Ithkuil IV Language FAQ | Hacker News Reader

Ithkuil IV Language FAQ

ithkuil.place

74 pointsxvilka26 comments

For anyone who hasn’t run into Ithkuil before, it’s basically an attempt at creating a language which is as precise and concise as possible:

> an idealized language whose aim is the highest possible degree of logic, efficiency, detail, and accuracy in cognitive expression via spoken human language, while minimizing the ambiguity, vagueness, illogic, redundancy, polysemy (multiple meanings) and overall arbitrariness that is seemingly ubiquitous in natural human language

For instance, here is a sample of Ithkuil III (since I can’t seem to find any materials on Ithkuil IV), precisely describing Marcel Duchamp’s Nud descendant un escalier, No. 2:

> Aukkras êqutta ogvëuļa tnou’elkwa pal-lši augwaikštülnàmbu.

> ‘An imaginary representation of a nude woman in the midst of descending a staircase in a step-by-step series of tightly-integrated ambulatory bodily movements which combine into a three-dimensional wake behind her, forming a timeless, emergent whole to be considered intellectually, emotionally and aesthetically.’

[http://ithkuil.net/texts.html]

This reminds me of standards relating to the various fields of computing. People regularly release new standards to incorporate and supplant the older groups of standards. Then, the newer standards are replaced yet again, continuing in what appears to be an endless cycle.

i suppose that's happening with natural language too.

After looking around a bit, this strongly reminds me of Václav Havel's play, "The Memorandum" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Memorandum).

Past related threads:

Ithkuil: A Philosophical Design for a Hypothetical Language - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20557830 - July 2019 (29 comments)

Utopian for Beginners (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17340757 - June 2018 (4 comments)

Ithkuil: A Philosophical Design for a Hypothetical Language - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14049712 - April 2017 (39 comments)

Ithkuil: A Philosophical Design for a Hypothetical Language - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8312842 - Sept 2014 (2 comments)

An amateur linguist loses control of the language he invented (2012) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8180493 - Aug 2014 (106 comments)

John Quijada and Ithkuil, the Language He Invented - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5420942 - March 2013 (27 comments)

Ithkuil, an invented language (for humans) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4932205 - Dec 2012 (2 comments)

> O’yë aitkánz lo’lsöspa kšänhëi’lujmu ih Jonkihada.

> ‘The chief clown, John Quijada, is engaged in constructing a new language for the good of everyone.’

(Quijada likes to use clowns in his examples, don’t ask me why)

I would like to recommend looking into the most recent script proposal at [0], especially if someone is inclined toward calligraphy.

In my humble opinion the script for Ithkuil III and the current proposal adapted from it are both together a work of art in itself.

[0]: https://ithkuil.place/4/archive/script/script-v0.3.5-2019-11...

jan Misali's Conlang Critic episode on Ithkuil[1] was pretty good, though I don't remember if it mentioned what version of the language was being covered.

1: https://youtu.be/e_n3loSfejg ( 6m 27s )

Version III. (0:20..0:25.)

Wow. After reviewing a couple of the pages, that appears to be to human languages what C++ is to programming.

Which is intended to be descriptive, not pejorative.

I would rather compare it to a language for code-golfing: very compact and impractical.

IthkuAPL?

(sorry)

This article [0] covers its fascinating history and adoption by somewhat unsavory characters.

[0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/24/utopian-for-be...

What a great link. Thank you. My own little personally obsessive python project is far more modest, but at least gives insight to the motivation.

If you're wondering what Ithkuil is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_x_PQ85_0k

Here's a spoken (sung) version of it:

https://youtu.be/AAJlr5C8fPA?t=166

I'd like to see the translation of Steven Wright's joke about

"The feeling when you're sitting in a chair and lean back on two legs and then go too far and nearly fall over but just at the last moment you catch yourself."

Reminds me of Speedtalk [0] from the Heinlein novella "Gulf." [1] Okay, apparently I'm not the first person to make that connection. [2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speedtalk [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_(novella) [2] http://ithkuil.net/faqs.html

There's a fascinating New Yorker article on Ithkuil and constructed languages in general:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/24/utopian-for-be...

Hmmm...links to IV seem to be broken.

I don't get this. No one is going to ever speak this language except the creator to himself. If it's not going to be spoken, why limit yourself to representations that can be made in air by normal human beings? If it's not ever spoken, then there are better methods of encoding information.

Well, for someone interested in languages conlanging can just be fun! I don't think most people are under the impression that their language will be popular.

It also serves as an interesting "what-if," i.e. what would a language look like if it were designed from the ground up to be as logical as possible. No idea if this is interesting to the average person, but it is to me.

However (and I'm not saying this is or will be the case with Ithkuil) there are several constructed languages that do indeed have sizeable communities (the internet has made this easier): esperanto, toki pona, lojban, even klingon has multiple speakers.

I don't know about Ithkuil specifically, but I know that lojban is a constructed language that has a small community around it that actively write/speak it amongst each other.

But regardless, the whole exercise of creating a new language from scratch is definitely informative.

I definitely agree. I phrased my comment incorrectly so it sounds like I am being critical, when I was actually thinking of something else.

> […] why limit yourself to representations that can be made in air by normal human beings?

For a constructed language using non-human forms of expression, you can check out Rikchik language, created by Denis M Moskowitz [0].

> No one is going to ever speak this language except the creator to himself.

Well, it’s a hobby and an art form. Do you ask someone drawing still life compositions, why he/she is doing this, when photography is a thing? Besides, people DO use the language in this particular example, although more as an interesting pastime activity than a regular language.

Granted, constructing languages makes an extremely niche hobby. Still, without it there probably wouldn’t be The Lord of the Rings (for Tolkien’s opinion on language creation, check [1]). There are still people learning Klingon, Lojban, toki pona, Dothraki, and so on.

Esperanto and modern Hebrew (to some extent) are also more practical examples of this art.

For a more elaborate insight into this hobby, there is the book “In the Land of Invented Languages” by Arika Okrent.

[0]: https://www.suberic.net/~dmm/rikchik/rikchik.html [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Secret_Vice

> Well, it’s a hobby and an art form

Understood. I think it's great. I was leading up to my question of why restrict yourself to the limits of spoken language when it will never be used for spoken communication. If communication efficiency is the goal then come up with a language that can express every human thought and emotion in the least amount of bits. Thanks for the links.

Well, the idea was to create the most efficient and compact language for humans to use. Having a species with 3000 vocal chords and 30 arms for a bonus sign language elements would be easier to work with, but wouldn’t be usable by humans.

And as in my previous comment, languages for non-humanoid species do exists if someone prefers to go in that direction.

Similarly, toki pona was designed to contain only the most popular phonemes among human languages, because it was designed with humans in mind.

Edit: I should stop starting the comments with “well”, shouldn’t I? :P

Edit 2: The “spoken” aspect can be similar to why we use CSV and TSV file formats, while even ASCII had from the beginning assigned characters for record delimiter — humans grasp easier thinks they can see/hear.

It expands the mind!

Note that Ithkuil III does kind of have the unpronounceable quality - I've heard it described as sounding like a "hacking cough".

But the actual structure of the language is fascinating, and brings a lot of stuff about English into focus. English loves making new words, and the resulting combinatorial explosion makes various concepts unrepresentable. Ithkuil has very few words, but allows you to attach enormous amounts of grammar to them to adjust their meaning coarsely or finely.

For an example of something I simply hadn't considered before, and which Ithkuil expanded my mind to encompass: it even has a grammatical way to indicate a statement that is true because it has just been stated. Search term: the "declarative" illocution. Just as you can adjust a statement using grammar to turn it into a question - i.e. a statement with neutral truth value pending a reply - you can turn it into a "declaration" (no real English equivalent exists) - i.e. a statement with a positive truth value pending the listeners' acceptance. Example: "this court is now in session".

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