• gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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    10 minutes ago

    Also note that script is historically mostly used for communication over large distances and times.

    Historical scriptures (such as the bible) got transported across half the globe and copied and passed down for more than a thousand years. The scripture transcends both space and time.

    If you only want to communicate with your neighbour, you don’t need a lingua franca. Lingua franca is exclusively for writing down, and communicating over very large distances (such as the internet). In that case, no pronounciation is needed. So it is possible to have an abstract sign language that doesn’t even have a standardized pronounciation.

    This might sound absurd at first, if you never thought about it, until you realize that is how a lot of our information is already transported. There are a lot of sketches and visualizations of important data that are graphics, plots, charts, drawings, and such, that don’t have a standardized pronounciation. The information is transported visually.

  • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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    18 minutes ago

    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.

  • vfreire85@lemmy.ml
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    23 minutes ago

    realistically, lojban, aui, mirad or kotava.

    out of fictional languages, quenya, klingon, or the language of the culture from iain m. banks’ books.

  • isyasad@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    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.

    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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      15 minutes ago

      everything you said is true because chinese script is not based on pronounciation, but on (highly abstracted) images. these icons are universal because the concepts they represent are universal.

    • morgan423@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      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.

      • isyasad@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        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.

        • morgan423@lemmy.world
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          1 hour ago

          Is Esperanto similar to what you’re talking about?

          No, I think a true universal language is going to need minimal friction, and be as simple and vocab-limited as possible, to encourage mass adaptation.

          For all its intent on being easier than other mainstream languages, Esparanto is still more complex than what I’m talking about.

  • ComradeSharkfucker@lemmy.ml
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    12 hours ago

    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

  • Dharma Curious (he/him)@slrpnk.net
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    16 hours ago

    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

    • AnarchoEngineer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 hour ago

      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.

  • jrubal1462@mander.xyz
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    14 hours ago

    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.

  • manxu@piefed.social
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    14 hours ago

    One of the South American variants of Spanish, probably Argentinian. And I say that despite not speaking any Spanish.

    The language itself is a contact language and heavily influenced by centuries of cohabitation with speakers of Arabic. That simplified a lot of the Indo-European complexities away.

    The phonology - the sounds - of the language are clear and predictable and sufficiently different that a non-native speaker and their accent are not too troublesome in comprehension.

    The language itself is already a world language, ranking 4th in number of native speakers.

    I like the suggestion of Esperanto, which I do personally speak and which has all the advantages above, except already being a world language.

    • vfreire85@lemmy.ml
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      4 hours ago

      One of the South American variants of Spanish, probably Argentinian.

      I’d agree on the sense that everything in argentine spanish can be said with thousands of curse words interspersed. ¡la puta madre que lo parió, boludo de mierda!