ceigered:Neo Patwa 2.0!

(although that language seems to be currently in a state of developmental flŭ - last time I checked with Jens (a good while ago, maybe May 09?), the creator, he was investigating different orthographies and I think we had a discussion on, for example, the pronunciation of "h" (which is basically a stand in for a whole lot of (loosely) guttural sounds all the way to the alveolar approximate R (English R), but you might as well pronounce it "ĥ" or "h").

But Neo Patwa, strictly speaking, is more pidgin than Toki-Pona-ish (which is conversly also like a pidgin but not the same as Neo Patwa).

I think I might learn Neo Patwa. It has Toki Ponan, Bon Wenan or Vuyamuyan characterisitcs, BUT it's free to evolve. It's not just one person improving the language, but many people collaborating. And it's likely to become international, unlike Bon Wen or Puna or even Esperanto.

Learn them all and you won't have to worry about which one is more likely to bear fruits

k1attack:I think I might learn Neo Patwa. It has Toki Ponan, Bon Wenan or Vuyamuyan characterisitcs, BUT it's free to evolve. It's not just one person improving the language, but many people collaborating. And it's likely to become international, unlike Bon Wen or Puna or even Esperanto.

I don't have any vested interest in what language you choose to learn, so please don't take this message as an attempt to convince you of anything

But these are my comments.

1) I think Neo Patwa is unlikely ever to become international. Sorry, but if even Esperanto hasn't, I really doubt that Neo Patwa will, especially since it seems geared for conversational speaking, rather than translations of technical document etc. Esperanto has a 120-year history and an established literature and people still laugh at it. I can't believe that these same people will take Neo Patwa seriously.

2) Evolution is overrated. Lots of people don't want to learn a language that is, by its own admission, still evolving. "Call me back when it reaches its final form and I'll think about spending time on it". Natural languages (and Esperanto) evolve slowly; I can learn French today and be certain that a year or 10 years from now, I will still be able to speak French. I wouldn't make this promise about Neo Patwa.

3) Crowdsourcing is overrated. A lot of good things can be created through collaborative effort and sharing of ideas, but I wouldn't take the leap to say that a crowd-sourced language is by nature better than one that was written according to the vision of a single intelligent person.

4) What is an "international" language? I'm not sure how you define this - is it that the language will become the worldwide second language? If so, then I doubt this will ever happen, for any language, period. Not Neo Patwa, not Esperanto, not English, not any other language. As a maximum, maybe the educated elites will all learn a certain language. But I wouldn't count on roadside sellers of steamed buns learning that "international" language. Regional dialects are still king in lots of places - in those places, I would not even count on Mr. Roadside Bun Seller speaking the national language of the country he lives in!

So by all means, learn Neo Patwa (or any other language), have fun with it, enjoy it, make friends with it - but don't be disappointed if it never accomplishes the things you hope for it.

I take it that Esperanto has not accomplished what you believe an "international" language should accomplish. But I have been hosted in the homes of cool people all over the world, made lots of friends, and had so many interesting experiences through Esperanto. It hasn't done any of the things that you seem to wish it would do - yet what I got out of it is far more than I put in, and I'm so glad I learned.

Chances are, none of the languages you mentioned will ever succeed on even as great a scale as Esperanto (and even Esperanto isn't exactly widely successful). So don't sweat the decisions, don't worry about what seems likely to "succeed" or not succeed, dabble around until you find something you enjoy, make the most of the community surrounding a language, and have fun!

A Youtuber guy called Arpee9216 thinks his 18 word language called Puna can actually become a global language like Esperanto.

On his website:
"Puna (good-language) is a language invented for global communication. It consists of 18 words and each word is 1 syllable. The language consists of only 18 words because if a language is to be global there should be as few words as possible to memorize. There are only 9 phonemes/letters because it is important for it to be as easy to pronounce as possible. In Puna, there are no words for complexities. Each complex word is build from smaller roots. This language also focuses on the positives in life. In order to say "bad" in Puna, you have to put the word "nu" which means "not" with the word "pu" which means "good". The language is completely contextual. If you are with someone and you say "ka", it could mean that it is "sunny", "bright", or "hot". That is an example of how important context is in this language. Most people can learn up to 10 words a day. Within a few days, you should be speaking fluent Puna. Avoid the stress of complexity, avoid the fear of negativity, and communicate with the world."

All the 18 words:

negative, not, no, opposite, question particle (when used at end of sentence): nu

science, logic, understand, knowledge, wisdom, know, believe, sense (feel, touch, taste, see, smell): ki

place, location, space, area, here, there: lu

living thing, animal, human, spirit, life, live: ni

energy, energize, strong, power, powerful, freedom, inspire, confident, free (of control): pi

seed, nut, egg, start, beginning, initial, first, root, origin, source, parent, God: ma

work, active, activate, business, labor, do, act, deed, action, create, make, build: pa

trade, buy, sell, give, take, get, receive, release, send, have, hold, maintain, keep: ku

way, move, go, come, time, period, mobile, motion, direction, path, road, method, skill, technique: mu

subject, verb, object, clause, separator: li

desire, want, need, require, pray for, wish for, wish, prayer: la

good, well, positive, healthy, improve, heal, help, support, benefit, advantage, simple, easy: pu

different, other, edit, change: tu

up, tall, high, heaven, sky, spiritual, formal, religious, religion, spiritual path: ta

sound, voice, noise, talk, say, word, name, music, play (instrument), language: na

light, bright, fire, bright, cook, hot, heat: ka

water, liquid, drink, clean, wash, sauce, wet, aqueous, soup: mi

plant, grass, tree, herb, vegetable, food, fruit, mushroom, medicine: ti

Back to the 18-word language. I thought I couldn't even say the pronouns in Puna, but after reading a little Vuyamu, I realised that I actually COULD say "I", "me" or "you" in Puna. "Speaking-person" could mean "I" or "me" in Puna. Puna's not all bad.

erinja:
2) Evolution is overrated. Lots of people don't want to learn a language that is, by its own admission, still evolving. "Call me back when it reaches its final form and I'll think about spending time on it". Natural languages (and Esperanto) evolve slowly; I can learn French today and be certain that a year or 10 years from now, I will still be able to speak French. I wouldn't make this promise about Neo Patwa.

It is a valid concern. I think the dilemma is that while it's true that people will be reluctant to learn what they perceive as an "uncompleted" language, they also will balk at a language that has a big dictionary with lots of words in it. I think it's a tough problem for auxiliary languages as a whole.

erinja:
So by all means, learn Neo Patwa (or any other language), have fun with it, enjoy it, make friends with it - but don't be disappointed if it never accomplishes the things you hope for it.

This is probably the best advice. It's best to enjoy the experience itself.

I totally agree with Erinja that Neo patwa needs not to be constantly evolving to finally take off.

It's been a while I took a look to neo Patwa. But I didn't notice major changes. At that time I wasn't so impressed by it. Maybe I should take a look again.

JOW:It is a valid concern. I think the dilemma is that while it's true that people will be reluctant to learn what they perceive as an "uncompleted" language, they also will balk at a language that has a big dictionary with lots of words in it. I think it's a tough problem for auxiliary languages as a whole.

Unfortunately, I don't see a way around this problem. If you want a language to be a pidgin with limited communicative capabilities, good for casual conversation but not scholarly works, then a very limited vocabulary works fine.

If you want a language with the ability to handle poetry and scholarly works, I think a big dictionary (big compared to these 18-word languages, small compared to English) comes with the territory.

The problem is this - I can define a language as having, say, 500 words, which is very few as languages are concerned. I can form all concepts from these 500 words. But I think that at some point, the process breaks down, because people want to show more nuance in their speech and writing than you can necessarily show (with ease) with this limited number of words.

Esperanto has a gigantic dictionary compared to the languages being discussed in this thread, but a tiny dictionary compared to a language like English. But still, people come up with neologisms! Why? Esperanto's native word building can easily come up with terms for things. Sometimes it's through laziness ("let's just import this word from my native language") and sometimes it's through a perceived need to distinguish more finely than Esperanto easily permits. Off of the topic of neologisms specifically, someone asked, I forget if it was on this thread or on another, why Esperanto has the word "paroli" and the word "komuniki". The answer is that to speak and to communicate are not the same thing. If I call someone on the phone, and we don't share a language, we can talk all we want, but we are not really communicating. To talk and to communicate are separate, but related, concepts. Similarly, you can communicate without talking - by letter, by e-mail, by smoke signal!

My final thought is that yes, in many cases you can make these distinctions through compound words and prefixes and suffixes. Esperanto does this, of course. But if you limit your dictionary too far, then you end up with a 15-syllable word to say "dog", and most people don't want to accept that. In the end you are still memorizing nearly as many words, though the component parts provide a clue. You might argue that it doesn't matter if my word for dog and your word are the same, so long as they are both descriptive. But then you fall into a trap of not having a common vocabulary, and you may fall victim to using completely different words for things that serve the same function, but look different, in different countries. You might not even realize you're talking about the same thing.

As an example, I might talk about big-blue-box-with-eagle and one friend might talk about small-yellow-box-with-horn, and another friend might talk about tall-red-cylindrical-box-with-crown, and we don't realize that we are all talking about a post box! It's just an example, I assume that a small-vocabulary-language word for postbox would be something like written-correspondence-deposition-module.

erinja:
To talk and to communicate are separate, but related, concepts. Similarly, you can communicate without talking - by letter, by e-mail, by smoke signal!

Ah, I see. That seems to be the reason why the European Parliament did set up stronger pub outside smoking rules for the EU area.

erinja:
It's just an example, I assume that a small-vocabulary-language word for postbox would be something like written-correspondence-deposition-module.

sounds like the german "Schifffahrtgesellschaftseigentümer" = "Schiff-fahrt-gesellschafts-eigentümer" (holder of an company which runs a navy transportation service). It's not very common in daily speech but you could use that in German. Yes, three "f f f" acording to the new german orthography rules (Neue Deutsche Rechtschreibung).

qwertz:
sounds like the german "Schifffahrtgesellschaftseigentümer" = "Schiff-fahrt-gesellschafts-eigentümer" (holder of an company which runs a navy transportation service). It's not very common in daily speech but you could use that in German. Yes, three "f f f" acording to the new german orthography rules (Neue Deutsche Rechtschreibung).

See: Rinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz

(Sure they're three F, which is much more logical than the previous writing with only two F. However, the Viennese city government doesn't seem to care about this and hasn't renamed the road Hardeggasse to Hardegggasse.)

darkweasel:
See: Rinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz

Ha, ha . The folks from Meck-Pom didn't lose their homour after the Wende.

Is ja hammer-, hammer-, hammerhart (that knocks you for a loop)

darkweasel:
(Sure they're three F, which is much more logical than the previous writing with only two F. However, the Viennese city government doesn't seem to care about this and hasn't renamed the road Hardeggasse to Hardegggasse.)

So "Hardegggasse" is "raw-cobblestone-stutter-g-g-gap" in English, isn't? (ŝerco!)