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.<p>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.
For anyone who is interested in what an ideal language would look like, particularly in respect to brevity vs. informativeness I'd highly suggest looking into Terry Regier's work: <a href="http://lclab.berkeley.edu/" rel="nofollow">http://lclab.berkeley.edu/</a><p>I worked in his lab on one of many projects showing that most human languages use a near optimal trade-off in various semantic domains (so far - color, kinship, containers, and spatial relations). His work also includes some of the best evidence for some language dependent forces in cognition interacting with some universal ones.
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.<p>I don't know much about designing human languages, but I know how hard it is to design a decent programming language (see <a href="http://colinm.org/language_checklist.html" rel="nofollow">http://colinm.org/language_checklist.html</a>), and building a serious human language seems orders of magnitude more difficult. I've never seen an attempt that really intrigued me until I found Ithkuil.
If anyone wants to hear what Ithkuil sounds like : <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Ithkuil_pull_uiqisx.ogg" rel="nofollow">https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Ithkuil_...</a><p>From <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithkuil" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithkuil</a>
The same thing happened to Blissymbols[1], as documented by radiolab[2].<p>1. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blissymbols" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blissymbols</a><p>2. <a href="http://www.radiolab.org/story/257194-man-became-bliss/" rel="nofollow">http://www.radiolab.org/story/257194-man-became-bliss/</a>
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.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/" rel="nofollow">http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/</a>
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.<p>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.
Losing control of a language seems to be standard procedure.<p>If this invented language were to catch on, it likely wouldn't be a generation or two and kids who grew up speaking it would start saying the Ithkuil equivalent of things like "yo dog, that's the rad shizaz!". Then, several generations thereafter grandmothers would be regularly using the word "shizaz" and they would have to put it in the dictionary. That's just the way it goes and is probably the reason we don't all speak the same language in the first place.<p>That being said, I've always been fascinated by the idea of a systematically created universal language and think the world would be much better place with one....if that were possible.<p>This was a neat article.
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.<p>IMO this suggests the bottleneck is something about our brains on a biological rather than linguistic level.
I found this article fascinating and satisfying.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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:<p>A: "Did you enjoy the play?"<p>B: "It was very interesting. I thought the stage dressing was a little unconventional."<p>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."<p>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."<p>A: "Yes, as if they didn't want it to seem like they were 'acting', so to speak?"<p>B: It was awful wasn't it!?<p>A: Thank god! Yes, worst thing I've ever seen!<p>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.<p>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.<p>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 <i>is</i> 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.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172103" rel="nofollow">http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172103</a><p>[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 <a href="http://www.mrbauld.com/exrthkwtz.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.mrbauld.com/exrthkwtz.html</a>
"Among the Wakashan Indians of the Pacific Northwest, a grammatically correct sentence can’t be formed without providing what linguists refer to as “evidentiality,” inflecting the verb to indicate whether you are speaking from direct experience, inference, conjecture, or hearsay"<p>This is amazing. But I can't grasp the difference between inference and conjecture - they are both 'figuring out'
what happened rather than knowing or hearing?
I wonder how well Ithkuil can be represented in Ian Banks' Marain script. <a href="http://trevor-hopkins.com/banks/a-few-notes-on-marain.html" rel="nofollow">http://trevor-hopkins.com/banks/a-few-notes-on-marain.html</a>
>"Languages are something of a mess. They evolve over centuries through an unplanned, democratic process..."<p>I'm in awe of the creator of <i>Any</i> language. Because to create a (Good) language isn't easy. This is true or both programming languages and otherwise. However, it comes without saying that adoption is a vital component of any language, and with mass adoption comes evolution.<p>People will often make changes in languages, make their own dialects (based on things perhaps the can relate to on a deeper level, etc..). This isn't a bad thing. To me it only signifies growth and expansion of the language.<p>+1
I really enjoyed this article when it was new. Not long ago, when I was learning Octopress, my first post was Hello World in Rust and Ithkuil. (I just wanted to make sure code formatting was working.) I have no idea how correct the translation is. I just googled around until I found someone else's.<p><a href="http://screaming.org/blog/2014/07/12/ettawil-cutx/" rel="nofollow">http://screaming.org/blog/2014/07/12/ettawil-cutx/</a>
Can someone list a few popular constructed languages (maybe comparing them to programming languages)? I'd only heard of Lojban and Esperanto before reading this.
TFA:<p>> A sentence like “On the contrary, I think it may turn out that this rugged mountain range trails off at some point” becomes simply “Tram-mļöi hhâsmařpţuktôx.”<p>Wikipedia:<p>> Romanization: Oumpeá äx’ääļuktëx.<p>> Translation: "On the contrary, I think it may turn out that this rugged mountain range trails off at some point."
That was an interesting read, but the reporter's breathless assertions frequently got in the way of appreciating Quijada and his idea.<p>I mean, things like:<p>> A sentence like “On the contrary, I think it may turn out that this rugged mountain range trails off at some point” becomes simply “Tram-mļöi hhâsmařpţuktôx.”<p><i>Simply?</i><p>We could have used LZW algorithm and the sentence could probably become even shorter, just a "simple" sequence of random-ish bytes. If you increase the number of allowed symbols, of course you need less symbols to convey the same information. If you allow for a limitless set of words that are dynamically generated from combining many roots, of course the number of words decreases... sometimes down to 1, as in polysynthetic languages. This is Information Theory 101.
While it looks like it's an impossible language to use in every day, I'm wondering if it could be used for science and technology. Just imagine having all scientific papers in it :)
Two things struck me about this article in hindsight when I read it.<p>-- Whose pot did the Croats, Bosnians and Slovenes piss in to not make it into this super Slavic union?<p>-- China Mieville wrote a book[0] along very similar thought lines which won the Locus Award.<p>Also, Garkavenko appears not to have taken the obvious side [1] in Ukraine's present conflict given how he is described in Foer's article<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassytown" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embassytown</a><p>[1] <a href="http://maidantranslations.com/2014/06/24/russian-volunteers-returning-home-from-donbas-will-bring-the-deadly-maidan-virus-to-russia/" rel="nofollow">http://maidantranslations.com/2014/06/24/russian-volunteers-...</a>