I had this thought while walking home and thinking about Mandarin/Cantonese. They are technically dialects of the same language, but are diverse enough to prevent verbal conversation between them. However, they are united by written Chinese. A written sentence will be pronounced totally differently in each dialect but will mean the same thing (actually, not quite, but it usually works well enough).
I thought it'd be great if you could do this to unite totally different languages, and with the globe-spanning power of the internet, why not?
So I began thinking about a visual-only internet language. A cyberlanguage would probably have the following properties:
1) It never has to be pronounced, so we can use symbolic pictographs to make them universally recognisable.
2) Because it doesn't ever have to be written in pen, unlike
Blissymbols, they can be more detailed and less stylised to make recognition more natural.
3) Like Blissymbols, learning is much faster than natural languages because there is no pronunciation to learn at the same time.
4) If the language has an isolated grammar (unlike
Earth Language which merges symbols) it can be easily encoded as a font and presented in normal text fields.
5) The language can be designed around electronic input methods. Considerations can be taken like ease of use with qwerty keyboards and phone keypads, appropriateness for writing on-the-fly software translators and generalising to be as natural-language-inclusive as possible.
6) A simple, logic-based grammar means ambiguity is minimised.
7) Mathematical operators, (conveniently also globally consistent) like +, -, [], {} etc can be used when long sentences begin to degrade readability. Compare "1 + 2 x 3 + 4" with "1 + [2 x 3] + 4". A simple example, yes, but both are correct but one is more readable.
8) Borrow domain and namespace ideas from computer science, in particular, the internet-relevant bits of it like ., / and :. Although stemming from computer-jargon, most internet users have an idea of what these represent.
9) If we think beyond normal text fields, we could actually construct sentences in two or more dimensions, like in sign languages.
10) We could incorporate colour or text size for greater flexibility and a digital analogue of implicit communication like tone of voice and body language ie: sarcasm, intensity, etc.
All of these things suggest the possibility of a modern, forward-thinking, tech-savvy international language with a focus of
ease of learning and
ease of typing. Pretty much all general constructed languages have been conceived under a misty-eyed dream for a united world language. I would consider this more like a short-term solution: not appropriate for a united world language because it can't be spoken (although there's no reason it can't be signed), but also because the speech would be logically constructed and probably jilted and ugly. It would also probably be longwinded. In the long term, a naturalistic language would be the better option, but this is the internet age, man! Everything is wired these days and the only thing stopping absolutely anyone from interacting is language. It might even be possible to design the language to be easier to write natural language translators for, either creating a pivot point to go to other languages or just something which can be read by anyone.
The possibilities are pretty exciting and the thing that would set this system apart from other efforts is the
total embrace of technology, which I think should be a championed point of this system.
Please discuss! I'd really value criticism from speakers of languages that aren't english. Being a native english speaker I will naturally have a bias towards english ideas and grammars, and english grammar is
terrifyingly convoluted.
Key points i'd like to focus on are:
- complete exploitation of present and future technologies (multi-touch surfaces anyone?)
- simplicity and unambiguity (hopefully will naturally stem from logic foundations)
- symbols to embody concepts that should at
least be easy to remember, if not totally intuitive.
- malleability: can we construct new words on the fly, and can others work out what they mean (think latin-derived english words like 'arachnophobia' and 'psychology')
I really look forward to discussing this, mods please feel free to flick this to a more appropriate section (I couldnt pick one).
Oh, and if anyone wants to help me set up a website or find a space for collaborative development of this, I'd really appreciate that too.