Conlangery #95: Weird Ideas for Auxlangs

Conlangery #95: Weird Ideas for Auxlangs

Published: Tue, 03 Dec 2013 03:06:38 +0000 \

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Transcript

utterance-id1 [noise] hello every one did you missed us so many of you own writing noticed that <unk> has been around for a while uh that is changing slowly uh now um this episode that you're about to listen to was actually record before we went on hiatus but i was just so crazy that sort of swamped with stuff that i never ended up editing it so it's edited now and ready for you or listening pleasure and i want to announce that we are going to be doing new episodes starting in january i think we're going to be monthly for a little bit but ah hopefully that will be uh alright with people at least monthly for big shows we may be able to stick in shorts a little bit in between if we get uh if if me and maybe some other people get time but in any case we are not pod fading yet and i don't want us to participate so uh enjoy the show [noise] welcome to congress languages people create them i'm toward poorly with me down the road ways is william [noise] and over in maine we have my twenty [noise] and we have a probably a fairly quick topic but it's an interesting thing instead of featuring one con line today we sort of grab [noise] sort of a grab bag of comics that are sort of weird ideas and there to take over really talks slang that are weird ideas so this this episode were don't title weird ideas for ox one bite weird we should just you know for to to keep away the hate mail we mean this is not how you'd normally expect an ox linked to be done right and i'm not casting versions against the people who inventing these although one or two maybe two surface version [noise] but we're not going to talk about that that there's there are things that you wouldn't really expect and [noise] i think on williams uh lists you have one that really i never even thought of is <unk> what did you think it was well anyway some people know about this the um ah <unk> ah the ah john wilkins an essay towards a real character and a philosophical language basically one of the early philosophical languages yeah and see most famous by far yeah so he did propose this as a universal language or for scholars and scientists and such so it makes sense but i think what makes us weird and what makes it a weird idea for an <unk> is just the sheer sort of him practicality uh his massive classification system probably and i think that's going to be the theme for a number of the <unk> is even practicality mhm and a failure to understand how human language works [laughter] yeah it is and we can't blame mr wilkins in that sense linguistics was a new starting to that part and some of the things we understand you know we're maybe less clear or were had not yet even thought about his his his as i say was published in sixteen sixty eight so it's not really it wasn't <unk> linguistics was not really a science at that time so right right [noise] um and the thing that makes it difficult is laid out very neatly <unk> about construction languages which is that as george had has this enormous tax on them eat is like a gigantic <unk> every the <unk> of things in the world laid out in tables and the problem is that words that are for related topics the words themselves are related so even though in normal conversation when you need to talk about this kind of garden snake versus that kind of garden snake you want the words to be fairly distinct mhm in the real characters are going to be almost identical now was was real character written on link i know there was a pronunciation system available for a threat right next to him so he had a funky invested rating system but he also did transcription system okay um and yes everything can be pronounced as well okay um i don't think we need to go on too much further on any one of these but uh yeah that is and the thing about any of the classification systems uh when you're doing ah any any kind of <unk> like particularly for an ox line the thing that people have to realize it's there's no universal way of classifying the universe well that's true too yeah so it's it's like he's by making his classification system he was imposing his own order on reality uh just as much as any natural language does so [noise] sure he was just following aristotle like oh good people at the time yeah yeah [noise] so anyway um another one you have <unk> <unk> ah i'm not familiar with this one this was likenesses fantasy for having i very much in the same line as real character he wanted a philosophical language that were perfectly clear and unambiguous and could be used as specifically for scientist <unk> floss versed reason together and talk together without argument because he told me universal language and everything when refer clearly too when it was um the thing that was interesting about this one is it is that is based on rather funky ideas about how the chinese language worked [laughter] oh well like bliss symbolics which are going to talk about it is a purely visual language he never invented it he did some writings on that we have some diagrams we have some thinking about how things were going to be um but it was never completed yeah um one thing the reason i came to my attention is that um <unk> fairly famous <unk> like turtles completeness era um thought there was a conspiracy um too cause licenses <unk> universe all has to be concealed the from the world [laughter] 'cause it was just so good that it should have been accepted [laughter] ah that's that's always um but that's always been an issue at another and um there's just lots of these so we have <unk> how do you <unk> oh we are we <unk> hey the language of space it was invented by a austrian psychologists excuse me psycho analyst um in the fifties um and it is and all the goes synthetic language that is there is a small number of core meanings which combined together to form they took all the world's all of the words of language [noise] so basically you have an <unk> and science t._h. sound is some significant meaning so the the sound odd means space um the sound gloomy and spirit or mind um the sound e. means lite does sound evenings sound itself so that means you know yeah yeah yeah it's like he is is uh yes so uh we [noise] and uh another really odd thing about this obviously the the the sort of bizarre morphology is of these towns there are only four constants no no no no no no <unk> the web page you're looking at it does not have the full total oh really yeah [noise] are there are are there more confidence in that <unk> oh yeah yeah it's very valley denver [laughter] [laughter] that's a great are [laughter] i like that um he actually has a web page devoted to this yes <unk> university communication where he gives all of them i will include a link to that than we had oh okay so there's more confidence in that yeah okay yeah it is yet um [noise] right so the sound <unk> means part to sound for <unk> means equality the sound <unk> nah as in nancy means quantity and so on and so forth [noise] um so that you get where it's like you know which is lifetime which means day uh between this stay close to a day right so it's all it's kind of like <unk> even more condensed [noise] yeah <unk> <unk> <unk> and another case of um very uh <unk> <unk> another case of this sort of classifications system being applied and yes and sort of making these words and i will say like a lot of it is based on very similar sounds so it it if you were trying to use this practically it might not pass the redundancy test right because then we've not specifically named it is but the redundancy test is pretty freaking important [noise] um if you were just sounded like it's going to be very hard to understand what's being said to you in all but the most perfectly silent environment mhm right <unk> we communicate in a very noisy channel which is the world um and that's why all sorts of things that languages do that seem redundant persist for millennia is because they're useful sort of extra checks um noise interfering with your communication yeah that's it it <unk> it's not that um there's any specific test or anything that was just a term i was using it's just that yeah natural language is maintain a certain optimal level of redundancy in order to deal with noisy environments is william set yeah and and even <unk> outside of just any uh non ideal conditions like reading a book where pages ripped or something like that so yeah um and uh there's you had a note here i'm going to understand what this means the space men are wildly sexist [laughter] right so the guy was a psychotherapist and he taught i [noise] i was lucky enough to find a copy of his book [noise] years and years ago in the university of texas at austin library way at the end of the languages section is where they dumped all of the invented languages [noise] um and i found this and the language of space nineties myself reading it and one of the things he claimed is that by using the language you can fix psychological problems [laughter] why did such deep insight into the world that thinking about your emotions and this very sort of um composition analytic way could give you inside the problem is you know claiming you know calling some languages spaces entertaining except that it's full of all sorts of standard sort of european cultural stereotypes so the word which means manner person um [noise] the word for woman <unk> which means passive person thing [laughter] oh i [noise] [laughter] [laughter] and your mother which is hilarious is <unk> which is not toward around person which has something to do with yeah it's very strange [noise] wow um [noise] [noise] [noise] so let's go a little that's a little awkward [laughter] it is <unk> and i have as i said i've got a link to uh <unk> article complaining about the thing um from a website called the <unk> and this is from the art type of pie strangeness [laughter] yes i i'm i'm i'm sure that isn't entertaining rent here um and going down um we're we're working through uh the ones that william brought in 'cause he brought in a bunch of them and uh uh you also have and this one it's an interesting idea to me uh the practicality really only comes the him practicality only really comes when you think about it a little bit but ah <unk> yes which is basically a revival of <unk> andrew european yes now <unk> what am i <unk> uh language clogs is called language hat and he describes the language as touching the absurd project [laughter] but i mean it it makes some sense because you know a lot of times so i would <unk> would be since you know there's a huge number of languages descended from predator in the european well see radically we should have lots of pipe logical similarities with it so we could revive it as you know and <unk> for the entire european zone right the problem with this [laughter] ignore entirely a whole bunch of semantic issue um right words drifted meeting over time and and and we cannot recover necessarily fully the range of meanings any given agent where it had although maybe we can get in that direction um as far as i'm concerned that the phonology reconstructed for pro into european makes it look like a language is on the north <unk> it is an extremely bizarre phonology incomes then cultures weird by well things going on um strange confidence my always sound voice asked spirited uh <unk> maybe some some uh the so called <unk> that we don't know what they are that were probably sounds you'd expect in i don't know arabic right well we don't even having annoys me anymore right we have clues in greek mostly um and sometimes armenian about what was going on but [noise] so [laughter] it's a lot about <unk> into european to make it very difficult for learners to learn to say nothing and we have that even talked about the extremely complex distance of communication and the question that it has um so for me using this is uh i think it's weird because it's so interesting difficult yeah i it's <unk> sort of comes off as something it's a cool idea to throw out there but then once you realize what <unk> <unk> and the european it's like it just does not it just does not work in in any kind of practice now from the calling or is perspective i love this project because they have a <unk> a great deal of information about credit and european they make available for you for free so if you want to do um an outlay where you take pretty and european and run it through a bunch of different some changes yeah have you have all that information laid up for unique leah nicely and there and go nuts all in a nice little website just make sure that your little website it's a huge website yeah yeah i just you know and i i know that they'll have clearly marked what's you know reconstructed roots and what they're proposing people actually use and stuff but i think they made some changes in order to actually make things usable since there's just holes or what we know and that's fine but it's still an awful nice starting point yeah yeah and her for an outline kind of project yeah they call it modern in the european yes and uh you know they they actually take out the <unk> since nobody really knows what they are and things like that right um that and uh the last one you had on your list is uh adam except it's pronounced but a bummer but a bomb or mm oh is this it uses the latin alphabet as an ab jen <unk> we're still a very rather <unk> sorry oh um okay so each letter is actually it's a little ah a bum okay um um has it and it was invented by a japanese fellow in our lives from the eighteen hundreds the nineteen hundreds the book was published in nineteen sixty two <unk> his name is uh keeps she well komodo yes um and it also is attacks and i'll make language mhm um and it it's a little bit hard to find information about if someone's got some excerpts from the book um which was oh look it with other <unk> um [noise] but i just mentioned it as an interesting choice another tax and i'm <unk> um but this time using the lead enough of it in the kill your way yeah that's that's an interesting one to think about uh just just the idea and um [noise] the the the idea of weird writing she's becoming up [noise] a couple of places the <unk> the the first one that i brought i only brought a couple of the um examples and and one of them is bliss symbolics which is um notable in that it's only written and like the <unk> it's based on a miss understanding of how chinese characters work [laughter] i i i i say it that way because it was true because it's um charles lists um who i believe is what <unk> was a name he changed his um he changed his name's charles bliss for reasons he was born is carl ah <unk> blitz and uh basically he was one of the many people who had the idea of a universal language um and he had spent some time in china and he sort of got an idea of chinese that is a little bit of distracted and not quite right [laughter] um the you know the the standard sort of missed that eh that chinese is pick their graphic and such [noise] um and he based a language on that and the the really the interesting thing to me about listen box is this the odd history it went because basically it got picked up by um people who were teaching children with ah various learning disabilities that ah caused some difficulty with communicating and what and uh at first charles bliss was happy to see this this uh use but he got mad because they were not teaching his symbols of the language they were using them and modifying them to teach these children how to speak whatever the language that was relevant to them english uh in israel they they used to teach hebrew stuff like that and she actually shoot people for that [laughter] wow so this but but back to what the weird ideas the the the biggest thing is that it can't be spoken right i believe that's true yeah so it's like only written and i don't know it's a little bit bizarre to think i um i mean you can see where people would get the idea for that to have a language that's only written for for international communication but at the same time it's just a little bit um unusual and uh and the the other one that i brought in was uh <unk> yeah it could also russell and let me see if i can get i neglected to get the u._p. article up so i'm just going to search it right now [noise] ah but <unk> was uh created by francois <unk> uh in uh eighteen twenty seven starting then i guess you continue the project [noise] but uh if if people are familiar with this uh it's based on the ah <unk> the eight notes of a i guess a major scale in uh western musical tradition uh so and you know the names that we applied to those <unk> um uh although it's <unk> i guess it's <unk> there's there's different names i learnt <unk> anyway so here's the mode out as you can use for <unk> you can actually say the the the syllables you can't sing it or you can write it in colors [laughter] but interesting basically each one of these eight uh or seven really notes since those just repeats um each one of the seven notes is assigned a color of the rainbow and uh so you have red orange yellow green blue indigo violent you go with your <unk> <unk> [noise] yep yeah and it's i think it's another sort of organizing the universe sort of thing a little but is it or oh yes absolutely it's it's another tax and <unk> yeah the because each one of them has sort of uh a um uh basic meaning that contributes uh reducing the universe to seven concepts holy cow well according to this <unk> [laughter] <unk> [laughter] that's interesting yeah yes it is [noise] um yeah it's another one of these languages that care you know tried to use a very small <unk> of things and cram all of that and i mean especially if you if you all you have a seven syllables um and again you have the same problem with real character a lot of our betraying us so that things that are nominally quite similar um or <unk> that might be different enough that you care about their distinctions the word <unk> nearly identical mhm now um this is not really an exhaustive less um but i think it's really sort of interesting to see these these oddball ideas and was wasn't trick that i should mention that he pulls insult and so you know uh shifting of accents uh-huh where the accent is is interesting and also <unk> mhm [noise] um so all sorts of some things can happen there um so that <unk> for example or indicated by length and the final though mm mm oh exactly right that um [laughter] so wait so that can ah so there's there's some super sick rentals i guess but i guess that curious into all the different modalities too so somehow [laughter] yeah i don't know how it carries into color yeah i guess you can make that <unk> little wider i don't know [laughter] yeah [noise] um but anyway that was really surprisingly few that we had on the mind i don't know does anyone like have a another one of <unk> 'cause i i couldn't really think off the top of my head others i guess we could just sort of talk about like what can we really learn looking at these different uh different weird ideas and well how could we apply well i think the first one is that <unk> sentences is harsh <unk> when you take a small number of particles meaning and from those you generate an entire language and we have i mean we have not included but probably could um in this list <unk> we haven't included it because it does not offer itself as a box line mhm uh that's that's true i guess um took upon us is sort of like uh we're creating our own culture sort of thing right but taking a small number of particles in especially in together ultimately results in first of all the words that sounded nearly identical um when in fact you might want similar things to sound more differences that you can talk about them intelligent bowling yeah um and second you end up sort of throwing your hands up it often scenes in these languages and picking arbitrary distinctions to start with um one thing i did when i learned about the language of space is to amuse myself i made a list of like twenty five words mm um and i gave people a page with the symbols of <unk> and a few examples of how words might be formed and i asked him to come up with their own <unk> versions of common english words nobody came uh same thing right [laughter] that's that's that's another important thing with all these ones that have the the the the ugly synthetic ones and uh like the real character which is a little bit more complex but still has this classification system you can't really sort of impose that sort of rigid structure 'cause people would end up having to memorize you're classification system basically yeah yeah and the point is is it sounds like yes if i just have you know fifty critical meanings and just grab them altogether this'll be very simple it's not i mean it might be simple i mean you might be simple for the first inventing it the inventions might make perfect sense um yeah i wonder what the word for pizza <unk> in the language of space [laughter] um but it might not make much sense to anyone else and there's another thing i started reading um a woman fire and dangerous things uh accidently and uh the the point that's being made i i've only gotten through like the introduction such but the point they make their and i think this is a good point is it seems like humans don't actually naturally classify them in the things in the in the way that we are classically think of classification we don't really make categories based on properties and fix things into categories we have like <unk> types of a particular thing in our mind and compare things to do the <unk> [noise] right so my my favorite example of this abusive people down and ask them to start naming animals they're typically going to group things by function mhm right you're going to name pet animals and then you're gonna name farm animals and then you're gonna name zoo animal mhm um and so very often we classify things according to their relationship too [laughter] rather than some larger concept of tax on any which is scientifically useful um especially if you can back it up when genetics um but in terms of actual human day today human language and that's not how we think of something no i'm and that's an important thing to realize and it's probably one one reason why it it makes sense that in uh in natural language is usually very closely related concepts have different sounding more <unk> yes yes yeah they're they're different enough that you care yeah it's if you if you want to make sure that you're making the distinction then you want to because you would talk about the saying these things in the same contacts right and that's also another part of the of of redundancy is you know you have to have enough enough new information and i knew were that people can pick up what it is right and you're all you're pronouns should not rhyme [laughter] yeah and talking to you aspirin too mm [noise] i think another important thing with um with these um sort of odd ideas of uh you know written only languages and <unk> which is just kind of bizarre uh is i don't know really if you were making something that's a human language how practical that is to go beyond uh spoken and sign language is um i guess you could you could play with it but like particularly for <unk> those are the natural ways the humans use language is to either <unk> spoken language or um sign language in sign language is usually a rise in environments where uh somehow speech is not possible yeah from the perspective something that's only written does seem very ah especially in a world of modern communications something like real character or characteristic of universe alice made a little more sense as writing only systems um say character skiing or <unk> not being care for that can be smoking if most of international communication especially at hi philosophical government scientific levels are all taking place primarily by writing mhm isn't that obviously insane to focus on a rating system but in the modern world that seems a lot less obviously a good idea yeah and obviously like <unk> is different in that you can speak it i understand but yeah [laughter] yeah but at the same time you know if you can't speak it i don't know how many people are really would if it were to like catch on which it's not likely to i don't know how many people would like do the singing or the colors uh outside of like art projects right right it's it's sort of a a um it's sort of a trick and obviously the the other uh one in our own category don't revived front or languages for a uh a uh an an <unk> i i just don't think it's it's <unk> well i think my well what's wrong with it in principle i mean it would be nice to pick one that's not <unk> difficult to learn that's true yeah um i guess it would depend it's possible that there may be approved language out there that is similar enough to its daughter languages that we could we could do it but like say if someone wanted to revive like old chinese with the original pronunciation most speakers of chinese languages would not be capable of would not be well not easily learn that because it has very complex constant clusters that had no tones at that time mhm uh it would it would just be <unk> difficult for them it's it would just not quite the same as reconstructed p._i. he would be for us which is yeah uh but i think probably in a lot of cases it's going to be the case that the daughter languages at least if you're going to go like big into like big reconstructed languages that are <unk> years ago that it's likely that it's changed enough that will be difficult for modern speakers to learn that reconstructing language sure but again you're assuming that the goal is for the program language to be easily learned specifically by a small cluster people draining on an <unk> you want it to be widely available so then everyone's disadvantaged [laughter] [noise] i i want more friendly yeah i guess that that that makes some sense oh see that's the sad so um <unk> <unk> still has fan and so there's an entire website um devoted to it um and we learned that we missed by a full ten days recording so russell day which is oh that's that's that's wonderful yeah and <unk> that will be weeks in in the past by the time yeah but next year people can celebrate it yeah [laughter] uh i think um [noise] <unk> and anyway so what do you guys think are we are not really <unk> here nah [laughter] you know we don't really believe in uh uh i i don't think any of us on this show really believes in the the sort of ox slang philosophy no ours we do think it's impractical no i don't to what you're right i don't think it's impractical oh no [laughter] i'm not against <unk> i'm not against the idea of a good <unk> okay so william you are the more <unk> of us then what would you actually recommend for a good <unk> good according to what the standard if you want to actually communicate with people on the planet mhm who's language you don't speak learn <unk> because your chances of success or far higher there than in any other one right but i mean for creating one for creating one [noise] yeah i mean learn a little type policy pick things that are very common and go right um i think the thing that a lot of people miss in creating <unk> any sort [noise] and that's certainly is a great um disaster in many <unk> um is a failure to attend to carefully attentive to semantics of your words um in a failure to realize that a lot of what you express is determined by the words not some <unk> distract conception of grammar and we've rented about this before right your dictionary into your language um two very high degree and this can be a sneaky way to have all sorts of complex that will em terrorize your learners yeah um i would think [noise] a couple of things but for something that looks like an actual natural human language that has a reasonable constant involve inventory that has a reasonable syllable shapes and sizes [laughter] um <unk> um had a grammar and that's not wild that has um a flexibility inward creation but not the super crazy only goes synthetic that you can somehow imagine mhm yeah um i i think some there are some type of logical things that you might want to include <unk> ease of learning like um uh stick with not too small but fairly small uh funny mandatory and fairly simple syllables yep and also probably want to you probably want to make it isolating just so you know you know i mean uh if you do have um <unk> you know uh <unk> uh grammatical inflections make them perfectly regular but i don't think you really need them and and uh you know it's possible that making it more iceland could reduce the memories <unk> load maybe maybe i'm not i don't object to the idea of more complicated morphology in a in a <unk> but it just has to be regular right yeah i pointed <unk> easier to learn than a native language or a natural language so you should not have exception [laughter] um no no no way regularity regular already a lot of things that we advocate on the show you don't want for an ox line 'cause we usually <unk> naturalistic <unk> <unk> you wouldn't want um and uh yeah and uh keep an eye on your words [laughter] um and i think possibly one thing about it is that making it like a community build would be good i think that's one strength of <unk> that sort of belongs to a community right but i think it would be a can get it and mostly done and then give it to the community otherwise you'll get other commentators involved and nothing will ever be decided [laughter] yeah no it's true coming there's always wants to tinker and there'll be endless arguments i mean in the world of <unk> the perfect is definitely the enemy of the good mhm there'll always be some decision that has made that somebody somewhere and say it's a terrible idea probably was reasonable justification but sometimes you just have to make a decision that works um and move forward alright yeah that that i mean there's some of these discussions presume that language is preventable and that can lead to all sorts of weirdness people who believe that tend to be the same sorts of people who get behind <unk> so [laughter] not at all i mean you can get funny ideas about how language is supposed to work and what it is right right but all right i think that is about as much as soon as we can we i we we can we can get out of this but uh uh [noise] this i guess this will be a little bit of a shorter episodes but uh i hope people enjoy this [noise] uh our next episode is what is it again we were just talking about this for for what happened what happened to my nominated right what happened to my mom did where did mine nominated go [noise] uh so uh uh a little bit of tastes fun [noise] but we rattling to talk about [noise] and how you can fix up your taste systems in interesting ways so look forward to that [noise] and ah [noise] house for you [noise] william in mind [noise] everyone listening havoc on my [noise] thank you for listening to con lying or you could find our our cars it's your nose that tom landry dot com you can send questions comments poor topic or featured language suggestions coupon lying or e. i. g. e. mails dot com [noise] to submit icon langhorn outlying reading for the top of the show see our contribute page for detail [noise] web space <unk> provided by the language creation society and our seen music is by no device [noise]

Tags

  1. Conlangery Podcast
  2. Podcast
  3. aUI
  4. auxlang
  5. Babm
  6. Blissymbolics
  7. caracteristica universalis
  8. conlang
  9. Dnghu
  10. language
  11. linguistics
  12. philosophical language
  13. real character
  14. Solresol

Conlangery Podcast/Conlangery 95 Weird Ideas for Auxlangs (last edited 2017-09-09 10:13:49 by TranscriBot)