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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)

#61
I found this article fascinating and satisfying.

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

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

#62

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 have a lot of respect for your opinions on language (given your background as a professional translator and the solid advice you regularly give here on HN and your website).

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.

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

#63
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I wrote about Esperanto and its failure to go viral: "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…

Spanish is a beautiful language, I speak some myself, it's probably better than Esperanto or the more European-focused Interlingua, but... consider the number of forms of a regular verb: (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)…

That's not to mention that Spanish is deletive so those sometimes subtly different verb conjugations are often the only way of conveying the subject of the sentence. It seems much more optimised for speaking rápidamente than listening, especially for non-native speakers.

If you were designing a language from scratch you also wouldn't choose features like the unnecessary grammatical gender (even though it's relatively consistent and easy to get right) and the b/v distinction in the orthography that's unpronounced in most dialects.

On paper it's still a far, far better auxiliary language than English though (I wouldn't be surprised to live to see a day when most people worldwide speak a regularised English with much more basic grammar and sensible orthography one day though; it's easier to build momentum taking the second language people are most exposed to as the starting point)

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

#64
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I wrote about Esperanto and its failure to go viral: "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…

Spanish is a beautiful language, I speak some myself, it's probably better than Esperanto or the more European-focused Interlingua, but... consider the number of forms of a regular verb: (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)…

Every time I encounter irregular verb forms, I remember I have a personal hunch for Japanese (basically a handful of exceptions and only two tenses). The leverage of context is powerful and concise in a way strangely similar to Perl. Also I can't decide if their way of typed counting is brilliant or cumbersome. As for writing systems, I have a particular hunch for Hangul.

I wish it would be as easy to prototype human languages as it is for software...

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

#65
post #60
post #53

If anyone wants to hear what Ithkuil sounds like : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Ithkuil_... From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithkuil

> Ithkuil does not use the concept of zero Interesting. How is one supposed to talk about math without a concept of zero?

It's a fascinating problem. It makes me wonder, without zero, what paths mathematics would have taken. There have been civilisations that used math extensively without zero and I hope Ithkuil-fluent mathematicians some day would continue exploring this.

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

#66
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Language should not be concise. Redundancy is built into the language for a reason - language communication is extremely noisy and if there's two-bit-error distance between "I love you" and "I killed and ate your dog" then the usage of this language by humans would not be comfortable. Moreover, people communicating are imperfect. So if you have a language which is very precise and concise, you would have to spend a l…

It's hard to overstate the importance of redundancy in natural languages. 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.…

It's hard to overstate the importance of redundancy in natural languages.

There are other factors at play, such that speech perception is multi-modal. E.g. see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGurk_effect

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

#67
post #60
post #53

If anyone wants to hear what Ithkuil sounds like : https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Ithkuil_... From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithkuil

> Ithkuil does not use the concept of zero Interesting. How is one supposed to talk about math without a concept of zero?

It's likely not missing the concept of zero but rather the symbol in the numbering system. The 0 is not necessary for representing integers (if there's a new symbol for 10). I'm pretty sure it is necessary to write the decimal part of a real number.

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

#68

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…

I remember a criticism of Esperanto was that it was too similar to Europeans languages. I read about a language that was similar to Esperanto but incorporated Chinese and Arabic qualities. Does anybody know this?

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

#69

I found this article fascinating and satisfying. 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…

One of the threads in David Brin's Jijo trilogy is that development in the galaxy is being held back by (amongst other things) designed, unambiguous languages.
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