Gaeilge just to fuck with the brits. We all have to write it in ogham too, I don’t care how inconvenient it might be.
That or serbo-croatian because we are all serbs anyway
Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Japanese are totally unrelated languages. Chinese languages are sino-tibetan, Vietnamese is austro-asiatic, Japanese is japonic, and Korean is alone in its own family. Totally unrelated to each other as far as we can trace.
Despite that, they all used to use the same writing system and, shockingly, they were mutually intelligible when written down. In Japanese this method of reading Chinese (without actually knowing Chinese) was called kundoku but I think that the other languages also had ways to read & write Chinese writing with very light translation. Even today, Chinese writing unites the different dialects/languages of China.
My proposed lingua franca is the Chinese writing system. Everybody should keep their own writing systems, but they should also learn to transcribe into Chinese, the only extant written language in which this is really possible.
I’ve been enjoying studying Mandarin. The tones are a bit weird but the grammar seems surprisingly simple, everything can be written pretty universally in pinyin, and Hanzi characters are great for condensing information.
Hanzi characters are great for condensing information.
True, I will ask this: Why does it have 2 variants? Traditional? Modern?
Something with a consistent phonetic alphabet, like Korean with hangol.
I feel like Indonesian is a decent start. There are already a lot of people speaking it, and it’s REALLY easy to learn.
There’s no conjugation and no cases/agreement. I’m a native English speaker and picked up a functional amount of Indonesian in a matter of months, just from reading a couple books before we went.
Esperanto! Yes, there are better conlangs, yes, it’s eurocentric, and yes, there are ways to improve it or even come up with something better. But it has a cool history, it’s tied to socialist movements and anarchist movements, it is fairly easy to learn (especially for speakers of European languages), it’s grammar is super simple, it uses a system of root words and affixes that make me think of Legos, and it has real, native speakers already, meaning it is a living language that has changed over time, and is fully capable of being used exclusively to communicate efficiently.
Plus, the fascists fucking hate it
Plus, the fascists fucking hate it
Lol was waiting for this kick-back
Actually wondering, why would fascists hate it? Idk much history behind language, just know that language exists.
The whole idea behind it was radical unity, internationalism, and bringing disparate people together on equal footing. Instead of me speaking a language I’ve known since birth, and you speaking a language you are just capable of understanding, and both of us trying to plead our case to the government, the idea is that we would all have an auxiliary language to compliment (not replace) our mother tongues, and we would both be capable of making yourself understood equally.
Those ideals don’t really jive with hard nationalism and pseudoscientific ideas around superior races
Yeah make sense, thanks
Not against Esperanto but creating a “universal language”and then making it gendered seems a little stupid.
It’s not as bad as other languages on this front, but if I remember correctly there’s still no agreed-upon gender neutral singular pronoun in Esperanto is there?
Mi forgesis, ke mi lernis ĉi tiun lingvon.
There’s a daughter language called Ido that’s done away with gender, iirc. And I believe there’s some gender neutral ways to get around it in the community, but it’s been a long time since I’ve attempted to do anything with it
Congrats, you managed to turn this conversation into a socialism vs fascism conversation. It wasn’t easy but you spotted an opportunity and you took it. Now we can all talk about your favourite topic!
Congratulations, you managed to get offended by a historical tidbit about a constructed language!
Oh, and pissing off fascists is always good. Period. Full stop. If you don’t think that’s true, perhaps it’s time for some introspection!
Politics?? In MY language conversation? Well, I never…
C’mon now.
Lojban for now
Certainly not Esperanto- Lojban like Esperanto has been created to be a neutral lingua franca.
- I’ve heard that it’s a logical language that tries to do away with ambiguity and that sounds interesting to me.
- Esperanto feels like a language made for the EU rather than the world and so do all Esperanto look-a-likes.
- Lojban sounds like a cross between Romansh and a lost native American language. Not good compared to my two favorite sounding languages, Japanese and French, but at least more neutral than Esperanto. Esperanto sounds Spanish and Interlingua sounds like an Italian that thought that Esperanto should sound Italian and I don’t like how either of those two languages sound.
Mongolian, just for preparation for when the Mongols rise again. It’s just a matter of time.
Esperanto. It’s an artificial language designed to be easy to learn and communicate in. Although it’s worth noting that there are esperanto dialects and speakers of one don’t necessarily understand speakers of another.
Although it’s worth noting that there are esperanto dialects and speakers of one don’t necessarily understand speakers of another.
WHAT!? OK biggest failure of an artificial language in my book then
I think this is actually a success: this is the process of all languages. A usable language will evolve and grow, and something as geographical dispersed and isolated as Esperanto will certainly show divergence if it is being used.
So rather than a failure, I think this demonstrates it can be a real language. Though my interest in language isn’t for communication. So eh. Your milage may very.
I think it is easy, but I speak only european languages. Not sure if it is really easier or I just feel that is easy because I know the languages I do.
I would love to say mandarin/chinese, but tonal languages scares me.
I made a grammar rule set (not a complete conlang yet) where verbs don’t need to be conjugated, and information about time is separated from the verb; A new lingua franca, IMHO, should not have verb conjugation.
Esperanto. it’s not the statisically-average best lingua franca but it’s the best known that’s not tied to a single nation. Plus Hitler and Stalin both hated it.
Plus Hitler and Stalin both hated it.
The Fascist crew 😂
mathematics or cartoons work great for communicating ideas to people who don’t speak the same language you do.
essentially, all languages are made up. we therefore need to focus more on universal languages that are the same everywhere. mathematics are one example, but surprisingly, so are comics. many of the emotions displayed there are widespread and close to universal.
It’s pretty hard to express general, commonsense ideas in math, or abstract/complex ideas in cartoons, though.
Just an hour ago I changed my profile mentioning Lingua Franca because I’m downvoting non-English posts not using language tags… the last time I heard that word being used was probably like… 20 years ago maybe? It’s not a common word specially because the word itself doesn’t make much sense anymore (been several decades that French is no longer the trade language, so it just sounds funny)… and after just mentioning it in my profile I see it being used again… by any chance, did you read my profile? lol
Lingua franca has nothing to do with French.
Then it’s just a happy coincidence that it was the first world wide language used for diplomacy.
I’m pretty sure the first diplomatic language was Latin.
It wasn’t, the term lingua franca originates from the Mediterranean Lingua Franca, also known as Sabir, a pidgin language made up of bits from primarily romance languages (notably those of northern Italy) around the Mediterranean. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean_Lingua_Franca
It was (the first world wide language used for diplomacy). If you want to quote Wikipedia, then:
“French is sometimes regarded as the first global lingua franca, having supplanted Latin as the prestige language of politics, trade, education, diplomacy, and military in early modern Europe and later spreading around the world with the establishment of the French colonial empire. With France emerging as the leading political, economic, and cultural power of Europe in the 16th century, the language was adopted by royal courts throughout the continent, including the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Russia, and as the language of communication between European academics, merchants, and diplomats.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca#French
Maybe sailors communicated with locals through a broken pidgin, but diplomats and aristocrats used French.
Türkçe not gendered (at all, everyone and everything is “o”) and one of the easiest languages to learn
Toki pona
Thus making everything open to interpretation
I’d honestly love to see something like that become an actual universal language. Simple grammar, sub 500 words, a little more meat on the bones to eliminate some of the ambiguity, but be easy enough to teach every kid in early grade school. Something that just allows basic communication and is accessible to everyone.
Don’t think it’s going to be an evolved toki pona though, it feels like most of its fan base just wants to keep it an impractical art hobby instead of allowing it to grow up to be something useful.
I stopped believing in toki pona when I heard somebody say that “watermelon” would be “kili telo” (fruit [of] water). It goes without saying that “kili telo” would not be understood as “watermelon” unless they had heard it in English before, or heard someone use the English-derived “kili telo”.
If you’re going to use English-language ideas to form words, then English is a prerequisite language for speaking toki pona, and toki pona becomes useless.I think if toki pona is developed as you describe, it could be much more useful than it is today.
French, we could all be a little more french when keeping our leaders on a leash
