ANNALS OF LINGUISTICS
UTOPIAN FOR BEGINNERS
An amateur linguist loses control of the language he invented.

BY JOSHUA FOER

There are so many ways for speakers of English to see the world. We can glimpse, glance, visualize, view, look, spy, or ogle. Stare, gawk, or gape. Peek, watch, or scrutinize. Each word suggests some subtly different quality: looking implies volition; spying suggests furtiveness; gawking carries an element of social judgment and a sense of surprise. When we try to describe an act of vision, we consider a constellation of available meanings. But if thoughts and words exist on different planes, then expression must always be an act of compromise.... see link.

New Yorker

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Ithkuil

A better article than the usual unresearched, hysterical drivel.

It was sent to me. I liked the word Ithkuil so I read carefully (i think). Not that I really see the need for such a compressed language. Where would all the words go that are so nice, silly or disturbing? I would miss them. I tried to understand but of course I don't. If efficient, I don't understand to who or for what purpose people keep having those dreams.

What I do like is the name given to each of these constructed languages. Like titles of never written books.

list of constructed languages

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Not that I really see the need for such a compressed language.

The only problem with such a language, and it's a big one, is that the less redundancy in the message, the greater chance of miscommunication.

> miscommunication

Yes. And surely also nuncle, the reduced chance of felicitous imaginative sparks... for communication, like the process of genetics, relies on spontaneity and endogenous changes to produce new synaptic leaps of discovery.

If communication were to be perfucted© we would receive only that which was given, and the only end could be entropy.