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What would a modern (i.e., based on cognitive science) constructed language look like?

by yyaann, May 29, 2016

Messages: 34

Language: English

Vestitor (User's profile) June 6, 2016, 10:49:36 PM

But Esperanto is already easy to learn!

The argument is not that improvement is impossible in every case, but that aiming for total perfection in something that is at the mercy of potentially millions of users, who are not machines all using it in the same way, is a tall order.

In general I think languages tend toward simplification (sometimes helped along by reforms). English dropped practically all of its gendered nouns; Dutch simplified its gendered noun system to two; the Germans raise this issue as well. American English has simplified some forms that still exist in Britain. In contrast France's academy fights such things.

There are certainly other examples to be drawn from languages I have less knowledge of.

Esperanto is a cakewalk in comparison.

nornen (User's profile) June 7, 2016, 3:23:14 AM

vestitor:The Germans raise this issue as well.
That is indeed interesting. Could you link some sources?

lagtendisto (User's profile) June 7, 2016, 4:27:15 AM

nornen:
vestitor:The Germans raise this issue as well.
That is indeed interesting. Could you link some sources?
In fact 'Migranten-Deutsch'(1) is some kind of simplification. I.e. use of 'eine' & 'die', 'subject-verb'-nearby, 'Gehen andere Kasse/Go to other checkout'.

There also for sure exists migrants who learnt German near to native. I.e. GLS (university educated migrants from Syria)

Vestitor (User's profile) June 7, 2016, 10:16:30 AM

nornen:
vestitor:The Germans raise this issue as well.
That is indeed interesting. Could you link some sources?
Unfortunately I cannot. It's some time ago, but I read a paper about simplification in German that was linked from a forum. I've tried but I can't locate it.

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