I wonder if a similar approach could be taken with language construction. Instead of spending 25+ years fleshing out the details of a language in painstaking detail, computer programs could be devised that, using large amounts input, determine the most "efficient" means of expressing information. The approach would not only be far less labor intensive, it could also accommodate the rapidly evolving nature of language, for example adding to its "dictionary" in response to new phenomena in need of naming.
You could perhaps use a typological database with grammatical features of the world's languages and somehow select an "optimal" combination from it, but that's a far cry from letting a computer determine the most efficient means of expressing information; we have no idea how to define information/meaning, so that it's still an impossible dream. I don't think the problem is that designing languages is hard per se, it's that people can't be bothered to agree on one and learn it.
Seriously, though, take a look at the link I posted in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8180924
One of the techniques used is to computationally create a space of possible ways to partition semantic domains on a plane whose dimensions are simplicity and informativeness, in order to look at where in the possible space it is that real languages lie. While it's not been done (to my knowledge) for a whole language, it's potential direction to go.
I worked in his lab on one of many projects showing that most human languages use a near optimal trade-off in various semantic domains (so far - color, kinship, containers, and spatial relations). His work also includes some of the best evidence for some language dependent forces in cognition interacting with some universal ones.
I don't know much about designing human languages, but I know how hard it is to design a decent programming language (see http://colinm.org/language_checklist.html), and building a serious human language seems orders of magnitude more difficult. I've never seen an attempt that really intrigued me until I found Ithkuil.
Moreover, people communicating are imperfect. So if you have a language which is very precise and concise, you would have to spend a lot of effort to find a word or set of words which exactly expresses your meaning (in programming, we call it design when we do it upfront, and debugging when we do it post factum) and communication would be a very complex exercise. However, if you have a lot of words which mean roughly the same, you can be sure the meaning is passed through even if the words are not chosen super-carefully.
"Hegelochus, the actor in Euripides' Orestes, which was presented in 408 BC, in line 279 of the play, instead of "after the storm I see again a calm sea" (galeén' horoo), Hegelochus recited "after the storm I see again a weasel" (galeên horoo)."
This is the whole reason we are able to make ourselves understood in a noisy, imprecise world. Even if you miss a few syllables - or even half a sentence, you can usually piece together what the other person was trying to say.
Imagine someone technology-illiterate trying to describe a problem they're having with their computer in this language. Impossible.
Language should be useful and expressive for its users. Human languages designed by the kind of people who prize simplicity and regularity above all other qualities tend to fail for much the same reason programming language designers are hurt and disappointed to discover C is still popular.
Which is good for scientists and logicians, but would probably be an issue for novelists and poets. Exploiting ambiguity is a common feature of the arts.
Personally, I don't have much faith in the idea that you can make people's communication more precise and concise by designing the language in a certain way, just as I don't think that politically correct language leads to meaningful change. This is simply because I don't believe than language can drastically change the way people think (linguistic determinism, strong Whorfianism). Esperanto is very similar to natural languages in its (im)precision, which might just be the level where humans naturally converge to if left to their own devices.
And apq’uxasiu for 'gawk' doesn't strike me as a particularly huge win for conciseness.
It seems like it's missing the linguistic equivalent of huffman coding: make frequently used things shorter.
Also, it's hardly concise with respect to time if you have to spend 30 minutes consulting a dictionary to utter a single sentence.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027711... (Sorry for the paywall...)
So maybe Ithkuil isn't what a language should be after all. And maybe that's why no natural language looks like it...
In the first case you have privileged one group, but in the second everyone loses ... In the second case you create an additional barrier because there is a large amount of new vocabulary that everyone has to learn, while in the other anyone who doesn't know European languages will have to learn some of its vocabulary, but that might be useful to them anyway, so it clearly seems like the better option to me.
Interesting. How is one supposed to talk about math without a concept of zero?
This has also happened with the language Lojban[1], which was 'forked' from Loglan[2] when the creator starting making copyright complaints so the community could maintain control.
Such an odd concept that someone could 'own' a language, but I guess if you created it I can see why you would want to.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loglan
I seem to remember Umberto Eco mentioning that he does not offer his own interpretations of his novels for a similar reason, but I can't find the quote.
I speak some Esperanto but I'm no zealot. The "explanation" that your neighbours don't speak Esperanto, if such a simplified thing can exist, is probably as simple as network effects. I can learn German and speak to the man next-door, or I can learn Esperanto and speak to some theoretical people that may exist somewhere but I don't know them and they are mostly a bunch of nerds that meet at the local co-op to speak in Esperanto mostly about how great Esperanto is.
Go ahead. Ask your neighbour why he doesn't speak Esperanto. Does he say " The 'basic' number‐terms tri, trio, tria ('three, threesome, third') are a crowded jumble, making a mockery of the regular root/noun/adjective pattern they imitate" (K5 in the article)?
Or does he say "what's that?"?
* the language has an excessive number of phonemes
me: On this point I disagree strongly. A language with more phonemes can form shorter words and convey information faster. that's just basic math (43^9 >> 16^9)
* the vocabulary is too large to be practical and has dubious links to other languages. specifically, Basic English requires far fewer (>10x fewer!) words for competence and is more recognizeable due to worldwide borrowing.
me: Here I agree. The amount of memorization required is quite large and borrowing words doesn't make up for it. Interlingua took a better path, but it targeted the only continent that doesn't need it.
* synthesis mechanisms are irregular and insufficiently general. in particular, esperanto's semantic structure and word synthesis fail to allow the speaker to compensate for missing vocabulary by using compound words or overly general words with attached descriptors
[I don't understand this sort of thing, but it sounds serious]
* the alphabet is needlessly complex. it uses symbols people do not recognize and cannot type in favor of ASCII digraphs with wide recognition.
me: Also, it does not accord significant importance to the way that an orange bikeshed would clearly clash with the trees in the background.
Okay, fine, I agree. This is just putting the nail in the coffin at this point.
* the noun-to-verb-to-adjective declension is not compatible with the structure of meaning, and so cannot be extended in a consistent, predictable way. that is to say, the variety of possible verbs is such that it is basically undecidable what noun should correspond to a given verb in the general case, and vice versa.
me: I don't know this but as far as I can tell he's right. For example, what is the "verb" associated with "electron"?
* the language is inherently sexist.
me: This is not a trivial criticism.
So there are some substantial criticisms in the article, methinks. And you can't discount the impact of difficulty on network effects: if one person has too much trouble learning Esperanto, they're not going to pass it on to their friends, who will not pass it on to their friends.
I wonder if a language designed to be usable with as small a core as possible -- something the author suggests -- could have a substantially better chance of catching on? Perhaps if it were also good at borrowing words from other languages ("extensible"), and grew in the right community for a little while...
Whenever a post about constructed languages comes up, you post this link, which I find disappointing: Rye's rant is, well, just a rant and his reasons for not learning Esperanto are just bad.
There was a time when I spent a few months learning Esperanto. I eventually gave up because 1) whilst it is relatively easy to get going with Esperanto, speaking it comfortably would require about as much work as any other language and 2) the Esperanto community is made up out of folks that are either much older than me or a little strange.
I don't think my first criticism is a fault of Esperanto. Human languages require a lot of convention and shared cultural ideas in order for communication to be compact and, at the same time, clear. No language, auxiliary or otherwise, can magically remove these requirements.
The second criticism is perhaps a little unfair but still important. Cultural cachet is important for a language and a language that appears to cater only to certain groups is going to have a tough time.
But if someone is keen to learn a new language, especially if that person is a monoglot, they should be encouraged to give it a try, even if their language of choice is Esperanto. They can only improve their linguistic skills.
""" During recent travels to Spain, I had the opportunity to observe participants in a pan-European seminar on youth and globalisation. While English was the default language of this group, in conversations between any two people the participants would often switch to the native language of one or the other. For example, a young man from France would greet another in English, but upon discovering that his conversation partner is from Italy, would switch to Italian. This would not find approval among Esperantists. Ironically, English proves the neutral choice here. It is often seen as a sure bet for international communication among young people in many countries, but it is well understood that other languages may serve just as well. In the Esperanto movement, on the other hand, there is an ideological attachment to Esperanto which mandates its use even if there are other, more culturally rich possibilities. """
My experience was at large international demo-parties. I mainly noticed this for English and German, but that's because I speak those two languages relatively fluently (Dutch is my mother tongue). The same must have been happening around me for French or Spanish (or who knows what else) as well, but I don't speak those languages well enough to tell for sure whether they were using (say) Spanish as a common bridging language or were native speakers.
And yes, English is usually the sure bet. Although some of the comments elsewhere ITT have piqued my interest to perhaps learn some Spanish in the future, especially if it's really that easy to learn. Funny, I used to hate learning language (French and German) in high school. It's only later in my life that I found out I actually have quite a knack for it :) (I should probably blame the way it was taught, but I can't really get that much worked up about it, I'm pretty satisfied with the quality of my education overall)
As an Esperanto speaker, I have no objection to anyone using any language on any occasion, and I'm happ. I have just returned from an Esperanto conference in Dinan, Brittany. I was able to use some basic Breton with a few individuals, but the sky did not fall on my head.
I wish you well with your language learning. You may wish to add Esperanto one day.
Still, I'd say Esperanto is an interesting case because it is undeniably the most successful constructed language, with the longest continuous (still continuing) history. It is interesting to learn it for that reason alone, and as far as learning second languages go, it is also one of the easiest to learn. That could make it a useful first step towards learning other second languages.
Why hasn't Esperanto caught on with more speakers? Maybe it has something to do with the reasons in his rant; personally I find it much more likely that it's due to network effects. Even a "perfectly" constructed language would be very unlikely to win over the vested interests and inertia of people.
"There's already an existing language that fulfills so many of those criteria that it's going to be very hard to organize a new one from scratch. And the existing language already has a deep legacy of literature and culture.
That language is the world's second most widespread: Spanish.
Spanish has been destroying the dreams of Esperantists and others over the years who hope to build a more regular, orderly, and easy to learn common language based on common Indo-European roots.
Turns out that it's dang hard to design anything easier or more accessible to speakers of any European language than Spanish already is. The spelling and pronunciation are already completely regular and predictable. The grammar is straightforward and common to almost all European tongues. The vocabulary is mostly based on Latin with some Arabic variety thrown in, but it's been standardized over the centuries so that a lot of it has a simpler and more natural morphology. The sounds are a simple subset of what most languages already use.
It's a great second language: it's fairly easy, the world's second most widespread tongue, and spoken in warm countries with very friendly natives. It's not likely to provide you with many lucrative business opportunities, though. None of the world's financial capitals use it."
(lavar (present lavo lavas lava lavamos lavan) (past lavé lavaste lavó lavámos lavarón) (imperfect lavaba lavabas lavabamos lavaban) (future lavaré lavarás lavará lavaramos lavarán) (conditional lavaría lavarías lavaríamos lavarían) (present-subjunctive lave laves lavemos laven) (gerund lavando) (participle lavado))
And that's ignoring the twenty or so irregular verbs and roughly ten "irregular" patterns (e.g. querer). It's a lot simpler than French or Italian, to be sure, or Latin, for that matter, but it could be a lot easier.
I did get a few somewhat weird emails that I think were in Russian some years ago, but I think they figured out pretty quick that it wasn't the right email address to reach Quijada.
If this invented language were to catch on, it likely wouldn't be a generation or two and kids who grew up speaking it would start saying the Ithkuil equivalent of things like "yo dog, that's the rad shizaz!". Then, several generations thereafter grandmothers would be regularly using the word "shizaz" and they would have to put it in the dictionary. That's just the way it goes and is probably the reason we don't all speak the same language in the first place.
That being said, I've always been fascinated by the idea of a systematically created universal language and think the world would be much better place with one....if that were possible.
This was a neat article.
IMO this suggests the bottleneck is something about our brains on a biological rather than linguistic level.
This does seem to suggest that biology may be the limiting role in controlling the rate at which humans convey information. Indeed, the language mentioned in the article seems almost laughably cryptic and dense. However, I feel that the limitation of the mentioned study results from the fact that it treats information on a relatively limiting per syllable basis. Quijada seems to suggest that an artificially constructed language has the ability to incorporate all the implicit meanings of a phrase that are left unsaid in normal conversation.
Ultimately, while Quijada's project seems quite unlikely to catch on among those who are not fringe pseudoscientists, it poses interesting philosophical questions about the nature of speech and communication and perhaps earns its title as a "conceptual-art project."
[1] http://rosettaproject.org/blog/02012/mar/1/language-speed-vs...
I think you mean the inverse.
I'm curious about the desire to reduce ambiguity, which seemed to be emphasized as a motivation for the creation of Ithkuil and some of the other languages mentioned.
Is it desirable to completely eliminate ambiguity? I can see why it would be desirable in a scientific paper or a public political debate. But in everyday interactions, (intentional) ambiguity plays many important roles.
In my experience, politeness is bolstered by some level of ambiguity. Rather than explicitly state your needs, desires or opinions, you imply them at some level of abstraction, allowing other participants in the conversation to accept or decline more easily. Imagine Jessica who has brought two friends who don't know each other to see a play. They chit-chat a little afterwards, then Jessica goes home early leaving two virtual strangers to have a drink together. It's not hard to imagine the conversation going like this:
A: "Did you enjoy the play?"
B: "It was very interesting. I thought the stage dressing was a little unconventional."
A: "Yes, I noticed that too. Very creative. I was intrigued by the style of the narration. It really let the audience write the story for themselves."
B: "It certainly didn't constrain the imagination did it? I couldn't help noticing that many of the actors took a somewhat avant-garde interpretation of the source material."
A: "Yes, as if they didn't want it to seem like they were 'acting', so to speak?"
B: It was awful wasn't it!?
A: Thank god! Yes, worst thing I've ever seen!
Ambiguity allows subtle social cues (not so subtle in my example!) that avoid direct confrontation when it might be uncomfortable. If one person loved the play and the other hated it, they each might want to avoid offending the other.
Intentional ambiguity plays an important role in other social interactions like dating or friendship-making. Correct use of ambiguity protects feelings, demonstrates subtlety and good judgement, and avoids non-productive conflict.
In artistic expression too, ambiguity is often intentional or even necessary to the effectiveness of the work. Consider a poem like "My Papa's Waltz" [1]. Does it describe happy memories of the narrator's father, or dark memories of childhood abuse [2]? Can it describe both? Is there something in between? The ambiguity isn't a byproduct of imprecise language. The ambiguity is the meaning. To resolve it is to remove the point of the work. The poem cannot be effectively communicated in any medium that does not allow for the existence of ambiguity.
[1] http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172103
[2] 'Yet, this poem has an intriguing ambiguity that elicits startlingly different interpretations. Kennedy calls it a scene of "comedy" and "persistent love", and Balakian, in part, labels it a "comic romp" (62). In contrast, Ciardi sees it as a "poem of terror"' - from http://www.mrbauld.com/exrthkwtz.html
Steven Pinker explores this point in an entertaining presentation[1] for RSA. He also covers other language topics such as spacetime encoding, and profanity but the last part analyzes the need for ambiguity in a language. I deep-linked into the relevant portion of the presentation although the the entire talk is very enlightening. It's worth rewinding to the beginning to watch the entire talk. The 2nd youtube video[2] is the mostly the same material but it's the older one he presented at Google TechTalks.
This is a bit speculative, but I have the feeling there is a certain kind of personality that is typically fascinated with this idea of being able to rule out ambiguity. It seems to me a tendency to overextend the idea of mathematical rigor to other areas of life.
This is amazing. But I can't grasp the difference between inference and conjecture - they are both 'figuring out' what happened rather than knowing or hearing?
I'm in awe of the creator of Any language. Because to create a (Good) language isn't easy. This is true or both programming languages and otherwise. However, it comes without saying that adoption is a vital component of any language, and with mass adoption comes evolution.
People will often make changes in languages, make their own dialects (based on things perhaps the can relate to on a deeper level, etc..). This isn't a bad thing. To me it only signifies growth and expansion of the language.
+1
[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/tokipona [2] http://www.reddit.com/r/lojban
Loglan is a predecessor and inspiration to Lojban.
Slovio is the Slavic version of Esperanto.
Dothraki, Elvish (Quenya, Sindarin), Klingon, Na'vi are constructed languages from popular novels/movies.
Someone doesn't understand the point of Esperanto.
> A sentence like “On the contrary, I think it may turn out that this rugged mountain range trails off at some point” becomes simply “Tram-mļöi hhâsmařpţuktôx.”
Wikipedia:
> Romanization: Oumpeá äx’ääļuktëx.
> Translation: "On the contrary, I think it may turn out that this rugged mountain range trails off at some point."
I mean, things like:
> A sentence like “On the contrary, I think it may turn out that this rugged mountain range trails off at some point” becomes simply “Tram-mļöi hhâsmařpţuktôx.”
Simply?
We could have used LZW algorithm and the sentence could probably become even shorter, just a "simple" sequence of random-ish bytes. If you increase the number of allowed symbols, of course you need less symbols to convey the same information. If you allow for a limitless set of words that are dynamically generated from combining many roots, of course the number of words decreases... sometimes down to 1, as in polysynthetic languages. This is Information Theory 101.
Compressed with zlib: 86 bytes.
Compressed with lzma: 98 bytes.
The Ithkuil representation is just 30 UTF-8 encoded bytes.
Compressed with zlib: 39 bytes.
Compressed with lzma: 47 bytes.
(Measured using python's zlib/pylmza modules to avoid e.g. file header overhead)
It's hard to achieve this kind of compression without an external dictionary. What Quijada has created with Ithkuil is, in part, a dictionary for the space of human thought and concepts, something I wouldn't have expected to work in the way the article describes it.
I'm having trouble figuring out what's going on with lzma because the spec is lying about the header, so I won't attempt to guess the correct number there.
Just enjoy it.
-- Whose pot did the Croats, Bosnians and Slovenes piss in to not make it into this super Slavic union?
-- China Mieville wrote a book[0] along very similar thought lines which won the Locus Award.
Also, Garkavenko appears not to have taken the obvious side [1] in Ukraine's present conflict given how he is described in Foer's article
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassytown
[1] http://maidantranslations.com/2014/06/24/russian-volunteers-...
