I have a question about language, and i figured this would be the best board to ask this. Is there a logically generated / most efficient language that's meant to be used by humans? There have been efforts to unify measuring units and other scientific aspects, but i don't think the same was done to language. The only thing i could think of which comes roughly close to what i'm searching for is Esperanto, which as you may or may not know is a mix of european languages. The problem with this is that the goal of it was to easily learn it if you know another european language, but what i'm searching for is a language that's easily to lean if you don't know any language at all. The perfect language that consists of no pointless rules that appeared for historic reasons, with a high accuracy of expression.
I know people wouldn't learn this language because in the end humans are stubborn and stick to what they've grown up with, but i'd like to know if something like this exists.
Some of those construct languages like Esperanto have tried different variations, like elegance and consistency of rules etc.
But it might help your search to know that like all of a hundred years of linguistic theory and philosophy (which has been predominately linguistic) is against the idea of simplifying or containing language, if anything philosophy would tend strongly in the opposite direction
Gabriel Gonzalez
>asking profound questions requiring actually intelligent posters to answer on Veeky Forums
its been tried before using mathematics formally, and derivative principles for informal language. but it's currently unfashionable for linguistics to go in this direction. it was sort of a big thing in the 20th century.
an empirical proof would require inhumane experiments with children on grand scale
Daniel Murphy
All human language is meant to be used by humans so I don't know what you mean by that. And wouldn't efficiency generally lean towards restriction, which is something from which language strays away? Limitation of language limits range of expression, which then affects precision of the language. >I know people wouldn't learn this language because in the end humans are stubborn and stick to what they've grown up with I think it is more in the vein that as they grew up with the language, they filter their life experience through that language and it is again through this that they can relay information with others who also operate in that language. It becomes the most efficient means of communication for them, because it is the default means in which their brain operates that allows for abstraction. Learning another language implies not understanding its totality, which again limits range of expression. I would suggest pairing a low context cultural language with body language that provides or stresses elements unattended in the actual spoken phrase, but that is something humans do anyways. From personal experience, I would say Chinese is the most efficient language I have encountered as far as speaking goes.
Connor Reyes
Efficient in what sense? Natural languages evolved so theyre efficient in a darwinian sense. Programming languages and the like are constructed to be efficient ways of communicating with computers.
Basically the question youre asking is dependant on what youre trying to talk about. Youre assuming theres more and less efficient conversations, but even with programming languages, which you might assume is an easier problem because of the orderliness of computers, theres tons of languages, emphasizing different aspects, making different tradeoffs, etc.
Basically your question implies theres a right thing and a wrong thing to talk about. But the grammatical rules of conversation can never be completely divorced from the kinds of conversational topics its used for. So what language ends up being is basically a collection of memes.
Maybe you think there is a best conversational topic that our language should be oriented around. Perhaps God. In that case you might want to learn Enochian or something
Gavin Reyes
>The perfect language that consists of no pointless rules that appeared for historic reasons, with a high accuracy of expression.
doesn't exist because languages aren't pure but ever evolving and changing. Such a language would by necessity be artificial because no-one irl sat down and thought; alright I'll invent a language now with precise rules etc. When most languages where standardized they had been around for ever consisting of different dialects, accents etc. In fact even if such a language would exist and you would teach it to, let's say the whole population of Liechtenstein, after 100 years you would have different dialects and 'pointless rules' again. I think the closest you can get is old greek, since it's a dead language and offers a high accuracy of expression
I think Heidegger once said, that old greek offers the richest ways to express yourself, followed by german
Noah Carter
linguists can't even decide whether text represents speech or if it's an autonomous expressive mode. they're helpless if confronted with something like the possibility of an archaic language, besides such notions clash with progressive human blank state projects.
Joseph Lee
...
Sebastian Reed
Such a language exists, and it's the language used to express mathematics/logic. It would be entirely undesirable for us to communicate in such an "ideal" language. Read ยง81 of Philosophical Investigations by Wittgenstein.
Ryan Ramirez
how do you say "death" in math?
Ryan Cooper
Give up
Carter Harris
are you trying to form an argument, or is your frog pic an autonomous mode of expression?
Easton James
>It would be entirely undesirable for us to communicate in such an "ideal" language
You can't, that's why we don't use it in our ordinary settings. The language of mathematics is used to express a very self-contained type of ontology, while our ordinary language contains a far wider applicability. Mathematics is more precise and concise but lacks breadth, ordinary language is murkier but extremely varied.
Nathan Nguyen
If you havent heard of Lojban, its a language with no ambiguity, so its spelling and syntax perfectly reveal its pronunciation. No rules that only sometimes apply arbitrarily. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban Idk how it would work for expressing emtions and stuff tho
Christian Garcia
English
Kek
Logan Stewart
>Efficient in what sense? Ease of the spoken word and easy distinguishability of pronounciation preventing misunderstanding would be important points i guess. >Natural languages evolved so theyre efficient in a darwinian sense. The original thought about this thread came to me when i read something (which might have been /pol/itically motivated fiction) about some african talking to some european who explained that in his native language he wasn't able to say "the coconut is on the tree", or "the man behind the tree" as his language simply lacked such descriptive words. Such a primitive language would surely hamper a childs mental growth because it just doesn't learn to think about things in detail. That led me to the thesis that language has a large impact on how humans develop. If that thesis were to be true, a "scientific language" would increase the productive potential of every human growing up with it which i would consider a good thing.
Asher Rivera
Well, a language is a closed independent system of linguistic signs (read some Saussure to understand more) and, as such, it is alive and ever-changing. Linguistic signs are completely arbitrary, words have no real relation to what they're associated with (that is why a table isn't named "table" everywhere, it's the reason different languages exist). Grammatical rules come from an internalized system of rules we naturally develop through contact with other humans and through social conventions, the same conventions that define the meaning of words. Since language itself is human and constantly changing, there is no way we could ever create an universal system based entirely on logic (there's also the fact that language isn't physical, speech is, but language as a whole isn't, it's entirely conceptual, it's not like physics or biology). The most logical/efficient language used by humans is the one used according to the region they locate themselves in, each language is an independent system, with no relation to each other.
>TL;DR nope, languages based just on logic are impossible, because languages are a human thing and always change naturally.
Austin Evans
yeah, because people can think like calculators, sure. Keep telling yourself that, logocentric cuck
James Barnes
>a language that's easy to learn if you don't know any language at all
The hardest language there is, because babys keep learning languages all over the world
Nathan Nelson
Native languages are always significantly harder than a second language I guess. I'm a native speaker of Portuguese, that shit is HARD (srsly, we got dozens of verb tenses, and that's just the tip of the iceberg). As a second language, though, I guess English would be the easier one?
