[ExI] need a new word/suffix
Anders Sandberg
anders at aleph.se
Thu Jan 14 08:31:26 UTC 2016
On 2016-01-13 21:48, spike wrote:
> Esperanto is a good example of a system in which a lot of investment
> was made with little to show for it.
>
> Klingon is another example. You hear it at Star Trek conventions
> (with some of the hardcore yahoos very fluent) but it never gained
> much traction: didn’t take advantage of existing language expertise.
>
I recommend "In the Land of Invented Languages" by Arika Okrent. She
goes through the history and approaches to artificial languages.
Esperanto is an auxlang, intended to help people communicate: it is by
far the most successful such language. It is just not useful enough.
Meanwhile Klingon is full with linguistic in-jokes: it is deliberately
obtuse to be alien, and unlikely to be easy to learn (Okrent's framing
story is about her learning Klingon - she is a professional linguist,
how hard could it be?)
The problem is that languages are fairly expensive if you convert the
time it takes to learn them into salaried hours. They need to be very
useful to be worth it.
(Trivia: the micronation Moresnet planned to use Esperanto as official
language. http://www.ipernity.com/blog/jens_s_larsen/242660 )
--
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University
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