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Mini – The Minimal Language

minilanguage.com

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Re: Mini – The Minimal Language

#71

Post by Tor3 »

totetsu wrote: post #70

It tickled me to see a changelog for a language there, so i had GPT write one for English too. Change Log for English Language Evolution Version 1.0: Proto-English (450 CE) Initial release of Proto-English, a West Germanic language spoken by Anglo-Saxon tribes. Basic grammar and vocabulary established. Development primarily led by "Linguistic Trailblazers." Version 1.1: Viking Invasion Patch (850 CE) Introducing Old…

The change from 1.1 to 2.0 completely missed the Norman invasion which introduced Norman French as the new language in town. Everything which happened later was heavily influenced by that.

Re: Mini – The Minimal Language

#72

Post by majewsky »

nine_k wrote: post #67
eru wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turkish might be a better example: it's a real, natural language and highly regular.

Same with Japanese, apparently a completely unrelated, differently structured language.

Fun fact: A subset of the linguistic community conjectures that Japanese and Korean are part of the same family as the Turkic languages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altaic_languages

Re: Mini – The Minimal Language

#73

Post by psychoslave »

Seems interesting as a project, though I doubt the stated goals can be achieved with any new constructed language. I mean, congratulation for the great work, thanks for sharing this with the world and wish you all the luck to succeed with these goals, sure.

Let’s say this is technically the best solution among simplest naturalistic language ever conceived so far to use as an international auxiliary language. This is a ecological niche already largely populated.

Providing the best technical solution, as we know, is only the optional cherry on the tip of the iceberg. What really matters for the stated goals is the community. You can definitely attract a few conlang lovers with some elegant proposals, but that’s about it.

So what’s the plan for making Mini endorsed by a large sustainable community? What kind of ideals, values and social goals it is attached to? What Mini brings on the table for its aimed community to thrive that no other previous constructed language can also provide for people who don’t have ease of learn as sole and primary consideration?

Re: Mini – The Minimal Language

#74

Post by psychoslave »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #60
Conlectus wrote: post #5

I note that with a vocabulary of 1,000 words it is roughly 10x the size of Toki Pona, a conlang which also aims for minimalism. That said, Toki Pona's goal is to help clarify thought, whereas this seems to intend to prioritize communication more highly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona

Help clarify thought? While being actively hostile to numbers?

I’m not acquainted to TP, can you precise what you mean here or provide some link about this?

Re: Mini – The Minimal Language

#75

Post by tyty76 »

Redundancy in a natural language is not necessarily a bug. It can be considered a feature. Speach is transmitted over a noisy channel (as everybody knows who has ever tried talking/screaming to a friend on a busy street or a concert), so needs to contain redundancy for error correction purposes. A lot of that is context (there are only a handful of things my friend could be screaming at me at a given point in time), but a lot is that it's enough to hear parts of a sentence to infer what it's about.

Many different contexts make use of this redundancy. Air traffic communications is another example where synonyms are chosen to minimize misunderstandings yet still be concise.

Minimizing redundancy also minimizes synonyms, which can be undesirable. Another example is poetry.

Re: Mini – The Minimal Language

#78

Post by ydnaclementine »

jprogr wrote: post #48
anigbrowl wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By sheerest chance I read the same anonymous Japanese basket weaving forum where a link to this was posted just before its appearance here. Well played OP.

Which forum? May I have a link?

reddit.com

Re: Mini – The Minimal Language

#79

Post by aethertap »

Conlectus wrote: post #5

I note that with a vocabulary of 1,000 words it is roughly 10x the size of Toki Pona, a conlang which also aims for minimalism. That said, Toki Pona's goal is to help clarify thought, whereas this seems to intend to prioritize communication more highly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona

I've been making a game system in which the core mechanic is using a limited language to describe magical effects, so it's a long way away from the intended purpose for both Toki Pona and Mini. However, I've found that Mini is far easier to work with and more expressive for my purposes because it's easier to put structure into the statements using the particles to indicate what part of speech is intended for each word. The selection of words also seems to be surprisingly well-chosen, because most of my use cases have been pretty straightforward to express.

I haven't really tried to limit the system to just Mini Kore (which is also 120 words, like Toki Pona, and would be a more direct comparison), mostly because Mini's current size actually seems to have the right feel. It might be an interesting experiment though.

Re: Mini – The Minimal Language

#80

Post by Rhapso »

riku_iki wrote: post #41
Rhapso wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTR LLM embeddeds are a lot less efficient than ASCII for communication and are likely to stay that way.

absolutely not. Transformer layers already communicate using embeddings, and ASCII would be absolutely less efficient there.

And how many bits are in an embedded vector?
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