seriously meant to be spoken, written, read, or understood.

ggm 5y ago

regarding languages, does it really exist if nobody can speak it? Sort of like APL. I mean sure, I used a decwriter which had an APL keyboard. Everyone avoided it for a reason!

robbedpeter 5y ago
Not many Latin speakers remaining, outside obscure academia and religious orders. Dead languages abound, but constructed languages are slowly gaining ground. Esperanto has a dedicated following, and there's a surprising number of Klingon and Tolkien elvish speakers. To answer your question, though... Ithkuil seems like a very exotic tree falling in a strange forest.

snthpy 5y ago

Meaningful phrases or sentences can usually be expressed in Ithkuil with fewer linguistic units than in natural languages.[2] For example, the two-word Ithkuil sentence "Tram-mļöi hhâsmařpţuktôx" can be translated into English as "On the contrary, I think it may turn out that this rugged mountain range trails off at some point".[2] lol

ilaksh 5y ago

There used to be a variant called Ilaksh but I believe it got merged back in.

doodlebugging 5y ago

OT: I was instantly reminded of this old, short-lived search engine from way back in the day - Cuil. (In my small mind, Ithkuil ~ It's Cuil) Anyway, it was funny while it lasted. Here is a blast from the past for anyone that might have missed it: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/7da5i/police_raids_reveal_baby_farms/c06cqxb/ https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/7da5i/police_rai... I should read the Ithkuil wiki page instead of dragging up old reddit memes.

robbedpeter 5y ago

https://old.reddit.com/r/Ithkuil/comments/nnvuzn/welcome_to_the_ithkuil_subreddit_read_this_first/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Ithkuil/comments/nnvuzn/welcome_to_... Seems like the latest iteration of the language has stalled due to developer burnout, which makes sense, given the staggering scope. I wonder if machine learning or programming language developers could provide meaningful support? Maybe some mathematicians? Using English well can be a life's work - to create a language intended to improve the depth and nuance of expressed meaning is crazy ambitious. It doesn't seem TempleOS crazy - anyone have any firsthand experience of Ithkuil that can recommend for our against it?

akomtu 5y ago

I'm tempted to dismiss it as a product of hollow mental gymnastics, even though I admire the amount of effort put into it. Properly designed languages start with the careful choice of letters that simultaneously represent important ideas. For example, the Greek alpha is a circle and cross - a well known, even fundamental, symbol that can be understood by any sufficiently advanced nation, even if they live in another galaxy. Same for the capital alpha or A - the upward facing double triangle, another famous symbol of an important idea. Tau, O, I, X and so on follow the same rules. Once the set of symbols is chosen, they are assigned numbers, or an order. Words are ordered sequences of numbers represented by letters. In order to name a thing, it's assigned a number, sometimes randomly, sometimes based on its properties, and that number is encoded in a word with a certain traditional encoding scheme. This is similar to hexadecimal encoding: "a" means 10, with a positional scheme to encode bigger numbers. The advantage of this approach is that knowledge of the scheme allows to read, at least partially, unknown languages. For example, if you see YHNFIOI, you may not know the word, but if you know the alphabet, you can decode the word into e.g. 765. The number ambiguous, but using the first letter Y and the traditional interpretation of this symbol as a cue, you can correctly guess that the word means "mountain".

m0llusk 5y ago

Ithkuil was designed to enable the broadest possible range of language constructions. It wasn't really designed to be spoken, more to be studied as an interesting example of the phenomenon of linguistic communication.

robbedpeter 5y ago
It seems meditative to me, like a strictly mental version of Japanese calligraphy, shodo - effort and consideration are put into the construction of an idea, and the language provides the constraints by which you might make the idea artful.