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Why won't we invent a new major conlang given all the advancements in the linguistics, neuroscience and related areas? Perhaps now we could base it on some obje

Why won't we invent a new major conlang given all the advancements in the linguistics, neuroscience and related areas? Perhaps now we could base it on some objectively optimal solutions rather than just the creator's judgement.

klez 4y ago
Mainly because you can't make it major.
- qwerty456127 4y ago
  I believe you can make anything major if you make it good enough - much much better than what's already available. There were many great things which failed to achieve wide adoption but they mostly had some flaw making them not suitable for sufficiently wide audience. The advancements we have achieved since the invention of Esperanto can probably let us engineer a language a lot better and also learning tools much more efficient. I believe the only reason for lack of practical progress in this is lack of interest. Nobody really needs a new language, English is Okay for everyone for whom their native language is not enough. You have to learn English anyway if you want to go international so why bother...
MrJohz 4y ago
Mainly because there doesn't seem to be an optimal language in any meaningful way. Communication seems to work fairly well regardless of language, so it doesn't seem like optimising the language itself really solves any meaningful societal problem. And if there's no clear advantage for one language over another, then people are going to stick with their own. The big selling point of most of these languages has historically been the creation of a global language, which a hundred years ago might have been a more pressing need, but at this point it's become clear that English is fast becoming the biggest global language, with a handful of additional local trade languages where necessary. So now even that selling point has gone.
- anon25783 4y ago
  > Mainly because there doesn't seem to be an optimal language in any meaningful way. Communication seems to work fairly well regardless of language, so it doesn't seem like optimising the language itself really solves any meaningful societal problem. And if there's no clear advantage for one language over another, then people are going to stick with their own. Why is this the case? The same certainly can't be said of, for example, markup and programming languages. C and Python express ideas in very different ways, such that you could not reasonably say that ideas can be communicated equally well in both languages, or that there's no clear advantage of one over the other in a given problem domain. There are indeed some programming languages that simply make it harder to program almost anything you'd want to write, like Cobol, Assembly, or Intercal. Is it really true that natural languages don't have analogous comparability in terms of ergonomics and expressiveness?

klez 4y ago

Mainly because you can't make it major.

qwerty456127 4y ago
I believe you can make anything major if you make it good enough - much much better than what's already available. There were many great things which failed to achieve wide adoption but they mostly had some flaw making them not suitable for sufficiently wide audience. The advancements we have achieved since the invention of Esperanto can probably let us engineer a language a lot better and also learning tools much more efficient. I believe the only reason for lack of practical progress in this is lack of interest. Nobody really needs a new language, English is Okay for everyone for whom their native language is not enough. You have to learn English anyway if you want to go international so why bother...

MrJohz 4y ago

Mainly because there doesn't seem to be an optimal language in any meaningful way. Communication seems to work fairly well regardless of language, so it doesn't seem like optimising the language itself really solves any meaningful societal problem. And if there's no clear advantage for one language over another, then people are going to stick with their own. The big selling point of most of these languages has historically been the creation of a global language, which a hundred years ago might have been a more pressing need, but at this point it's become clear that English is fast becoming the biggest global language, with a handful of additional local trade languages where necessary. So now even that selling point has gone.

anon25783 4y ago
> Mainly because there doesn't seem to be an optimal language in any meaningful way. Communication seems to work fairly well regardless of language, so it doesn't seem like optimising the language itself really solves any meaningful societal problem. And if there's no clear advantage for one language over another, then people are going to stick with their own. Why is this the case? The same certainly can't be said of, for example, markup and programming languages. C and Python express ideas in very different ways, such that you could not reasonably say that ideas can be communicated equally well in both languages, or that there's no clear advantage of one over the other in a given problem domain. There are indeed some programming languages that simply make it harder to program almost anything you'd want to write, like Cobol, Assembly, or Intercal. Is it really true that natural languages don't have analogous comparability in terms of ergonomics and expressiveness?