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An amateur linguist loses control of the language he invented (2012)

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Re: An amateur linguist loses control of the language he invented (2012)

#21

Post by ketralnis »

tokenadult wrote: post #4

This is attracting some reader interest here, so I should probably mention, for other Hacker News participants deeply interested in human languages, a definitive analysis of Esperanto[1] explaining why Esperanto has not caught on with more speakers. [1] http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/

I don't think that explains anything; it looks like a list of aesthetic "faults" that the author finds, unlikely to be recognised by anyone without a degree in linguistics. Surely those faults exist, but it's a stretch to pretend that they alone explain anything.

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?"?

Re: An amateur linguist loses control of the language he invented (2012)

#22

Post by abruzzi »

MichaelDickens wrote: post #2

Ithkuil seems like what a language should be: as the article said, it is both precise and concise. It looks the way Esperanto ought to have looked. I find Quijada's effort deeply impressive. 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 magnitud…

>Ithkuil seems like what a language should be: as the article said, it is both precise and concise.

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.

Re: An amateur linguist loses control of the language he invented (2012)

#23

Post by hueving »

godarderik wrote: post #20
Terr_ wrote: post #16

I think there's some research out there that suggests all natural languages have about the same information density, when you factor how two people in conversation will add error-correction or extra context to frame an idea. IMO this suggests the bottleneck is something about our brains on a biological rather than linguistic level.

According to a study published several years ago, mainstream languages seem to operate on an information density/speed tradeoff [1].The authors found that languages that are spoken faster seem to encode less information per syllable than those uttered at a slower pace. This does seem to suggest that biology may be the limiting role in controlling the rate at which humans convey information. Indeed, the language menti…

>The authors found that languages that are spoken faster seem to encode more information per syllable than those uttered at a slower pace.

I think you mean the inverse.

Re: An amateur linguist loses control of the language he invented (2012)

#24

Post by godarderik »

hueving wrote: post #23
godarderik wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to a study published several years ago, mainstream languages seem to operate on an information density/speed tradeoff [1].The authors found that languages that are spoken faster seem to encode less information per syllable than those uttered at a slower pace. This does seem to suggest that biology may be the limiting role in controlling the rate at which humans convey information. Indeed, the language menti…

>The authors found that languages that are spoken faster seem to encode more information per syllable than those uttered at a slower pace. I think you mean the inverse.

Fixed it, thanks.

Re: An amateur linguist loses control of the language he invented (2012)

#25

Post by [deleted] »

godarderik wrote: post #20
Terr_ wrote: post #16

I think there's some research out there that suggests all natural languages have about the same information density, when you factor how two people in conversation will add error-correction or extra context to frame an idea. IMO this suggests the bottleneck is something about our brains on a biological rather than linguistic level.

According to a study published several years ago, mainstream languages seem to operate on an information density/speed tradeoff [1].The authors found that languages that are spoken faster seem to encode less information per syllable than those uttered at a slower pace. This does seem to suggest that biology may be the limiting role in controlling the rate at which humans convey information. Indeed, the language menti…

[deleted]

Re: An amateur linguist loses control of the language he invented (2012)

#26

Post by yepguy »

rodgerd wrote: post #12
MichaelDickens wrote: post #2

Ithkuil seems like what a language should be: as the article said, it is both precise and concise. It looks the way Esperanto ought to have looked. I find Quijada's effort deeply impressive. 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 magnitud…

> Ithkuil seems like what a language should be: as the article said, it is both precise and concise. 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.

Ithkuil is not simple. It's so ridiculously complex that it is just not possible for anyone to learn to speak fluently. It never stood any chance of being adopted in the way Esperanto has. I'm surprised that it found any use at all, but people without linguistics training seem to find it useful for discovering nuances in their own languages that they hadn't considered.

Re: An amateur linguist loses control of the language he invented (2012)

#27

Post by ilaksh »

Ithkuil is definitely one of the most amazing pieces of work I have ever come across. I having been using the name as my email address for many years and another variant of it he had called 'ilaksh' as my screen name (note I didn't have anything to do with the creation of ithkuil/ilaksh, just a fan). I think not only other conlangers but also anyone interested in fields like linguistics, computer programming, knowledge representation, etc. can be inspired by what Quijada did.

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.

Re: An amateur linguist loses control of the language he invented (2012)

#30

Post by godarderik »

Reading this story brings to mind the history of algorithms in the field of machine translation. Early attempts at the problem attempted to explicitly define the rules of converting between tongues using meticulously laid out systems of vocabulary and syntax. This approach proved untenable, in part due to the complex and ever changing nature of language. Modern systems such as Google Translation make use of machine learning algorithms that are fed large amounts of source material and computationally discern relationships between them.

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.

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