That said, Toki Pona's goal is to help clarify thought, whereas this seems to intend to prioritize communication more highly.
"The spark that led me to create Mini was realizing that a micro-language like TP could actually work: there’s no reason in principle a language with a limited word-count couldn’t have a simple, complete, and unambiguous grammar alongside a vocabulary based on intelligible word roots designed to handle most aspects of everyday discourse...."
I haven't really tried to limit the system to just Mini Kore (which is also 120 words, like Toki Pona, and would be a more direct comparison), mostly because Mini's current size actually seems to have the right feel. It might be an interesting experiment though.
I cannot find a citation quickly, but I recall years ago reading a paper about simulated agents "evolving" a language in a game context where agents had to indicate items to one another, by sending messages which were subject to a noisy channel. Items had multiple attributes (think "small red square", "big green triangle" etc), and experimenters could vary both the noise in the channel, and the entropy of the distribution over items. Naturally if "small red square" is 99% of the things you have to communicate, and there is low noise, agents invent an abbreviation for it. If there's a huge amount of noise and a relatively even distribution over items, then "small small green green triangle triangle" or similar becomes more likely. Languages very naturally reflect both the things people discuss and the environment in which they discuss them.
> Most English irregular verbs are native, derived from verbs that existed in Old English. Nearly all verbs that have been borrowed into the language at a later stage have defaulted to the regular conjugation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_irregular_verbs#Develo...
But if you look at the words in English for which we have "different rules", and you look at which words in other languages which have "different rules" ... they typically line up with frequency. You'll note that the small list of verbs listed above also happen to be irregular verbs in a lot of languages.
Yes, but different natural languages resolve this tension differently.
For example, Turkish is much more regular in its verbs (and in general) than English or German.
... ok, this is annoying. Can't speak for Italian and Spanish, but in German vowels are pronounced differently depending on context. Later, it says the 'o' is meant to be pronounced like in "moment". Moment is pronounced differently in American and UK English. And neither are like Italian "momento" or like German "Moment".
> All of the consonants (b d f g j k l m n p r s t v) are pronounced exactly the same as they are in English. Phew!
Not helpful.
In college Japanese class we were taught the phrase “ah, we soon get old” for a, i, u, e, and o respectively. I found it to be simple and satisfying.
Why include both sounds "r" and "l", when they can be tricky to distinguish for some speakers, and then use Japanese as pronunciation guide? The sounds "m/n" are also easy to mix up. Same with "b/v", which are pretty much interchangeable to a lot of Spanish speakers. I think the number of consonants could have been reduced considerably.
I like how the language flows though. It seems like a goal has been to avoid consonant clusters. It feels kind of like Swahili, though I don't speak that at all. The only input I would have on this point is that the verb/noun/adjective markers "i/a/e" would be hard to distinguish against words ending in a vowel, which seems to happen a lot. In rapid speech I see that becoming a problem that would cause it to flow less well, or breed forth a need for a de facto fixed word order for clarity.
What if every word started with a consonant and ended in a vowel, including those three markers? What if we completely got rid of problem pairs like "rl/mn/bv", by removing one or both in each pair? Could we get by using mainly voiced consonants? I kind of want to fork this project and try it out.
To be clear, while I am being critical in this comment, I want to explicitly say also that it is an impressive job to have made a new language, and refine it to this level of minimalism. Perhaps I am wary after having "wasted" a lot of time on Esperanto.
If you want more precision, generally speaking, the value of the character in IPA will match the actual sound value, except for "j".
"T" as in "Trent" is the same as "T" as in "butter" for this person?
"S" as in "pass" is the same as "S" as in "passion" too?
"G" as in "go" is the same as "G" as in "gel" as well?
There's a reason humans invented the IPA.
C and G have some ambiguity, but they didn't include C and it should be obvious that G is not going to be the same as J.
> There's a reason humans invented the IPA.
99% of people can't use IPA without an example chart.
But also: "Each letter matches its International Phonetic Alphabet pronunciation with the exception of J, which is the English /dʒ/."
> ... ok, this is annoying. Can't speak for Italian and Spanish, but in German vowels are pronounced differently depending on context. Later, it says the 'o' is meant to be pronounced like in "moment". Moment is pronounced differently in American and UK English. And neither are like Italian "momento" or like German "Moment".
I listened all four (UK/US English, German, Italian), and the 'o' in moment sounded the same to me.
Whether it sounds the same to you or not in different languages/dialects depends on how many "o-like" sounds your native language has. If it's just one, then e.g. [o] and [ɔ] can be hard to distinguish, because you're used to treating them as the same thing manifesting in different contexts.
The script is hard, and you have to learn enough of the roots and recognize them to get the meaning. Indonesian is slightly similar: tinju is boxing and petinju is boxer. Prefixes on roots to build up and guess meaning from context.
I remember once pronouncing "stoic" as "stoyc" instead of "stow-ik" once in English for example. My limited knowledge of Arabic indicates that one diacritic produces "aah"-like vowels, another produces "ooh"-like vowels and another "iih"-like vowels, and even though some other modifiers come into play later, it's still predictiable how a word is pronounced just from reading it. Would be happy to be corrected if I am wrong.
Many different contexts make use of this redundancy. Air traffic communications is another example where synonyms are chosen to minimize misunderstandings yet still be concise.
Minimizing redundancy also minimizes synonyms, which can be undesirable. Another example is poetry.
Like Wilkins’ Real Character, a priori languages attempt to decompose the elements of thought into distinct atomic units and build up larger linguistic constructs from those simpler units.
A posteriori languages like Esperanto take a very different approach: rather than starting from scratch with a set of basic concepts, they attempt to pave over the unnecessary grammatical quirks and complications of natural language to create something which is simple and easier to learn.
Mini’s goal is to fully realize both of these visions: to have, at once, a set of linguistic primitives which can be combined to discuss any topic, while ensuring that those primitives are themselves borrowed as directly from natural languages as possible.
Yeah, I don't get it. In Esperanto you don't use particles, but you change the endings of the words, according to their roles in the sentence. How is Mini fundamentally different?
I made this 4 letter language: http://move.rupy.se/file/talk.txt
The singular "a" between verbs and objects, is that a long or short vowel sound - do vowels have short and long distinctions at all? It says all the consonants are pronounced how they are in English - but consonants don't have just one sound?
For consonants, when they say that, what it usually means is "consonant by itself" (i.e. not a part of a digraph like "th", and not followed by a vowel like "e" or "i").
Let’s say this is technically the best solution among simplest naturalistic language ever conceived so far to use as an international auxiliary language. This is a ecological niche already largely populated.
Providing the best technical solution, as we know, is only the optional cherry on the tip of the iceberg. What really matters for the stated goals is the community. You can definitely attract a few conlang lovers with some elegant proposals, but that’s about it.
So what’s the plan for making Mini endorsed by a large sustainable community? What kind of ideals, values and social goals it is attached to? What Mini brings on the table for its aimed community to thrive that no other previous constructed language can also provide for people who don’t have ease of learn as sole and primary consideration?
Change Log for English Language Evolution
Version 1.0: Proto-English (450 CE)
Initial release of Proto-English, a West Germanic language spoken by Anglo-Saxon tribes.
Basic grammar and vocabulary established.
Development primarily led by "Linguistic Trailblazers."
Introducing Old Norse influence due to Viking invasions.
Added Norse loanwords and grammatical structures.
Integration efforts led by the "Language Fusion Guild."
Major phonological update affecting long vowels and diphthongs.
Unprecedented vowel sound migrations across the language.
Executed by the "Phonetic Alchemists Consortium."
Extensive vocabulary enrichment, drawing inspiration from literary works by William Shakespeare.
Introduction of numerous idiomatic expressions.
Collaborative effort involving "Poetic Linguists Guild."
Localization effort to adapt English for various regions within the British Empire.
Incorporation of local dialects and vocabulary.
Localization project overseen by the "Imperial Language Commission."
Creation of American English variant with notable vocabulary and spelling differences.
Introduction of simplified grammar rules and new expressions.
Led by the "Patriotic Language Architects."
English becomes an international language due to global interactions.
Inclusion of loanwords and phrases from various languages.
A collaborative effort by the "Cultural Linguistic Exchange Taskforce."
Vocabulary expansion to encompass computer science and technology terms.
Introduction of internet slang and acronyms.
Driven by the "Cyber Lexicographers Consortium."
Increasing divergence between regional dialects due to globalization and migration.
Emergence of unique vocabulary and idiomatic expressions in different English-speaking communities.
Monitored by the "Dialectologists Guild."Okay. Now I want to know about non-man made languages.
We just happen to learn one or more languages, and pass down a few of our mistakes and innovations to others, the vast majority of which have no effect on anybody.