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Martian · 11-15-2007, 11:01 PM

propagation is the only issue, but it's nigh insurmountable.

It's relatively easy to develop an artificial language. A trade language can be a form of pidgin with simplified grammar and syntax; while it won't have the subtlety of an organic language, it's a trade-off for ease of learning and use. However, unlike an organic language, an artificial language is very hard to sell because there's no group that identify with it. German exists today and will continue to exist as long as there are German's to speak it. Same for English, Polish, French, Japanese, etc. Your internet language, on the other hand, has no ethnic group associated with it and very few people will be willing to learn it when the language(s) they speak already serve perfectly well for the vast majority of their needs. Even those whose native tongue doesn't allow them to communicate effectively (ie, immigrants who have yet to learn the local language) are better served by learning a language that's already in use.

In other words, nobody wants to learn a constructed language because nobody speaks it, and nobody speaks it because nobody wants to learn it. It seems you're aware that this idea has been presented many times throughout history, but they've all inevitably hit the same stumbling block. The technical side is fine, but propagation just doesn't occur.

EDIT - for further thoughts.

The downside to using a pictographic language is that one must necessarily have an individual symbol for every concept. This is mitigated to a degree in written pictographic languages by modifying existing symbols to embody new concepts; however, when one attempts to design a language within the constraints of currently widely accepted technology this problem becomes a major hurdle. You're right that by using individual symbols you could create a language as a font; if we ignore the software side of it (which has it's own technical issues I'm not going to get into here) we still have a problem: if we attempt to adapt a standard 104 key QWERTY keyboard, using alt, shift and ctrl as modifiers and space as a delineater we have (104-7)x4 or 388 available keystrokes to assign. If each keystroke represents a seperate and distinct idea, one must find a way to limit the number of symbols to the available keystrokes without causing the meanings of each symbol to become so vague as to be useless in any practical application. Note as well that this is using every available key minus the system specific ones, which isn't really practical. If we assume that keys such as Esc and the lock keys (Caps lock, Scroll lock and Num lock) are out of bounds, the number of available keystrokes is even further reduced.

One could, of course, assign symbols to individual phonemes; however, this defeats the purpose of designing the language for the internet, as one then has to decide what phonemes in what combinations carry which meanings (in other words, one must design a verbal language).

I have no idea how one would surmount this problem; to my knowledge, nobody to date has attempted to design a language that's used in such a fashion.

EDIT 2 - Lojban was developed phonetically and thus is not an internet-only language. Any language based on phonemes can be spoken. Whether or not anybody actually speaks lojban, I have no idea; it's another example of how constructed languages inevitably fail, because nobody has any motivation to use them.

The most successful constructed language to date that I'm aware of is Esperanto, and even that is really more of a curiosity than anything else; upper limits put the number of speakers at about two million, which means that aside from obscure tribal dialects it is quite probably one of the least-spoken languages in use today. Personally, I think even two million is probably wildly optimistic, and expect that globally the number of people who are actually fluent is somewhere in the high tens or low hundreds of thousands.

11-15-2007, 11:01 PM	#5 (permalink)
Martian Young Crumudgeon Location: Canada	propagation is the only issue, but it's nigh insurmountable. It's relatively easy to develop an artificial language. A trade language can be a form of pidgin with simplified grammar and syntax; while it won't have the subtlety of an organic language, it's a trade-off for ease of learning and use. However, unlike an organic language, an artificial language is very hard to sell because there's no group that identify with it. German exists today and will continue to exist as long as there are German's to speak it. Same for English, Polish, French, Japanese, etc. Your internet language, on the other hand, has no ethnic group associated with it and very few people will be willing to learn it when the language(s) they speak already serve perfectly well for the vast majority of their needs. Even those whose native tongue doesn't allow them to communicate effectively (ie, immigrants who have yet to learn the local language) are better served by learning a language that's already in use. In other words, nobody wants to learn a constructed language because nobody speaks it, and nobody speaks it because nobody wants to learn it. It seems you're aware that this idea has been presented many times throughout history, but they've all inevitably hit the same stumbling block. The technical side is fine, but propagation just doesn't occur. EDIT - for further thoughts. The downside to using a pictographic language is that one must necessarily have an individual symbol for every concept. This is mitigated to a degree in written pictographic languages by modifying existing symbols to embody new concepts; however, when one attempts to design a language within the constraints of currently widely accepted technology this problem becomes a major hurdle. You're right that by using individual symbols you could create a language as a font; if we ignore the software side of it (which has it's own technical issues I'm not going to get into here) we still have a problem: if we attempt to adapt a standard 104 key QWERTY keyboard, using alt, shift and ctrl as modifiers and space as a delineater we have (104-7)x4 or 388 available keystrokes to assign. If each keystroke represents a seperate and distinct idea, one must find a way to limit the number of symbols to the available keystrokes without causing the meanings of each symbol to become so vague as to be useless in any practical application. Note as well that this is using every available key minus the system specific ones, which isn't really practical. If we assume that keys such as Esc and the lock keys (Caps lock, Scroll lock and Num lock) are out of bounds, the number of available keystrokes is even further reduced. One could, of course, assign symbols to individual phonemes; however, this defeats the purpose of designing the language for the internet, as one then has to decide what phonemes in what combinations carry which meanings (in other words, one must design a verbal language). I have no idea how one would surmount this problem; to my knowledge, nobody to date has attempted to design a language that's used in such a fashion. EDIT 2 - Lojban was developed phonetically and thus is not an internet-only language. Any language based on phonemes can be spoken. Whether or not anybody actually speaks lojban, I have no idea; it's another example of how constructed languages inevitably fail, because nobody has any motivation to use them. The most successful constructed language to date that I'm aware of is Esperanto, and even that is really more of a curiosity than anything else; upper limits put the number of speakers at about two million, which means that aside from obscure tribal dialects it is quite probably one of the least-spoken languages in use today. Personally, I think even two million is probably wildly optimistic, and expect that globally the number of people who are actually fluent is somewhere in the high tens or low hundreds of thousands. __________________ I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said - Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame Last edited by Martian; 11-15-2007 at 11:43 PM..