Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 11:43:43 49558,
You have got to be about the most superficial commentator on con-langues since
the idiotic B. Gilson.
Did I miss the one where you said which conlang you're fluent in and read at
least three times a week and can read new books in every week of even one year
or listen to radio shows in every week? New radio shows?
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 11:55:13 49558,
New radio shows?
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 11:55:14 49558,
Yeah, I'm surprised you don't know that there are radio shows put out in
Esperanto every week. I thought you were supposed to be an expert.
And, which of the conlangs are you fluent in?
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 11:55:16 49558,
I was born in 1998 so I don't know what a radio is sorry
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 11:55:18 49558,
I suppose you think that's cute. What it makes you is a fraud.
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 11:55:19 49558,
yeah but I'm a cute fraud though right?
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 11:55:21 49558,
I assume that anyone who is reading this should assume since you have not
mentioned which one you actually can speak that the answer is you don't speak
any of them .
Let me guess, you can speak English and maybe a little, tiny bit of a second
language but you couldn't actually live in what you know of it. Typical.
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 11:55:23 49558,
sina sona ike! mi ken toki kepeken toki pona. taso, ona li toki lili. jan ale
li ken kama sona toki kepeken ona kepeken tenpo lili! tenpo pini la mi toki ala
e ona tan ni. ni li ale.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 11:55:24 49558,
toki pono or whatever it is? Give me a break. Show me the bibliography.
Show me the speaking language community, show me the technical literature
written or translated into it, show me the literature from many countries
translated into it. I wonder, since its inspiration is supposed to be Taoism
if they've translated any of the literature of Taoism into it.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 11:55:26 49558,
toki pona is a game that is a little above pig-Latin and way below Ido. About
its only virtue is that it lacks the nationalistic hegemony of Basic English.
I'd love to see someone try to translate a 4th grade level chapter book into
it. Or try to. Why don't you wow us by translating The Little Engine That
Could or .... no. An even better demonstration. How about you translate
Gerda Malaperis into it.
Mike S.
Sun May 4 11:55:28 49558,
Ouch.
Flaming Obsidian
Sun May 4 12:06:23 49558,
I can translate the entirety of Moby Dick, if you want to challenge me. Also,
Toki Pona has a whole community, unlike slowly dying Ido.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:06:25 49558,
I'm not an idist, I'm an Esperantist, a language which has the largest
"conglang" community in history. I bet you couldn't translate Moby Dick into
toki pona and have anyone who hadn't read the original tell you what was going
on in most of it. I'll bet your translation would be controversial. The
language is radically vague except when talking about the simplest things. It
wasn't designed to talk about complicated things, its inventor said as much.
Mike S.
Sun May 4 12:06:27 49558,
This snippet is the entirety of the lackluster "Literature" section of
Wikipedia's article on TP: "Lang has published proverbs, some poetry, and a
basic phrase book in Toki Pona." Actually, there is a little bit more than
that, but not much more. Perhaps the most significant work I can find is a
translation of The Little Prince
(https://failbluedot.com/toki_pona/jan_lawa_lili/). The translation however is
not very faithful, but rather is heavily abridged. When you translate it back
to English (to the extent that is even possible) and compare it to the
original, it sounds like what you'd say if you were trying to explain the story
to a 2- or 3-year-old child. All the little details melt away like snowflakes
falling into a campfire. There is no alternative; TP lacks the necessary
lexicon and syntax to faithfully convey the full story. It is essentially
glorified baby talk, and I doubt the original author would have been very
pleased with this translation.
Despite all that, Flaming Obsidian, I do challenge you to translate the
entirety of Moby Dick into TP. I suspect it would be a good learning
experience.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:06:28 49558,
I just looked at an article, I notice that it says the inventor of t.p.
translated the Tao te Ching INTO ESPERANTO.
I like how she purposely limited the number of words for numbers so it wouldn't
be easy to talk about "big numbers" in the language. Numbers like 5 and
sixteen, apparently.
I've got nothing against people playing in the language but to pretend it's a
real language with even an unsophisticated range of usefulness is simply not
true. Seems to me if they're going to be true to the inventors intention they
can't really make it so. Zamenhof invented Esperanto to do that and he built
in means of extending a fairly small vocabulary into a far larger number of
usable words. Claude Piron was able to write some fairly technical and
sophisticated books as well as crime novels and even beginner books like Gerda
Malaperis that, by the end of the book, feel quite normal.
I really meant it when I said that though I studied French and German for years
and use them practically every day, Esperanto is the only secondary language
that I can use with practically the same fluency and feel of fluency that I do
my native English. And I don't speak it all that often. compared to French.
Flaming Obsidian
Sun May 4 12:06:30 49558,
Simplicity does not mean stupidity. All of your points rely on the claim that
simple things are for idiots. I know it may be difficult to translate things
into Toki Pona, but that does not mean it is a dumb language. You could easily
translate many things into V0tgil, but that does not make it a good language.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:06:32 49558,
A language of 120 words, designed by its inventor to not be able to express
complex ideas or numbers bigger than - what was it in the official vocabulary,
two? - cannot express complex thoughts in a clear manner. It would be like
trying to translate a modern novel into an ancient language in which modern
ideas and things had no vocabulary. Only without having the freedom to invent
neologisms as they did in Finland when they tried to do their Latin news
reports. They were popular but they had to invent a lot of words to pull it
off.
I will bet if you came up with a toki pona translation of Gerda Malaperis by
Claude Piron most of the users of t.p. wouldn't understand what the story was
about or what was happening during most of it. Go on, prove me wrong. There
must be an English translation of it somewhere.
Flaming Obsidian
Sun May 4 12:06:33 49558,
Challenge accepted.
Flaming Obsidian
Sun May 4 12:06:35 49558,
Here's chapter 1 of Gerda Malaperis. It only took me a few minutes to write it.
https://pastebin.com/NzMGm4C2
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:06:37 49558,
Let's see you translate the last chapter of it. The first chapter is the
simplest one. How about the chapter where Linda is trying to figure out what
she's going to do when the blond guy leaves.
I'd like some other toki pona user who didn't know the story prove they
understood it on a cold reading.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:06:38 49558,
I retranslated your translation and it's hardly a clear translation of what the
text says.
Am I right, you describe the blond young man as being pale yellow? Really?
Flaming Obsidian
Sun May 4 12:06:40 49558,
No, pi linja jelo translates as "having yellow hair." Linja is a more informal
term for hair, the more formal term being linja lawa. jelo walo is pale yellow.
This must be a form of pigeon chess, to translate a text for somebody who does
not know the language I am translating into.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:06:42 49558,
I looked at t.p. and learned to read it once, though there wasn't much of
anything interesting to read in it. It didn't take long. I am not impressed
with the translation and I do doubt that if someone was unfamiliar with the
story if they would really understand what is supposed to be going on in it. It
would be an interesting test to make. I wonder what the inventor of t.p. would
have to say about it.
As the story is in Esperanto, using pretty much exclusively a very small
vocabulary, as I recall all of them standard, "official" roots and grammatical
forms, it's obvious that E-o can do that.
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:06:44 49558,
"Haha you don't know any conlangs"
"That one doesn't count"
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:06:46 49558,
A conlang of 120 words, it has three numbers "one, two and many" because its
author didn't want the language to have the ability to express "big numbers"
and doesn't like the introduction of the word for "hand" to represent the huge
number five.
toki pona isn't so much a language as it is a game. It takes the absurdities
that sprang from Basic English with its 850 words and magnifies them
enormously. If you had read Gerda Malaperis, with its own radically reduced
vocabulary, and read the "translation" of the first chapter into toki pona
linked to above, you would see that it isn't a language in any way. Some
people call it a "pidgen" but it's not even that.
Anyone who thinks they can judge a real constructed language on the basis of
toki pona is probably too ignorant to have an important idea on the topic.
So, you speak toki pona? I have a feeling the place it got the best workout
was at the Esperanto Youth group's workshop on it at the International Congress
a while back. I don't know if they taped it but it would be interesting to see
how those conlangers who know an actual conlang did with it.
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:06:47 49558,
lol
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:06:49 49558,
So you don't speak toki pona. Why am I surprised?
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:06:51 49558,
I'm sorry but I'm just having trouble comprehending the sheer volume of haughty
obstinance it must take to engage with a comment that only says "lol".
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:06:52 49558,
You should have put your period between "comprehending" and "the" and left
everything after the period out.
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:06:54 49558,
Is this your job, to do this?
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:06:55 49558,
You've finally said something amusing. The idea that someone gets paid to
promote a conlang or criticize one is mildly amusing. As is the idea that
refuting you is work.
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:06:57 49558,
I mean you've written some pretty lengthy comments on here, I was wondering if
you had some reason for doing this or just really value your time so little
that you consider it a priority to refute even the most asinine response to
your youtube comment thread where you make fun of someone for not being a
die-hard esperantist.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:06:59 49558,
I think fast and type fast. I write several thousand words most day. This is
child's play.
I haven't made fun of anyone for not being a "die-hard Esperantist" I haven't
made fun of anyone for not being an Esperantist. The only non-Esperantists I
have anything against are those who say untrue things about the language as a
language and a real phenomenon in the world.
My criticism of toki pona was with the idea that it was a language instead of a
game. Try writing the English language using 120 words even if you use all of
their grammatical inflections within that. The results won't be communication
on any but the vaguest of levels. I have no problem with people playing with
toki pona if they want to but to claim you could translate Moby Dick or even
Gerda Malaperis into it is absurd. By the way, I respect toki pona enough to
not capitalize it. I might think Ms. Lang is kind of eccentric but I don't
have anything against her or her project, such as it is instead of such as it
isn't.
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:07:00 49558,
Well I'm glad to see you've found something productive to do with that big head
of yours.
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 12:07:02 49558,
"I respect toki pona enough to not capitalize it"
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51UGifIDjML._SX331_BO1,204,203,
200_.jpg
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:07:03 49558,
The instructions I found online said that it never used upper case letters, did
that change or was the thing I learned to "read" it from wrong?
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:07:05 49558,
Hey, if you're going to get snarky I'm going to return it with attitude. I can
also kick it around if necessary.
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:07:07 49558,
Well, let's see it then. Go on and have a go at me.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:07:09 49558,
Oh, I thought I was already being too edgy for you. Or was it just too long?
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:07:11 49558,
No, actually.
Luis Manuel Ontiveros
Sun May 4 12:07:13 49558,
+Conlang Critic thank you for pinning this absurd thread. You gained one more
subscriber ;)
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:07:14 49558,
sethraptor thank you for giving me something entertaining to read (that is to
say, i'm on your side here, i wish english had affect suffixes)
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:07:44 49558,
Yeah seriously that would be so useful on internet.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:07:46 49558,
I'd have to see what it was, the active, using community it attracted, the ways
it is USEFUL and the literature it produced. One person doesn't determine if
one conlang is better than another, a community that adopts and uses it does.
That is if it isn't something ridiculously impractical such as Loglan or Toki
Pona
The history of Esperanto "improvements" is a long one but the only ones that
have been successful are minor points which have changed in the century + of
its use by a community of users. The basic structure of the language has,
already, passed the test of time in users whose native languages have been from
many different families of languages around the world. Several of the best
writers in Esperanto grew up speaking such non-Indo-European languages as
Japanese and Hungarian.
Mike S.
Sun May 4 12:07:48 49558,
Loglan is often presented as a "logical language", but actually it was a
homebrew project putatively designed to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. That
needs to be fully appreciated if you wish to understand why the language was
designed the way it was. Starting in 1955, the creator seems to have been
working mostly on his own, with minimal input from others, and never
incorporated the various advances in transformational grammar, formal
semantics, case role theory, etc that appeared in the 1970s and 1980s. Along
the way, innumerable kludges, patches and just plain bizarre design decisions
found their way into the language over the time of several decades. Suffice
to say that Loglan and Lojban should not be presented as IALs. However, just as
with Toki Pona,some enthusiasts did not get the memo that the language was NOT
designed to be an IAL. I will say, however, that a properly reformed loglanoid
language could probably be used as an auxlang. Such a language might be useful
in clearing up ambiguities that might arise between people of different
cultural backgrounds in conversation, arguably helping to avoid
misunderstandings. Whether a properly reformed loglanoid would ever attract a
significant following and a movement is, of course, an entirely different
question.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:07:51 49558,
Last time I looked one of the inventors of Loglan bragged that two people had
actually sustained conversation in it for 45 minutes. I believe by that time
in the history of Esperanto there had actually been international congresses
conducted entirely in the language with participants from many different
countries. Let me know when the world-wide community of those who could
actually get along for an hour in the language reaches three figures.
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:07:53 49558,
I'm no expert, but it seems to me like if you judge every "conglang" against
the virtues of Esperanto, then of course Esperanto is going to come out on top
since it literally is Esperanto. Of course a minimalistic spiritually minded
experimental language isn't going to be tremendously successful as an
international auxiliary, especially compared to THE "definitive" auxlang that
is gloriously prolific Esperanto. I would even venture to say that Esperanto's
main virtues are it's widespread use and recognition which may or may not have
to do with it's merits as an auxlang. Whether these goals themselves are worth
pursuing is another matter entirely, and to be honest, mostly irrelevant.
Mike S.
Sun May 4 12:07:56 49558,
Anthony McCarthy, perhaps you aren't aware of some the current usage in Lojban
(Loglan's successor language). Currently there is a good amount of
conversation occurring in Lojban, both in IRC and voice chat. There are
translations and there is also some original musical output on Youtube and
Vimeo if you're curious. I am not trying to compare Lojban to Esperanto. I'm
just trying to make you aware of things. If you have read my last comment, you
know that my view is that Lojban is need of radical reform, and that it's not
suitable as an IAL candidate, at least not in its current state.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:07:59 49558,
I have read about Lojban, it is essentially the same language with some
differences to get past the copyright on it, as I recall.
If it isn't as simple to learn as Esperanto has proven to be over decades, I
doubt it has much of a chance to become practical or widely used. Simplicity
of learning mixed with having enough established community, literature, etc. to
make it worth learning is essential to it becoming more than a hobby.
Mike S.
Sun May 4 12:08:01 49558,
Natural languages get pretty complicated and are still used, so I don't think
the degree of simplicity of Esperanto is a necessity for learning. Simplicity
is not the end-all that trumps all other considerations, but is one goal that
has to be balanced with other goals, such as versatility and the possibility of
expressing precise, nuanced thoughts. Esperanto and Lojban don't have the same
goals, so again, at the risk of repeating myself, it's not really apt to
compare Esperanto and Lojban directly. Lojban was designed for purposes that
are separate from Esperanto's IAL idealism.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:08:02 49558,
A second language isn't learned under the same conditions under which a mother
tongue is, learned from birth as the first means of communication, during all
of the waking hours a child experiences. A conlang would be learned in a way
more like a second language learned in school would be. Language instructions
in schools are notorious for their not producing speaking ability and, usually,
more than slight reading skills.
I'm skeptical about the linguistic theory that Loglan was formed to
demonstrate, I've got no problem with people playing with it but it's not going
to be widely used because it is too different from most or any other language.
Mike S.
Sun May 4 12:08:04 49558,
Anthony, any second language, if it's going to be learned at all, is going to
be learned only by the minority of people who are motivated to learn it.
Esperanto is no exception. No matter how simple a language is (assuming it's
fully functional and not a toy like Toki Pona), learning still requires
significant practice and memorization. It takes commitment.
In the case of Lojban, Lojban is learned by the sort of people who want to
learn Lojban and absolutely no one else. I have been studying the language for
a while, though I am not fluent. I share your skepticism of Sapir-Whorf,
assuming you are referring to that, but I do think that Lojban is worthwhile
for the purpose of bringing preconceptions to consciousness and encouraging
clear and precise thinking. As a I said earlier, the language could stand a
serious reformation -- I agree with you that it should be made simpler in order
to learn and use. I agree it's more complex than it needs to be, but that's
the way it is for now.
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:08:06 49558,
mostly he knows how to be evasive and a pedant.
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:08:08 49558,
I see anthony as the kind of guy who sees himself as some kind of big
intellectual, but the only way he has to express his expert thesaurus reading
skills is on youtube, where he picks fights by way of hyperbole.
Mike is all about the facts, and argues with information. He doesn't worry so
much about how the debate will turn out in the end because he's just in it for
the pursuit of truth.
I think what this comment thread really means is that argument for the sake of
argument is futile, and by injecting the thread with personal emotional
investment, Anthony has set himself up from the start to have accomplished
nothing by the end of this treacherous journey.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:08:10 49558,
Oh, for crying out loud. I've been reading and participating in conlang
discussions for decades. I know what I'm talking about, if that's pedantic,
I'm not ashamed of it. I do, actually, USE one and have looked at several of
them in depth. Mordu min.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:08:13 49558,
Anthony McCarthy decades? christ you must be boring
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:08:15 49558,
As I say to my students, boredom is a sign of stupidity.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:08:17 49558,
Anthony McCarthy a) you dont say that, you just wanted to flaunt the fact youre
a teacher as though thatd equate to some intellectual authority
b) so youre never bored? when youre grading your students' tests you sit at
your desk fucking ecstatic, having the time of your life? if not then ur an
idiot according to urself
c) if i a) had students and b) told them that every single person named anthony
is a 45 year old mine who was recently divorced with one rebellious teenager
daughter who wears shorts and has white socks with one red and one blue stripe
with a beer belly who sits at his desk looking down at his monitor with his
glasses low down on his nose, it wouldnt make it true
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:08:19 49558,
Well, you are just about entirely wrong in all your speculations.
If you think conlangs are booorrrring and you come here to talk about them you
can't be too bright. It's such a novel concept to so many of you guys, knowing
what you're talking about.
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:08:21 49558,
I used to think someone who is decades old would be above fighting with <2
decade olds on youtube comments but I guess you can never know anything these
days.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:08:23 49558,
Oh, is that what you think. Or is that what you just said. I can assure you,
I'm quite able to kick it around with you young'uns. Especially if you don't
bother to know what you're talking about, which is what surprised me.
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:19:47 49558,
Well you see Anthony I actually can't know what I'm talking about, because it
all depends on the country, region, and social context. Because of this fact,
knowledge is unknowable to any single human.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:19:49 49558,
Anthony McCarthy show me exactly where i said conlangs are borings, why the
fuck would i be here if i didnt like conlangs?
Luis Manuel Ontiveros
Sun May 4 12:19:51 49558,
Stop feeding the troll... (unless this is all becoming ironic, which is hard to
tell :v)
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:19:52 49558,
As the other guys don't seem to know anything about the topic, it's ironic that
you'd call someone who does a troll.
I guess it's always a rule of comment tread commenting, that ignorance rules
because those are the people who troll comment threads. How's that for irony?
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:19:54 49558,
How is that for irony, Anthony? Care to elaborate?
Luis Manuel Ontiveros
Sun May 4 12:19:55 49558,
You know, I think I'm actually sort of starting to like your idiotic comments
again :) keep 'em coming!
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:19:57 49558,
Because a "troll" was originally a person who didn't address the issues at
hand. Now it apparently means someone who knows enough to be able to do that
as opposed to people who don't and so can't.
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:19:58 49558,
Well I'm glad there's at least one person here with the knowledge to maintain
some level of academic excellence for this comment thread at youtube dot com
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:20:00 49558,
"SAD!""SAD!""SAD!" Did you learn English from reading Donald Trump tweets?
Toki pona doesn't even have an official word for a number other than one, two
and "many", it was designed to only be able to express the most minimal of
information and, as the "translation" of even the first, most vocabulary
limited chapter of Gerda Malaperis shows, it can't even really do that. It
doesn't have user community, it has a gamer community. Lojban has a tiny
number of people able to use it and it's so difficult and artificial that it is
destined to never have more than a tiny user community. Neither are a viable
conlang.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:20:01 49558,
Well, you would seem to have other habits in common with Donald Trump, not
being able to understand when what you want to be true has been refuted, for
one. So, where is the rest of the Gerda Malaperis translation into Toki pona?
You don't even have to go to the last chapter which uses the full c. 500 root
vocabulary of the book, that one where Linda is trying to decide what to do if
the blonde guy gets up and leaves will make the point that, no, very little can
be translated into Toki pona and have another TP user understand it. I think
it's something like the ninth section of the book, though I'd have to look.
Obviously, you can say it in Esperanto since the book was written as a
beginner's reader in that language, one which has been successfully used and
understood by many thousands of Esperanto users and speakers.
Conlang Dude
Sun May 4 12:20:03 49558,
Anthony McCarthy if you want I'll translate that section if you find it. I've
never read Gerda Malaperis, but then why would I? The only reason it's at all
noteworthy is because it was written in a conlang, not a particularly good one
at that. Anyway, give me a link to a section and I'll translate it. You can
find some Toki Pona user to read it and let's see how close they are. Until
then, I'm off to speak non-Esperanto languages with any merit whatsoever. Oh
wait, it's redundant to say both "non-Esperanto" and "with any merit" because
the two are mutually inclusive.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:20:04 49558,
The trick is translating it in a way so that a person who doesn't know the
story, or the section translated, would understand what was going on in it. I
was familiar with the story and I am familiar with Toki pona and I would never
have been able to figure out what was happening in the story. Toki pona, with
its radically tiny vocabulary cannot do what is done by Claude Piron in that
book, give people an easy to learn language which will provide them with a
vocabulary and grammar able to do what can be done in any natural language with
the same level of precision and specificity. If you want an easier challenge
you could try to translate the texts and exercises of the Zagreb Method
textbook - available all over the place, free, online, with an even more
reduced vocabulary. I will bet you won't get far into it before the resources
of Toki pona are proven to be unable to produce the same equivalent use of
language that Esperanto does and has since the end of the 19th century. I
counted the vocabulary for the first lesson at about 40 words, or a third of
the entire corpus of Toki pona, By the time you get to lesson 4, you already
surpass the corpus of T.P. words for numbers and I'm sure in many other
categories of vocabulary.
I am sure you might give some vague sense of what is going on in the original,
though not much that is very specific. And according to the inventor of the
language, that was her intention. To only be able to talk about very simple
things, not a full range of human experience. It does no one any good to
pretend you could possibly do that with 120 words. Plus or minus "unofficial"
neologisms which, as it is the nature of neo-logisms, will start muddying the
water as fast as you invent them to clear things up. Anyone who has ever read
novels in a second language will know that experience, especially when those
words are ones you can't find in any but the most specialized dictionary of
jargon.
The history of Ido as opposed to Esperanto shows that once you start fiddling
to "improve" a language, you'll more likely drive your reform into decadence.
I can read Ido - it's really a dialect of Esperanto, more or less - but if I'm
going to use a conlang I want one where people will understand what I'm saying
instead of being confused by my "improvements" or "reforms" or neologisms. I
do agree with the late Claude Piron on the desireability of clarity over
novelty. I am certain you will never be able to translate his fine study La
Bona Lingvo into TP.
As I said, I have no problem with people wanting to play with Toki pona or
Lojban or Ido but except for the ever fading project of Ido, there is no chance
of them becoming a useful conlang for general communication.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:20:06 49558,
The word, itself, isn't old, it came up on Usernet in 1991 and I would call
your attention, such as it is, to the first line from Merriam Websters:
Definition of conlang
: an invented language intended for human communication that has planned and
cohesive phonological, grammatical, and syntactical systems
"Intended for human communication" contains more than can be expresed in any
120 +- word game. If 120 words, why not 12? Why not 2? Yes No. You could
communicate something with just Yes and No but nothing clearly about something
and no more information than affirmation or negation. It's almost certain that
more times than not one or both parties won't know what is being talked about
or what is being affirmed or negated.
Your statement about the example of Gerda Malaperis is a transparently
dishonest dodge. I proposed the test of Toki pona because it is a novella
written very successfully, communicating quite clearly in a vocabulary of about
500 word roots, many of which are grammatical affixes. I would hazard the
guess that any natural language which is used to communicate about life in the
late 20th and early 21st century could come up with a translation of it which
carries the full meaning of the story, probably most of it in fairly direct,
literal translation due to the flexibility of sentence structure in Esperanto.
I'm sure there could be a totally successful translation into many conlangs,
but not Toki pona becaue it lacks sufficent vocabulary and clarity BY THE
DESIGN OF THE WOMAN WHO INVENTED IT. I'm sure there is probably a possibility
of doing a translation into Lojban, though perhaps not as the language was
constructed, suppoedly to make lies impossible to tell in it and lies play an
important part in the story.
You don't know what you're talking about.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:20:08 49558,
No, let's not leave it at that because any conlang that hopes or deserves to
become an actual, used language exists to facilitate human communication, not
to test a theory or a flaky idea that someone has. There is a very good word
for "language" projects that aren't for general communication but are some kind
of embodiment of a theory (Loglan-Lojban) or philosophical position (T.P.) or a
make believe, non-human community (Elvish, for example).
I very seldom talk about conlangs or language in general while using Esperanto,
I talk about all kinds of other things unrelated to language and language
problems. And I do it with people who can understand what I'm saying with the
same level of precision that others can when I'm speaking my native language.
I do, by the way, think it would be a very good test of the theory behind
Loglan-Lojban to see if a story in which lies play an intrinsic part could be
translated into it. If those lies could be expressed in the language, they're
obviously not a test of the theory. If they can't, then could you lie to the
Nazis about where their intended victims were hiding in it? I wonder if anyone
has ever tested the theory in that way.
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:20:09 49558,
Listen guy, academic linguistics doesn't even all agree on what a language is
for normal old natural languages, so it's awful big-headed of you to think that
you can make the distinction between what is and isn't a "real" "conlang". This
especially when your distinction is based on whether the "project" in question
imitates natural language,
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:20:10 49558,
I would bet you that you could get a hundred academic linguists in a room and
ask them if a language that limits itself to 120 words, has no word for numbers
other than the ones TP is limited to, other radical limitations in essential
words denoting specific things, actions and conditions of being, etc. and not
one of them would say it was a real language, some might note what I have, that
such a thing is a game.
Any language that deserves that designation will enable those who use it to
conduct all of their day-to-day communication within a reasonable range of
specificity. Any which don't aren't languages. Those dead languages which
left no or minimal remnants vocabulary which are available to us today could
not be considered a language that still exists, though they onced did. In the
same way any constructed "language" which limits itself to a vocabulary of a
similar number of words is, essentially, in the same category by design.
So, guy, why don't you go ask a bunch of "academic linguists" about that
instead of just assuming they'd agree with you. I'm not that impressed with
academic linguistics, George Lakoff, for example, I'd like to hear their
reasoning if they agreed with you. It might be fun.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:20:12 49558,
Good.
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:20:13 49558,
You do realize that linguistics is what allows conlangs to exist and be
discussed the way that they do and are
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:20:15 49558,
You said " academic linguistics doesn't even all agree on what a language is"
which is a different thing than the study of language in general. I doubt that
until the 20th century that "academic linguistics" had much of anything to do
with constructed languages and, as in the case of Glosa, Interglossa, Novial,
especially Interlingua and a host of others, the association was hardly a great
success. Why don't you read the late Don Harlow's history of conlang projects
before you go on. Look up "Don Harlow How To Build A Language Esperanto Book".
I think the reasons Esperanto worked were a. The fact that Zamenhof spoke
several languages and read more, b. he had the failed example of Volapuk to
learn from, c. he took a practical instead of a theoretical-academic approach
to the problem. His overall goal was communication among people who didn't
speak a common, natural language, not to illustrate some academic theory or
other.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:20:17 49558,
Anthony McCarthy i never realized pirahã isnt a real language
Conlang Dude
Sun May 4 12:20:18 49558,
Anthony McCarthy Similarly, Toki Pona achieves its goal. It's goal was to creat
communication with a radically small vocabulary. It does this, it does it
effectively, and most importantly it does it functionally. By design it isn't
meant to go into specifics but specifics in a sentence don't limit
communication by very much. Take the sentence "I glanced at the words littering
the page, before flicking my eyes over to him." It's a relatively detailed
sentence. Now saying "I looked at the words on the paper, then I looked at
him," doesn't communicate anything different. Now you could translate "mi lukin
e nimi pi lipu. mi lukin e ona" as either because they both mean the same.
Being able to differentiate between "disgusting paste (ko jaki)" and "mud"
isn't necessary because 99 times out of 100 it makes sense contextually. Your
argument is that TP has no detail but details come from context.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:20:20 49558,
I'd like to see someone write a news report into the Trump-Russia scandal in
T.P. Or the firing of James Comey. How would you say, "Donald Trump fired
James Comey to try to stop the Russian election hacking investigation".
You limit your vocabulary to 120 words, you'll find yourself severely limited
in what you can talk about and what you can say about that. You want to play
with that, I'm not against that. Pretending it can function as a full language
is a fraud.
I'm the one who pointed out, over and over again that Ms. Lang, in inventing
T.P. said she didn't want it to be able to talk about complex topics. Which is
incompatible with a full service language.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:20:22 49558,
Anthony McCarthy "Akesi utala jan pali e James Kome tawa pali tawa pakala ike e
Lusia pali kulupu tawa lon li e ike tawa oko li sona"
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:20:25 49558,
The test would be to give that to someone telling them nothing about what it
said and seeing if they could figure out what you were saying. Someone who
didn't know anything about it. I will bet it wouldn't work because, frankly, I
can't figure out what you're referring to and I proposed the sentence. Give a
word for word translation back into English.
Conlang Dude
Sun May 4 12:20:27 49558,
Anthony McCarthy "jan Tono Tunpu li pakala e pali pi jan Kemu Komi la ona li
ken pakala e lukin pi pakala pi lawa pi jan ale pi ma Lusa pi jan Kemu Komi."
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:20:28 49558,
I know that's a language which also doesn't have words for numbers beyond two,
or is it three. Other than that, perhaps like you, I don't really know much
about it. I do know that the people who use it would have to have more
specific means of talking about complex things than Toki pona provides or
they'd all have died out.
I would like to know what they do when they interact or trade with other people
with languages and more complex numbers systems.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:20:30 49558,
Anthony McCarthy So?
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:20:31 49558,
So comparing a real language with Toki pona and claiming that TP can stand on
an equal footing with it is absurd. In the context of the lives of the people
who speak Priaha, it's clear they don't require numbers larger than two. Who
in among the Toki pona community lives a life where they can get away with such
innumeracy?
If they tried to conduct business at the U.N. in Toki Pona I wonder what they'd
be able to do. I'm fairly confident that they'd be able to do most of not all
of it in Esperanto, or Ido, for that matter. Claude Piron was a UN
interpreter, by the way.
I really would like to see how many people who didn't know anything about the
Trump-Putin scandal would know that's what your translation of that sentence
was talking about because I don't think they would have any idea what you were
getting at. I have read books and articles about things I didn't know anything
about in Esperanto and I am just about certain I knew what they were talking
about and what they said about it.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:20:33 49558,
OK, so neither of you will do the exercise of giving a word for word
retranslation back into English so people will know what you think means what
the original says. I took yours and put it in an online Toki pona to English
translator - so no one can say I twisted it and this is what yours says
person Tono Tunpu is blunder such work belonging to people Kemu Komi it's said
he is is able to blunder such see belonging to blunder belonging to head of
people ale of land Lusa belonging to people Kemu Komi
Here's what it gave back for Nathan Harding's
reptile conflict person activity such James Kome to activity in order to
blunder bad such Lusia work community to be in/at/on be there is such negative
to eye is wisdom
If you want to give your own word for word retranslations, I would like to see
them.
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:20:34 49558,
Toki Pona isn't meant to be used to conduct business at the U.N.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:20:36 49558,
Anthony McCarthy you cant do word for word translations because a) what is and
is not a word isnt a concrete thing b) toki pona doesnt have words for "to
fire", "to hack", "to elect", "to stop" or "russia"
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:20:37 49558,
Of course a machine translation isn't going to work for Toki Pona, jesus lord
almighty.
All you've been doing this whole time is constructing a point of view
specifically designed to shit on Toki Pona and glorify precious Esperanto, and
repeating it over and over again without giving any justification or reason why
any of us should give a rat's ass what you think a "real" conlang is. To be
entirely honest Anthony, if you don't think it's interesting to make an
experimental conlang that explores what language is and what it's capable of, I
don't know what the fuck you're doing in the conlang community. Either explain
to us why this wild distinction you're making is somehow neither meaningless or
arbitrary, or shut up about how good you're stupid new radio shows are and how
this other language intentionally designed not to encompass complicated ideas
is bad for not being able to express complex ideas over and over forever.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:20:39 49558,
So, you do it, retranslate what you translated into Toki pona, word for word so
people who haven't spent the several days it takes to be able to master its 120
words and grammar will know what you think contains the meaning of the original
so they can judge if it's clear what it's talking about.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:20:40 49558,
You could translate the words you claim carry the same meaning of the original
sentence, that it would prove my point that Toki pona cannot function as a real
language but only - as a means of saying extremely simple things- as its
inventor intended. It can't translate Moby Dick as was claimed, it can't even
translate that one sentence and produce a clear meaning as to what is being
said.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:20:42 49558,
Why, Donnie, I didn't think you spent your time on Youtube conlang comment
threads. I have a feeling that Comey, when he's asked, under oath will deny
what Trump claims about him telling him that - especially the version in the
iterview with Lester Holt because Comey isn't stupid enough to have broken the
law by setting up a quid pro quo (how do you translate that into Toki pona, I
wonder). Donald Trump has criminal reasons to have tried to stop the
investigation into his campaign and regime committing treason with the Putin
crime family, I can only imagine how many family members and associates he's
going to pardon as he flees on a chopper with a guarantee by Pence (assuming he
hasn't already been forced out) that he'll pardon him like Ford pardoned Nixon.
Why does it surprise me that the rest of it sounds like Trump, too?
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:20:44 49558,
So you don't do English particularly well, do you. I listened to the hearing
where Clapper and Yates testified, that's not what they said.
Apparently the reason you don't notice that Toki pona isn't a real language
able to deal specifically with anything but the simplest level of vague
communication because you don't think at a very high level, either.
How many of the guys I've been arguing with are your sock puppets?
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:20:45 49558,
Anthony McCarthy they dont do english at all they speak it
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:20:47 49558,
Akira Enderle also do you have a reddit account?? id love to see your conlang
Conlang Dude
Sun May 4 12:20:48 49558,
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:20:50 49558,
What did I say that was not true?
No one who didn't know what was going on in the news would have understood
either of those sentences in Toko pona. "mi povas diri unu aferon al vi"
really, which online translator did YOU use.
Eble ili kredas ke vi pravas, "kredas" cxar ili ne pensas. Ili scias nenion
pri la problemoj de interkomunikado. Por ili, estas ret-ludilo.
Friggin' TP has got me all messed up. Bah!
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:20:51 49558,
Just so no-one gets me mistaken, I am not a trump supporter.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:20:53 49558,
I wonder how many of those are your sockpuppets.
And as I told someone above, mordu min.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:20:54 49558,
I suspect that one of your commentators might be the anti-Esperanto troll Bruce
Gilson who used to infest conlang discussions, he was a right wing Republican,
as I recall.
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:20:56 49558,
rawr XD bites u >w<
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:20:58 49558,
Anthony McCarthy do you honestly think seth gets his friends to gang up on
someone on youtube?? also ive never ever seen, heard or otherwise communicated
with someone who i knew was white as quickly as you
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:20:59 49558,
sethraptor we must be annoying the fuck out of mitch
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:21:01 49558,
Sorry Mitch
Luis Manuel Ontiveros
Sun May 4 12:21:02 49558,
Lol. I'm still getting my daily update of this mess :v
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:21:04 49558,
I have no idea why several people who obviously know nothing about conlangs are
doing this, I'm just answering them. As a comment down thread says, I'm
getting updates on this and most of them seem to be attacking what I said. I
don't have any problem answering them because most of the stuff is either silly
on its face or stuff that was said in conlang discussions before the word was
invented and before most of you were born.
That one or more of them are suckers for Donald Trump even as he proves himself
to be a liar, a traitor and a pathological falling despot doesn't surprise me.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:21:05 49558,
Anthony McCarthy yes youre right akira (and almost definitely seth, mike s,
etc.) and i have made conlangs but we dont know what they are according to you,
and im not a narcissist im a fucking dumbass who hates themself but seth, akira
and i havent said a word that's untrue or false (unless it was sarcastic but
youre a big boy, you can figure that out yourself)
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:32:06 49558,
A conlang made by someone who has a habit of attributing statements to people
who haven't made them, I wonder what that would be like. Where is it
published, I want to see it.
It's no great achievement to having constructed a language project, as Don
Harlow pointed out in that chapter I recommended to you, Mario Pei said he used
to get several sent to him every month. The only one that has ever been more
than a scheme or a project, both generating an actual user community which uses
it for actual communication on a sufficient level, over more than a century,
now, is Esperanto. It has had the proven stability - with modest, minor
changes in common usage but with the structure intact - and the practicality to
endure.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:32:07 49558,
Anthony McCarthy im sorry are you genuinely trying to say that one's
personality and traits come across in their conlang(s)? i'm sorry, are you
really that stupid? also, sorry, you're right, nothing seth, akira, etc. and i
has ever made is a real conlang, because they're not as good as esperanto
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:32:09 49558,
Getting insults from someone like you don't bother me. If you'd given me
reasons to respect your thinking it might.
If you want to create a language which no one but yourself will ever use, go
ahead. I don't care. But the idea of a conlang is to communicate among people
who aren't contained in your own head.
Eventually most normal people want to talk with other people about something
other than conlangs so they'll want an actual language they can learn easily,
use naturally with which to talk to other people. It isn't a geeky form of
gaming niche, it's a means of communication with normal people about other
things.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:32:10 49558,
Anthony McCarthy you havent given any of us a reason to respect your thinking,
because it's fucking stupid. and no, the idea of a conlang is not to
communicate with others, it is an art form and of course you're gonna come up
with some bullshit that only makes sense to you to refute that.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:32:12 49558,
Anthony McCarthy also, what the fuck, who said conlanging was a "gaming niche"?
what the fuck are you on about?
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:32:13 49558,
Apparently that's what it is for you. A language that can't communicate, that
exists in the inventor's head, you don't need the word "conlang" for that,
there's already a term for a language only one person can understand, it's
called a "dead language" or, when no one else ever has or ever will understand
it an aborted language. I wonder how many of your fellow gamester-conglangers
will bother to learn each others languages. How many can say "May I order a
cup of coffee" in yours? Can you say that?
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:32:15 49558,
Now you're just being a silly billy. I'm old enough that I remember when
conlang discussions weren't the equivalent of the Society For Putting Things On
Top of Other Things. It was about people communicating.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:32:16 49558,
Anthony McCarthy each other's*
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:32:18 49558,
Anthony McCarthy "silly billy"?? jesus christ man
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:32:20 49558,
So you don't want to reveal to the world how you would order a cup of coffee in
your invented language?
How many of you geeks have learned each others languages? I'm guessing that
you NEVER learn to use them, I doubt most of you ever learn them, yourselves.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:32:21 49558,
I was trying to use language you might understand.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:32:23 49558,
Anthony McCarthy you cant order cups of coffee because there arent any words
for cup or coffee (yet) and it doesnt fucking matter if we learn eachother's or
whoever uses them, a (con)language's worth is not defined on the amount of
people who learn it and are you seriously calling us "geeks"?? do you live in
the 1950s?? and also, we're geeks but you've been having conlang discussions
for decades?? grow the fuck up man youre an adult
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:32:24 49558,
Is there a word for "douchebag"?
So, you're telling me, pretty much, that your imaginary language is essentially
as real as an imaginary friend.
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:32:26 49558,
My favorite kong lang is the DK rap
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:32:27 49558,
Anthony McCarthy where the fuck did the imaginary friend come from what the
fuck are you on about you crazy old fuck
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:32:29 49558,
sethraptor it's a conglangue* stupid young'uns
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:32:30 49558,
If you can't order coffee in it, I've got no use for it.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:33:05 49558,
Anthony McCarthy good for you
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:33:07 49558,
"Crazy old fuck" as opposed to someone who makes up languages that no one will
ever speak or use and which apparently aren't supposed to be communicated with.
If you can't deal with an absolutely obvious simile like that one, I'd really
love to see what your invented languages are supposed to be like.
Do I get points for avoiding saying "callow young dick" for this long?
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:33:09 49558,
Anthony McCarthy i do want people to see them which is why i post about them on
reddit also no you dont get any fucking points this isnt a game jesus christ
you are painful to communicate with
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:33:10 49558,
Akira Enderle i dont know if i pronounced it right but damn that* sounds good
(* = assuming i pronounced it right)
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:33:12 49558,
Akira Enderle ive been doing spanish in school for two years and you can tell
that very easily by the fact that i didnt realize that wasnt spanish (although
to be fair most auxlangs borrow heavily from spanish), also i thought the
spanish for and was y not e?? anyway thats a great looking script
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:33:13 49558,
Akira Enderle oh and also i was confused by the fact you said you spoke two
languages, neither of which were espagnol (dont have n tilde on this keyboard)
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:33:15 49558,
Akira Enderle all i really know how to say is "soy una manzana" and "yo hablar
abogado" so im p much set
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:33:25 49558,
Go ahead.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:33:27 49558,
Anthony McCarthy what a scathing retort
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:33:29 49558,
Akira Enderle thats pretty damn impressive man congrats
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:33:31 49558,
I let him have that one. It wasn't worth topping.
Raymond Chandler, Playback
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:33:32 49558,
You could have just said the quote without citing it and saved me ten seconds
of googling
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:33:34 49558,
I don't quote without attribution. Though I might paraphrase.
Why did you google it? Fact checking?
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:33:35 49558,
I don't know who raymond chandler is, lol
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:33:37 49558,
If that's meant to be ironic, it's not. If it's true, I used to remember when
people who liked to pretend they were smart made a minimum of effort at
appearing informed. And here I thought my generation was a come down from the
one before it.
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:33:39 49558,
I don't think that not recognizing the name of a novelist from the 30s makes me
uninformed.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:33:40 49558,
He wrote up into the 1950s and as he's one of the most popular novelists
America has had. Yeah, it does make you uninformed.
You ever hear of Faulkner? Steinbeck?
What do they teach in schools these days?
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:33:43 49558,
Anthony McCarthy youre a teacher and you dont know what they teach in schools??
youre the uninformed one
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:33:45 49558,
I have teach private lessons, I haven't taught in a classroom in more than a
decade.
So, you know who Faulkner and Steinbeck were?
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:33:47 49558,
I'm not that into literature outside of some sci-fi, and no they don't make you
read hardboiled detective fiction in school. There's lots of things in the
world to give your attention to, I don't think you can really rag on a guy for
not knowing every important author, nowadays especially.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:33:49 49558,
i dont have teach private lessons
old white people most likely
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:33:51 49558,
darn young'uns and your scientitism
sethraptor
Sun May 4 12:33:52 49558,
If I knew I was going to be playing Jeopardy today, I would have studied.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:33:54 49558,
My typical student is in their teens to early 20s.
I'd rather be old and informed than young and ignorant, which you prefer.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:33:56 49558,
Anthony McCarthy how the fuck do you know
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:33:58 49558,
I've read your comments.
Are you so stupid that you didn't see how I would answer that? If you're not
Bruce Gilson you're his reincarnation.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:33:59 49558,
At least tell me you know who Faulkner and Steinbeck are. I won't open a vein
if you don't but it will shock me.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:34:01 49558,
Anthony McCarthy i know i just wanted to annoy you, also i already said i dont
know
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:34:02 49558,
I can hardly wait for you to publish your con lang. I forget, was yours the
one which uses G. B. Shaw's alphabet? If so, a. it will never be adopted, b.
you do know that Shaw wrote stuff, don't you.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:34:04 49558,
Anthony McCarthy you seem to have extreme difficult in typing the word
"conlang", you've called them "conglangs", "conlangues" and now "con langs",
theyre only 8 letters like come on youre a grown man
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:34:05 49558,
Akira Enderle well obviously its not in esperanto and itll never work because
its not esperanto and everything needs to be like esperanto because its the
only real conlang
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:34:07 49558,
Do you "like" your own comments?
Esperanto is the only conlang which has a large, international user community,
an actual, readable literature, a history of continual use, actual usefulness,
etc. It is used expertly by many people whose mother tongues are from a large
number of family groups - not merely Indo-European. It is easily learned and in
the experience of those who take the small effort to master it, quite natural
in the experience of using it. By any measure, it is the most successful
conlang in the history of such efforts. It has withstood attacks for its
entire history and has maintained the integrity of its structure, those who use
it today can read its literature back into the 19th century with just about
complete comprehension. Whereas other languages such as Ido produce factions
and schisms and one "reform" after another, always in the process of reformers
coming up with reforms all on their own, Esperanto is stable going on a century
and a quarter of actual use with minimal changes which don't impinge on its
stability.
Let me know when even one person can actually say something in your language
project, never mind the one other fluent user of it, the bare minimum for a
language to actually exist as a language, before one of them stops using it or
dies to join the other thousands of still-born constructed languages.
I'm more interested in using a language than in fantasizing about the language.
I don't have lifetimes to wait for those fantasies to produce something
useful and I don't need to because that already exists.
You are childish.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:34:08 49558,
The Shaw alphabet is used by no one except, apparently, those who want to get
hold of money from the Shaw estate.
I was vaguely aware of it and that Androcles and the Lion had been issued in
the alphabet. Reading a little - about as much time as I hope to spend on it
in my life - I see that Androcles attempts to reproduce British received
pronounciation which I sure as hell won't adopt, so the pretense that it is
phonetic is out the window right there. I also see that someone has used it to
publish some Poe. As Poe grew up in several different places in early early to
mid 19th century United States and certainly didn't speak with a Brit Received
pronunciation, I wonder if the imposition of it on his words isn't a complete
distortion of them. I'd have to hear someone reading his poetry and prose in
the Brit received to judge how ridiculous it was.
You do know that Poe was a writer, don't you?
I also see that, as with Ido, the supposed advocates of it disagree about what
sounds to assign to the various letters. Let me know when there is universal
agreement about that. In about a thousand years when it will all be more than
moot.
People wined about the handful of accents in written Esperanto and thought that
was a breaking point - though the use of "x" has arisen as a perfectly viable
alternative to that even above Zamenhof's suggestion of using an "h" in that
role. I use it all the time while typing, using a tiny little program to make
those into accented letters at the touch of a key. Looking at the Shavian
alphabet I count about five letters that would be recognizable to anyone who
uses a Latin alphabet, so it turns that complaint about Esperanto on its head
proposing an even less recognizable means of written communication. And
considering such things as "ligatures" involved, it is a thing of dotty
eccentricity.
Have you even read Androcles and the Lion in standard English spelling? It's
not a great play, it's seldom performed.
I can't think of a practice that would more quickly relegate a proposed
language to a still birth. I'd suggest you rethink that one.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:45:33 49558,
Anthony McCarthy i wouldnt suggest they rethink, your word is not law, stop
acting as though you have some kind of intellectual authority because you know
a bunch of writers
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:45:36 49558,
Well, I'm glad you realize that someone reading about the Shavian alphabet for
about twenty minutes online and noting the actual non-use of it and its
ridiculously impractical and rather stupid features wouldn't make someone an
"intellectual authority" on it. Though, far less, would not knowing that make
someone an authority.
I think you boys are a good example of what happens when people stop reading
adult books. Stupidity ensues.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:45:38 49558,
Anthony McCarthy stupidity ensues though you cannot spell conlang right and
youve repeated ignored the use of question marks. do not call people stupid if
you dont know anything of their intellect. im conversational in finnish,
afrikaans and french and im well versed in the fields of astronomy, particle
physics (to a lesser degree), neuroscience (lesser degree) and linguistics. i
know im not some super god of all mighty intelligence, im probably not even
smarter than you but i am not stupid
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:45:40 49558,
Now you're getting whiny. If you hadn't noticed, Youtube comment's aren't
exactly your higher level of university press. I'd rather include a few typos
and misspellings (I'll bet you're unfamiliar with Shaw as a critic of standard
English spelling) than to spout total nonsense and ignorance.
I can assure you, kid, that I'm a teacher going on many decades, having gone
through undergrad and grad school before the age of spell check. You know,
back when you were expected to have read something by writers like Steinbeck
and Faulkner and others. Even people who went on to major in what they call
STEM subjects, these days. Maybe you spent too much time on Aqua Teen and video
games.
Anyone who thinks anyone uses the Shavian alphabet except to get money from his
estate is silly. I would bet the fewer than a handful of books and the several
issues of one magazine published in it have been read by more than about twenty
to fifty people in the entire history of the effort. Including the authors and
publishers, is silly. Probably only including them. It is a farce that Shaw
couldn't do justice to. Mel Brooks came close in a movie script dealing with
fraud for profit.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:45:43 49558,
Oh, you do know that William Shakespeare of Stratford couldn't spell his own
name, don't you. Go look at his signatures, not to mention the spelling in the
First Folio. Whoever wrote those plays and poems sure as hell wouldn't have
known how to spell "conlang".
I doubt your alleged resume is any more real than your constructed "language".
The idea that it's like an imaginary friend gains credibility with every one of
your comments. You might be able to bluff your fellow "conlang" ranger boys
with that but don't try to pull it on me, kid.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:45:45 49558,
Anthony McCarthy no, also they also wouldnt have been able to spell
"phenomenology" because it wasnt a word at the time, as was not "conlang". also
also, the inability of shakespeare to spell his own name is not at all relevant
to your most-of-the-time misspelling of "conlang" also also also, are you
honestly comparing yourself to shakespeare because you cant spell a word?? you
are a ridiculous man
do you think im making this all up?? for my own entertainment, or perhaps to
stoke my massive ego and assert my dominance as the intellectual he-oh wait,
that's what you're doing. you think your knowledge of a bunch of irrelevant
writers overrides my intelligence because i dont share the same views as you. i
think toki pona is a valid conlang and that esperanto isnt that good and
somehow that nullifies all the actually important things i know, because you
dont agree. everyone who doesn't think the exact same as you is completely
wrong because they arent you. are you really that solipsistic, that craven,
self obsessed, that obsessed with self-assurance and validation that you base
your views on others with how their's coincide with yours?? you're a grown man
and whether or not youre good in arguments youre obviously a smart man with a
class so grow up and act like the big boy you are
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:45:48 49558,
Well, he couldn't spell his own name. That was there.
I remember the champion speller in my class had a knack of visual memory but he
was of rather low intelligence. I think he ended up working for the owner of a
chain of laundromats. Don't know what he's doing now.
You'd have thought Emily Dickinson was an idiot too. You heard of her?
You're just sulking now. It's not much fun to tease someone who just sulks.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:45:51 49558,
Anthony McCarthy youre just rambling about irrelevant shit that has nothing to
do with anything
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:45:54 49558,
Well, I have been talking about your project this morning, so that's accurate,
in one sense.
You are nuts.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:45:57 49558,
Anthony McCarthy no i am human
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:46:00 49558,
Akira Enderle minä pidän tämää kaverea
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:46:03 49558,
My argument is that if people had problems with 6 accented letters in Esperanto
they weren't about to adopt an alphabet that had only five letters they'd
recognize at all.
Let me know when your imaginary friend and you can talk together in your
imaginary language for 20 minutes at a time.
No, cancel that, I don't really care.
I suspect I knew most of those moons decades before you were born, bunky. I
was a bit of a science geek when I was a kid.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:46:06 49558,
Anthony McCarthy only one of your last five replies have mentioned those six
(not including this one of course), boy you will not let this imaginary friend
thing go will you?? i didnt realize your massive knowledge of english
literature gave you extensive insights the complex neurological functions,
patterns and idiosyncrasies of our brains. why ask if you dont wanna see it??
what was the point in that?? "bunky"?? really??
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:46:10 49558,
im sorry mitch rlly
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:46:13 49558,
Akira Enderle is your reddit account akso akiraenderle?? im looking forward to
seeing it, what's it called?
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:46:16 49558,
If you young dolts hadn't answered my first comment it's the last one I'd have
posted. It's not my fault you've kept proving your ignorance and silliness.
Do you "like" your own comments or do you like" each other's? You should
look up the song "Mutual Admiration Society". It could be your theme song.
Maybe you could translate it into Toki pona.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:46:19 49558,
I think you should look up the history of all of those things you apparently
figure were invented since you were born. I probably studied Spanish and
German before you were born, too. Not to mention C++ though the last time I
was associated with a college Pascal was the groovy language, I looked it up
C++ was first published in 1985. Had you been born yet?
I doubt you know more than the word phenomenology I probably read Husserl
before your parents were born. Look him up, bunky, he died in 1938. I'm
assuming you know who he was, though that's assuming more than is safe with
you.
I have found it funny to have you youngsters figuring that such stuff was after
my time.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:46:24 49558,
Good luck with that "gather a large community around it" part of your scheme.
I wouldn't suggest holding your breath waiting for it to happen.
I thought you boys were whining that this thread was getting too long and here
you keep it going.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:46:28 49558,
Anthony McCarthy "i doubt you know more about the word phenomenology i read
husserl before your parents were born"??? what???
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:46:33 49558,
Do I friggin' have to spell it out for you E-D-M-U-N-D H-U-S-S-E-R-L. If you
don't know who he was you don't know crap about phenomenology. Let me guess,
you read the word someplace and figured it sounded impressive. Geesh, what a
bunch of phonies you guys are.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:46:38 49558,
Will prove me wrong in what sense and on what topic? If it's on constructing
the universally accepted and used uber-perfect universal language, Zamenhof was
a genius who came closest to doing that as proven by the history of the effort.
Many of them thar professional linguists touted here tried to outdo him, some
of them quite famous in their day. and their attempts are either totally dead
or have been kept alive as brain dead corpses, just barely.
Now, why don't you whine about how long this has been going on as you and your
tag team buddy keep it going even longer. I'd just as soon not waste the time,
though when you say something really stupid it's too tempting to answer it.
What in the world ever happened to the idea of a liberal education? Well, I
guess I should ask what ever happened to the idea of AN education.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:46:42 49558,
Anthony McCarthy phenomenology is the study of the structures of consciousness
from the first person and no i used it bc i like how it sounds
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:46:46 49558,
Anthony McCarthy also dont talk to us about spelling mr conglangue
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:47:18 49558,
If you don't know Edmund Husserl you don't know, literally, the first thing
about phenomenology. You are a B. S. artist.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:47:22 49558,
Anthony McCarthy i dont know who he is but i do know the first thing about
phenomenology which is that it's the first person study of structures of
consciousness. there's no point knowing who made something before you know what
the thing itself is
Daniel Alorbi
Sun May 4 12:47:27 49558,
Nathan Harding Nathan Harding What's the argument about? Sounds like one guy
likes Esperanto a lot dislikes Toki Pona a lot and everyone else is trying to
show him that he should consider Toki Pona a conlang. It looks like it's
devolved into questioning each other's authenticity too.
I'm going to give a stab at providing some facts
Everyone in this discussion at least knows more about conlangs and linguistics
than the average person
Toki Pona was designed to be a simplistic conlang, the creator believes it to
be one.
Esperanto has a big community, (possibly the biggest of existing conlangs)
Anthony measures conlangs against their potential to be used in everyday
situations and expressiveness compared to natural languages
In conclusion Anthony will not accept that Toki Pona is a good conlang or even
"truly" a conlang. Other members will not accept that only Toki Pona is not a
conlang.
Sound about right?
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:47:31 49558,
Not exactly, Toki pona with its c. 120 word vocabulary cannot function as a
language in real life. It's the conlang equivalent of a sheltered workshop.
If you want to see some discussion of people who knew what they were talking
about, look up the old conlang treads back when people like Don Harlow were
around to talk about them.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:47:35 49558,
If you don't know the literature of phenomenology you don't know anything about
it except what you'll find in a dictionary or encyclopedia (and those would
probably mention Husserl). And in the case of phenomenology, you can't get
around the writings of Edmund Husserl which are the origin and heart of matter.
It would be like claiming to know about physics without knowing the math.
Grumble Bee
Sun May 4 12:47:40 49558,
Anthony McCarthy Oh my god this is hilarious but at the same time sad. But
mostly sad. Sometimes I hate being an Esperantist.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:47:45 49558,
What's hilarious about it?
Cxu vi vere estas samideiano? Mi ne kredas ke vi vere estas.
anthony_havenn
Sun May 4 12:47:49 49558,
a
Rynabunny
Sun May 4 12:47:54 49558,
I think you all have valid points. Anthony thinks of conlangs as tools for
communication. To them, a bad conlang is one that fails at that (by being too
simplistic, in the case of Toki Pona).
The others think of a conlang as having its own purposes. Someone said conlang
creation is an artform. Some people, myself included, create conlangs for fun
and/or for personal use. They don't have to be perfect, or good for
communication, or even useable (e.g. kay(f)bop(m)!). For a personal conlang,
they just have to make its creator satisfied and it will have achieved its
purpose. Different conlangs set out to achieve different goals. Esperanto
arguably achieves a lot of its goals (relatively simple to learn, useful tool
for communication) and yes, it is a good conlang in my opinion. But that
doesn't automatically make Toki Pona a bad one. The latter also achieves its
primary goals (extreme simplicity and ease of learning), perhaps even
overachieving.
So I guess Anthony has a fairly narrow view of what a conlang should be, and
that's fine! But it should be understood that not all conlangs had/have/will
have exactly the same goals, and I think comparing two vastly different
languages is a futile exercise.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:47:57 49558,
That's almost right, I distinguish between a language which is for
communication and the creation of a pseudo-language structure which is not for
communication but which is a personal amusement.
I said that I have no problem with people doing that if they want to or even
playing with it, such as was the case of the Esperanto Youth Group of Toki Pona
users who held a workshop-gathering session on it at a convention. I would
like to hear how those people who can use a real con-lang for communications
used it, wondering if they were able to give it an, as it were, maximal test of
its limits. I don't have any problem with someone making up a pseudo-language
using the Shavian alphabet but to compare a language like Esperanto or Ido to
it is comparing apples to imaginary apples.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:48:00 49558,
The inventor of a language isn't the one who decides if it goes from being a
mere project into becoming a real language, a community of users of the
language does that. Let me know how that works for you.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:48:04 49558,
Un, maybe you should learn how to read English before you start counting your
speakers before they hatch.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:48:10 49558,
OK, so you don't know much about politics, either.
Did Bernie Sanders say exactly what you put in quotes? Where's your citation?
I never said either of those things or the rest of it. The government
"seizing the means of production" doesn't mean that something is socialism. As
far as I'm concerned that's not socialism because it is only when the WORKERS
own the means of production that it's socialism as far as I'm concerned.
You are a silly.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:48:13 49558,
Maybe you don't know how quotation works. When you say someone said something
and put that something in quotation marks it indicates that you're claiming
that they said what you put in quotation marks. In the thing you cite to back
up your quotation, Sanders said, "These days, the American dream is more apt
to be realized in South America, in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela and
Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal today than they are in the
land of Horatio Alger. Who's the banana republic now?"
He talked about income equality, not socialism.
Geesh, where did you go to school?
As for the definition of socialism, you should have read a bit down the page
because your own citation mentions that the meaning of socialism has meant
different things and has changed over time. I believe it was Lenin who decided
it meant that the government owned the means of production, something I've
never agreed with, especially a non-democratic government.
I'm not interested in any kind of socialism which means anything but that the
workers who produce the wealth of an entity own the means of production, not
someone who lends them money and who got paid off with interest several
generations ago. I'm against anything but egalitarian democracy that includes
economic justice.
You are a boob.
Alex Hayes
Sun May 4 12:49:25 49558,
(200 comments)
(First posted a month ago)
(Most recent posted hours ago)
Guys.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:49:26 49558,
Hey, you make it 201.
I'm just answering people. If no one had responded to my first comment I'd
probably have forgotten making it by now.
Ryan
Sun May 4 12:49:40 49558,
Nice English m8.
Is2DealYou Яаgиа
Sun May 4 12:49:41 49558,
I have a question : are all esperantists douchebags and treat other languages
with different purposes like trash ?
just asking...
Alex Hayes
Sun May 4 12:49:43 49558,
Is2DealYou Яаgиа DING DING DING DING DING
Is2DealYou Яаgиа
Sun May 4 12:49:45 49558,
btw did you know that Conlang Critic made a video about this comment ?
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 12:49:47 49558,
Is2DealYou Яаgиа well its not esperanto so much it must be ridiculously
terrible unless its mimicing esperanto
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:49:51 49558,
Since you obviously mean me, what language did I do anything other than
describe? Since we're talking about inventions, invented languages being
inventions, if they don't work as a means of communication they're essentially
games, in the case of most of those discuseed here, the equivalent of solitaire
since no one else in the world but the inventor is ever going to even bother to
learn of their existence or learn them. The one whose author claims they're
going to use the Shavian alphabet doesn't even seem to have done the actual
inventing, it's more of a fantasy than a game.
I don't care what silly people do among themselves but any real language is
there for the purpose of communication between people. If it's only meant for
the inventor to use, that's not a language. In most cases it's not even a
personal code because talking about what they're intending to do is as far as
it goes.
The historical fact is that the only conlang to have ever gained a substaintial
body of users who use it is Esperanto. It has stood the test of time and use
since the end of the 19th century. If you learn the language as it's used
today, you will have little, if any, trouble reading what's written in it for
the entire history of the langage. Ido has never had that level of stability
and nothing like the flexibility. Though it is certainly simple to learn - if
they'd stopped fiddling with it they might have gotten somewhere.
A lot was made in early conlang online discussion of Novial by one Bruce Gilson
who managed to gather a few people together to make what I'm sure they believed
would be just one last "reform" of that disused conlang before it took the
lead. From what I gather, that effort petered out c. 1998 or so. This
discussion is about on that same level. I've seen this B.S. for going on two
decades now.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:49:53 49558,
No, for some reason I have no interest in listening to it.
Nicholas Layton
Sun May 4 12:49:55 49558,
Well let's be honest, toki pona is useless as a language. You can try to play
with it in small talk but no one is going to understand what each other is
trying to convey in any kind of meaningful conversation. And let's be even more
honest, any efforts put into creating a new IAL is an exercise in futility.
It's mental masturbation at best and will never be anything useful to anyone,
including yourself.
You Safar
Sun May 4 12:49:57 49558,
#notallesperantists
People like Anthony are the main reason people kabei though (in my opinon).
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 12:50:01 49558,
Oh, bite me.
Is2DealYou Яаgиа
Sun May 4 12:50:04 49558,
This is probably the largest comment argument in youtube i had seen.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 13:05:07 49558,
Anthony McCarthy the definition you see in a dictionary or encyclopaedia is the
first thing about that thing, that's kinda the point
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:05:09 49558,
If people hadn't said what they did to my first comment I wouldn't have posted
a second one here.
I've seen longer but, yeah, this has gone on a long time. But there is a
precedent in the actual history of conlangs, I'd start that with the first
agitation of the Ido promoters. I think the subsequent history of "better"
conlangs and how, one after another, they went nowhere is an indication of what
the future of them will be like. Meanwhile, Esperanto is the only one which
has had any notable success. It is the only one with any proven history of
actual use.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:05:10 49558,
Oh, so the definition of a word that they put first is the only real, right way
to use a word and the rest of those uses, often by some very fine authors and
thinkers, is, by that arbitrary fiat, wrong.
Well, there are some people who don't agree with that arbitrary rule which was
never a rule I was taught.
You Safar
Sun May 4 13:05:11 49558,
You are assuming that all conlangs measure of success is how widespread their
use is. In fact it seems like a lot of the methods you use to dismiss other
peoples points are based on using your personal reasons for believing esperanto
has been successful as a metric against all others which are brought up.
edit: Anthony, I know you said you were mad initially because of mistakes he
made when talking about Esperanto in this video. What were they? Just curious.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:05:12 49558,
Actually, what I thought was that he didn't know what he was talking about
generally.
I said from the beginning that if anyone wants to play with Ido or Logban or
some one of the other thousands of proposed language projects, I have no
problem with them doing it. I don't have any problem with people making up
some kind of personal code system as a language. But I do have a huge problem
with them a. misrepresenting the history and content and proven usability of
the one and only invented language to have gained a widespread user community.
b. misrepresenting the success of other projects which failed to even gain a
fixed form that people could learn without any guarantee that what they learned
wouldn't be deemed "wrong" within a month of them learning it.
I don't have any interest in expanding my criticism of the author of the video
except to say what I have.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:05:13 49558,
I don't think I'm going to change my mind that you are a very silly person who
doesn't know what he's talking about and who doesn't know much of anything
about Esperanto as it is used by the largest number of users of an invented
language in the history of the effort to create one. That is if you don't
count Bahasa Indonesia (a semi-invented language) which was imposed by
government fiat and conquest.
I have never heard an Esperantist mention the "fina venko" except to tell jokes
about the idea. Forcibly converting anyone to using Esperanto is entirely
contrary to the intentions of Zamenhof and any sensible Esperantist I've ever
read. It was always intended as a second language for communication between
people who didn't share a common language, it was never intended to supplant
peoples' first languages, like English and others have.
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 13:05:14 49558,
Anthony McCarthy They share different opinions to you regarding Esperanto, so,
of course, they're wrong and "very silly"
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:05:15 49558,
People are entitled to their own opinions they aren't entitled to their own
"facts". The history is what it is, it isn't what they want it to be, the body
of present day Esperanto users is what it is, and you can compare that with
what their fantasy "languages" they seem to prefer talking about instead of
inventing are not what they are not.
You might want to work on your English reading skills because you have a common
disability of making things people say mean what you want them to mean instead
of what they say.
You Safar
Sun May 4 13:05:17 49558,
I know you said you don't want to expand but I'm going to ask anyways. Which
facts? Do you mean in this video? Or are you talking about the esperanto video?
Mi pardonpetas pri la demandado, but I don't understand why you chose this
video, or even this platform, for whatever point it is you are trying to make.
Are you just upset that he was dismissive instead of asking for corrections?
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:05:18 49558,
Things went way past a critique of the video a long, long time ago.
When I started this I intended to make one comment and if no one had answered
it, it is the only comment I would have made. When I get notifications that
people are responding to what I said, I don't see why I don't get to respond to
them and when they start being snarky why I can't snark back. One thing I
don't think I've been whiny or, as they say in Newfoundland, a sook. Not all
who have commented here can say the same, honestly.
You Safar
Sun May 4 13:05:19 49558,
You can't deny you've been a little snarky, but I agree with you, people have
been a little combative. It's silly for you to blame people responding to you,
however. What made you think people would be okay with you taking a pot shot at
the creator of the video, and that they wouldn't call you out on it? I'm almost
getting the impression that you never had a real critique and felt offended he
doesn't like Esperanto...everyone deserves benefit of a doubt, so I asked. Ne
plu mi demandos se vi ne temos pri la kialo. Simpla scivolo :p Just wanted to
see if asking nicely ended up any different to be totally honest.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:05:20 49558,
Oh, for heavens sake, I'm not the one who's been whining about the length of
this discussion thread that's the people who have been saying things I can
respond to.
You are all Bruce Gilsons, phonies who won't ever come up with anything as you
resent the person who did.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:05:21 49558,
Well, you got that they were at school and they were talking and there is a
blond guy in the story and a few other things but, as I suspected, it didn't
even carry the information in the first and easiest chapter in the book. I'd
really love to read someone try to express what Linda was thinking about what
she'd do if the blond guy got up and walked out. And that's not even nearly
the most complex part of the story, coming in, if I recall correctly, about the
first third of the book.
I doubt it could deal with the even earlier chapter when Tom is trying to talk
the Nurse into coming to take care of Gerda who has collapsed in the hall.
Toki Pona is not a real functional language, it wasn't designed to be one. No
language that is restricted to 120 words could be a functional language. No
matter how well those words were chosen.
You Safar
Sun May 4 13:05:23 49558,
I don't know, the translation looks pretty good to me, although I've read Gerda
and you're right, this isn't the most complicated chapter, although none of
them really are complicated, and the story is straightforward enough I'm sure
anything that was confusing could be guessed. It wouldn't be very elegant (some
nested ni/pi statements, surely), but the story could be translated if someone
felt the desire to do it.
(to anyone considering it, please direct your expertise towards marvirinstrato
instead! Meduset is begging to be in toki pona, and mine isn't good enough to
write yet)
Anthony, have you seen the monty python translation? It's very good:
https://web.archive.org/web/20041116173522/http://www.geocities.com/tokipona/tex
t/mphg.html
Is2DealYou Яаgиа
Sun May 4 13:05:24 49558,
I think I get Anthony's point of view: Any language out there that isn't
designed for communication does not deserve to be called a language. (Or it
fails to be one).
You Safar
Sun May 4 13:05:25 49558,
1) There are more dimensions to a language than its ability to be specific and;
2) There is also communication with yourself internally. Since you already know
what you're talking about, it doesn't matter if you're able to be specific.
This being valid depends on whether or not you believe that the language(s) you
know change the way you think. I do, obviously.
I understand the point of view, It's just limited IMO. A language is, or at
the very least can be, more than just a tool for interpersonal communication.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:05:26 49558,
A personal code is not the business of anyone else and I doubt it's interesting
to anyone else. I don't have any problem with people doing whatever they want
to as long as they're honest about the nature of it and don't claim that it
compares to real languages which are designed to communicate with other people.
By making public claims of that sort, they've taken it outside of the
internal, personal realm and anyone can comment on it if they choose to.
I said I didn't have any problem with anyone playing with Toki Pona or any
other "language" as long as they were making absurd claims for it.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:05:28 49558,
The original sentence I challenged someone to translate was, "Donald Trump
fired James Comey to try to stop the Russian election hacking investigation".
You Safar
Sun May 4 13:05:29 49558,
"jan Donald Trump li kama e ni: jan James Comey li jo ala e pali tan ni: ona li
wile pake e ni: ona li lukin e ante losi pi wile ma"
Not my translation, but it's pretty close.
You Safar
Sun May 4 13:05:30 49558,
Also can we please not have an off-topic debate about russians or trump or
comey start in this thread.
You Safar
Sun May 4 13:05:31 49558,
"place desire" = country will / desire of the land / election.
Donald Trump caused this:
James Comey doesn't have a job because:
he wanted to stop this:
he was looking into the Russian change of the will of the land
My best guess.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:05:32 49558,
Donald Trump SAID HE FIRED JAMES COMEY TO STOP THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION. The
rest of it was window dressing and a smoke screen.
You have obviously bought the neo-fascist, FOX narrative that pretends that
Trump didn't say that, himself but it is an obvious and transparent lie,
obvious and transparent in a way that Toki Pona cannot express but which
English can, as can Esperanto.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:05:34 49558,
It is not off-topic because I was giving an example of something important that
Toki Pona could not express.
I wasn't aware that there was some ban on subject matter on this comment
thread, there was plenty of extraneous junk brought in by those opposing me,
Phenomenology, for crying out loud, and by someone who obviously didn't know
more than the word without knowing what it meant.
Try translating that into Toki Pona.
You Safar
Sun May 4 13:05:35 49558,
What are you talking about, we just gave you two different ways to translate
that sentence. If you want to say Trump said you just add jan Trump toki e ni:.
If you want to say he dreamt it you could add that. If you wanted to say he
wasn't sure if he dreamt it or not but it probably happened you could say that
too. How far back did you want to move the goalposts this time?
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:05:36 49558,
I meant a "translation" of what I said in the comment.
The "translations" a. don't contain the content of the original sentence, b.
convey the meaning of the sentence, c. let anyone who doesn't know what is in
the original sentence know what it says. Those "translations" are not
translations anymore than a circle drawn on a piece of paper is a portrait of a
real person.
How many languages do you speak? I mean real ones, not "Toki Pona".
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:05:37 49558,
You are a Republican idiot and a traitor to democracy.
Is2DealYou Яаgиа
Sun May 4 13:05:39 49558,
You people are in politics now?
Alex Hayes
Sun May 4 13:05:40 49558,
+Akira Enderle
"Libertarian"
Well, there's your problem. Now can we please get back to watching Anthony
spend over three irrecoverable months of his life actively writing about how a
language can't be simple lest it lose it's status as a language? Don't get me
wrong, I'm enjoying this thread in the same way I like to go laugh at /r9k/
sometimes, but fucking really? This is still happening? Either way, we're here
for the linguistics, get out of here with this shit Akira. (Also, Akira, was
the near-impeachment of Nixon treachery towards democracy? He was, after all,
democratically elected. Don't actually answer that, you're proving nothing, and
this is derailed enough.)
I would also kindly suggest that any future commentators also take this
discretion.
(Also, direct question to Anthony: the information is being retained, you just
have to jump through some grammatical hoops. Is that not okay? Is Japanese not
a real language because the grammatically correct sentence "Watashi wa ringo ga
suki desu" translates to English literally as "As for myself, apple(s) are
liked (by me)" instead of "I like apples"? Is Lojban not a language for it's
reliance on abstract predicate logic to fuel its grammar (Can't give an
example, I only know basic theory, not actual words/syntax)? Spanish translates
"I am 20 years old" to "Tengo 20 años" back to "(I) have 20 years", is that
unacceptable? Is it simply the number of concessions that Toki Pona must make
that invalidates it? Even with all these questions, there's even more when you
aren't speaking with an Anglophonic bias. Would a hypothetical native speaker
of toki pona even notice the simplicity of the language? Would a native culture
develop different language standards, kind like how Japanese poetry is more
rhythm based than rhyming? Take all this with a grain of salt of course, since
I do not speak toki pona, but I would still like clarification rather than "The
language is too simple to speak complex thought with. Oh, you want an example?
Nah, it's pretty self-evident, please translate something for me. When we back
translated it, it sounds clunky and doesn't contain every detail I wanted but
did not specify, so you've just proved my point, lol.")
Is2DealYou Яаgиа
Sun May 4 13:05:41 49558,
Why is this discussed here instead of Conlang Critic's Esperanto Video?
You Safar
Sun May 4 13:05:43 49558,
Why are politics discussed in a conlang video? I'm convinced Anthony offered up
that sentence just to ignore the translation that was offered and pretend like
he had a good reason to yell at strawmen about Trump. People, don't be like
Anthony, learn toki pona instead of Esperanto! (or learn both or neither, I
don't care). If the we vs. Anthony argument can even still be considered a
real, valid debate, I think it's become clear we're never going to win.
mi wile e ni: jan ali ni li kama sona e toki pona. Ĝis y'all
Alex Hayes
Sun May 4 13:05:44 49558,
Akira Enderle
Oh my god, this has to be bait. At least you're on topic…
You Safar
Sun May 4 13:05:45 49558,
ni li kama jo ike: jan lawa kama jo e mani pi jan anpa
ni li kama jo ike: jan lawa li jo e mani pi jan anpa (second kama is probably
not needed)
This is an immoral way to acquire: leaders (coming to) have the money from
subjects
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:05:46 49558,
You have resorted to outright lying that is contradicted by the very claims of
Donald Trump and the sworn testimony of people who have enormous credibility.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:05:47 49558,
Toki pona isn't just "simple" it is inadequate for communication.
I didn't claim that Lojban wasn't a language, I said it was an invented
language which was invented to demonstrate a linguistic theory from the 1930s
which just about no credible linguist believes is true, b. which has failed to
gain a speaking community EVEN AMONG THOSE WHO ARE ENTHUSIASTS OF IT and which
will clearly never become a viable means of communication between people who
don't share a non-planned language.
You obviously share something with the people who have kept this going by
spouting nonsense, you can't understand anything in any but the most
ridiculously pat, black or white terms. Obviously the problem of coming up
with a useful lingua franca used in addition to your native tongue is more
complex than most of those here can deal with. As I said, I saw this kind of
stuff on conlang comment treads back in the 1990s. You can still read those
online. Anti-Esperantists tend to not know much of what they're talking about,
though some pro-Idoists do, actually, know what they're talking about. I
disagree with some of what they believe but at least they have some foot in
reality.
You Safar
Sun May 4 13:05:49 49558,
tokipona.net works great, in addition to sonjas book. There aren't really an
overwhelming number of resources so its acceptable, I think, to just try
whatever you come across and see if you like it. Also, make sure to practice
talking with other people, there are a few great chats on
IRC/Discord/Facebook/Telegram, and probably others
Alex Hayes
Sun May 4 13:05:50 49558,
You Safar
Sun May 4 13:05:51 49558,
That's not a bad point, and you bring up a decent valid criticism of toki pona,
which is the choice of certain shared definitions (and even the inclusion of
certain words).
I personally learned toki pona mostly through Esperanto, so the inter-language
point is intriguing to me. Although I think just memorizing phrases in another
language would probably do as much good as learning the grammar and definitions
involved with toki pona, it's still funny that both would probably work about
as well.
More drama: My personal biggest problem with toki pona is that if someone does
not understand something you say in toki pona, it can be almost impossible to
explain it to them without resorting to another language, as most of the time
it is difficult to find an entirely different way of phrasing something that
means the same thing.
Is2DealYou Яаgиа
Sun May 4 13:05:52 49558,
261st reply !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:05:54 49558,
If no one had answered me with misinformation I'd have left it at the 1st
comment.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:05:55 49558,
"My personal biggest problem with toki pona is that if someone does not
understand something you say in toki pona, it can be almost impossible to
explain it to them without resorting to another language, as most of the time
it is difficult to find an entirely different way of phrasing something that
means the same thing."
A language which needs another language to explain what is meant in it is no
language at all. It reminds me of the description of the Volapuk meeting which
had to be conducted in German because Volapuk was so cumbersome and that one of
the early Ido propagandists had to correspond with LL Zamenof in French because
he didn't know Esperanto. As well as the letter by another condemning
Esperanto as compared to Ido which was written in Esperanto.
This discussion has convinced me of one thing, anyone who believes you can
conduct your life in a language of 120 words either has a very simple-minded
life or they are simple minded.
You Safar
Sun May 4 13:05:56 49558,
You must be a very sad person to try to bait people you repeatedly insist you
are superior than.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:05:57 49558,
That replying to me? You boys can stop any time and I can assure you I won't
post another comment here. It's not as if any of it was at all difficult.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:05:58 49558,
Oh, and, by the way, how come you guys use more than 120 words of English? I
challenge you to carry on a conversation about this in Toki Pona among
yourselves and see if you understand each other.
Alex Hayes
Sun May 4 13:06:00 49558,
+Akira Enderle
It turns out that I actually do like the taste of bait. Anywho, you're ideals
are flawed. Why can't there be conflicting material on a news outlet? A truly
neutral news outlet would have opinions from both sides, and quite a few of
those examples from the album do. I mean really, do you expect every writer to
agree on paid family leave? And again, news changes. Articles will conflict
simply from being dated. Should you cover up the fact that you wrote an article
with now proven false information, or leave it up, add a footnote, and write a
new article? The first choice is shadier, and you seem to want it for some
fucking reason.
And seriously? He's done nothing? Okay, seemingly you'll mindlessly follow any
right-wing denial-based narrative, so if you'd be so kind, jump through some
hoops to convince me that his son didn't ask for incriminating evidence against
Hillary from Russia.
Edit: When the hell did I say I wanted a safe space?
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 13:06:01 49558,
wow this thread is still going, huh? shame that it somehow became about
politics somewhere in there but I guess that's what happens when a youtube
comment thread lasts over three hecking months.
my favorite part of this (okay, ONE of my favorite parts of this. I can't just
choose one part to like it's all so good) is that Anthony keeps saying that if
nobody responded to his first comment this thread wouldn't've happened. it's
really funny because the first comment he made was saying that I don't speak
any con-langues that fit a really specific set of requirements that literally
only apply to Esperanto and my response was literally just repeating the last
thing he said and then after that I made a joke about being born after radios
stopped being relevant
and somehow THAT provoked Anthony into writing these heckin essays about how
toki pono or whatever it is isn't a real language because it doesn't have very
many words (that's the point of the language, you dingus!)
my other favorite part is when he wrote a multiparagraph response to when
sethraptor said "lol". that was really good
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 13:06:02 49558,
Conlang Critic cong-langues* stupid kids
Nathan Harding
Sun May 4 13:06:03 49558,
Conlang Critic in seriousness, yeah sethraptor has been amazing in this
argument lmao
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:06:04 49558,
"the first comment he made was saying that I don't speak any con-langues that
fit a really specific set of requirements that literally only apply to
Esperanto"
You should learn the difference between a question and a declarative sentence,
at the very least you should actually re-read what I said in that comment which
wasn't want you say.
"and my response was literally just repeating the last thing he said and then
after that I made a joke about being born after radios stopped being relevant"
I wonder when you believe "radios stopped being relevant". I'm sure they'll
find that interesting at the BBC, Deutsche Welle, All India Radio, Radio China,
Voice of America, etc. As they still sell them and large parts of the world,
especially in the developing world, depend heavily on radio you don't seem to
know much about that either. Certainly a language which is broadcast regularly
on the radio is more relevant than one which never has been and never will be.
I wonder how you would define "relevance". How do you say "relevant" in Toki
Pona?
Are you complaining that people are commenting on your Youtube channel?
That's weird, most people would like that happening. But if you are
complaining about it, I'll make this my last comment here. The boys can carry
on in the silliness they assert.
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 13:06:05 49558,
don't get me wrong, I love everything about this thread. it's one of the
funniest things I've ever seen and I'm glad to have inspired it. that bit there
where you pretended not to know that it's possible to say something in the form
of the question? fantastic! I love reading stuff like that
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 13:06:07 49558,
also, "relevant" is "suli". if you wanna get more specific, you could say
something like "suli lon tenpo ni".
Alex Hayes
Sun May 4 13:18:07 49558,
+Ramanuj Sarkar
Might as well derail it now, it's already become a political thread. Granted,
it's being restored, but go ahead and work your magic.
This would usually be the point where I go silent and become a spectator again
or just leave, but honestly, this thread is actually more hilarious as a
participant. Keep laying out that bait, guys.
dominic maddock
Sun May 4 13:18:09 49558,
Anthony McCarthy you absolute idiot! who said made-up languages have to have
speakers, grammar or complexity? the whole point of making a language is that
you can flip the tables, do things a natural language cannot do! a personal
language is a personal language, and if it pleases yourself then you have
successfully created a conlang.
your problem lies in your fixed mindset, you forget that we are able to do
whatever the fuck we want. saying 'your conlang will never be spoken by anyone'
shouldn't be an insult, it should be a compliment, that your ideas are unique
and complex to you. sure, toki pona is simple, and sure, esperanto is more
popular, but we should look past all the hate and see that all of these
conlangs were successful in their goal, maybe to please the creator, creator's
friends, or speakers around the world.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:18:11 49558,
You illiterate gobshite, I have said anyone should do anything they wanted to
all through this discussion. TRY READING, IF YOU CAN.
Gee, conlang guy, why aren't you whining about this continuing ?
You Safar
Sun May 4 13:18:13 49558,
Right, people should do whatever they want, in between declaring what is and
isn't a language and making sweeping statements about people who speak certain
languages. :roll eyes:
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:18:14 49558,
I suspect all your projects will have a similar history to Gilson's Novial
project that began and died c. 1998. And he had a ready made language to work
with.
You Safar
Sun May 4 13:18:16 49558,
Why the quantitative measure of success though? Why can't something just be
what it is and do what it does? Why are you figuring languages on a pass/fail
anyways? I think you could benefit from learning toki pona, and I sincerely
mean that :)
Alex Hayes
Sun May 4 13:18:18 49558,
I think I'm having an existential crisis guys... Is Anthony more or less
pretentious than Nathaniel Hawthorne? I actually can't tell anymore...
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:18:20 49558,
I'm not the one who is pretending that Toki Pona is a real language.
At this point this is only interesting in so far as it reveals how silly you
boys are.
Alex Hayes
Sun May 4 13:18:22 49558,
And I'm not the one creating laughably vague standards just to fail a conlang I
don't like, demeaning an entire community just because they don't agree with
me, and using the word "boy" as an insult.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:18:24 49558,
Wow, requiring of a language that it at least work to communicate to other
people in fairly specific ways about at least everyday life, what a novel
concept. You wonder why it didn't occur to anyone here before now. .
If you want me to treat you like adults, act like adults, kids.
You Safar
Sun May 4 13:18:26 49558,
I guess the natural response is it's not up to you to decide what a person
wants or doesn't want their language, or to be fair, their art work, to be.
There is no reason a language has to be designed to facilitate communication
with other people. There's no reason it even has to make it possible to
communicate with other people. Even though you refuse to understand this, a lot
of people do, and it's a good thing, too! Otherwise we'd all be speaking
Esperanto instead of languages that actually challenge the way you think.
You Safar
Sun May 4 13:18:39 49558,
I don't think he really has any problem with toki pona, he's just
reeeealllllyyyyyy upset (lol) that someone insulted Esperanto. #fuckgreenpopes
Alex Hayes
Sun May 4 13:18:42 49558,
"Communicate to other people in fairly specific ways about at least everyday
life"
I love that you want a stupid fucking made up language to have specificity when
you yourself refuse to use it in your own. How many times have I asked for
specific examples by now? And how many times have you responded with "it's not
specific enough"? The irony is so deliciously brilliant I can taste it without
opening my mouth.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:18:43 49558,
I asked for someone to translate the first and easiest chapter of Gerda
Malaperis into Toki Pona and the person came up with an inevitably vague garble
that doesn't carry the information in the first chapter (nevermind the
following chapters that grow increasingly complex and nuanced) only to have
TPists claim that it was an accurate translation. I would challenge anyone to
come up with a translation of it using 120 or 170 or 300 English language words
that would convey the full meaning of the story, knowing that it couldn't be
done, no matter how carefully you chose the English words to do it in. You
couldn't come up with 120 Esperanto words that would do that, even with its
agglutinative features of word creation.
You kids are what I said in my first comment here. You are superficial, some
of the stupidest and least honest people I've ever encountered in a discussion
of conlangs. You won't even try to make sense and, as you figure languages
aren't for the purpose of accurate communication, you figure you don't need to.
This is playtime, nothing important.
You Safar
Sun May 4 13:18:45 49558,
lol it's inevitably vague garble to you because despite this convo going on for
4 months you still haven't learned toki pona
also you just got dangerously close to admitting toki pona can do something
esperanto can't, keep going
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:18:47 49558,
You can leave it at any time you choose to. I'm always so interested in people
who complain at the lengths of arguments online as they continue to lengthen
them. Or doesn't that occur to you?
If you think that I "got dangerously close to admitting that toki pona can do
something esperanto can't" in what I said, that only proves that your reading
facility is only slightly less deficient than your reasoning ability. I will,
though, admit that there is something Toki Pona can obviously do that Esperanto
can't, make people make the most absurd claims about the ability of 120 words
to comprise a complete language with the full abilities of a much larger
vocabulary even as they prove that they can't.
You Safar
Sun May 4 13:18:49 49558,
So you don't want to talk about any of the successful translations you have
requested so far :(
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:18:51 49558,
A successful translation reproduces the information in the original in a way
that someone who doesn't have access to the original would understand without
recourse to another language.
Toki Pona can't do that except for the most simple of things, JUST AS ITS
INVENTOR SAID SHE INTENDED THE "LANGUAGE" TO BE WHEN SHE INVENTED IT.
You Safar
Sun May 4 13:18:53 49558,
That sentence you asked to be translated and the gerda translation both fit
that criteria. The reason you specifically couldn't understand them is not
because they were translated poorly, or they are unable to be translated, it's
because you can't speak toki pona. Not that you can read it but how about the
(absolutely perfect) translation of monty python and the holy grail which was
linked? Did you even bother to look at that?
Is2DealYou Яаgиа
Sun May 4 13:18:55 49558,
Too much comments
Alex Hayes
Sun May 4 13:18:57 49558,
Is2DealYou Яаgиа Same, but it's entertaining in its own right, kind of like
watching a three month train wreck.
You Safar
Sun May 4 13:18:58 49558,
yea;
pona lukin = attractive, good looking
suwi lukin = adorable, cute (although suwi alone works)
etc
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:19:00 49558,
This thing has certainly shown that my first comment in this thread was true,
it is silliness and that any serious view of the attempt to construct a
workable, useful, easily learned lingua franca is best kept out of the hands of
silly people. L.L. Zamenhof was not a silly person, nor a theoretician but a
practical and brilliant man who made the only one which has survived more than
a century and a quarter and which is actually used for something other than
playing games and being silly in.
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:19:02 49558,
Volapuk was too complex for easy learning and secure use and its inventor made
the fatal error of insisting it was his proprietary property. A language has
to belong to the people using it. Zamenhof learned a lot from both the good
and the down side of the Volapuk experiment.
I would like to know more about the people who read Volapuk and who might do
those translations or use it for something. I think the complexity of it can
be seen in its verb conjugation that has, if what I'm reading is correct, more
than a thousand, five hundred possible inflections. Esperanto has six, which
suffice for just about every purpose with some of the complexity of Schleyer's
system taken up in a regular system of affixes which aren't nearly as complex.
They're also not necessary for everyday use, for the most part.
I think that all of the older constructed languages that have failed to gain an
ongoing user community should be considered as having failed for the purpose of
doing that. I have no problem with people who want to use Volapuk doing what
they want to, though if I had to learn a language of that complexity, I'd
rather learn a non-constructed language that was a window into an existing
culture. As it is, I've read many things by many people from many different
places in Esperanto, not translations but directly from them in their own
words, Mongolia, Croatia, Bulgaria, (many European countries) Japan, China,
India, Iran, etc. which aren't available in English or in an English text
directly written by the author. I've listened to many radio broadcasts and,
even more, podcasts of spontaneous interviews in Esperanto, talking about
things that have nothing to do with Esperanto. For me, any competitor conlang
would have to top that to convert me.
You Safar
Sun May 4 13:19:04 49558,
Why do you have to be converted, why can't you just learn both :(
Anthony McCarthy
Sun May 4 13:19:06 49558,
Granted, though after having had more than two decades of using Esperanto it
would take a lot to convince me to learn another one. Someone once accused me
of having Esperanto as a second language but it was not, it was considerably
down the list. I can report, as I said earlier in this discussion, I find it
far easier to use than French, my second language, which I use virtually every
day.
Phina Ibe
Sat Sep 3 13:19:08 50557,
Anthony McCarthy "The show that gets facts wrong about your favorite conlang!"
Is2DealYou Яаgиа
Sat Sep 3 13:19:09 50557,
Is it over?
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:19:11 50557,
Not as long as people keep it going. If no one had answered me it would have
been over three months ago with my first comment.
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:19:12 50557,
lol
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:19:13 50557,
"Why did you hit the other boy, little Anthy?"
"HE MADE ME DO IT HE SHOULDN'T HAVE INSULTED ME WAAAAAAA"
lol indeed.
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:19:14 50557,
Don't be such a cry baby. I'd assumed you were all big boys, guess I was wrong.
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:19:15 50557,
_
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:19:17 50557,
Kind of a bad reason to like it, considering that that would stimulate the
creation of potentially infinite microdialects. Either way, I'm not going to
call it not a language and you can do you ( COUGH COUGH ).
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:19:18 50557,
Is it actually used for anything by people who aren't conlang geeks?
I believe I said that Logan and Lojban are languages, just that they aren't
exactly learner or user friendly and they didn't generate a user base
I consider all languages, natural or other, that are capable of a reasonable
level of communication among people are equal.. There is no "best" language
though there are lots of bad or, at least, failed conlang projects. Thousands
of them.
One of the best things about Esperanto was that it was, from the start,
intended a an inter-communications language, not as a replacement for any first
language.
Lucille Francois
Sat Sep 3 13:19:19 50557,
This is possibly the best comment chain to show off when someone needs an
example of linguistic prescriptivism gone horribly wrong. Just cause Esperanto
has a larger community than other conlangs doesn't mean it's the best, or the
most important. And someone not being fluent in a conlang doesn't mean they
can't be critical of them. That's not how criticism works at all. Of course he
is fluent in a conlang though, but let's ignore that cause Toki Pona is a joke
or something. This guys subjective opinion isn't wrong just cause Esperanto is
slowly going lower and lower on his list. It just means that you like a
language more than him.
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:19:20 50557,
Actually, it's a good example of a bunch of silly people who don't understand
that a. languages are meant for communication, b. in conlangs, it's the
languages that people choose to learn and use that win. And that monoglots
generally don't know what they're talking about, I will include those who take
up the play language Toki Pona and believe it can do what it obviously can't
Now, complain how long it's gone on as you add more to it.
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:19:21 50557,
Objection, the last time someone mentioned the length of the chain was you
yourself. "Not as long as people keep it going. If no one had answered me it
would have been over three months ago with my first comment." You are the only
one left who is actively replying and still directly complaining about how long
it's going. Everyone else has moved past that by now.
You Safar
Sat Sep 3 13:19:23 50557,
I was thinking a while ago that Anthony is that annoying stoner kid in high
school who always went on about how (insert shitty stereotypical drug album
here) was the best album ever because of how popular and well known it was, to
the extent that they never wanted to listen to anything new, and reduced any
new music to a shallow comparison to (insert album). You're just sitting there
like dude that was (insert how many generations ago) ago, and we've covered so
much ground since then.
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:19:24 50557,
Well, of you "stoner kid" was over seventy, didn't do drugs or drink, didn't
talk about drug albums or ever do anything else like you mentioned, yeah, I can
see why you'd think that.
Silly boys, don't you have languages to invent, people to not get to use them?
sethraptor
Sat Sep 3 13:19:25 50557,
I have a confession to make.
Ever since two months ago, I have been holding Anthony McCarthy at gunpoint and
forcing him to respond to any new comments appearing on this thread. I thought
it could be the greatest practical joke ever invented, but I have come to
regret this decision, as me and Anthony both have now squandered countless
hours of our tragically limited lives carrying on an argument that has no
relevance to anyone on earth, and is ultimately completely pointless. Anthony
ran out of new things to say even before I tracked him down using Facebook and
my dad's credit card and put a gun to his head forcing him to respond to every
menial and hollow argument with his own empty thoughtless answer. If it were
not for someone literally holding a gun to his head, threatening to end his
only life on this earth, Antony would have no reason or desire to continue this
asinine discussion unless he was completely hopelessly mentally insane, or
maybe just terribly lonely. Now that I have returned to my own life and finally
let Anthony return to his family and his job as a teacher, there will no longer
be any need to continue this pointless hopeless bickering. My sincere apology
to anyone who has been affected by my actions. Now we can all return to our
lives as they were before this ever happened.
I think we all can take away a valuable lesson from this, which is that you
always have the choice to not respond to a youtube comment. As Anthony has
pointed out an exhausting number of times in the closest thing to a cry for
help that I would allow him to write without blowing his brains out, if nobody
had responded to him, he would never have been literally forced at gunpoint to
write an almost all the way thought out retort between one and three
paragraphs, lest he be killed instantly by a giant gun pointed at his head at
all times.
I wish you all good luck in your future endeavors, whatever language, real or
invented, they may take place in. Tomorrow I will turn myself in to the
authorities.
Goodbye forever
- Seth Raptor
P.S. Sorry Mitch.
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:19:26 50557,
Even stupider than most of the other comments here and that's saying something.
I've never been on Facebook.
I think Esperantists and other people who are interested in using a language
instead of pretending to make them up just leave this bogus conlang stuff to
the kiddies.
You Safar
Sat Sep 3 13:19:28 50557,
it's okay Anthony, you're free! You can stop!
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:19:29 50557,
You're right I am. I wonder how you'd say that in Toki pona and if someone who
didn't know what you meant would understand it. My guess is no.
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:19:30 50557,
Anthony, are you actually insane now? Do you have some sort of Stockholm
Syndrome? He's not going to kill you, you have no reason to continue anymore!
Do you need me to call a therapist? I know how hard it was, do you want to talk
about it?
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:19:32 50557,
Hey, I'd forgotten all about this till I saw the notification that someone had
flapped their fingers at me. It amused me to answer it.
Compared to inventing "languages" in ridiculous, unused alphabet projects and
ridiculous "languages" of 120 words that don't say much of anything that's
sensible.
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:19:33 50557,
Oh my god, it is Stockholm Syndrome! You think this is fun? Jesus Christ,
sethraptor, you've completely broken him!
Don't worry, Anthony, professionals are on the way! We can help you!
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:19:34 50557,
I don't think you know what "Stockholm Syndrome" means anymore than you know
what phenomenology means. Which is an irony when the topic is language though
one I'm sure you won't get, probably not knowing what "irony" means, either
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:19:35 50557,
great improv skills anthony way to say yes
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:19:36 50557,
Anthony McCarthy
Shh, shh, it's okay, tell us all about it, you can trust us...
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:31:28 50557,
Great way to, again, confirm my original comment in this thread.
Admit it, this is the most excitement any of your youtubes has ever caused and
you're thrilled by it.
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:31:29 50557,
But he does have Stockholm Syndrome! Well, on an abstract level. See,
sethraptor was his physical captor (Rhyme not intended), but what truly kept
him hostage was his task to continue replying to this thread endlessly. Sure,
it wasn't as obvious before, with his aggressor making it clear how he would be
punished and making it unethical to assume that he didn't want to stop; but now
with physical freedom, Anthony is still partaking in and even romanticizing
this argument! Just as the traditional Stockholm Syndrome sufferer develops
feelings of safety, normalcy, and even love for their assailant, our poor
nonconsensual comment warrior has grown to associate this utter torture of
discourse with joy and entertainment!
I understand trying to use more accurate labels, and PT+OCD does fit this case
pretty well, but the point is that he has deluded himself past self-help. And
regardless of the exact wording we use, we're still arguing semantics when we
should be helping this man avoid succumbing to complete insanity!
Anthony, I know you're reading this, can you please try to understand that what
you're doing is not fun? We need to acknowledge this first before anything
else; you have not enjoyed this, are not enjoying this, and will not ever enjoy
this. This isn't normal! Please, return to functional society! I am begging you!
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:31:30 50557,
I can imagine you could translate some lines from really bad Tarzan movies into
it. I would like to know why it was invented and what kind of "user base" it
has generated and what use they make of it. Other than that, I don't know.
I'd like to see someone translate that first sentence in this comment into it,
doing a word by word retranslation back into English. How would you say "I can
imagine" in the language, what with no pronouns or verbs. I can imagine trying
to express the second person plural or, in fact, any large plural class would
get rather involved.
I can assure you I feel no stress, no trauma and no OCD in this. I've left it
for weeks at a time before I noticed the little bell in the upper corner of the
screen said there were responses to things I'd said. It was an exercise in
testing how silly some of Youtube's, um.... "intellectuals" were.
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:31:32 50557,
What does "Stockholm Syndrome on an abstract level" mean?
You get sillier with every comment.
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:31:33 50557,
But you yourself are one of those silly intellectuals, considering that you're
still compulsively replying to every new comment and taking joy in it.
I'm sorry, but I can't really help you unless you admit that you aren't
enjoying this. Until then, I'll still be here. I know you can do it!
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:31:35 50557,
You say as you reply to what I said.
I do have to note that it's really funny how you guys whine about how long this
has been going on, making it go on longer to whine about how long it's getting.
I think I said something about your projects reminding me of the Society for
Putting Things On Top Of Other Things.
I'm finding this mildly amusing, that's as far as it goes at this point.
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:31:36 50557,
"Objection, the last time someone mentioned the length of the chain was you
yourself. "Not as long as people keep it going. If no one had answered me it
would have been over three months ago with my first comment." You are the only
one left who is actively replying and still directly complaining about how long
it's going. Everyone else has moved past that by now."
-Me, one month ago
"Objection, the last time someone mentioned the length of the chain was you
yourself. "Not as long as people keep it going. If no one had answered me it
would have been over three months ago with my first comment." You are the only
one left who is actively replying and still directly complaining about how long
it's going. Everyone else has moved past that by now."
-Me, again right now
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:31:37 50557,
I think you've watched too much Perry Mason. Only he was careful to get his
facts lined up. I was answering the whiny objection to my answering people who
answered me.
I think you have got to be the silliest people other than Alex Jones fans.
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:31:39 50557,
Who's Perry Mason and why is he relevant?
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:31:40 50557,
Try google. And if upon finding out who Perry Mason is and don't understand
the relevance to your comment, that wouldn't surprise me.
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:31:41 50557,
I had actually looked him up before I even made the comment. Again, who is
Perry Mason and why is he relevant?
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:31:43 50557,
It was his use of the word "objection" and I meant it as a joke.
I wonder if someone could get that meaning from your translation if they didn't
know what the original sentence said.
I wonder why anyone would attempt to construct such a language except as an
experiment in seeing to what extent the most common of grammatical categories
are essential to communication.
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:31:44 50557,
So he said objection a lot? So he's basically just Phoenix Wright? Wait, but
you're calling him Perry Mason... and it's still irrelevant! Oh my god, your
memory is starting to deteriorate! This is horrible; I've never seen somebody
fall so deep into Stockholm Syndrome, PTSD, and OCD! We can help you! Please
fight it, try to stabilize your consciousness!
Also why is he relevant?
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:31:45 50557,
Also why is he relevant?
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:31:46 50557,
AlsNo why is he relOevant?
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:31:48 50557,
Ramanuj, toki pona has the pretty obvious advantage of being rediculously easy
to learn. even someone who doesn't think it counts as a language can see that.
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:31:49 50557,
Any list of 120 words is "ridiculously easy to learn" as compared to a real
language, that doesn't mean that list can function as a full language. Even
the inventor of Toki Pona didn't claim that it could deal with more than very
simple ideas. Well, if you want a good example of what happens when you
conduct your affairs on the basis of very simple ideas, look at the United
States under Trump. I would love to see someone do a mark up of the "Graham
Cassidy" atrocity that is going through the Senate right now on the basis of a
language that doesn't even have a means of expressing large numbers,
unambiguously without exceeding the limitations of the language.
Your claims for Toki Pona don't match those of the woman who made it.
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:31:50 50557,
see, this guy gets it (also hey anthony what claims are you talking about? so
far I've just said that I like it more than I like esperanto)
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:31:52 50557,
That Toki Pona is a real language that can do what Esperanto or any other real
language can. It's not a language, it's a game, I'd say that it's the
equivalent of pig-latin or ubbi-dubbi but those are, actually, able to
communicate ideas because they use standard English.
Anyone who claims that TP is an actual language that can do what a real
language can is a silly billy. Not even Sonja Lang would claim that. Or at
least she hadn't the last time I bothered to look. As I recall it, the TP
facebook page uses mostly English to talk about Toki Pona and it has a couple
of thousand "friends" the one that tries to talk in only TP has a few hundred.
I'd love to see them discuss something complex and abstract. Or try to.
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:31:53 50557,
"Toki Pona is a language that breaks down advanced ideas to their most basic
elements." -Toki Pona: The Language of Good, page 9
guess Sonja Lang is a silly billy, huh
side note: "silly billy" is hands down the funniest way you could ever insult
someone
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:31:54 50557,
If by "most basic elements" in a vocabulary of 120 words means "vague
generality" it's accurate. If it is supposed to mean expressing its meaning
then, yes, she is a silly billy. If you think think "silly billy" is the
funniest I can be you should read some of the comments I made above.
Which other conlangs do you actually know? I mean "know" as in could actually
talk about something in.
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:31:55 50557,
I was making fun of you, ya dingus. calling someone a "silly billy" makes you
sound like you're from the twentieth century. oh wait nevermind
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:31:57 50557,
Nobody here is saying that Toki Pona is advanced but you, Anthony. I would say
objection but I am too young to know why he's relevant.
(Also, not to rush, it's been far longer than usual. Do you know when we can
expect the Zese video?)
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:32:08 50557,
(9/24/17)
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:32:10 50557,
Again with the "oh you don't know any conlangs that I like so you are unfit to
talk on this subject".
(Nice.)
Memnun
Sat Sep 3 13:32:11 50557,
anyone in this thread smoke weed
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:32:13 50557,
Oh, what are you? 12? Apparently the oldest you might be is 17, or didn't you
do the math. Maybe you did it with the three numbers available in Toki Pona.
"Dingus" my quick perusal of an online etymological dictionary says that it is
a word from the "late 19th century: via Afrikaans from Dutch ding ‘thing.’"
Little boys playing intellectual, that's what you guys are
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:32:14 50557,
It's not a matter of it being "advanced" it's a matter of it being sufficient
as compared to real languages with sufficient vocabulary and it isn't.
Phina Ibe
Sat Sep 3 13:32:16 50557,
Jesus fuck, did you make a fool of yourself.
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:32:17 50557,
I like the implication that I said dingus to sound like an intellectual
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:32:19 50557,
I hereby arbitrarily decree that a language must be as precise as Ithkuil to be
considered sufficient for communication.
Well, would you look at that, my dearest straight-jacket connoisseur, not only
is Toki Pona not a language, neither is any naturalistic language. Maybe
arbitrary goal posting is a bad idea? But what do I know, I only fluently speak
English, which is nowhere near expansive enough to compare to the soft, loving
arms of Father Ithkuil.
(Personally, I'm not certain that everybody in this thread is sober, Andrew.)
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:32:21 50557,
That is an implication only in your own mind. And that of your fan boys.
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:32:22 50557,
Well, good luck with that.
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:32:24 50557,
""Dingus" my quick perusal of an online etymological dictionary says that it
is a word from the "late 19th century: via Afrikaans from Dutch ding
‘thing.’"
Little boys playing intellectual, that's what you guys are"
-Literally you, not even a day ago
The implication may not have been intended, but it is right there in your
fucking words. Jesus Christ, are you losing your eyesight along with your
sanity?
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:32:25 50557,
I said "playing" not "succeeding in being" or is that too complex and subtle
for your minds honed to a blunt and non-incisive obtuseness by TP?
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:32:27 50557,
and I said "sound like"! wow, clarifying is fun
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:32:29 50557,
What the actual fuck? That was probably the most pretentious word choice I've
ever seen. "Blunt" and "non-incisive obtuseness" mean the same thing; you just
expended two more words consisting of 22 characters not including the spaces
and "and" without contributing to the overall information of the sentence. Why?
Why in the hell would you do that? Why wouldn't you just say "for your blunt
minds limited by TP"? That's like 30 fewer characters and gives the same
information. Is it to add emphasis? Is it to sound like a legal document? If
the former, you're adding emphasis to what is already an ad hominem, so said
emphasis is repetitive and unneeded. If the latter, then there's no way to deny
that it's pretentious. Is there another reason? This seriously makes no sense.
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:32:30 50557,
If you like it I'm surprised you don't try to get better at it. "Sound like"
doesn't get close to it.
I can come up with as many insults as you'd like to provoke but it's really not
that interesting a use of my time.
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:32:31 50557,
What is an interesting use of your time? Surely this isn't?
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:32:33 50557,
ok anthony you want a better clarification? here's exactly what happened:
1) you called me a silly billy
2) I said that was a funny way to insult someone, because it's really pathetic
3) you thought my comment was complimenting your wit or whatever
4) I called you a dingus
5) you called me and alex silly boys playing intellectual
6) I pointed out that your phrasing made it sound kinda like you thought
"dingus" was the sort of thing a fake intellectual would say
7) you clarified that that was not your original intention
8) alex restated that it really sounded like that's what you were saying
9) you thought they were saying that I succeeded in sounding like an
intellectual by saying "dingus"? I guess?
I'm not actually sure what you meant by that particular comment but I think
I've clarified my side of this conversation. please let me know if there's
anything else you're confused about.
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:32:34 50557,
oh also somewhere in there you implied that I would forget what century I grew
up in AND that knowing how long ago the year 2000 was counts as doing math
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:32:36 50557,
There's a common English phrase for what you're doing, "grasping at straws".
How do you say that in Toki Pona?
I have to say, I've seldom been so discouraged with the products of the recent
decades in education as this discussion has left me.
Esperantists, even Idoists should ignore the current "conlang" scene because it
has just gotten too silly.
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:32:37 50557,
if Esperanto has an idiom with the same meaning as "grasping at straws" I'm
very impressed. also what the entire heck are you talking about
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:32:39 50557,
While you could say it any number of ways in Esperanto, the common one is
alrocxi sin al -ero. I confirmed that in Peter Benson's Comprehensive English
Esperanto Dictionary.
And if you don't understand what I said, I'm a lot less surprised at that then
I was the first time I found this channel. Who would have ever guessed that
someone might think language was about communication?
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:32:41 50557,
hey anthony I understand WHAT you're saying I just have no idea why you're
saying it. what point are you trying to get across? I get that you think toki
pona isn't a real language because it's too good at being simple, but are you
also saying that esperantists, who arguably make up the majority of the modern
conlang community, aren't a part of the modern conlang community? are you
saying esperanto, by far the most popular constructed language, doesn't count
as a constructed language because it's just so much better than all the other
ones? or maybe you're saying that esperantists just don't like making their own
conlangs, because they all agree with you that since esperanto nailed it there
isn't a point in making any more? you certainly have written several thousand
words in this thread, and I've read all of them, and I'm no closer to
understanding your viewpoint than I was when you called me a fraud for not
mentioning esperanto radio shows in a video about ido. didn't you say you were
a teacher? as in, a person who professionally explains things to people who
don't know about them? please, teach me. I am but a foolish teen, after all.
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:32:43 50557,
No, it's just the only constructed language project that has worked to attract
a substantial user base and to persist for a hundred thirty years. It never
had to be 'perfect" or "flawless" it just had to do that.
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:32:45 50557,
In language terms, a couple million people is not substantial. If all
Esperantists lived in the US, they would be near 1% of the population. As it
stands, less than 0.01% of the world speaks Esperanto. If we trust Wikipedia's
"List of languages by number of native speakers" page, then Konkani, the 100th
biggest language, has more native speakers than Esperanto has fluent (not
necessarily native) speakers, ranking at 0.11% of the world. The only advantage
Esperanto has is that it is known on the internet.
Sources:
http://www.esperanto.net/veb/faq-5.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers
http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/
http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
I know that none of these are concrete, but even taking these purely as
estimates, Esperanto is generally less spoken than a language in India that I
didn't even know about until now.
Did it persist? Yes. Is it more popular than Mormonism, which is older by
another half century? No. Is it influential? Counter question, are any internet
fads truly influential?
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:32:47 50557,
It's a lot more substantial than 100 users and none of your non-fulfilled
schemes are even going to get two users. And those users come from many
different countries which is the whole point of having a constructed language
such as Esperanto. The use of Esperanto was always meant as a secondary
language of intercommunication between people who didn't share a common
language. People who speak Konkani would use Esperanto to communicate with
someone in Poland, Sweden, a country in East Africa, South or North America
with whom they don't share another common language. To compare Esperanto to a
national or regional language is to not get the point, at all.
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:32:49 50557,
Did I call any other conlangs substantial? No, I did not. Conlanging as a whole
is not substantial as of right now and very likely will never be. The highest
quality broken wrench is still a broken wrench; being relatively popular and
influential means nothing outside of our little-known hobby.
There are Esperantists worldwide? Wow, that fixes everything! Now there is
perfect communication across all borders, never mind that very few of people
can talk to each other internationally and are likely in the same demographic,
you know, since they have to know what an auxlang is or be raised by someone
who does in order to at the very least know Esperanto exists. Never mind that
only conlangers and language enthusiasts can talk to other conlangers and
language enthusiasts in other countries using Esperanto. Never mind that
language enthusiasts tend to already be multilingual. It all doesn't matter
because wow, how fucking amazing, a minority of people in one country can talk
to an identical fucking minority in another. This excuses literally everything.
And you know, fuck those Konkanis for speaking a language in a different
family, it's their fault for speaking an Indic language instead of a Romance,
Germanic, Slavic, or otherwise European language. How dare they have a
vocabulary that does not correspond to Esperanto's? This is an international
language, and that apparently means that it retains vocabulary and grammar from
the only languages that matter: ones within a short boat or train ride from
Poland. That's international enough for the average auxlang enthusiast, so the
rest of the world just needs to suck it up and learn this bafflingly easy
language like the rest of us. You speak Mandarin, an extremely isolating
language with no European cognates other than modern loanwords? Doesn't matter,
and don't complain that Esperanto is fusional because it's just so damn easy
and international.
"To compare Esperanto to a national or regional language is to not get the
point, at all."
Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot that Esperanto isn't actually a language, I'm sorry for
comparing it to languages, it's obviously in its own untouchable category. Just
because it has words and a grammar doesn't mean it's a real language, therefore
we are not allowed to treat it like a natural language, even if people consider
it a "living language". It is simply a word game between European polyglots,
except that it's not even a fun word game like the literally demonic Toki Pona.
There, are you happy now? To escape criticism, your language is now in the same
category as Toki Pona, which is something that you don't take seriously in the
slightest. Is that what you wanted?
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:32:51 50557,
Many Esperantists don't have a European language as their first language.
There are substantial numbers of users in China and Japan, including some of
its most significant authors.
Konkani is an Indo-European language, it is grammatically similar to Sanskritic
languages. There are more than a few Esperantists in India, as well.
You guys should get together and invent Sillibillian. Use the Shavian
alphabet, which I bet none of you can actually read, not even English written
in it.
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:43:26 50557,
That is the most in-depth deconstruction I've seen of any argument on all of
YouTube. Congratulations. I'm going to sit back and see if anyone else comes in
and makes this less stale.
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:43:27 50557,
Oh, for crying out loud. You guys say stupid stuff, I notice the little bell
in the corner of Youtube is red, I knock it down. None of it is hard.
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:43:28 50557,
Do you want an award? You sound like you do.
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:43:30 50557,
I can conceive of no honor that you boys could come up with that I'd want.
Strike Ecozzocn
Sat Sep 3 13:43:31 50557,
Anthony McCarthy this is the longest thread I have ever seen. While I don’t
speak toki pona I admire it for what it does.
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:43:32 50557,
Strike Esozzocn
I highly recommend that you read the entirety of the thread. Sarkar is right;
it is beautiful.
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:43:34 50557,
What does it do? I mean, what does it really do, not what do people claim that
it does. I would be curious to know what Sonja Lang does with it, though I
don't seem to be able to find that out. I have read that when she translated
part of the Taoist literature it was into Esperanto, not Toki Pona, though
perhaps that's old information.
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:43:35 50557,
the most important thing toki pona achieves, imo, is learnability.
additionally, the tiny vocabulary makes it so that in order to say most things,
you need to define what they are. this is admittedly less convenient than the
traditional "just have a word for everything" approach, but it makes it so that
you can't talk about anything in toki pona if you don't understand what it is.
this might not sound like an admirable goal to many people, and I get that, but
I personally think it's incredible. the only restriction on what you can say is
your own understanding, rather than gaps in the vocabulary itself. (unless you
wanna talk about math because that's basically impossible)
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:43:36 50557,
Why not reduce the vocabulary to 60 words, then? If you already understand
what's being said why say it? What you are saying in this shows what I
originally said, that your conception of conlangs is just plain silly.
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:43:37 50557,
no, see, it's not that the LISTENER can only understand what they already
understood; it's that the SPEAKER can only say what they understand. for
example, you can't say "radio" if you were born in 1998 and don't know what a
radio is sorry, but if someone says "ilo pi pali kalama kepeken sona walo",
even if you personally don't know what a radio is, you can figure out that
they're talking about a device that creates sound using information that's made
of light. of course, that's rather cumbersome to actually say, so in practice
you'd usually say something like "ilo pi kalama walo" or just "ilo kalama",
both of which are less specific but get the general idea of a radio across.
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:43:39 50557,
I know people who were born after 1998 who aren't so stupid they don't know
what a radio is. I can't account for why you wouldn't have. Maybe you don't
have a very big vocabulary in English.
Can you get any sillier?
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:43:40 50557,
it was a callback you goof
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:43:41 50557,
something like "nasin sona sijelo" I guess? I don't think I've ever said the
word phenomenology in english so to be completely honest the answer is that I
wouldn't say it
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:43:43 50557,
I'm sorry for not responding to your questions it's just that anthony was out
here saying much funnier things
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:43:44 50557,
yeah sure go for it
Mcguy215
Sat Sep 3 13:43:45 50557,
holy crap, Anthony is still replying? It is so embarrassing for him, I would
delete the comment after FO translated moby dick, but the thread continued!
Mcguy215
Sat Sep 3 13:43:47 50557,
also TWO THIRDS of comments on this video are on this comment...
Phina Ibe
Sat Sep 3 13:43:48 50557,
JUST DELETE THIS COMMENT ALREADY, YOU DUD!
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:43:49 50557,
Actually no, please don't. This should be a national monument or something.
Phina Ibe
Sat Sep 3 13:43:51 50557,
Alex Hayes Look what Mcguy said, this comment contains 2/3 of the Comments on
this vid.
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:43:52 50557,
How odd, I don't feel embarrassed at all. Where's the translation of Moby
Dick? Do you mean the "translation" of the first chapter of Gerda Malaperis
which I pointed out was no translation at all but a vague indication, something
in line with Woody Allen's joke about speed reading, "reading" War and Peace in
20 minutes, "It's about Russia".
Obviously you don't know anything about toki pona, even less than the silly
people here who do know a tiny bit about it.
Oddly, I don't expect such silly people as many who engaged me in this thread
to feel embarrassment over not knowing stuff they were pretending to, of
pretending that Toki pona is a real language capable of doing complex
communication when its inventor said that was not her purpose and she designed
the language to not be able to do that.
Let's hear your championing of the Shavian alphabet. I could use a laugh.
Phina Ibe
Sat Sep 3 13:43:53 50557,
Anthony McCarthy I can't believe that Misali hasn't blocked you yet.
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:43:55 50557,
Why? Because he's gotten lots of comments on one of his videos? Surely a
desideratum of any vlogger. If he did it wouldn't bother me in any way,.
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:43:56 50557,
"vlogger"?
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:43:57 50557,
I'll have to admit I didn't take much time with that comment. "Poseur" more
to your liking?
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:43:59 50557,
hey anthony, I suppose you think that's cute
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:44:00 50557,
Oh, does that impress you? Among the people I know it's just another word.
French is my first second language, I use it just about every day. I grew up
among French Canadians from Quebec and Arcadie. So I know what it's like to
learn a real second language, not a play one.
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:44:01 50557,
Geesh, thin skinned, much?
chromaticiT
Sat Sep 3 13:44:02 50557,
mr. mccarthy is that you
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:44:04 50557,
look, anthony, we've had fun here for the past few months but I wanna get real
for a second. with no jokes, here's my understanding of your argument, in no
particular order
1) toki pona doesn't count as a language because there isn't a significant body
of works written in it
2) esperanto is like, really good
3) people who use fancy words are smarter than people who try to make
themselves understood
4) this comment thread has gone on for too long but if it certainly isn't YOUR
fault
5) I don't speak esperanto which means I'm a faker of some sort
as I'm sure you know, I disagree with basically all of those points. however,
you haven't really done that good of a job communicating your stance, so I'm
certain I've misinterpreted your views in some way. if we ever wanna have a
meaningful discussion, which we might not wanna do because throwing
ridiculously mild insults back and forth is much more fun, it would be best if
you go ahead and clarify how much of this is actually what you're trying to say.
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:44:05 50557,
OK, - T. P. isn't a real language because it can't function as a real language
does, express a vast range of ideas to other people who don't already know
those ideas, communicate needs, desires, etc. with the same level of
specificity and accuracy that real languages do.
- Esperanto can do that as by the way, Ido can too. So can most natural
languages, especially those which have or can adopt vocabulary to cover things
not already part of that language, T P, stuck at a corpus of 120 words, can't
do that. The number of works written in the language is immaterial to it being
a real language, though it can make learning it more rewarding
- I'm not the one who brought terms like "phenomenology" or "Shavian" or many
others into this. I don't have any problem with people who can communicate
ideas accurately and effectively with a smaller vocabulary, In Esperanto I
favor the same approach that Claude Piron did, which favors the use of a
smaller vocabulary for maximum clarity, but one big enough to do that.
However, I don't see any reason to not use a word if it's part of a language.
- I'm not the one who has been whining about the length of this discussion. - I
don't think you know what you're talking about, sometimes, though there are
others in this discussion who really don't know what they're talking about.
It's good to know things. Better than not knowing them. Language can be useful
for that if it can express ideas clearly. It's not just some kind of game or
hobby, there are important things to do.
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:44:06 50557,
thank you! see, now I understand you much better and can actually talk about
where we disagree.
- "it can't... express a vast range of ideas to other people who don't already
know those ideas" I'd actually argue that the opposite is true! it's
specifically impossible to talk about anything WITHOUT explaining what it is to
whoever you're talking to.
- yes, toki pona only has 120 words. that doesn't mean that there's only 120
things you can say. just like in esperanto, words can be combined together in
regular ways to form new ideas; it's just done through word order rather than
through affixes.
- I see no reason to use a word if another word gets the same idea across more
elegantly.
- "Not as long as people keep it going. If no one had answered me it would
have been over three months ago with my first comment." -you, two months ago,
in response to "is it over?". this is pretty clearly saying that you don't
think it's your fault that the thread is so long, but the fact that you're even
blaming anyone about it means that you, on some level, wish it hadn't lasted as
long as it has
- ok I know that that last point is in response to my last point but it's still
the most confusing part of your argument. the closest thing to like an actual
insult you've said about me is calling me a fake... something? like you've
called me a fraud and a poser (sorry, "poseur") but what exactly am I
pretending to be? a linguistics educator? I specifically call conlang critic a
"show that gets facts wrong" so that can't be it. a polyglot? I've avoided
answering the "how many languages do you speak" question mostly because, as is
pretty clear, the answer depends on what counts as a language and on what
counts as speaking. but importantly I've never claimed to speak any languages
other than english and toki pona, the two languages I'm most confidant in. I
do, in fact, have passing familiarity with several languages, conlangs
especially, but I've never been in an environment where speaking a language
other than english was necessary, or even a viable option. no, I couldn't live
in what I know of german, not because I don't know how to speak german (I did
study it for years, after all) but because literally nobody who lives where I
live speaks german so using german just wouldn't be practical.
- oops there's a subpoint to your last point! are you trying to say that having
fun with languages isn't allowed? like anyone who enjoys linguistics or
conlanging just should stop? I sure hope that's not what you're trying to say
because wow that sounds like the most boring thing you could possibly care
about. oh no people are having too much fun! the horror! idk maybe I'm reading
to far into things
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:44:07 50557,
probably not, since I've only had experience with the language in an academic
context
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:44:09 50557,
Who said that having fun with language isn't allowed, I didn't. I said there
was more to it than playing games and having a hobby of inventing "languages"
and talking about languages that you have not and never will get around to
inventing.
Toki Pona cannot express a full range of ideas. How would you say, "the square
root of fifty seven" in Toki Pona? How would you say "pi times the radius of a
circle squared"? How would you say "all people are created equal and have an
equal right to the due process of the law?" I will bet you that just about
any joke you can laugh at in English can't be translated into it so that you
could get a laugh out of another TP user.
The creator of the language certainly didn't assert that her invention could be
used to express all ideas that can be expressed in natural language, she said
you could only use it talk about very simple things, that is unless she lost
her mind and started making claims of that sort.
I think my original comment on this video is more true than I did when I made
it.
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:44:10 50557,
ok so you were talking about one specific type of fun. that's... better?
no, toki pona can't talk about math. that's not what it was designed for, and
if you want to talk about math, toki pona is not the language to do it in. it
also won't be able to translate humor, but humor is pretty untranslatable in
general. most of the jokes I'd laugh at are puns, and english puns won't work
in tp and tp puns won't work in english. that's just how jokes work! however
you did give a specific example which I am now obligated to translate:
original: "all people are created equal and have an equal right to the due
process of the law."
translated: "jan ale li sama li jo e ken sama pi pali lipu lawa."
back translated: "every person is equal and has the same abilities with regards
to the law's (literally "controlling document") actions."
this doesn't capture all the nuance of the original statement, but you can't
deny that it gets the idea across. oh and as a cool bonus it actually is more
efficient to say that than the english phrase! neat.
I've already quoted jan sonja saying that it was designed to be able to express
anything USING simple ideas. like just scroll up the quote is right there. the
point is that it's possible to say anything by breaking it down to the simple
ideas that it's made of.
ok uh, your original comment? are we talking about the same comment here? the
one that goes, ahem,
"You have got to be about the most superficial commentator on con-langues since
the idiotic B. Gilson.
Did I miss the one where you said which conlang you're fluent in and read at
least three times a week and can read new books in every week of even one year
or listen to radio shows in every week? New radio shows?"
the one where you follow up a mostly legitimate criticism of my videos (I don't
go nearly as deep as a should and most of the stuff I talk about is super
basic) by misspelling a word that's in the title of the video the comment was
left on then insulting some guy I had no reason to have heard of before? (he
does an esperanto podcast I think?)
I just wanna make sure we're both talking about the comment where you have a
paragraph break after one sentence and then proceed to show that you did, in
fact, miss the one where I said which conlang I'm fluent in (episode twelve)
and then go on to list some things that basically only apply to esperanto,
(literally the only conlang where new books are published in it weekly) and
then wrap the whole thing up with three entire spaces in a row and the
assertion that radio shows are something literally anyone in the year 2017
cares about?
this is the comment where I replied simply by copy pasting the last sentence,
which, in isolation, sounded pretty funny, and then you proceeded to go on
about how surprising it is that I didn't mention esperanto radio shows in a
video that isn't about esperanto. this was the comment that prompted me to
point out how radios aren't a thing anyone my age (I'm 19 years old!) cares
about which for some reason prompted you to say literally the funniest thing
anyone has ever said to me.
anthony, this is the comment I scroll past every time I reply to a comment in
this thread and I've read it so many times it's imprinted in my brain. its
exact cadence has impacted my speech irreversibly. this is the comment that
started a thread that inspired me to make a dumb homestuck joke remix and post
it on my channel for thousands of actual people to see and be confused by.
so, maybe you still do think I'm about the most superficial commentator on
con-languages since the idiotic B. Gilson, and maybe you did miss the one where
I said which conlang I'm fluent in and read at least three times a week and can
read new books in every week of even one year or listen to radio shows in every
week new radio shows. anthony, I suppose you think that's the truth. what it
makes you is a fraud.
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:44:11 50557,
Akira was some random libertarian that started spamming about how the left is
bad or something. I don't remember anymore, and I'm not rereading all of these
400 comments to find out by context.
Cax Attacks
Sat Sep 3 13:44:13 50557,
Conlang Critic I bet you can't even translate everything ever written into toki
pona. I bet you can't communicate with foxes in toki pona. Only real
languages can communicate with foxes. Have foxes read Moby Dick? Only real
languages have read Moby Dick.
Foxes are serious business and only they can communicate in the UN.
Foxes aren't very good at math though so I guess they're not a real language
either.
Errorite
Sat Sep 3 13:44:24 50557,
Just joining in on this glorious piece of history.
A bit late tho...
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:44:26 50557,
It's already been half a year; there is no end in sight. Long live the thread!
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:44:27 50557,
I'm not sure of a word that means - "someone making believe someone said
something really stupid when the person making believe they did was the only
one saying it" - but there really needs to be one because it's one of the most
common means of mischaracterizing what was said online. That wasn't done
nearly as often in print. I don't know if that's because there are so many
more silly people typing stuff out online or if it was just harder to get away
with among people who read books.
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:44:28 50557,
I am, though, confident you couldn't say that in Toki Pona.
Cax Attacks
Sat Sep 3 13:44:30 50557,
I mean you didn't express the concept of "someone making believe someone said
something really stupid when the person making believe they did was the only
one saying it" well in english either so I guess it's a fake language that has
no value and is just a game too. Also I like how you imply that the set of
people who use the internet and the set of people who read books is a vastly
different set and has no significant overlap. I like how you imply that books
are the only kind of valid written literature.
The other thing that I can't seem to fathom is why you feel that in order to
like Esperanto, you have to put down all other conlangs. There's plenty of
conlangs out there that are great. Toki Pona is cool and has an interesting
concept. Some conlangs exist for artistic purposes or to push the boundaries of
what it is to be a language. Some exist to facilitate story telling and world
building. Some exist to try to find new ways to communicate with many people.
The fact that Esperanto has native speakers does not mean it is more valid than
others. The fact that it has enough users that it has books written in it
semi-consistently doesn't make it more valid. Popularity does not equal ease of
communication or how good something is. English is used by many many people,
but that doesn't mean it's the best language and that others aren't valid.
It's okay to feel a bit sad that other people don't like a thing you love, but
that doesn't make it okay to try to invalidate other people's opinions or the
things that they like. I'm sorry you feel bad, please don't be afraid to ask
for help from people you care about and who care about you.
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:44:31 50557,
The only criticisms I made of Ido was that that it hasn't established a stable
form and it hasn't attracted a large, continuing number of users. The only
criticisms I made of loglan-logban were that it wasn't user friendly and that
it was based on a bogus linguistics theory from the 1930s that just about no
real linguists ever bought or believe in now. Novial, I only pointed out that
Gilson's project to "perfect" it began and died c. 1998. My criticisms of Toki
Pona are many and I stated all of them many times. Of those only TP is defined
in a way that means it will never and could never be a real language on the
same level as a natural language or a real invented language.
I don't recall talking about the small number of native speakers of Esperanto,
where did I give that as a criterion of why it is what no other of the
languages under discussion is, an actual language of at least every week, if
not everyday use of many, many people in many, many countries.
People have every right to hold their opinions and other people have a right to
criticize those opinions on the basis of their coherence, their fidelity to
facts and logic and reality. If someones opinions can't stand up to that then
their attachments to their opinion aren't based on coherence, fidelity to
facts, logic or reality. There's a lot of that going around online. It's what
destroyed American democracy.
Cax Attacks
Sat Sep 3 13:44:32 50557,
See the thing is, though, that Toki Pona does exactly what it's set out to do
and is still a real language. Since there seems to be a definition issue, could
you please create a list of requirements to be a language? I'm really curious
as to how you would define a "real" language
Also if you want to get into political talk, if you think that the internet is
the reason that American Democracy isn't functioning then you're just plain
wrong. It's been fucked up since its creation and only ever barely functioned.
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:44:34 50557,
A real language has to enable the people using it to conduct their everyday
life and fulfill their reasonable requirements for communication or it is not a
real language, it is an inadequate code or a game.
What the inventor of Toki Pona intended it to do was to communicate "very
simple" ideas. If you want to conduct your life on the level that Toki Pona
would enable you to other people would be entirely justified in thinking you
were simple minded. The same would be true if you tried to conduct your life
with 120 words of English or French or Esperanto (though about 1200 would serve
you extremely well due to its word creation capability) or any other language.
Basic English with its vocabulary of about seven times the size of Toki Pona
doesn't work very well but it might just barely count as a real language,
Special English from Voice of America is notably more successful though I
wouldn't want to have to limit myself to it.
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:44:35 50557,
I didn't blame the internet for the problem that has led to the downfall of
American Democracy but to the dumbing down and lack of integrity that is merely
exposed by the internet. See, that's the kind of subtle distinction that was
contained in my comment:
People have every right to hold their opinions and other people have a right to
criticize those opinions on the basis of their coherence, their fidelity to
facts and logic and reality. If someones opinions can't stand up to that then
their attachments to their opinion aren't based on coherence, fidelity to
facts, logic or reality. There's a lot of that going around online. It's what
destroyed American democracy.
It's going around online but it comes from a more general dumbing down of
American thought, and that comes mostly from TV, movies, radio, video games,
etc. But people who have been so dumbed down often can type out nonsense
online. Or is that too subtle for a Toki Ponist to be able to grasp, which
wouldn't surprise me, one bit.
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:44:36 50557,
hi anthony! it’s great hearing from you again. I have a few things to say in
response to your points:
- “someone making believe someone said something really stupid when the
person making believe they did was the only one saying it” is called
“projecting”. in toki pona, I’d call it something like “toki nasa”,
which isn’t as precise as the exact english definition, but it sure is easier
to say, and speaking precisely isn’t the point of toki pona. why should you
expect it to be able to perfectly and conveniently translate a concept you
didn’t even know the english word for?
- you don’t like Ido because it failed to be popular? that’s a pretty
boring reason to dislike something.
- your definition of “real language” excludes classical greek! wow
- you sure don’t know what toki pona is trying to do, huh? it’s not trying
to make it so you can only say simple things, it’s trying to encourage you to
explain complicated concepts. the only limits are your own understanding of
what you’re talking about, and the amount of detail you’re willing to go
into. direct quote from sonja lang: “Toki Pona offers a path for semantic
reduction. Just as we can rewrite a mathematical fraction like 4/8 as 1/2, we
can distill our thoughts to their most fundamental units to discover what
things really mean. We can understand complex ideas in terms of their smaller
parts.” (that’s from page 10 of Toki Pona: The Language of Good)
- “It's going around online but it comes from a more general dumbing down of
American thought, and that comes mostly from TV, movies, radio, video games,
etc. But people who have been so dumbed down often can type out nonsense
online.” I don’t understand what this means. as a tokiponist, which means
I’m just a huge idiot who doesn’t even read books probably, it’s too
subtle for me.
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:44:37 50557,
Where did I say I didn't "like" Ido? I didn't express any dislike of Ido,
which I learned enough so I can read it. I'll bet I can read it better than
you can.
Classical Greeks and many others were quite able to conduct their day to day
lives, not to mention communicate quite well in the language. Try translating
Sophocles, Euripides, Plato or any of the other, many texts written into it
into Toki Pona, I'm sure we could all use another laugh, at this point. If it
had the vocabulary added to it to enable it to deal with the modern world,
classical Greek could function as a fully adequate language.
How would Sonja Lang propose saying "4/8 is equal to the fraction 1/2" in Toki
Pona?
What's not to get about that question within the statement that if that is the
case then it wouldn't surprise me.
There's some reason your claims don't cohere, at times and some reason you
can't seem to understand when that's pointed out to you. Maybe you should
listen to the radio more, it's more work than TV and movies, good mental
exercise.
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:44:39 50557,
ah yes let’s argue about which things you literally said and which things you
simply implied that’s deffo a good use of our time.
can you order coffee in classical greek? if you can’t order coffee in it,
it’s of no use to me. maybe if it had a few thousand more words, it would be
functional enough to be a Real language, but actually it’s only a game.
“nanpa ni en nanpa ni li sama.”
“What's not to get about that question within the statement that if that is
the case then it wouldn't surprise me.”
asfdhfkjalhdfdgfhadjkfldhsfjhgjkfdglaf;gafhfsg
hey anthony what the entire heck is a radio? where can I find such a device?
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:44:40 50557,
I nowhere implied that there was any problems with Ido apart from the two that
I mentioned, the failure of the language to settle into a standard form and to
attract a large body of users. Compared to Esperanto it is more of a series
of closely related dialects of the parent language. I've thought it could be
useful in Esperanto literature in rendering dialects.
Well, if the language were supplied the vocabulary to order coffee, I'm quite
sure it could be. People bought and sold things in the language, I would
imagine including food and drink. You know, language man, that classical
Greek turned into modern Greek, so that happened. I can assure you, you can
order coffee in modern Greek.
Maybe you should try googling "radio". Do I have to tell you what google is?
Your radio humor is about as witty as Donald Trump's.
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:54:57 50557,
okay, so yes, you’re presenting ido’s unpopularity as a reason to dislike
it. you’re not using the word “like” because that would be too
Subjective, but that is what you’re saying.
I’m not talking about modern greek, or a hypothetical version of classical
greek that had modern vocabulary. I’m talking about classical greek, as it
existed in ancient greece. that language isn’t useful for communicating in
modern times without adding a significant amount of vocabulary, and yet
there’s no reason not to call it a real language.
okay so I’m going to stop this “I’m too young to know what a radio is”
goof because you’re right it’s no longer funny. here’s my actual
response: you think it’s hard to listen to radio? like, seriously? listening
to the radio is “work”? I don’t think I actually own a physical radio,
but I spend a huge amount of my spare time listening to podcasts (that’s what
replaced radio shows now that the radio is obsolete!) and it’s a far more
passive than watching tv. it’s an audio medium instead of an audiovisual
medium, after all. you only need to be paying attention with one of your senses
instead of two.
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:54:59 50557,
First, to say Ido is "unpopular" or to claim that's the way I presented it is
silly. To claim I presented "unpopularity" as a reason to dislike it is as
absurd if not dishonest. So your reasoning, as well as words, fails you.
English c. 1950 wouldn't suffice to discuss the full range of current
purchasing possibilities today. Are you claiming that means there's something
wrong with the language in 1950 to conduct life in 1950 or that English in 2017
is a different language? I believe way back when one of your fan boys was
trying to bring up other languages I noted that if they had gained the
vocabulary to deal with modern technology and other things any of them could,
theoretically, function as well as any other. I haven't made any qualitative
judgements of natural languages or languages with sufficient vocabulary and
linguistic resources to function in real life. If all of us knew !Xoo and it
had been supplied with an expanded vocabulary as English or German or Mandarin
or Arabic had, it would work as well as any other. Though it has phonemic and
other features that make it almost impossible for anyone but the most devoted
specialist in the study of it to learn as a quickly acquired, easily used
second language. Those are things that Zamenhof took into account when he
invented Esperanto, giving it features that make it easy to learn and use with
total confidence - I mentioned that before, too. Not all "conlang" inventors
did that. Interlingua keeps such absurdities as different conjugations of
verbs. Loglan hasn't proven to be either learner or user friendly, either,
even its inventors and early enthusiasts report having not gained full fluency
in it.
Your memory seems to fail you as well, you're the one who pretended to not know
what a radio was when I noted that unlike other conlangs that there were enough
Esperanto users for a number of radio services to have programming in
Esperanto. That was your attempt at a lame joke, not mine.
As to radio being a medium that requires the active use of the mind, more so
than TV or video, I guess you don't know that because of your repeatedly
asserted ignorance of radio. As someone who listens to radio radio services
in several languages, including Esperanto, you'll have to defer to my
experience until you gain that experience. Maybe you'd enjoy listening to
audio drama as a bridge, the Lime Town series is a way for you to do both a the
pod-cast is in the form of a radio documentary to tell a sort of sci-fi mystery
tale.
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:55:00 50557,
The question isn't necessarily if scientists are writing papers in a language,
it is if they could write them in it.
I would like to know who leads a life simple enough so that 120 words which
includes, if I recall, exactly three numbers in it. I doubt that anyone who
can be said to be fluent in T.P can give any kind of nuanced information to
other fluent T.P. users if they don't already know what is being said to them.
As I said, it's like the old Woody Allen joke about speed reading War and
Peace in 20 minutes, "It's about Russia".
Esperanto was never meant to "take over the world" it was always intended to be
a second language of inter-communication among people who didn't share another
language. I think it would be enormously useful if it became the accepted
lingua franca of science and other areas of life. It would certainly save a
lot of time and money spent on translation or learning far less easily learned
languages. Its (theoretically) uniform or near uniform pronunciation is, in
my experience, an important aspect of its suitability for that. It isn't the
only invented language that could do that, Ido could, if it could achieve a
stable form, though for literary purposes the added flexibility of Esperanto is
an added feature to attract learners and users.
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 13:55:02 50557,
wait, so you’re saying !xoo isn’t a real language either? man, your
definition of “language” sure needs some extending.
I don’t know what about “I’m going to stop this “I’m too young to
know what a radio is” goof because you’re right it’s no longer funny”
made it sound like I thought it was your joke? was it something in the phrasing
that I didn’t catch, or did you just not read it properly? I’m going to be
nice and assume it was something in the phrasing, because you’re very smart
and read all the time.
have you ever listened to the adventure zone? it’s my favorite podcast.
(sorry, “pod-cast”) if it were played on a radio for some reason, there’d
be no reason not to call it a “radio drama”. the first story is about
eighty hours long and I was laughing and or crying the whole way through. my
mind certainly was engaged, but you know what wasn’t engaged? my eyes! I
wasn’t looking at anything! I’d say that’s a more passive experience than
watching a tv show of the same length, both of which are more passive than
playing a video game of the same length. man, I’d love to start actually
talking about different types of media and their relative engagement levels.
can we start actually talking about different types of media and their relative
engagement levels? that seems like it’d be a much more productive discussion
than “is this language real”.
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:55:03 50557,
I didn't say anything about !Xoo that could possibly lead to someone honestly
concluding I'd said it isn't a real language. Obviously the language does and
has worked to serve the people who can use it with other speakers of !Xoo in
their daily life and their communications and with either the adoption or
creation of neologisms providing it with words as needed, it could deal with
anything English or Mandarin or Japanese could. It already has more than 120
words and isn't restricted to the limited vocabulary that Toki Pona does. It
isn't, however, easy for people to learn as a second language so its not a good
candidate for an inter-language or a lingua franca. From what I've read about
!Xoo it is quite capable of expressing deep nuance.
I haven't listened to Adventure Zone. I have listened to Lime Town and it's
very good. I'm an enormous fan of audio theater, especially the past product
of the CBC which, unfortunately, doesn't produce it anymore. It's the real
theater of imagination and new ideas because, as Rod Serling noted, it's cheap
enough for an author to do different stuff in. I also like Jack Black
Justice, though that's more of a comedy.
There are a number of new plays produced every month for radio by the BBC, RTE,
radio in New Zealand and Australia as well a independent audio theater
producers. I don't know why anyone would bother with TV or Hollywood after
they experienced it.
Hans Lee
Sat Sep 3 13:55:04 50557,
Here is my attempt to simply rebut Anthony's points:
1. You say that you cannot talk about math in Toki Pona. However, an average
person seldom talks about elaborated maths in everyday communication. This puts
mathematics out of Toki Pona's goal, but this fact in no way makes TP less
valid of a language.
2. You argue that TP is incapable of translating literature, and you even gave
examples for us. TP is a language made to communicate simply and clearly. As I
quote from jan Misali, "it is impossible to talk about things WITHOUT
EXPLAINING". TP cannot translate literature easily, because it is not made for
it. TP is a language for people around the globe to learn it easily, and get
points across when talking to others. There is no advanced vocabulary, making
explanation obligatory. This in turn makes it possible for everyone to
understand what you say. TP is simple, and it's meant to be.
Hans Lee
Sat Sep 3 13:55:06 50557,
Ramanuj Sarkar I suppose the creators have gone too far with simplifying the
number system. But for my other point, TP aims for simple communication, and
what you said has not convinced people that TP is not a good language in that
aspect.
Akira Enderle
Sat Sep 3 13:55:07 50557,
Anthony McCarthy, why on Earth are you still replying to this comment thread?
If you are as old as you claim to be (in your seventies IIRC), then you're
probably aware that you only have 1-2 more decades to live your life before you
die. You are, without question, the oldest person commenting inside this
thread.
Why the fuck would anyone waste the last years of their life arguing on the
Internet unless they actually thought it was fun? Stop wasting your time here
and go live the rest of your life before you die!
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:55:08 50557,
Oh, dear,watch what you say about that, bunky, hubris has such a way of
catching up with people. I might outlive you. You might understand that if
you read stuff.
Nathan Galler
Sat Sep 3 13:55:09 50557,
Anthony. Just stop replying... It is obvious that you we will never get any
points through your thick ass skull. You believe that you can never be wrong
that you have been fighting in a fucking youtube comment section for 4 fucking
months you chimp!
Nathan Galler
Sat Sep 3 13:55:11 50557,
Also fun fact! There has been over 207,384 letters in this shit storm of a
youtube comment string
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:55:12 50557,
Oh, you silly boy, if you wanted me to stop toying with you, that's about the
stupidest way to get me to do it.
Nathan Galler
Sat Sep 3 13:55:13 50557,
LOL, stop toying with me? Do you not see how much of a fucking time waste your
comments are? And you think im annoyed or something even tho i just posted a
comment?
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:55:14 50557,
Oh, well, if that's what you think, just think of how much more of "a fucking
waste of time" your comments on my comments are.
You a very silly boy.
Nathan Galler
Sat Sep 3 13:55:16 50557,
Yes, this was a big fucking waste of my time trying to talk to person like you.
But i still find it funny that you have been writing comments for over 7 months
now and you think that im the person wasting there time :D
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:55:17 50557,
Ooh, and guess what, you just wasted some more of it. Apparently you have
more time to waste than you want to believe you do.
Nathan Galler
Sat Sep 3 13:55:18 50557,
You still don't understand you have wasted over 6 months of time writing on
youtube comments? And so what if i waste 30 sec writing a youtube comment.
Anyways im done commenting here since you are so stubborn and think that you
know better then EVERYONE that you have been arguing for over 6 months about a
fucking language
Anthony McCarthy
Sat Sep 3 13:55:19 50557,
Oh, I guess I must type faster than you do. Or think faster because I doubt
I've spent two hours writing these comments, I'd be surprised if it took me a
hour and a half, most of that time looking up stupid stuff that you conlang
rangers brought up like the Shavian alphabet and to check on the date of the
death of Edmund Husserl.
You boys aren't very swift, I guess. Maybe if you read more.
c a t
Sat Sep 3 13:55:21 50557,
Talk about a following, this Rick and Morty fan over here be showing off with
his radio shows in Esperanto. Oooo. Remember, its not a real language if it
doesn't have tssisssciiii.
Aj Rollo
Sat Sep 3 13:55:22 50557,
I don't know why I have done this, but I've actually spent the last while
translating "Moby Dick" into Toki Pona. My first draft is here -
http://bit.ly/1e1EYJv - any comments or criticisms are quite welcome.
WanderingRandomer
Sat Sep 3 13:55:23 50557,
Hi guys, I'm new to the party.
This really has been a fascinating read, so much so that I felt compelled to
comment (although, I can't say I relish the idea of this thread pinging my
notifications for the foreseeable future but never mind).
My favourite part is that Anthony clearly think he is winning this little
argument. I don't know why he can't just accept that people disagree with him,
instead of slowly undermining his own intellect with petty retorts and smug
arrogance. Do carry on!
Square Zack
Sat Sep 3 13:55:24 50557,
What does "commentator" even mean?
Is2DealYou Яаgиа
Sat Sep 3 13:55:26 50557,
Wow. This thread lasted longer than I thought it would. The last time I was
here was like from 5 months ago.
Is2DealYou Яаgиа
Sat Sep 3 13:55:27 50557,
I was expecting more but.... meh.
Federico Volpe
Sat Sep 3 13:55:28 50557,
Anthony McCarthy Sir, you're completely right!
Luna Hoshi
Sat Sep 3 13:55:29 50557,
I think this thread is absolutely idiotic. Not just on Anthony's part (even
though it's mostly him), but on everyone. You have spent the past 6 months or
so arguing about Esperanto and toki pona. I'm not saying that Anthony McCarthy
was right in any way, I'm just pointing out that this is stupid.
(Ido realize that this is 1 month late)
Alowishus Devadander Abercrombie
Sat Sep 3 13:55:40 50557,
I bet you watch Rick and Morty
おらushankaboiおら
Sat Sep 3 13:55:42 50557,
Anthony McCarthy To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand
Esperanto. The grammar is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of
academic linguistics most of the history will go over a typical learner's head.
There's also Zamenhof's hopeful outlook, which is deftly woven into his
characterisation - his name literally meaning "one who hopes", for instance.
The fans understand this stuff; they have the intellectual capacity to truly
appreciate the depths of the language, to realize that it's not just good- it
says something deep about LIFE. As a consequence people who dislike Esperanto
truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn't appreciate, for instance, the humour
in Zamenhof's existencial catchphrase "Saluton" which itself is a cryptic
reference the polarising issue of Eurocentrism. I'm smirking right now just
imagining one of those addlepated simpletons scratching their heads in
confusion as Zamenhof's genius unfolds itself in their books. What fools... how
I pity them. ?? And yes by the way, I DO have a Esperanto tattoo. And no, you
cannot see it. It's for the ladies' eyes only- And even they have to
demonstrate that they're within 5 IQ points of my own (preferably lower)
beforehand.
おらushankaboiおら
Sat Sep 3 13:55:44 50557,
Shitposts out.
do the woah
Sat Sep 3 13:55:46 50557,
This whole thread by you mr.McCarthy, can be summed up in two subreddits:
r/iamverysmart and r/gatekeepers. Just because people don't learn the language
YOU like, doesn't mean they're "wrong." It's what makes them happy. This is
what everyone hates about conlanging community. The vast amount of snooty
assholes who think that Esperanto is god and that all other conlangs are
"stupid" or "copying esperanto." Because, believe it or not, conlangs existed
before esperanto.
* gasp * I know. Shocking.
Alex Hayes
Sat Sep 3 13:55:48 50557,
I see that we're still using the word "boy" as an insult.
DeluxeTux5249
Sat Sep 3 13:55:51 50557,
OOOOOKAAAAY lots to unpack here
Firstly, your comparing an artlang to an auxlang. But screw it, the beliefs of
a "lowly YouTuber" are worth more than that of a "scholarly source" such as
yourself
if you're gonna be an jerk online, don't associate yourself with the movement.
it's people like you that drive people away from learning Esperanto in the
first place. I've seen first hand people discouraged to learn it due to idiots
like you online.
If you were an Esperantist, you'd, know that Esperanto was made to bring people
together not be your excuse to complain about another language that wasn't made
with internationality in mind. And so what, if tp, a language that doesn't have
more than a centuries worth of existence, was to be ADAPTED as an auxlang,
(given more less vague vocab, and more printed learning resources other than
the one, lone book made by S.Lang etc.) then I, an Esperantist as well, accept
it would run circles around Esperanto.
Your comparing a book, not book series a book, to 138 years of resources and
2000+(those numbers may be off by a margin but the point still stands) native
speakers.
Piss off, and don't think your better than anyone here. If you wanna be a
goofus online, work for Trump, I think he'll take a looking to you, ya might
get an even better pay working with/for the president
DeluxeTux5249
Sat Sep 3 13:55:53 50557,
You Safar jes vi veregas
DeluxeTux5249
Sat Sep 3 13:55:55 50557,
Anthony McCarthy and yes some natural languages don't have and cannot write
about scholarly topics so by your definition !xoo isn't a language (I think I'm
no further than a 1/4 through this thread lol)
DeluxeTux5249
Sat Sep 3 13:55:57 50557,
I HAVE MADE IT TO THE END OF THE THREAD!!! I'VE DONE THE IMPOSSIBLE!!!!
MI AL VENIS AL LA FINO DE ĈI TIU KOMENTO!!! MI HAVAS FARINTE LA NEEBLAN!!!!
mi kama tawa pini pi poka toki lili. mi pali e ken ala!!!!
I think that accounts for all the relevant communities it's been fun guys or is
this thread still ongoing
おらushankaboiおら
Sat Sep 3 13:55:59 50557,
DeluxeTux5249 I liked every comment in the thread. It was hard, but I did it.
Also, "silly Billy" is very insulting to my people and you should stop using it.
海達覺得你好嘅 ハイ田は、あなた
Sat Sep 3 13:56:01 50557,
this thread is art
Strike Ecozzocn
Sat Sep 3 13:56:03 50557,
Anthony McCarthy if we read more? You’re the one trying to get us to
translate an Esperanto book into toki pona!
Rúnatál
Sat Sep 3 13:56:05 50557,
this thread is a masterpiece and i hate it, thanks
sethraptor
Sat Sep 3 13:56:08 50557,
Hi all you readers and commenters, welcome to the one year anniversary post for
“New Radio Shows”; the comment thread where us rowdy kids goof off with an
old man who refuses to acknowledge other people’s ideas.
I’m SRG Thai Boxing champion and comedy writer Seth Raptor, one of the
creators of the thread “New Radio Shows”. I play the part of
“sethraptor” on NRS. Since my character’s incarceration at the end of
season one, I’ve been working extra hard with con-langue critic, Anthony, and
our other collaborators to bring you all even more outrageous internet
discourse content. This interactive comment-based format to storytelling is
unprecedented in both art and in the world of entertainment media, so it’s
been very challenging and rewarding to work on this little project and see it
grow over the last twelve months into something none of us could have expected
when we ignorantly penned Anthony’s first moderately insulting accusation
back in 2017. And can I just say, the time has just crawled by since then. It
feels like it’s been so much longer than that, doesn’t it? It’s just
crazy for me to think about how far we’ve come in that short time, it’s
been an incredibly humbling and rewarding experience to see the reaction and
support of all our fans while we worked on this weird little thing in our
corner of the internet.
So, first order of business, in this comment I want to send out a big thank
you to all our fans, readers, and participants in the thread over this last
year. We’ve had some great times interacting with the NRS community and
reading all the nice tweets on the hashtag #NewRadioShows, and we’ve
attracted a surprising amount of attention considering we haven’t spent a
single dollar on advertising. We’re running this thing completely on word of
mouth, so we really appreciate you guys talking about the show on social media
and sharing it with all your friends. If you want to support our project, the
best thing you can do is share it with your friends and family, and use the
hashtag #NewRadioShows to spread the word about what we’re doing here.
We’re really just a few guys on the internet, we don’t have any big company
behind us, or any investors, so you guys’ support is a huge deal to us, and
we’re so thankful for whatever you can give.
Secondly, I want to make some announcements about what you can expect to see
on the upcoming third season of New Radio Shows that we’re calling “The
Dis-enlightenment”. We’ve already got lots of exciting content written up,
and plenty of esoteric references to marginally notable intellectuals, requests
for translation of arguably challenging texts, and 20th century grade school
insults ready to thoughtlessly fling at any members of the NRS community who
think they might be the one who finally gets Anthony McCarthy to admit that he
may have made a few too many assertions about the nature of language and also
the world in general. You can also expect to see more plot development on the
story of my favorite character sethraptor, who as you know has been in prison
for six months. And we’ll finally get the answer to why Anthony just keeps on
responding to youtube comments even though he is not being literally forced at
gunpoint to do so. We’ve all been wondering, I’ve seen the fan theories,
and some of them are really good, but I think you’ll find the real backstory
very surprising. Also, expect to see some special guests coming on the thread!
I don’t want to drop any names, but let’s just say some of you lucky
commenters could get the chance to move the figurative goalposts with the
second most superficial commentator on con-langues. Some would even call him
… “idiotic”...
Anyways, until then, thanks for sticking with us for these TWELVE WHOLE ENTIRE
AGONIZING MONTHS, and don’t forget to tweet about us with the hashtag
#NewRadioShows to spread the word. As they say in esperanto, ¡Będziesz Hasta
Your Bientôt!
sethraptor
Sat Sep 3 13:56:10 50557,
Don't worry, we have some big plans ;)
sethraptor
Sat Sep 3 13:56:12 50557,
Hey this ain't a competition, man, we're just here to share some goofs and poke
fun at the problems with internet comment discourse. We want our readers to
think of Anthony not as an enemy to be defeated, but as a human being with a
very different way of looking at things. Even though we poke fun at him alot in
the comments, the objective is always to come to an understanding of each
other, and maybe to find some common ground between us. The message we're
trying to send has always been one of respect, and we (especially me) often
worry that we haven't made that clear enough in our writing.
Dibyajyoti Lahiri
Sat Sep 3 13:56:15 50557,
To whoever it may concern, this thread, apart from giving me the worst migraine
attack of my life, made me start learning toki pona :)
Noah Losert
Sat Sep 3 13:56:16 50557,
Guys I think Anthony might be dead
Brett Harkness
Sat Sep 3 13:56:18 50557,
Oh my god... I think you're right.
Conlang Critic I think it's only right that you pay Anthony proper tribute.
You must make a video denouncing toki pona and giving your life to Dr.L Leizher
Z.
Anthony, if you can hear me from that great Green Star in the sky,
You will be truly missed
Yarrow M
Sat Sep 3 13:56:20 50557,
Why are esperantists all such assholes? This is far from the first time I've
seen an esperantist bully someone on youtube for not being a samideano.
Brett Harkness
Sat Sep 3 13:56:22 50557,
#notall
Firebrain
Sat Sep 3 13:56:24 50557,
mi pilin ike tan mi kama pi tenpo pini. mi wile toki e sina ali. linja sitelen
ni li luka musi mute.
(mi wile toki e "comment thread" la mi wile pali e "linja sitelen" anu seme? )
Firebrain
Sat Sep 3 13:56:26 50557,
Idk if Anthony McCarthy will see this (sona moli anu seme?), but "I'm free"
translates easily into "mi ken pali e ijo pi mi wile" or "I can do the things I
want." Not hard to do if you're willing to think about what you say.
64imma
Sat Sep 3 14:11:14 50557,
Anthony McCarthy I know you're trying to roast toki pona for it's
impracticality, but I will say that there is a natural language (pirahã),
which only has 2 words for numbers. One word for a small quantity and another
for large quantities. You may think that it's absurd (because we live in a
society that needs larger numbers to exist), but if a language has no reason to
distinguish between 1, 7, or 567,492, then of course its number system is going
to be rather limited. Toki ponans Do recognize the number system as a potential
flaw (such as was mentioned in the toki pona episode), but it's countered by
saying that oftentimes, having specific quantities specified is not always
important. That's like making the criticism that a turkey baster cannot be used
to spray, when that's not its intended use. Toki pona doesn't have numbers for
specific numbers, because for its purposes, it's not necessary.
Jacob Kang
Sat Sep 3 14:11:16 50557,
God this comment string is a legendary mess.
Fernando Banda
Sat Sep 3 14:11:17 50557,
I just want to say that as much as I regret the time I spent reading all of
this despite the amusement factor, I'm actually now very inclined to look up
Toki Pona.
And don't worry, I'm not discouraged to ever learn Esperanto at some point.
Shells 57
Sat Sep 3 14:11:19 50557,
Do I care that this thread was posted a year ago? No, no I don’t.
Now to address an issue that to my knowledge was not mentioned in #Newradioshows
Conlang:
Constructed=Con
Language=Lang
Thus, conlang=constructed language.
Esperanto is a constructed language. Toki Pona is a constructed language. Thus,
THEY ARE BOTH FUCKING CONLANGS
As much as it saddens me to admit it, #Newradioshows shouldn’t have gone on
for more than a day
Adonaí J. Arellano Flores
Sat Sep 3 14:11:20 50557,
Man the meme here is s u r r e a l
Andrew Christman
Sat Sep 3 14:11:21 50557,
Jesus Christ. You guys are insane. Anthony must have a stick so far up his ass
he can taste it. Just respect a conlang. I know I'm late to the party, but
DAYUM this gave me a headache to read. Just relax, we get it you have a hard on
the for Esperanto. You should have just left it at that. Now, once again I only
read to about the 200th comment, and I doubt anyone will see this, but i just
wanted to vent my frustration at reading these comments. The argument has very
little progression. "Toki Poki bad. Not many words" stfu if you dont havr
anything nice to say, dont say it at all.
anpanboy
Sat Sep 3 14:11:23 50557,
Everybody in this beutiful comment chain has just got an unnecessary unfunny
comment.
anpanboy
Sat Sep 3 14:11:24 50557,
You're welcome.
ilinniartoq Neriuutissaqanngitsoq
Wed Jul 20 14:11:26 50642,
Anthony McCarthy conlangs don't have to be spoken to be a conlang. Also what
you're saying is like saying to someone who plays tennis as a hobby "stop
playing it, if you aren't going to join a tournament"
ugh
Wed Sep 12 14:11:27 50891,
Huh, so this is finally dead.
Neal Pierce
Wed Sep 12 14:11:29 50891,
What a ride this garbage fire of a thread was. I could season nearly 4 tons of
meat with the salt in here.
ugh
Wed Sep 12 14:11:30 50891,
@Neal Pierce this has to go somewhere on reddit
do the woah
Sun Jul 28 14:11:31 50976,
someone needs turns this into a massive google slide or powerpoint presentation
just filled to the brim with nothing but these 400+ comments. this whole thread
is probably the best i’ve ever encountered on youtube,
Xax
Sun Jul 28 14:11:32 50976,
Stultus Films Yeah. Pretty spicy thread right here
Danitonnan
Sun Jul 28 14:11:34 50976,
Almost 500 responses, people! We can make it!
dukereg
Thu Jun 13 14:11:36 51061,
Damn it! I had a serious question for Anthony McCarthy. He was making a big
deal of the limited number of numbers in Conlang Critics' favourite language so
that CC could feel the hurt that Anthony McCarthy felt when Esperanto was
criticised in an unrelated video, but Aren't there natural languages that lack
many numbers?
I seem to recall when studying Natural Semantic Metalanguage at university
years ago that their "Semantic Primes" only had a very small number of
number-related words because they were the only few that appeared in all
languages.
Just typed that and realised that this is a stupid place to discuss my question
because this comment will never die and I can't be arsed scrolling down to read
any intelligent replies that might appear. Oh well, at least I'll finally be
part of something bigger than myself. <3
Mobius1
Thu Jun 13 14:11:37 51061,
based
DeadLetter
Thu Jun 13 14:11:38 51061,
Rest In Piss Anthony McCarthy
vxcvbzn
Thu Jun 13 14:11:40 51061,
Godwin's law (or Godwin's rule of Hitler analogies) is an Internet adage
asserting that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a
comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1"; that is, if an online
discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later
someone will compare someone or something to Adolf Hitler or his deeds, the
point at which effectively the discussion or thread often ends.
Conlang Critic must be Adolf Hitler's daughter
Is2DealYou Яаgиа
Thu Jun 13 14:11:41 51061,
Anthony McCarthy come back. I need to see people bullying you more for research
purposes.
Is2DealYou Яаgиа
Thu Jun 13 14:11:42 51061,
Plus I wanted to see you people beat the world record.
Alien Platypus
Thu Jun 13 14:11:44 51061,
Is2DealYou Яаgиа He responded like 200 times, maybe he got CTS so bad he
died or something.
***Leticia ***
Thu Jun 13 14:11:45 51061,
It was a beautiful trainwreck. Thank you all.
Kyle Neckar
Thu Jun 13 14:11:46 51061,
holy crap I wish I could save this thread somehow
Ziyad Hamoda
Thu Feb 10 14:11:48 51138,
Brain xd anthony choongoose
Lord LunaEquie is me
Thu Feb 10 14:11:49 51138,
Oh dear lord. I was only skimming and that was quite the ride.
I'm half-convinced to learn Toki Pona now. I've got Japanese and Russian on my
itinerary, so why not?
silver & noise
Thu Feb 10 14:11:51 51138,
What the fuck is a "conlang"? Is it like that stuff the girl from Sigur Ros
sings in?
Real irony is "Moby Dick" being featured so heavily throughout this thread.
Jay
Thu Feb 10 14:11:52 51138,
who's gonna get the last reply to this comment? find out next time on toxic
youtube culture!
Neil Gratton
Mon Dec 26 14:11:54 51222,
These attitudes are why I stay away from Esperanto and its haughty community.
Relux the Relux
Mon Dec 26 14:11:55 51222,
Holy shit what in all cursed hells is this thread
Joshua Bateman
Mon Dec 26 14:11:57 51222,
This reply thread is just insane
Alexandra Townsend
Mon Dec 26 14:11:58 51222,
Hey conlang critic!
I found your channel last week.
This is easily the best reply thread I've seen in my life. Thankyou for
pinning this :)
Hu He
Mon Dec 26 14:12:00 51222,
WTF
Oliver Robinson
Mon Dec 26 14:12:01 51222,
This is the most fuckin ridiculous thread oml
Alice In Salt Land
Sat Feb 14 14:12:03 51305,
This thread WILD wild, and I’m guessing Anthony fingers most prolly been rot
away to the point of him not being able to reply anymore 😔
ironic gacha
Sat Feb 14 14:12:04 51305,
legendary thread
Emeraldstar_14
Sat Feb 14 14:12:06 51305,
Anthony McCarthy Vi tre koleriĝas pri lingvo. Trankviliĝu
Emeraldstar_14
Sat Feb 14 14:12:07 51305,
Mike S. There is also a great worldbuilding series by Ewa U. spoken entirely in
Lojban
Emeraldstar_14
Sat Feb 14 14:12:09 51305,
Anthony McCarthy they are languages (no matter how simple or alien) that were
constructed. (Con)structed (Lang)uage.
Emeraldstar_14
Sat Feb 14 14:12:10 51305,
r ã h d î h ö w ę
Joe Yuzwa
Mon Feb 19 14:12:11 51472,
Not even in the Norwegian black metal community is there an elitist so proud as
you. I am barely read this without stopping to wonder why on earth you'd be so
incredibly negative
tjpiniella
Mon Feb 19 14:12:13 51472,
@Anthony McCarthy literally everyone else wins the long war
The Zantidraf
Fri Sep 6 14:12:15 51518,
Holy shit that was an experience reading all of that. I hope whatever school
district that anthony worked with found this
Dab Boi
Fri Sep 6 14:12:16 51518,
This dude thinks he’s the shit cuz he knows Esperanto no one cares. Plus i
have no idea why you are so fixed on continuing this novel of a thread. Long
live the thread boys!
jcqln
Fri Sep 6 14:12:18 51518,
commenting to leave my mark in history. the adventure zone (lup, specifically)
is a work of art
Gnome Slayer
Fri Nov 5 14:12:19 51537,
Sorry, don’t mind me. Just signing my name in this novel.
Fif Gallag
Sun Jul 15 11:43:47 51551,
3:40 As one of those “non-binaries” i love it every time you mention
when a language doesn’t know I exist! :)
Green146
Sun Jul 15 11:43:51 51551,
All I'm worried about...
Is ido mutually intelligible with esperanto
Sam M.
Sun Jul 15 11:43:53 51551,
I've always conjured a certain stereotype in my head about what "an
Esperantist" is like, and boy howdy does the pinned comment thread deliver on
that.
Todd Tolson
Fri Nov 5 11:43:55 51537,
Is /ts/ a sound an English speaker can’t easily produce? I don’t think we
have a single sound which represents it, but what about “cats”? The coda
should at least approximate the sound, right?
My_opinion
Fri Sep 6 11:43:58 51518,
Anthony McCarthy, the one man you do not want to bump into in the comment
sections.
TheLazyWanderer
Mon Feb 19 11:44:00 51472,
... Man is a synonym for "human" though, so maybe the "man" there means "human"
and not "male"
Using "man" to imply "male" should generally be obsoleted, it creates a lot of
misunderstandings.
Conlang Critic
Mon Feb 19 11:53:08 51472,
the primary definition of "man" has been "male adult human" for centuries and
is, in fact, newer than its use to mean "human". if any use should be obsoleted
to avoid misunderstanding, it should be its use to mean "human".
Zeriix
Mon Feb 19 11:44:03 51472,
IDO es asun pijopik de Esperanto.
MC Cookies
Wed Dec 30 11:44:05 51389,
Wait, /ts/ isn't compatible with English? What about something like "tsunami"?
I understand that not all dialects pronounce it fully, but if you were
pronouncing English "correctly", that would use /ts/, no?
Caleb Berney
Wed Dec 30 11:44:08 51389,
Counterpoint to the flap/trill thing: I think if you can do the trill you can
also do the flap, but not necessarily vice versa. Therefore the change from
trill to flap is probably increasing the general usability.
Francesco S
Wed Dec 30 11:44:10 51389,
boy, to learn how latin-based languages work you need to learn Italian
Kaiser Tyranny
Sat Feb 14 11:44:12 51305,
I want to give a shout-out to Anthony for brightening up my drunken evening.
Brian M
Sat Feb 14 11:44:15 51305,
The benefit of changing the alveolar trill to the flap is that for people whose
native language has neither sound, the flap is usually easier to learn. It's
for a similar reason that I don't really like the use of ⟨w⟩ in Toki Pona,
because while it might be more common than sounds like ⟨ts⟩ or ⟨x⟩, it
seems like people who don't have it in their native language have a harder time
learning it.
mannyfromsaneli
Mon Feb 19 11:52:48 51472,
In such a situation, can't speakers of a language that don't have /w/
substitute it with /ʋ/ or /v/? I've also heard, firsthand, Germans and
Russians hypercorrecting <v> with /w/ when speaking English.
But maybe you're onto something; maybe only one semivowel /j/ would be more
practical.
CanadianKirby
Sat Feb 14 11:44:18 51305,
And still how Esperanto did it compared to a language like Spanish isn’t very
good since it just adds on to one word for a gender to make the other gender
unlike a language like say Spanish which instead of it being like Niño and
Niñono or something it’s Niño and Niña so they have a base word to make it
easy but for either gender there’s just a one letter distinction
T H O T
Mon Dec 26 11:44:20 51222,
Isn’t English the third most commonly spoken language. Spanish is the second
(I thought)
Nils R. Bull Young
Mon Dec 26 11:44:23 51222,
Please, for the sake of the Living Frank, can the goddamn background music!
Sherrig Ofdenmark
Mon Dec 26 11:44:25 51222,
I believe this whole gender thing is ridiculous and being taken out of hand,
but if you are creating a language then you can avoid it in the first place.
I don’t really care what Conlang Critic’s politics are, the content is gold.
If you can create a language that let’s someone be content with their belief
that they are a toaster, all is good.
Rohan Zener
Mon Dec 26 11:44:28 51222,
The bottom line is, the best interlang would be compatible with Mandarin.
leathernluv
Thu Feb 10 11:44:30 51138,
The five vowel system: Niyiyiyice pants! (Obscure "Whose Line" reference...
It's here on Youtube.)
Alpha_Mach
Thu Feb 10 11:44:33 51138,
"Please no politics"
"Well, hear me out"
>it's just more politics
Thanks.
David Simpson
Thu Feb 10 14:24:25 51138,
You talk so fast it's hard to understand you!
mechnokie blood
Thu Feb 10 14:24:27 51138,
Normally people pronounce scii as if the last I is silent or they just stress
the I
Sprecherfuchs
Thu Feb 10 14:24:28 51138,
Pretty sure English is very unusual in not having linguistic distinctions based
on how well you know someone. I think every language I have learnt has this,
though not necessarily in the word for "you'
Andrew Watson
Thu Jun 13 14:24:30 51061,
I hadn't heard of Esperanto until I just watched your previous video 1 minute
ago. I found your channel because of your seximal video.
Soviet Loli
Thu Jun 13 14:24:31 51061,
1:03 The alveolar flap is easier to learn than the trill. I tried my whole life
to do the trill, but to no success. Learning the flap took just a few seconds.
This is subjective, but perhaps it's universal. And in that case, it's better
for such a language.
nupanick
Thu Jun 13 14:24:33 51061,
Not gonna lie, I watched like ten of these in a row and was kinda waiting for
the pannenkoek joke, you've got the right voice for it and everything. Well
played.
Szymon Arabas
Thu Jun 13 14:24:35 51061,
Pannenkoek references <3
ertio
Thu Jun 13 14:24:37 51061,
I gotta to correct you
We don't actually have a voiced palatal fricative in Italian, or at least not
in the standard varieties, it is only used in some local accents and in
loanwords.
Guacamo Shakrtveli
Mon Feb 19 14:30:53 51472,
And we don't even have "h"
LadyDeirdre
Thu Jun 13 14:24:39 51061,
The familiar/formal distinction in second person singular is extremely common
world-wide. Indeed, English is one of the few languages that doesn't include
it, and English did have it until the 17th century.
unni
Thu Jun 13 14:24:41 51061,
pannen
The1Floyd
Sun Jul 28 14:24:43 50976,
This channel is essentially a person walking around a room, pointing at peoples
hobbies and telling them that they're no good in a condescending manner. Then
you find out that person has his own hobby in the room and he is covertly
trying to make you think it's the best one, deriding it's far more popular
competitors.
It's OK kid, we know you like Toki Pona, it's just the majority think it sucks.
Conlang Critic
Sun Jul 28 14:31:06 50976,
that's a really good way to explain what a review series is
Neil Gratton
Mon Dec 26 14:31:07 51222,
toki poni li pona tawa mi :-)
Mr.Spøon
Sun Jul 28 14:24:45 50976,
Saying that how "woman" is just a variation "man" is sexist is a bit stupid
Saying it's sexist implies it comes from a place of malice
Really it's more just a product of our evolution/culture and in the old days it
was considered normal, even to women
Conlang Critic
Sun Jul 28 14:31:02 50976,
what is a patriarchal culture if not a place of malice
Pokemon is cool
Wed Sep 12 14:24:48 50891,
It’s hilarious how salty people get about feminism. Just because you don’t
like to admit that sexism is still a problem doesn’t mean you can pretend it
doesn’t exist. Before someone replies “THEY ALREADY HAVE EQUAL
RIGHTS!!!!”, that is true legally, but only in 1st world countries.
Even so, cultural sexism is just as big of a problem, if it wasn’t we
wouldn’t have shit like incels.
Bruh Moment
Wed Sep 12 14:24:50 50891,
I do
Aeturnalis
Wed Sep 12 14:24:52 50891,
imagine the level of douchebaggery and microphallicism it takes to be the "holy
fuck leave your politics out of this" guy.
Nile Snow
Fri Jul 24 14:24:54 50809,
Ya! Yaha! Woo!
Please excuse me. I just felt your music needed that.
無口
Fri Jul 24 14:24:56 50809,
I might sound stupid here, but doesn't English have /ts/ in 'rats'? I might be
blatantly wrong here but I just want to make sure.
Conlang Critic
Fri Jul 24 14:30:57 50809,
while the sequence /ts/ does exist in English, this isn't the same exact thing
as the phoneme /t͡s/ (which is usually just written like /ts/ to make things
easier). in English, /ts/ is a sequence of a plosive followed by a fricative as
opposed to an affricate. even though affricates generally sound basically the
same as stop fricative sequences, English /ts/ is not considered a single
phoneme simply because it doesn't behave like one in English phonotactics.
unlike /t͡ʃ/, /ts/ doesn't appear word initially outside of some
pronunciations of loanwords. (eg. choof /t͡ʃuf/ would be valid but tsoof
/tsuf/ would not be) /ts/ also tends to only appear across morpheme boundaries,
like the "rats" example you gave. "rats" consists of two separate roots: "rat"
and the "-s" suffix. the -s suffix creates a lot of consonant sequences that
wouldn't appear in English words otherwise, such as /θs/ (as in "breaths") or
/fs/ (as in "proofs").
無口
Wed Sep 12 14:30:59 50891,
Conlang Critic Ahhh, that makes more sense.
Don Fatale
Fri Jul 24 14:24:59 50809,
What is it with the pointless background music on so many YouTube video?
lorengo
Mon Sep 8 14:25:01 50724,
you speak so fucking fast
ChangGoon Yi
Mon Sep 8 14:25:03 50724,
Do you know a newly constructed ConLang, Simi Orbis.
If you are interested in this new language,
please visit the facebook group, Simi Orbis.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/162477131178334/
or
the Youtube Channel, Simi Orbis.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdihXmTPIbfkurSMMCWRgIw
T Orrent
Wed Jul 20 14:40:26 50642,
Unlistenable garbage. Stop editing out gaps in your speech, videos CAN be as
long as ten hours. Yours isn't.
פופ
Wed Jul 20 14:40:28 50642,
but english does have ts like in cats
0lly Melancholy
Wed Dec 30 14:47:21 51389,
Conlang Critic:
"while the sequence /ts/ does exist in English, this isn't the same exact thing
as the phoneme /t͡s/ (which is usually just written like /ts/ to make things
easier). in English, /ts/ is a sequence of a plosive followed by a fricative as
opposed to an affricate. even though affricates generally sound basically the
same as stop fricative sequences, English /ts/ is not considered a single
phoneme simply because it doesn't behave like one in English phonotactics.
unlike /t͡ʃ/, /ts/ doesn't appear word initially outside of some
pronunciations of loanwords. (eg. choof /t͡ʃuf/ would be valid but tsoof
/tsuf/ would not be) /ts/ also tends to only appear across morpheme boundaries,
like the "cats" example you gave. "cats" consists of two separate roots: "cat"
and the "-s" suffix. the -s suffix creates a lot of consonant sequences that
wouldn't appear in English words otherwise, such as /θs/ (as in "breaths") or
/fs/ (as in "proofs")."
Roberto Padylha
Sat Sep 3 14:40:30 50557,
Saluton! Mi nomighas Roberto Padilha el Fortalezo Brazilo. Bonvole, sendu al mi
gramatikoj kaj kurso de Esperanto. Mia adreso : Travessa Jangadeiro, 76
Mucuripe Fortaleza Ceará Brasil. Dankon! Dio benu vin. Kisetoj. Ankauh Ido.
פופ
Sat Sep 3 14:40:32 50557,
eu isn't common but it's still really easy to pronounce
Mc Hobbit
Sat Sep 3 14:40:34 50557,
I don't get why they the feminine suffix is -o of all things. I speak English,
German and French, I don't associate the ending with a female. Someone whose
native language is Spanish or Italian would get especially confused because the
-o ending is always masculine there. I cannot think of a language where girls
are -o.
Neil Gratton
Mon Dec 26 14:46:31 51222,
It's not, 'o' is the noun suffix. 'in' is the feminine infix.
Harry
Sat Sep 3 14:40:37 50557,
I’ve just rewatched this and realised.... English has ts just it’s at the
end of words like hats and darts
Иван Рогожин
Sat Sep 3 14:40:38 50557,
I’m a native has-distinction-between-formal-and-intimate-you-language
speaker, and it’s not about not being in yours, it’s definitely a stupid
thing to have even in a natural language. There are no clear rules, sometimes
you’re forced to just ask what one the one prefers, sometimes you keep
communicating in moths avoiding using not only the pronoun but also all the
second person forms of verbs and adjectives which is highly annoying. I wish we
could just speak same to anyone and this possibility is one of the best things
about English.
"Woman is a kind of man" is not really natural… On the contrary, man is
actually kind of woman in the first place, ’cause the earlier organisms were
reproductive and only later some of them developed additional gender to spread
functions on. I dunno why did later people decide to make the male one primal
if they could just do the neutral thing (well, some did).
Pity the music volume spoiled the video.
Soviet Loli
Thu Jun 13 14:47:30 51061,
Languages were invented before Darwin was even born, so these uncultured
neanderthals had no idea.
Patricia McGeorge
Sat Sep 3 14:40:41 50557,
I can't seem to reply to Anthony McArthy, but can I mention that A) You don't
have to speak a language fluently to be able to work with it. Without knowing a
word of Arabic, I beat an Arabic person on an Arabic test because linguistics.
Case in point - LangFocus Chanel B) A show like this wouldn't work if he was
fluent in every language he reviewed - he almost certainly doesn't have the
time to learn enough languages to make a consistent Conlang Critic show C)
Being fluent in a language is one thing, reading three times a week in it is
another. That's not knowing the language - that's downright obsession and a
potential waste of time (depending on your time management skills) D) You
seriously expect Esperanto to become a functional interlang? I speak Esperanto
fluently, but I do it as a hobby, and to add a language to the list of those I
know. It isn't, and is unlikely to ever be, an interlang.
Quality Content
Sat Sep 3 14:40:42 50557,
Sorry mate, but doesn't English have /ts/?
- Cats
- Bats
- Rats
- Mates
- Gates
etc.
Quality Content
Sat Sep 3 14:40:44 50557,
Sorry mate, but doesn't English have /ts/?
- Cats
- Bats
- Rats
- Mates
- Gates
etc.
Heimerblaster
Sat Sep 3 14:40:46 50557,
Great Episode iv been vey interested in IDO and the video was very interesting.
I think it would be interesting for you to make a vid a bout how to fix the
problems you out line.
ajoajoajoaj
Sat Sep 3 14:40:47 50557,
Ido is just a bland, soulless form of Esperanto. For all of Esperanto's
practical faults, it is today a living and breathing language virtually as much
as any natural one and Ido purged of all that made it stand out as a unique
idiom in its own right in favour of turning in into a generic Romanceclone.
Epic Stimulus
Sat Sep 3 14:40:49 50557,
0:30 - 0:32 lol
Entire Total
Sat Sep 3 14:40:51 50557,
Can any Spanish speaker confirm that "ido" means "crazy" en español?
Ken Collins
Sat Sep 3 14:40:52 50557,
Esperanto is the only constructed language that is not an under-construction
language, the only one with millions of speakers, and the only one with native
speakers, hardback books, books on subjects other than itself, and is the only
one used as the language of instruction in a graduate school for the sciences.
It serves as a base (Ido) or a source (Toki Pona) for other constructed
languages. In its 150-year history, it has has developed in the same way and
at the same pace as natural languages. The sentence "bonvolu alklaki ĉi tiun
legilon por vidi mian mojosan retejon" would be valid Esperanto words and good
Esperanto grammar in 1887 (though "mojosa" is recent), but Zamenof would have
no clue what it means. Every Esperanto-speaker today knows that it means
"please click on this link to see my cool website." Which other of these
languages can boast hardback books. books on topics other than the language
itself, and its own popular music? Esperanto functions as a living language
today. There is really no point in reviewing it here.
https://youtu.be/C9yugFqefP8,
https://youtu.be/vLMeDv7_a0U
https://youtu.be/_aN94LWe9roesper
Quality Content
Sat Sep 3 14:40:54 50557,
English TOTALLY has a /ts/ sound. If it didn't have the alveolar flap it'd be
compatible with English, and it already is with Scottish English.
Quality Content
Sat Sep 3 14:40:55 50557,
English TOTALLY has a /ts/ sound. If it didn't have the alveolar flap it'd be
compatible with English, and it already is with Scottish English.
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 14:47:15 50557,
whoah, scottish english has /eu/?
Quality Content
Sat Sep 3 14:47:16 50557,
No, it does not. My mistake. It is compatible with the rest though.
Clive Goodman
Sat Sep 3 14:40:58 50557,
The combination 'ts' exists in English as in 'cats'. It is not considered a
phoneme, however, but a combination of phonemes. Nevertheless it can be easily
pronounced by native English speakers.
Entire Total
Sat Sep 3 14:46:46 50557,
Noam Tashma
Sat Sep 3 14:41:00 50557,
Request: Modern Hebrew!
Obviously, not really a conlang, but it has some conlanging in it - at the very
very beggining elements from different versions of hebrew (biblical, talmudic,
mishnaic, and the such) were picked and chosen to form the beggining of modern
hebrew.
Then at the early stages, people deliberately made up new words (preferably
with old roots) for new modern concepts, or readapted old words.
Basically, each word currently in hebrew is either a loanword, slang, or was
intentionally invented or picked up from an extinct version of hebrew.
Rolf Hartmann
Sat Sep 3 14:41:02 50557,
Isn't the Alveolar affricate (/ts/) the sound you make at the end of english
words like "hates"? At least that's how I'd pronounce it.
Harrison Cwiklinski
Sat Sep 3 14:56:56 50557,
3:36, You are awesome! I heard that and I immediately knew what you were
referring to.
Naþan Ø
Sat Sep 3 14:56:58 50557,
Hm, has anyone done a condialect yet?
Marios Rouggeris
Sat Sep 3 14:57:00 50557,
why do you hate the vowel system?
Xanman Gaming
Sat Sep 3 14:57:01 50557,
3:43
did pannenkoek even get into here
Brendan Ózi
Sat Sep 3 14:57:03 50557,
Hello my interlang has a four vowel system and 16 phonemes. But it uses š and
ž because i<3háčeks
mannyfromsaneli
Mon Feb 19 15:02:54 51472,
You should make a video about it.
Theodore Landman
Sat Sep 3 14:57:05 50557,
"eurocentric" wtf cuckistani propaganda
Hector Quinones
Sat Sep 3 14:57:07 50557,
Cool music, but too loud
MadVulcan
Sat Sep 3 14:57:09 50557,
3:30 As a Kid I always thought it was childish to automatically assume that
"Its sexism" all the time as your first thought to a gender difference. I saw
it like that cause that was the farthest thing to my little mind than anything
else. Me, I thought it was cause of an unimaginative mind, a mistake, laziness,
didn't care, you know, I actually put some thought in it, than going on blowing
assertions out my ass.
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 15:02:10 50557,
so what do YOU call it when women are blatantly treated worse than men? for
example, a constructed language giving men their own basic roots and then
deriving the terms for women from those roots, instead of just, you know,
having gender neutral roots that words for women and men both derive from? I
call it sexism
MadVulcan
Sat Sep 3 15:02:12 50557,
I can't speak for the myriad of gender inequalities women and men face in the
world but just sticking to constructed languages here. I'm pretty sure many
more astute viewers would bring up your Láadan review. A conlang were it gives
women their own basic roots and then deriving the terms for men from that
roots, you reframed from saying thats sexism.
For other conlangs that do that use men as their own basic roots and then
deriving the terms for women from those roots, I don't think it was out of
any malice towards women. This subject is just to vas and complicated for me
to type all out I would say look up some sites/videos on the subject like
Doctor. J. Peterson and the like.
PastelJelly 2
Sat Sep 3 14:57:11 50557,
Boobs
Brendan Ózi
Sat Sep 3 14:57:13 50557,
Rosa Lovecraft
Sat Sep 3 14:57:15 50557,
Technically speaking English does have the ts affricate, it's just that most
speakers are too lazy to pronounce it. it's in the loanword tsunami, for those
of you who are particularly dense. that being said, I don't think any English
word (loanword or not) uses the eu diphthong.
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 15:02:32 50557,
the reason most people don't pronounce tsunami with an affricate is the same
reason most people don't pronounce croissant with a nasal vowel: it's not a
phonemic sound in english. if you count sounds that only appear in pedantic
pronunciations of loanwords, you can argue that english has whatever sounds you
like.
The Perpetual Procrastinator
Sat Sep 3 14:57:29 50557,
If you were to design an inventory for an auxlang what phonemes would you use?
David Shaner
Sat Sep 3 14:57:31 50557,
i’m entirely missing the point of the territorial responses of the conlang
critic’s critics. why does he need to defend his opinion-giving, credibility,
scholarship, or conclusions? esperanto, a gesture of hope in a hopeless world,
is an international auxillary language...cobbled from european languages.
thanks, european hegemony, for saving us from ourselves — again!
currently, the lingua franca is english — with crippling problems, yes, but
how does esperanto really serve as an improvement; rather, how is it necessary?
conlangs certainly can help us understand “real” languages, and i do
believe ials have an intrinsic philosophical value. i also believe real-world
experience, as in everything else, gets in the way of our best efforts.
Jacob Locklear
Sat Sep 3 14:57:33 50557,
There are only two genders. Stop adding politics into your videos and just
review the dam languages
Jacob Locklear
Sat Sep 3 15:02:42 50557,
Ps love what you do keep it up
Neil Gratton
Mon Dec 26 15:02:44 51222,
Are we talking grammatical gender? Because some languages have way more than
two!
Ike Moon
Sat Sep 3 14:57:35 50557,
2:09
"Bits"
also, some people pronounce "tsunami" with /ts/ at the beginning, though
granted it's a loan word. ("it's")
Ken Collins
Sat Sep 3 14:57:37 50557,
Esperanto doesn't think a woman is a kind of man. In most of Esperanto's source
languages, the ending -o is neuter. All nouns in Esperanto are neuter and a
special feminine form can be made by using the heavily used
German/Dutch/whatever else suffix -in. The pattern of specifying female
continues in the kinship terms.
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 15:03:45 50557,
so, if "virino" isn't the word for "man" then a suffix meaning "female", then
what does "vir(o)" on its own mean? it certainly doesn't mean "person".
Louis Francisco
Sat Sep 3 15:03:47 50557,
Not all nouns are neuter. All inanimates are neuter, and the majority of
animates are. But there are a handful of inherently masculine nouns and some
inherently feminine.
Louis Francisco
Sat Sep 3 15:03:48 50557,
-in only means "female" when used with neuter roots, e.g. "heroino". It cannot
have the exact same meaning for masculine words: "patrino" doesn't mean "female
father". That would be silly. It means "the female counterpart of father".
Ken Collins
Sat Sep 3 15:03:49 50557,
You have to make a distinction between grammatical gender and semantic meaning.
In German, one of Zamenhof's major source languages, diminutives are
grammatically neuter. They take neuter articles and adjectives, as in das
Männchen and das Weibchen. Both words are grammatically neuter, but the first
one refers only to a male creature and the second one only to a female
creature.
In the Slavic languages, masculine nouns generally end in a consonant, feminine
nouns in -A, and neuter nouns in -O. Bialystok was in the Russian Empire,
Zamenhof's medical education was in Russian, Esperanto has slavic phonology,
and the first Esperanto grammar pamphlet was published in Russian. Accordingly
in Esperanto, all nouns end in -O and are grammatically neuter, but they could
refer to masculine, feminine, or neuter things.
Gender and sex don't necessarily coincide. In German, a man can be a Person and
a woman can be a Mensch, even though Person is grammatically (but not
semantically) feminine and Mensch is grammatically (but not
semantically) masculine.
In Esperanto, all nouns are grammatically neuter, but they can refer to
masculine, feminine, or neuter things—such as instruisto, which can be a man,
a woman, or, hypothetically, a robot.
Louis Francisco
Sat Sep 3 15:03:51 50557,
I agree that esperanto doesn't have grammatic gender. But if you want to talk
about the feminine suffix then you need to take into account that esperanto
roots have neuter (most of them), masculine or feminine meaning. The suffix
won't have the exact same meaning on neuter words and on masculine roots.
Ken Collins
Sat Sep 3 15:03:52 50557,
Zamenhof took the -in suffix from German. He might not have known this, but it
is also used in Dutch. The German suffix -in is used extensively in help wanted
ads, such as "looking for a Reporter/in," and in other contexts where it is
necessary to be explicitly inclusive, even when the masculine form is inclusive
on its own.
All Esperanto nouns are grammatically neuter (gender, not sex). Some have
masculine or feminine (sex, not gender) meanings, but aside from kinship
terms, nouns that refer to people are not specific to the person's sex. For
example, a flegisto is either a man or a woman. A flegistino can only be a
woman. There is no way to specify that flegisto only refers to a man.
Louis Francisco
Sat Sep 3 15:03:54 50557,
Mi ne diris alie.
Clive Goodman
Sat Sep 3 15:03:55 50557,
Ken Collins. In Russian 'o' is a neuter suffix, but in Italian and Spanish it
is a Masculine suffix.
Ken Collins
Sat Sep 3 15:03:57 50557,
Spanish wasn't one of Zamenhof's source languages.
Edward Davis
Sat Sep 3 14:57:39 50557,
at the time of THIS video, I know waht esperanto is, but when I found your
channel, I did not. I am just a conliguist that was looking for cool conlang
channels. Currently working on my 5th conlang, all for my book :)
Leo Morgenstern
Sat Sep 3 14:57:41 50557,
German has eu but it's spoken more like oi
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 15:03:01 50557,
yeah you got me /ɔʏ/ and /eu/ are clearly the same sound
dr ostrich
Sat Sep 3 14:57:43 50557,
Lets cut the international language in half
Ike Moon
Sat Sep 3 14:57:45 50557,
Lydstrykken af musikken var for høj
Ike Moon
Sat Sep 3 15:03:24 50557,
El volumen de la musica era demasiada alta
Ike Moon
Sat Sep 3 15:03:27 50557,
Dude the beat's kickin' too hard aight
DeluxeTux5249
Sat Sep 3 15:15:50 50557,
Although , about the gender neutral pronoun, gxi (it) it not a dehumanizing
pronoun like in English. Hell I use it all the time. Gxi faris gin (they/it did
it) I agreed and understood everything in this and the Esperanto video
(especially after digging through comments to find what you believed it to be)
but I'd like to put a suggestion: go to communities if possible. It can help
clarify different nuances of the language that are otherwise obscured by formal
study
JoystickAnimation
Sat Sep 3 15:15:52 50557,
Do elvish
SuperIdiotMan00
Sat Sep 3 15:15:55 50557,
Music at the end is too loud.
Kyazar Shadala
Sat Sep 3 15:16:07 50557,
I would never have expected pannenkoek reference in a linguistic video
Mr. Rich B.O.B
Sat Sep 3 15:16:09 50557,
English has /t͡s/, we're just stupid and don't think we have it. For some
reason, an initial "t" is magically ignored :P
Alsom @ 3:41, oh heck yeah, because of that, if I ever work on another conlang,
I'm inventing gender rules specifically to repress non-binary.
Bluemon
Mon Feb 19 15:21:58 51472,
english doesn't have /t͡s/ as a separate phoneme. it's just /t/ and /s/.
that's why we don't pronounce the initial "t"
Mr. Rich B.O.B
Sat Sep 3 15:16:11 50557,
"If you don't know what Esperanto is, please tell me how you found this video
and why you're watching it..." Dude, I can honestly say, I have never legitly
laughed out loud in my life, before.
Baptiste Clugéry-sénégas
Sat Sep 3 15:16:13 50557,
Thx to speak about the inner sexism of esperanto. I'm learning esperanto, and
when I discover that all noun are masculin. In tried to discusse with fellow
esperantisto. They said "you have to understand that is a 19th century conlang,
so it's a reminiscence of the mentality". So I'm relief that i'm not the only
one to see that. (sorry for my english)
Louis Francisco
Sat Sep 3 15:22:46 50557,
If you discovered that all nouns are masculine in esperanto, then you weren't
learning esperanto.
Only a handful of words are inherently masculine. Some are inherently feminine.
All nouns for inanimates and the majority of nouns for animates are neuter.
Mosco Monster
Sat Sep 3 15:16:15 50557,
the first videos were cool and all, but this is getting kinda repetitive. Isn't
there anything more interesting to talk about these conlangs other than their
excessive sounds, strange grammar and political afiliation?
Bcoo1 ?
Sat Sep 3 15:16:17 50557,
Have you done Novial?
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 15:21:11 50557,
just updated the Big List
Strike Ecozzocn
Sat Sep 3 15:16:19 50557,
2:13 as a native English speaker I can say that English has t͡s what about
pizza or any plural noun that ends in ‘t’
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 15:22:07 50557,
that's /ts/, not /t͡s/. the difference is subtle but important!
Timothy Verma
Sat Sep 3 15:22:09 50557,
Chrice Chiu
Sat Sep 3 15:22:10 50557,
Tsunami.
Masteredog Films
Sat Sep 3 15:22:11 50557,
Tsunami is a Japanese loanword
Soviet Loli
Thu Jun 13 15:22:13 51061,
I always cringe when I hear the English pronounciation of ps, ks and ts in
loanwords. Which tend to be s, z and s.
Golden Plastic
Sat Sep 3 15:16:22 50557,
English has the ts sound.
Conlang Critic
Sat Sep 3 15:21:51 50557,
not phonemically
Clive Goodman
Sat Sep 3 15:21:52 50557,
Conlang Critic. So what?
Entire Total
Sat Sep 3 15:21:54 50557,
/ŋ/ is a phoneme in English, but good luck teaching English speakers to
reliably pronounce and hear it in initial position. The same argument applies
to /ts/.
Arturo Stojanoff
Sat Sep 3 15:16:24 50557,
"My idiolect of written English..."
What the hell??
The Major
Sun May 4 15:16:25 49558,
I agree on the sexist part in languages, but I agree a conlang should have
things like professions be neuter and if a woman or man is having said
profession a prefix, infix, suffix, circumfix, interfix, simulfix, transfix,
suprafix or a disfix.
Gender 1 / Gender 2 / Gender not specified.
Let's make up a word, let's say Komcham let's say it's a title of some
sort(profession, name, stage in life and so on...)
Then let's say that the unspecified gender of said title, is Komchamu, Komchami
is the female, and komchame is the male.
Or ukomcham, ikomcham, ekomcham; depending on what one prefers when making a
language, infixes could be used as well.
Komucham, Komicham, Komecham. Circumfix ukomchamu, ikomchami, ekomchame. The
rest aren't so easy to show off though.
Bacon
Sun May 4 15:16:27 49558,
Sophiα2329
Sun May 4 15:16:29 49558,
does half an A press
%%%, Conlang Critic, %%%%%
(come to think of it that's not a bad symbol for a clap)
Kóta
Sun May 4 15:16:30 49558,
It upsets me that people think gender/sex identity has anything to do with
politics... Or, rather, that in the public mind it has /become/ almost
exclusively about politics.
Jeshua Tehillah
Sun May 4 15:16:32 49558,
when will you do Angos
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 15:21:20 49558,
you've already requested that! don't worry, your first request was noted on the
Big List, which you can see by donating to my Patreon patreon.com/hbmmaster
Omega Fallon
Sun May 4 15:16:34 49558,
keep your politics in these videos
Öğrenci Sarp Eren Hangişi
Sun May 4 15:16:36 49558,
Hahaha tj """""""Henry""""""" Yoshi reference
Louis Corbett
Sun May 4 15:16:38 49558,
Women and men are different, it's not sexist it's natural... like language.
Mauricio Liadanni
Sun May 4 15:32:39 49558,
Spanish is the second most spoken language, not english
Neil Gratton
Mon Dec 26 15:38:15 51222,
It depends if you include second language speakers.
matthew fanous
Sun May 4 15:32:42 49558,
that pannenkoak meme came straight out of nowhere, and i freaking love it
Soviet Loli
Thu Jun 13 15:39:35 51061,
It was absolutely perfect. All youtubers who get the same dumb comments
repeatedly and decide to reply slightly condescendingly should do it this way.
I hope Dzeeff (a Yugioh youtuber) joins in.
Jatin Bharati
Sun May 4 15:32:46 49558,
German does use Du, Ihr, and Sie.
HealyHQ
Sun May 4 15:32:48 49558,
Boom, headshot: https://bovino-lakto.rhcloud.com/conlang-critic/
Jolie Rouge
Sun May 4 15:32:51 49558,
I guess it's just that people want to like you, and then you go all libtard on
them, and it kind of kills the fun. People are just showing their
disappointment when they realize that even though you're very intelligent,
you're also kind of a mangina. Sexism is a feature, all the successful
languages have it. They might be on to something :)
Ginger Ale
Sun May 4 15:32:54 49558,
I think the alveolar flap instead of the trill is because trills are difficult
for many people (including myself, I can't produce a trill sound at all)
KpTroopaFR
Sun May 4 15:32:56 49558,
odd how the mic quality decreased since the Klingon episode.
Tyron S
Sun May 4 15:32:58 49558,
The prefix 'mal' is still there, it just isn't used as much and has a different
word to avoid confusion with Romance languages
Vikram Sundarraman
Sun May 4 15:33:00 49558,
Thank you for this review that I was looking forward to. I totally agree with
your observations on conlangs having an opportunity to handle gender in a
reasonable manner from the beginning. I have not studied Esperanto or Ido in
sufficient detail, but I am really curious to know if the Ido solution to
gender asymmetry in Esperanto is a reasonable one, why is the Esperanto
community unwilling to give it even a consideration? I mean if we don't change
other aspects of Esperanto but just handle gender the way Ido does, how
difficult will it be for users of Esperanto to adopt to that? is there
something about the design of Esperanto that makes gender reform almost
impossible, or is it just the mindset of its users?
Mike S.
Sun May 4 15:39:23 49558,
I am not an Esperantist (just a curious casual observer of the language) but I
believe I know two basic reasons why radical reforms are difficult to implement
in Esperanto despite all the pressure: (1) The language has a substantial
history of usage and literature which has entrenched the current system,
particularly for certain words like "patro" which means father. Think of how
hard it would be to make every English speaker re-assign "father" to serve as
the basic word for parent, and consider the break this would cause with past
English literature. (2) Esperantists are afraid that even if you could force
changes like that, it would be dangerous to do so because it would set a
precedent for further reforms. Further reforms, in turn, would cause chaos and
demoralization and undermine the real goal of the Esperantist movement, which
is to get everyone in the world speaking an international language. In
summary, Esperanto works well enough, and Esperantists value achieving their
idealistic vision over trying to make a perfect language, assuming a perfect
language is even possible in the first place.
Vikram Sundarraman
Sun May 4 15:39:24 49558,
This is the argument that I have heard in other forums also, which to me looks
okay if Esperanto is promoted only as a hobby language. Then, I don't have any
problem with it. However,, the Esperanto community hopes that this language
will become the international auxiliary language bringing all of us together.
If they are serious about it, they need to do more to address the issue of
gender justice. As Yan Misali observes, a conlang has the opportunity to treat
gender fairly from the beginning and Esperanto has chosen to ignore it. Ido
seems to have fixed it, thought it might have introduced a host of other
issues. So, if we were to choose a language for all, I would still prefer Ido
over Esperanto because Esperanto is flawed by design, even if it has greater
established user base. It is not at all about having a perfect language. It is
just about being reasonable in the way gender is handled. Natural languages
have issues with gender because they grew out of a culture which took a long
time to recognize the need for gender justice. Okay, Esperanto does not have
grammatical gender as such like Spanish or French. However, how did they come
up with the ridiculous idea of calling mother a female father: something that
no natural language I am aware of does and something totally against
commonsense (I would think the root word should be like a parent of any gender
and male or female gender can be marked when required). Ultimately, I see a
hypocrisy in the community in holding on to the version of a language that is
less than reasonable and at the same time advocating for its adoption as an
international auxiliary language. If established user base and existing
literature is a criteria, Basic English is much more suitable than Esperanto
for this purpose.
Mike S.
Sun May 4 15:39:25 49558,
I agree with some of what you're saying -- no language on earth that I know of
lacks a basic word for mother. Zamenhof was trying to reduce the burden of
learning the vocabulary, and like a person who works with a hammer for a living
he started to see everything as a nail. However, I have a different
interpretation of what this design goof actually amounts to. IMHO the problem
is more logic and efficiency than justice. (I don't really wish to rehash the
whole topic; I had a really long conversation with "John Paine" over on
Misali's "Comment Responses: Esperanto" video if you want to know the gory
details of my opinion).
Vikram Sundarraman
Sun May 4 15:39:27 49558,
Okay, we don't need to get into that whole debate again here. However,
regarding your hammer analogy I have only one submission to make. If the hammer
was really used properly, we should have certainly ended up handling gender
more like Toki Pona (which has no grammatical gender markers at all) or Ido
(which handles gender symmetrically). Even purely from the point of view of
logic and efficiently, gender asymmetry is a very bad idea and I don't see any
valid reason, other than a certain sense of fanatic attachment to a particular
cultural notion, for retaining in it a language that hopes to become the lingua
franca of the world. If you had a hammer, will you hit the nail head on or
sideways? I think the design should default to neutral gender, not masculine or
feminine speaking purely from the point of view of simplicity of learning and
logical and efficient design.
Mike S.
Sun May 4 15:39:28 49558,
I can't understand why people are always floating Toki Pona in auxlang
discussions. Toki Pona makes it very difficult to discuss gender stuff at all.
Since I get the impression that you want to discuss gender issues, why would
you and Jan Misali tout a language like Toki Pona? The whole point of that
language is to take your mind off of complex and troubling thoughts. It's not
meant to serve as an auxlang.
I myself, as a conlanger intending to publish a loglang in the near future,
would never implement asymmetrical gender markings, and I would always make
gender marking optional (roots epicene by default) including in pronouns. As
for why Esperanto will not change: Simply put, Esperantists consider
reform-mongering to be the greater evil.
Vikram Sundarraman
Sun May 4 15:39:29 49558,
I understand that the design objectives of Toki Pona and Esperanto/Ido are
different. In this context, all I am saying is that if the aim is to use
minimum words, the logical, reasonable, and sensible solution will be to
default to common gender, not masculine or feminine. It is incidental that Toki
Pona does it, but for the record Finnish also does not have gender pronouns and
it has never been a practical issue in talking about gender when required. Ido
does it as well. Why would Espernato go against such a fundamental principle?
In fact for a language that is designed with logic and efficiency in mind to
have male gender, and not common gender, as default only shows how extremely
biased the design of the language is. Even in everyday conversation, we don't
need to always make a person's gender, it is an optional extra information like
their skin color, height, nationality, etc. Imagine how complicated a language
will be if you had different pronouns based on these parameters? Just because
many languages have used grammatical gender does not make is natural, logical,
or sensible. Anyway, my primary query in this context is why can't Esperanto
accept Ido proposal for fixing gender asymmetry even if they did not accept
other modifications? I understand the counterargument is it is not possible
because of established usage and my response is that if established usage has
reinforced a design flaw, Esperanto is not longer worth consideration for
international auxiliary language until the design flaw is fixed by existing
users and Esperanto community must stop pretending that their language is more
appropriate as global lingua franca than a natural languages because (a) it has
a fundamental design flaw of gender asymmetry and (b) established usage means
it cannot any longer be easily fixed and the majority of the users have no
inclination to fix it either and (c) there is no reason why we should not
create a conlong without such fundamental issues and promote it as the
international auxiliary language. I have nothing against those who learn and
promote Esperanto as a hobby but the moment they say it is the best suitable
candidate for international auxiliary language, I want to call them hypocrites
unless they are actively doing something to fix issues like gender asymmetry.
Vikram Sundarraman
Sun May 4 15:39:31 49558,
On a positive note, I am happy that you are considering creating a conlang
without gender asymmetry and making marking of gender optional. I guess you
would also try to use the best features of other conlangs you have reviewed. I
will look forward to it being published and perhaps reviewed here. We could
further solicit reviews of it from diverse communities, make further
modifications it to ensure it is fair to all, and promote it as a suitable
candidate for international auxiliary language. If you really do that, I will
be very very happy to support your initiative!
Riche the Rapper Induction SolutionsTV
Sun May 4 15:33:02 49558,
You should review the great conlang nynorsk which sucks ass and every
Norwegian/bokmål speaker has to learn in school. It's basically like
esperanto, but instead of European languages it's mixed with Norwegians accents
from the 18-hundreds.
Darn you Ivar Aasen
Riche the Rapper Induction SolutionsTV
Sun May 4 15:38:53 49558,
Even though the name directly translates to "new Norwegian" it's the oldest
form of Norwegian still in use today. And yes, i do mean that it counts as a
conlang as it was made by the god darn Ivar Aasen
Eg skulle virkelig ønskja at Han villa døy or whatever
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 15:38:54 49558,
meh, I don't think controlled dialects are the sort of constructed language
that this show is about
Riche the Rapper Induction SolutionsTV
Sun May 4 15:38:56 49558,
Conlang Critic Oh well. It contains a lot to critique with, but I'm not the
conlangcritic expert. Thanks for such an.. dare I say entertaining show.
Cotote
Sun May 4 15:33:05 49558,
ahem. Do interlingua
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 15:38:33 49558,
episode 17
pokemon3335
Sun May 4 15:33:07 49558,
can you please do a video on Town Speech(aka. Urban Basanawa) you can find it
here http://conworkshop.info/view_language.php?l=UBS
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 15:38:11 49558,
just updated the Big List
Robert Doucet
Sun May 4 15:33:09 49558,
do dothraki
Nicholas
Sun May 4 15:33:10 49558,
People complaining about how you bringing up gender is "politics"- LMAO, youve
been living under a rock for the last 50 years mate!
Nukestarmaster
Sat Sep 3 15:40:02 50557,
More like they've lived through the last five years where nearly everything has
been accused of being "sexist".
Têt'dmétal Chèvrehumaine
Sat Sep 3 15:40:03 50557,
Nukestarmaster You're the person living under a rock they were talking about.
Nukestarmaster
Sat Sep 3 15:40:05 50557,
+Tentacle Rick Do you have an argument or are you just going to make ad hominem
attacks?
Têt'dmétal Chèvrehumaine
Sat Sep 3 15:40:06 50557,
Nukestarmaster You got me dude, your argument of "just look at what's been
happening recently", is better than my "just look what's been happening in this
longer period of time"
Nukestarmaster
Sat Sep 3 15:40:07 50557,
+Tentacle Rick If that was actually the arguments, then yes recent events are
generally more relevant to the present day than older events (of course arguing
about how relevant certain events are based solely based on when they happened
is utterly retarded anyways). But that is not your argument (or the argument of
OP), which is merely denigrating those who you disagree with; especially since
there's no mention of what this mysterious "what's been happening in this
longer period of time" actually is. Also "just look at what's been happening
recently" is probably the most reductionist stating of an argument I have seen
in my life, so reductionist that it misses the entire argument.
Têt'dmétal Chèvrehumaine
Sat Sep 3 15:40:18 50557,
Nukestarmaster What an intellectual powerhouse! Truly unmatched in philosophy
and science by any of the greats.
Têt'dmétal Chèvrehumaine
Sat Sep 3 15:40:20 50557,
(You are arguing with tentacle Rick, an alternate version of the popular Rick
and Morty caracther that is being fucked by a plethora of tentacles in yaoi
porn)
Nukestarmaster
Sat Sep 3 15:40:21 50557,
+Tentacle Rick Huh, more ad hominems. I guess I shouldn't have expected
anything better.
Têt'dmétal Chèvrehumaine
Sat Sep 3 15:40:23 50557,
Nukestarmaster Your argument is that in recent years, things that aren't sexist
have been called sexist. This doesn't change the fact that building a language
where women are a subcategory of men/where people are assumed to be male unless
specified otherwise is sexist.
Skeletoaster
Sat Sep 3 15:40:24 50557,
Tentacle Rick your claim is false. this practice in language construction is
not sexist and it harms nobody.
IrgendWer
Sat Sep 3 15:47:01 50557,
LANGUAUGE IS SEXIST LETS BAN LANGUAGE instead of accepting that language
evolved that way and we could instead learn to not be sexists ourselves.. geez
Têt'dmétal Chèvrehumaine
Sat Sep 3 15:47:03 50557,
SomeOne Nobody wants to ban language. We were talking about the fact that
"language has evolved that way", and this way actually happens to reflect
underlying sexism.
Luigicat11
Thu Jun 13 15:47:04 51061,
Maybe that's because he's using terms that are irrelevant to the field and
mainly used by those who have a political axe to grind (i.e. nonbinary) when
there are perfectly good preexisting terms within linguistics that suffice and
don't open that politically-charged can of worms (i.e. epicene).
S U P E R V 8.0 - クラシックビート
Sun May 4 15:33:13 49558,
Could you do Elvish? I wouldn't care if you didn't.
Thank you?
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 15:39:09 49558,
just updated the Big List
S U P E R V 8.0 - クラシックビート
Sun May 4 15:39:11 49558,
Hello, Senpai-kun.
William
Sun May 4 15:33:16 49558,
This channel is fantastic. I found it by searching "conlang". I'd be
interested in an episode on Quenya or Sindarin
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 15:38:24 49558,
just updated the Big List
JESH GAMER
Sun May 4 15:33:18 49558,
Plss tell if u have Angos conlang, which i asked last time in your list
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 15:38:39 49558,
yes, Angos is on the Big List
JESH GAMER
Sun May 4 15:38:40 49558,
Conlang Critic thanks, happy to get replied in 2 hrs
IamAHelpfulPerson
Sun May 4 15:33:21 49558,
can you do a video about my conlang- Buryish
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 15:38:07 49558,
is it published somewhere?
Jade Dinosaur
Sun May 4 15:33:23 49558,
Dude, you're awesome! Ooh, do Mandalorian from Star Wars, or Lapine, the bunny
language from Watership Down. :)
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 15:38:45 49558,
just updated the Big List
Jade Dinosaur
Sun May 4 15:38:47 49558,
Yay! Also, don't worry about the haters; I really appreciate your knowledge of
linguistics, especially since I only got a C in that class. But yeah, even
though I'm currently learning French and Indonesian (and to lesser extents
Japanese, Gaelic and a bunch of other shit) I would love to learn a conlang, as
it sounds fun. Just looking for the right one. Now I'm thinking about creating
one for my own writing. Thanks for the insight! :)
D. Lawrence Miller
Sun May 4 15:33:26 49558,
could you review pegakibo?
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 15:39:39 49558,
just updated the Big List
D. Lawrence Miller
Sun May 4 15:39:41 49558,
Conlang Critic thanks!
Gilles-Philippe Morin
Sun May 4 15:59:13 49558,
I replied to this video in a new blog post:
https://bovino-lakto.rhcloud.com/conlang-critic/
Gilles-Philippe Morin
Sun May 4 16:05:32 49558,
@Akira Enderle Thank you for notifying me. This should do the job:
web.archive.org
Gilles-Philippe Morin
Sun May 4 16:05:34 49558,
Akira Enderle No problem. If you wish to comment on my reply, feel free to
leave a message here in this comment section, for my blog's server seems to be
down at the moment.
Gilles-Philippe Morin
Sun May 4 16:05:36 49558,
I would like to inform you that my blog is working again.
Aeon Maujean
Sun May 4 15:59:15 49558,
That music near the end is very distracting and nearly drowns out your speech.
Gilles-Philippe Morin
Sun May 4 15:59:16 49558,
You said Ido is "still extremely Eurocentric". Why do you criticize Ido for not
being what it doesn’t strive to be? To me, it would be like criticizing
Ithkuil for not being an auxiliary language. Or Klingon for being too difficult
to learn.
The Délégation pour l’Adoption d’une Langue Auxiliaire Internationale
(Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language) adopted
the following declaration in 1907 (translated to English in the Complete Manual
of the Auxiliary Language Ido, 1919, p. X):
"DECLARATION OF PROGRAMME OF DELEGATION.
"1. To select and promote the use of an auxiliary international language
destined not to replace the national languages in their everyday use, but to
serve as a means of communication between people speaking different languages.
"2. In order to fulfil usefully its intended purpose, an international
auxiliary language ought to satisfy the following conditions: (a) It must meet
the requirements of ordinary social life, and also those of commerce, science,
and philosophy. (b) It must be easily acquired by people having an ordinary
elementary education, and especially by the people of European civilization.
(c) It must not be one of the national languages."
Now, your "ranking" of favorite auxiliary languages seems to overlook the fact
that international auxiliary languages don’t necessarily have the same goals
— and thus the same criteria. Pretty much all of them agree for 1 and 2c;
however, Ido is unapologetically Eurocentric with 2b, and could you please
explain me how Toki Pona is superior to Ido in regard to 2a?
Ido was one of the first auxiliary languages designed with scientific use in
mind. You can read more about that in the book Scientific Babel by Michael
Gordin (2015). Notably, many scientists complained that the Fundamento forced
them to use the very Latin "hidrargo" instead of the international "merkurio".
For that reason, even the very early Ido dictionaries (1908) contained words
such as "acetileno", "akromata", "akumulatoro", "akustiko", "albumino",
"atomo", "chankro", "glikozo" and of course… "merkuryo" (now merkurio).
Now, where is Toki Pona’s periodic table? What is "glucose" in Toki Pona?
How can you conceive Toki Pona as being a better auxiliary language than Ido if
it cannot even compete with the level of versatility that Ido had in 1908? The
truth is, Toki Pona was not designed to replace English in scientific
literature. Ido was, even from the beginning.
Finally, as a side note, Ido’s "Eurocentric" system did not block words with
non-European origin from entering the language. The word for Esperanto’s
"ĉu" is "ka(d)", which according to the Ido-English Dictionary (Luther H.
Dyer, 1924, p. 157) comes from… Sanskrit. Many European words also come from
Arabic (e.g. adobo, alkaldo, alkemio, algebro, algoritmo, alkoholo, almanako,
amalgamo, ambro, admiralo, arobo, asasino, azimuto, azuro, baldakino, baobabo,
bergamoto, kafeo, kalibro, karafo, karato, cheko, divano, shako, jirafo,
gitaro, hazardo, hashisho, limono, limonado, magazino, matraco, mumio, moskeo,
nenufaro, oranjo, siropo, sukro, zero), Nahuatl (e.g. avokado, axolotlo,
chokolado, koyoto, oceloto, tomato), Quechua (e.g. kokao, kokaino, lamao,
pumao, quinino, vikuno), Eskimo-Aleut (e.g. anorako, igluo, kayako), Arawakan
(e.g. kaimano, kanoo, hamako, iguano, savano, tabako), Tupi-Guaraní (e.g.
kayeno, jaguaro, manioko, petunio, tapiokao, tapiro, tukano), Aymara (e.g.
alpako), Cariban (e.g. kanibalo), Cherokee (e.g. sequoyo), Taino (e.g. patato),
Sanskrit (e.g. Aryana, atolo, kandio, shakalo, junglo, mandarino, pantero,
puncho), Hebrew (e.g. abako, amen, Babel, kerubo, edeno, jubileo, manao, mesio,
pasko, farizeo, sabato, amonito, makadamo, sodomio), Japanese (e.g. soyo),
Turkic (e.g. kazako, kalpak, turkezo, yogurto), etc. The fact Ido is based on
European languages does not mean the origin of these words restrict themselves
to European borders.
All in all, I do not see how an international auxiliary language could be easy
to learn, easy to use and easy to understand without being at least a bit
Eurocentric in design. Take Chinese for instance. Arbitrarily incorporating
more Chinese words into Ido would be pointless, since Chinese itself is
mutually unintelligible, it’s strongly tonal (which Ido is not) and it
doesn’t use the English alphabet (which Ido uses). An Ido word based solely
on (Mandarin) Chinese would probably not even be recognizable to a Chinese
person. Ido would thus fare no better than Volapük — which Schleyer deformed
especially to make the etymology harder to recognize. In the end, Schleyer’s
clever system (that even lacked R to be easy for the Chinese!) rather made
Europeans crave Esperanto’s vocabulary and grammar and ended up with… Idiom
Neutral and Volapük Nulik.
Sameen Dusk
Wed Dec 30 16:07:14 51389,
yeesh, my dude. what's the tl;dr?
Todd Tolson
Fri Nov 5 16:07:15 51537,
Sameen Dusk That it’s better than Toki Pona because of the ability to express
complex or scientific topics, and that it being Eurocentric is fine, since
it’s goal was primarily to be a language for European use, but that even
while it is very European, it still includes words from languages outside of
Europe.
Sameen Dusk
Fri Nov 5 16:07:16 51537,
@Todd Tolson that's a weird opinion to develop, much less defend so vehemently.
Todd Tolson
Fri Nov 5 16:07:17 51537,
Sameen Dusk The science part I understand a bit more, and a language designed
for European use should probably be very European, but the vehemence is the odd
part.
Tibe That Guy
Wed Apr 28 16:07:19 51543,
Wow. We found Anthony McCarthy's son.
Karlos Tjuroukei
Sun May 4 15:59:19 49558,
I'm looking forward to seeing what you have to say about Volapük. It has
bizarre vocabulary that provide fewer cognates than Esperanto, the grammar is a
bit more complex from what I can see. Though despite that I find Volapük has a
somewhat more natural feel than Esperanto say which strikes me as artificial.
Volapük is described as being beautiful more often than I see Esperanto being
described that way.
Gilles-Philippe Morin
Sun May 4 15:59:20 49558,
OP's OC
Sun May 4 15:59:22 49558,
Song name pls.
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 16:05:09 49558,
all music used in Conlang Critic can be found on my channel
AlexRulesVGCP HD
Sun May 4 15:59:24 49558,
FOR NEXT EPISODE:
VOLAPÜK
Gilles-Philippe Morin
Sun May 4 15:59:26 49558,
For the digraph QU, the early founders of Ido applied the same principle as
with X (which I detailed in an earlier comment). According to the Grammaire
complète de la Langue Internationale (L. de Beaufront, 1908, p. 7), QU is the
combination of two pronunciations: "kw" and "kv". That way, by using QU instead
of KW or KV, Ido neutrally relies on etymology — "aquo", for instance, comes
from the Latin "aqua" — and leaves the freedom to the speaker to say either
"akwo" or "akvo". Same spelling, two possible pronunciations, yet the language
stays easy to learn, use and understand. In comparison, Esperanto’s
Russocentric pronunciation imposes "akvo", which is far from international and
neutral.
You said that QU was adopted "so that words from Romance languages can still be
spelled the same way". Yet here’s an interesting tidbit: the spelling of
"bisquito" (the word for "cookie") can come from no other language but Russian
(бискви́т), a Slavic language. Otherwise, we would have "biskuito" not
unlike the word "cirkuito". The text above and my previous comments explain why
that is the case.
Gilles-Philippe Morin
Sun May 4 15:59:27 49558,
You said, "why drop /ai/ and keep /eu/?" This question is indeed relevant in
Ido, since the early Idists took this difficulty in consideration when adopting
"nevrologio", "plevro", "anevrismo", etc. Since Ido often bases its
pronunciation on Russian (and German), the "v" was preferred to the "u" (plus
it is found in French and sometimes even Italian). That is also why we have
"volfo" instead of "wolfo" for "wolf". In comparison, Esperanto has
"neŭrologio", "pleŭro", "aneŭrismo", etc. That trait, however, was not
adopted in words like "eufonio" because of the consonant cluster that "vf"
would cause.
I would also like to point out that in Ido, the three key practical elements
are: easy to learn, easy to use, easy to understand. That is why Ido’s
pronunciation is not that strict. You can generally pronounce the letter I as
/i/ or /ɪ/ or even /j/, as long as you can be understood. The only thing that
matters is that you place the tonic accent correctly. That is why we have words
like "boikoto". Meanwhile, Esperanto seems to suggest that there should be a
difference between "bojkoti" and "boikoti" when in practice there is none. So
much for "one letter, one sound"!
Taking that into consideration, I think that someone who is not familiar with
the diphthong /eu/ can definitely pronounce the word "feudo" as /fˈeudo/ with
or without the "u" as a consonant. With the correct accentuation, the
pronunciation is barely different and mutual understanding is fully preserved.
Also, we have to take into consideration that words like Europa, Paris,
Québec, København, etc., are considered foreign words in Ido, and keep their
original spelling (using the extended Latin alphabet, of course) and
pronunciation as closely as possible. The use of Latin (in e.g. Japonia,
Suedia, etc.) is simply a neutral convention.
Louis Francisco
Sat Sep 3 16:07:02 50557,
No difference between oi and oj ? Do you pronounce in the same way foino and
fojno, gaino and gajno. If not, is it only because the accent falls on the i?
DieArroganz
Sun May 4 15:59:30 49558,
Could you please do an episode abour Lingwa de planeta? Source:
http://enlidepla.esy.es/
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 16:07:32 49558,
just updated the Big List
DieArroganz
Sun May 4 16:07:33 49558,
Conlang Critic nice Video by the Way ^^
Logan Stewart
Sun May 4 15:59:32 49558,
Would you do a video on "John Wilkins language" published in "An Essay towards
a Real Character and a Philosophical Language". it is a philosophical language
a concept you have not talked about.
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 16:06:56 49558,
just updated the Big List
Gilles-Philippe Morin
Sun May 4 15:59:34 49558,
For the formal (vu) and intimate (tu) distinction, you have to
understand that, in order to approach the "greatest easiness to the greatest
number of people", Ido adopted the system introduced by Idiom Neutral (a
radical reform of Volapuk). In that system, the vocabulary is based on the
common denominator of the six most important European languages in the early
20th century: German, English, French, Italian, Russian and Spanish. However,
there are two major distinctions between Idiom Neutral’s system and Ido’s
improvement. First, Idiom Neutral also included Latin, which Ido got rid of
because it is not a living language. Instead, Latin is used only when all of
the six languages disagree between each other, and Latin comes as an "a
posteriori" neutral ground — an example of that is the replacement of
Esperanto's neutral "a priori" correlatives with words based on Latin. Second,
not all six source languages are equal, since in order to best follow the
principle of "greatest easiness to the greatest number of people", Ido also
took the number of native speakers (in Europe) of each language into
consideration. That way, it made German much more important than Spanish.
Taking that into account, the "tu/vu" dichotomy is found in German (du/Sie),
French (tu/vous), Italian (tu/lei), Russian (ty/vy) and Spanish (tú/usted).
Thus getting rid of "tu" would be very Anglocentric.
The "tu/vu" dichotomy is very cultural, so saying that a pronoun system is
better than another without any objective basis is, to me, like saying that one
culture is better than another. That is very interculturally inappropriate. The
"tu/vu" dichotomy is so important in some French subcultures, for instance,
that as a medical student, I can get penalized if I don’t use the right
pronoun with people. For instance, using "vous" with a younger person and "tu"
with an older person can truly destroy the therapeutic relation with the
patient. It could also destroy my interprofessional relations in the future.
Outside of French culture, here’s another example: when I suggested to get
rid of "vu" in an Ido group on Facebook, I was greeted with verbal violence
from a Japanese Idist. You don’t play with that sort of thing.
I am one of those who (strongly) think that the problem is not the language but
the people who use it. When you exchange with someone from another culture and
language, you should not expect a single language to be the perfect "cultural
middleman". One must also learn about the other’s culture, and most
importantly, be receptive. When meeting an English speaker in Ido, I would tend
to use "vu". On the other hand, when I meet a Swede, I would tend to directly
use "tu". Finally, with a French speaker I would always start with "vu", then
maybe ask after a while if "tu" is preferable. If I meet someone whose customs
are unknown to me, I don’t worry: I use "vu", since that is what my own
culture is used to, and I expect the other to be accepting and politely correct
me if I am wrong. What some see as useless ballast in Ido, I see it as cultural
flexibility: the "tu/vu" dichotomy helps Ido be as little a cultural middleman
as possible between two (European) nations. In other words, it maximizes direct
communication. However, this flexibility must be welcomed without pedantry from
both parties.
If I were a native English speaker like you, and since you seem uncomfortable
with the idea of adapting to the other language’s "tu/vu" custom, I suggest
you to always start with "vu" when interacting in Ido, then switch to "tu" if
you notice the addressee feels offended or uncomfortable.
If you are interested in the topic of cultural adaptation, I suggest you to
read about Young Yung Kim's integrative communication theory.
Wario Craft
Sun May 4 15:59:36 49558,
1st off German is the 11th most spoken language and second off I don't see how
removing /eu/ makes Ido's Phonology compatible with German. Unless you mean its
closest to German which still seems weird. Its vocabulary in my opinion is even
worse although I like that the mal- suffix is gone. I hate the fact that it's
even more unbalanced than Esperanto for lexicon
Alex Robson
Sun May 4 16:04:56 49558,
The phonology of Ido minus eu is compatible with German if you count the rhotic
as either a flap or a trill, which is realistically acceptable.
Gilles-Philippe Morin
Sun May 4 15:59:38 49558,
You said "the accusative case is indicated through word order (but it can be
marked if you want to)". That is a common misconception about Ido. There is a
clear rule about that: the accusative case is marked (with -n) only when the
direct object comes before the subject. That way, we can equally say
"L’arboron me hakas", "L’arboron hakas me", "Hakas l’arboron me", "Me
hakas l’arboro", "Me l’arboro hakas" or "Hakas me l’arboro". This is
useful when people (e.g. I, who am a French speaker) don’t always use the
S-V-O order in their mother tongue. Also, it is useful for sentences built with
relative pronouns, for instance "La filmo, quaN me spektas, esas tre populara"
(The movie that I watch is very popular).
Although the -N is usually not applied to copular verbs, it can be useful in
Ido when confusion may arise: "Quon divenas aquo pos varmigo? Vaporo" (What
does water become after it is heated? Steam) differs from "Quo divenas aquo pos
varmigo? Glacio" (What becomes water after it is heated? Ice).
If you want to read lots of criticism about Ido (and Esperanto) and reform
proposals of Ido, I invite you to read the magazine Progreso, in publication
since 1908, that explains very well (in thousands of pages from diverse
authors) how today’s Ido came to be. Ido, like the blueprint of a lightbulb,
is not set in stone, and is continuously perfectible. If you are interested in
changing anything about Ido, I invite you to learn the language and expose the
dramatic flaws of our language in an argumentative essay (written in Ido, of
course). That would be much more effective than pointing out details, like in a
bulleted list, in an English-language video…
Zion J
Sat Feb 14 16:05:43 51305,
brah how did you get two top comments when the "Read More" button is the
detonate button on a word bomb for both? srsly, keep it to 6 lines. If you're
writing a second paragraph, something's gone wrong. These are comments after
all. Quick comments on the video, not a stinkin' essay.
Gilles-Philippe Morin
Sun May 4 15:59:40 49558,
The reason why X was adopted was to combine the sounds "kz" and "ks" (and the
French and Polish "gz", although missing in Esperanto AFAIK) into a single
letter that can be freely pronounced in either of the three ways. That way,
"ekzameno" and "ksilofono" are spelt "exameno" and "xilofono" in Ido, and can
keep the original pronunciation or be pronounced "eksameno" and "kzilofono" or
"egzameno" and "gzilofono". It is a simplification, since notably French (sorry
for mentioning French, I know some Esperantists are allergic to it but it’s
my native tongue) pronounces these Xs like GZ, and apparently English simply
pronounces them like Z. It’s also more appropriate in a historical sense,
since the word "ekzameno" comes from Latin "exāmen", in which the X is
pronounced like KS, not KZ, in Classical Latin. This wide range of
possibilities on how to pronounce the letter X shows that Esperanto’s
orthography (and thus imposed pronunciation) is very Russocentric — that’s
not even Polish in nature, since the word for "ekzameno" in Polish is…
"egzamin"! Such a non-international trait is contrary to Ido’s core
principle: "The best international language is that which offers the greatest
easiness to the greatest number of people." Letting everyone pronounce X in the
way they do in their natural language (as long as it doesn’t sound completely
different, e.g. like SH) is easier to learn and apply than imposing the
pronunciation from a single language.
Blackpink-agent Daniel
Sun May 4 15:59:42 49558,
How about Pegakibo? I've just found that conlang for only a few minutes ago and
I already love it! The writing system was very easy! Only 11 letters and I
learnt them immediately. I didn't even need to look at the chart! I just looked
at the texts written in pegakibo immediately and somehow managed to follow by!
:-D
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 16:06:59 49558,
just updated the Big List.
Zackary Midddleton
Sun May 4 15:59:44 49558,
conlang critic you should do furbish
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 16:05:39 49558,
just updated the Big List
minibug
Sun May 4 15:59:47 49558,
Can you add Rikchik (http://www.suberic.net/~dmm/rikchik/rikchik.html) to the
big list?
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 16:05:18 49558,
just updated the Big List
Sovairu
Sun May 4 16:05:20 49558,
Rikchik might be a difficult conlang to discuss in this format. However, I do
not know how he plans to do signed languages.
Sylvain Auclair
Sun May 4 15:59:49 49558,
Suggestions of conlangs to be reviewed: sambahsa-mundialect, uropi, lingwa de
planeta, lingua franca nova, afrihili (never could find a lot of info on this
one). If you read Esperanto, you can read my reviews (
http://www.esperanto.qc.ca/eo/riverego issues 99 and up).
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 16:07:05 49558,
just updated the Big List
george aka Angrycheese
Sun May 4 15:59:51 49558,
By this point it becomes obvious that this guy knows fucking nothing about
languages, be it conlangs or natural languages. Without any logic, the
"universality" argument is used when referencing the grammar, ignoring the fact
that when esperanto was created, most of the countries with "most commonly
spoken languages" were barely known (plus, they are not commonly spoken because
they are universal, they simply have a large number of people speaking them,
meaning creating a conlang that pleases everyone is impossible). But then, when
adressing the male-female distinction, he completely ignores the aforementioned
universality or that most universally spoken (especially european) languages
work like this. Striving to achieve nothing seems to be the primary motivator
here, hence why toki pona (aka the baby lang) is his favorite. What a joke.
george aka Angrycheese
Sun May 4 16:07:25 49558,
It reminds me of a feminist parody site joke article that argued that "she"
should come before "he", because if "he" comes first, then, clearly, evil men
are behind this all.
Tarrkin
Sun May 4 16:07:27 49558,
I'm totally pulling this out of my ass, but I'm pretty sure European people in
the late 19th / early 20th century very much knew about those commonly spoken
lanaguages like Chinese, Hindi, Arabic, Bengali, Japanese, Punjabi etc. Be it
from colonies, war, trade, or christian missions. Some of them, by the way,
have very little gender distinction, like Chinese, Bengali, and Japanese.
There's absolutely no mistake calling Esperanto and Ido eurocentric auxlangs.
Keegster
Sun May 4 16:20:43 49558,
I don't think that it's a problem that it is Eurocentric. If you include words
that are too different, then it would just make it harder for everyone.
Also, women as a type of man (grammatically) isn't really a problem, either, I
think, because so many European languages do it (yes in a perfectly logical
world, perhaps it doesn't make sense). Having women as a type of man in a
language is not necessarily sexist. Really, you can interpret that fact
however you want. For example, you could say that it is pro-women, because it
makes them a distinctive group and so more special, or you could say that it is
against women, because it makes them seem like a weird version of human that
doesn't coexist properly with the rest of the population.
Sovairu
Sun May 4 16:28:44 49558,
No, that's not true. There are many varieties of conlangs and conlangers, just
as it is the case with many other forms of hobbies or art. Not all conlangs
need to be exceedingly logical.
Sander Suverkropp
Sun May 4 16:28:46 49558,
Not all conlangs no, but for auxiliary languages, I would say it is reasonable
to keep them to this standard.
Sovairu
Sun May 4 16:28:47 49558,
Sovairu
Sun May 4 16:28:49 49558,
Yes, it is much more understandable to apply the concepts of logic to auxlangs
and loglangs, especially. By necessity, I think, Lojban would be the most
logical language, although its practical functionality seems abysmal.
miguelceromil
Sun May 4 16:20:57 49558,
reviwe arcaicam esperantom, it's better than esperanto
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 16:28:37 49558,
just updated the Big List
Mike S.
Sun May 4 16:21:00 49558,
I know little about Ido, but I am surprised you didn't mention the v/w
distinction. That is something virtually absent in Esperanto.
A Duck
Sun May 4 16:21:01 49558,
I know it would be very difficult, but would it be possible to critique Gestuno?
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 16:28:01 49558,
just updated the Big List.
Paulo Victor de Jesus Moraes
Sun May 4 16:21:04 49558,
Is there even gonna be any language you like more than toki pona?
Indecisive
Sat Sep 3 16:29:36 50557,
Paulo Victor de Jesus Moraes No
Burke Tinsley
Sat Sep 3 16:29:37 50557,
Toki pona is his favorite language!
NeptuneF
Wed Sep 12 16:29:39 50891,
Burke Tinsley even though it's the worst possible language for an interlang
Tibe That Guy
Wed Sep 12 16:29:41 50891,
@NeptuneF Jesus, it's his own damn opinion.
NeptuneF
Wed Sep 12 16:29:42 50891,
@Tibe That Guy lol
Paulo Victor de Jesus Moraes
Sun May 4 16:21:06 49558,
4:37 doesn´t that happen in a lot of languages?
Seiban
Sun May 4 16:21:08 49558,
Ｏｈ ｙｅａｈ, Ｉ'ｖｅ ｇｏｔ ａ ｒｅａｌ
ａｐｐｅｔｉｔｅ!
Seiban
Sun May 4 16:21:09 49558,
Great video!
Astro
Sun May 4 16:21:11 49558,
i can definitely see this becoming a youtube red series
Zinouweel
Sun May 4 16:28:32 49558,
noooo
like noooooooooo
Astro
Sun May 4 16:28:34 49558,
i dont mean as in paying, i just see it as having a similar format
Griffin
Sun May 4 16:21:13 49558,
cool and good
ra sak
Sun May 4 16:21:15 49558,
Don't put the music so loud! Please, i almost can't understand your voice
rookieagenumber1
Sun May 4 16:21:17 49558,
28th
BladderMuffin
Sun May 4 16:21:19 49558,
"binary gender",
>implying there are more than two genders
lmao go back to tumblr
JCON
Sun May 4 16:31:05 49558,
BladderMuffin wow you're so cool being all conservative and all. Lmao "read a
biology textbook" right? Let's go ahead and ignore literally ALL of the
identity psychology advances made in the past century!
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 16:31:06 49558,
I literally link to my tumblr in this video
Seiban
Sun May 4 16:31:07 49558,
Joseph Connell All of those advances were made in the past decade. You could
have just said past decade instead of past century.
Also: that's a nice strawman you've built!
BladderMuffin Could you at least try to see the other perspective instead of
blindly ignoring everything he said? He said that there is a pronoun that can
be used without stating gender. That's all. He could have just as easily been
trying to distinguish from Biological Gender^TM and grammatical gender.
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 16:31:09 49558,
I specifically said "binary gender" because of nonbinary people. I was trying
to imply that there are more than two genders, like BladderMuffin said.
BladderMuffin
Sun May 4 16:31:10 49558,
ahahaha the regressive left strikes again! throwing around 'conservative' left
and right smh.. also lmao 'identity psychology' what's next, people with autism
aren't sick they're just different amirite? also shoutout to HBM for banning
people with perfectly fine opinions on a fucking conlang server! stop bringing
your sjw nonsense into your videos, for God's sake! your videos are alrite but
this is just plain stupid. Khuda Hafiz , jazik Allah khair.
Seiban
Sun May 4 16:31:11 49558,
Yeah, I know. It's just best to start with the glaring holes in an argument
before going after the specific philosophy.
Seiban
Sun May 4 16:31:12 49558,
BladderMuffin Let me get this straight; you take issue when Conlang Critic
brings up his personal ideology in his videos and want him to stop; but when he
takes issue with your personal ideology and wants you to stop on the Discord
server, it's wrong to censor opinions.
BladderMuffin
Sun May 4 16:31:14 49558,
Seiban 1. yes, because conlanging has absolutely NOTHING to do with this gender
identity nonsense.
2. there was a debate in the server and I voiced my opinion. what's wrong with
that?
needlessnoise
Sun May 4 16:31:15 49558,
conlanging has nothing to do with gender identity? i mean fuck, even by your
own standards that describe other genders as "made up"...so are the fuckin
languages so who gives a shit. and on top pof that, languages, especially
interlangs, are descriptive not prescriptive. that is to say, if a significant
amount of people believe they are nonbinary, whether you agree with the
biological basis for it or not, we still need words to describe and refer to
these people
Seiban
Sun May 4 16:31:16 49558,
BladderMuffin There was nothing wrong with what you did. I'm just saying that
Conlang Critic and you are both hypocrites.
Seiban
Sun May 4 16:37:41 49558,
needlessnoise I can agree with that.
Mike S.
Sun May 4 16:37:42 49558,
I like CC's show, but the fact that he uses ideological jargon, including
neologisms, rather than standard linguistic terms in this particular area makes
his politics more than obvious. He's entitled to his opinion of course, and
maybe he likes the controversy he gets from that; I don't know. Anyway, the
less loaded term in linguistics for a form that leaves gender unspecified is
"epicene". No one refers to "binary gender" when discussing language, it's
simply "gender" Also, linguistic forms like pronouns and suffixes don't -- dear
God -- "assign a gender" to an entity. They refer to an entity by means of
gender, which in natlangs may or may not match the natural gender of the thing
-- see Spanish, German, etc. as examples. Gender is just a tool for language
speakers to refer to things and build in redundancy (e.g. noun-adj concord)
into the speech stream. Of course, in a logical language, I totally agree with
CC that the unmarked form should be epicene, and the genders should be treated
symmetrically. But, Jiminy Cricket, no one except primarily for monoglot
English speakers with a certain political axe to grind would regard grammatical
gender as a big ideological issue. The issue is logic and efficiency!
Seiban
Sun May 4 16:37:44 49558,
I have a question. Is any of this discussion actually affecting opinion here,
or is it just bullshitting for bullshit's Japanese alcoholic beverage?
Mike S.
Sun May 4 16:37:45 49558,
The discussion may well be changing opinions among neutral observers, if not
among the active participants.
Seiban
Sun May 4 16:37:46 49558,
That is a good point.
Alex Hayes
Sun May 4 16:37:47 49558,
Are you so insecure with your political opinions that you must point it out
every time that CC criticizes the language from a perspective that you do not
agree with? Go back to 4chan.
BladderMuffin
Sun May 4 16:37:49 49558,
Alex Hayes yeah, and the 'perspective' from which he criticizes conlangs is
complete bullshit and irrelevant.
also, nice try, but I'm not a 4channer ;)
Alex Hayes
Sun May 4 16:37:50 49558,
Yeah, because a grammatical gender system is completely unrelated to gender,
and of course all the lefties have bullshit perspectives, our opinions are
completely wrong. Look, I don't care that you think that some of my friends
don't exist, that's fine, political opinion is a thing, but can't you give the
other viewers the same courtesy? You aren't the only person in the universe
with beliefs, you're going to disagree with people.
Also, was my assumption that you are from 4chan any worse than you assuming
that anybody who accepts non-binary gender is automatically from Tumblr?
Granted, he has a link to his Tumblr in the description, but it's not an
inherently left-wing blog; it's just for conlanging.
P.S. People with autism aren't sick, they really are just neurologically
different. Why are you parodying yourself?
DingoSaar
Sat Sep 3 16:37:51 50557,
"Binary" means ðere is no "two", ðere is only 0 or 1.
DingoSaar
Sat Sep 3 16:37:53 50557,
"Binary" means ðere is no "two", ðere is only "1" ϗ "0".
BTW... ðere is no spoon, eiðer.
DeluxeTux5249
Sat Sep 3 16:37:54 50557,
Conlang Critic although you gotta admit, (at least I think) people weren't non
binary. It wasn't a thing when Esperanto was made so its less of an improvement
and more of an add on to suit the times
Indecisive
Sat Sep 3 16:37:55 50557,
BladderMuffin Yeah, because more than teo genders has NEVER developed outside
of Tumblr. I bet there are NO cultures with 3, 4 or even 5 genders! Ridiculous
right? And why would someone ever want to speak without identifying their
gender? Obviously language must show it you're a guy or girl or the very fabric
of reality will unravel!
Nash Feiler
Sat Sep 3 16:37:57 50557,
Almost all educated scientists confirm gender is on a spectrum. Mind your own
business and go back to whining about your bad quesadilla on Yelp.
Josiah Nethery
Sat Sep 3 16:37:58 50557,
M. Feiler everything is on a spectrum. It's still natural and simple to define
things based on the poles and center of said spectrum. We can then modify these
words for specificity. Adding 100 different words for levels of light instead
of "light" and "dark" or 1000 different words for the shades of gray between
black and white is useless and overly specific. Placement on a spectrum between
masculine and feminine isn't quantifiable. It is sufficient to say "he", "she",
"them" and "it". "Non-binary" as an identity is incredibly non-specific, not
useful, and it opens a giant can of politically loaded words, as often there's
no clear definition on what people mean when they say that they are
"non-binary". Ultimately, it boils down to the PHILOSOPHY that females and
males are the same, and that no tangible distinction can or should be made
between the two. Passing this off as "science" isn't accurate.
The negative reaction to it stems from the commonly-held fear that people's
speech is going to be dictated based off of fringe philosophy. If a biological
woman demands to be called a man, it creates uncomfortable and confusing
ambiguity in what has been considered a simple concept for thousands of years.
It is demanding that people abandon their culture, understanding, and language
to appease the philosophy of a small percentage of people.
So, sorry, I know you mean well here, but you can't radically change language
and expect everyone to adopt it overnight. You can call it "science" until
you're blue in the face (it's philosophy), but 99.9% of the world understands
men and women to be 2 separate things. On a spectrum, sure, but the binary
classification is reflective of humanity's understanding of reality. As long as
we remain creatures that reproduce, we will continue to recognize the
distinction between male and female. And our language will reflect that
understanding.
DeluxeTux5249
Sat Sep 3 16:37:59 50557,
Josiah Nethery wow... You're the most mature/smart man/woman I've seen in these
comments... Well said. Well said.
Skeletoaster
Sat Sep 3 16:38:01 50557,
M. Feiler they would be crucified by an angry mob if they dared to speak
against the social justice groupthink of academia.
ThatZommy
Sun May 4 16:21:22 49558,
Nice
EDIT: I'm curious, what words should one start with once they reach the
vocabulary stage of conlanging? I'm trying to create a language for my novel,
but I'm running into issues finding a good list of words to begin with that
would allow for basic everyday speech. Y'know what I mean?
Eita Tsukino
Sun May 4 16:28:56 49558,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swadesh_list#Final_Swadesh_list the swadesh list
is good for some real basics
http://aveneca.com/cbb/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2590 and this thread has a nice list
to get started
After that, I'd recommend just doing some translations of things so you can get
a feel for what you're still missing.
ObeyBunny
Sun May 4 16:28:57 49558,
It depends. The people who speak your language, how did their culture evolve
and what does their environment look like?
ThatZommy
Sun May 4 16:28:58 49558,
I've got the swadesh down, I'll check the other list out too. Thanks guys.
Insert Channel Name
Sun May 4 16:21:24 49558,
2:16 I get why you didn't say English has a 'ts', but it is in words like iTSy
biTSy spider. It's not that common and some people have a problem pronouncing
it, I just wanted to say that.
Marsh
Sun May 4 16:30:34 49558,
Pegaliko the sequence /t/ + /s/ is allowed in some positions in English but
there is no affirmative phoneme /ts/. Is there a difference? Kinda.
Marsh
Sun May 4 16:30:36 49558,
Pegaliko *affricative
Sgàire
Sun May 4 16:30:37 49558,
You can't start a word with /ts/ in English, while I'm guessing you can in Ido
which is why he's trying to say.
Sage Sweeney
Sun May 4 16:30:39 49558,
Tsunami?
Marsh
Sun May 4 16:30:40 49558,
Pegaliko loanword from Japanese, which does have a /ts/ phoneme. The
pronunciation in English is approximated with /s/
Keegster
Sun May 4 16:30:41 49558,
Insert Channel Name
Sun May 4 16:30:42 49558,
Marsh Thanks I wasn't fully clear on the difference between them being an
affricate and being in the same position.
Ashtăr Balynestjăr
Sun May 4 16:30:43 49558,
In fact, Polish distinguishes between affricates and stop-fricative sequences:
czysta /t͡ʃɨsta/ "clean (feminine)" vs. trzysta /t.ʃɨsta/ "three hundred".
Strike Ecozzocn
Sat Sep 3 16:30:45 50557,
We don’t distinguish /ts/ and /t͡s/ but in words like dates, it can be
pronounced /dɛɪt͡s/ or /dɛɪts/
Soviet Loli
Thu Jun 13 16:30:46 51061,
@Ashtăr Balynestjăr How?
Ashtăr Balynestjăr
Thu Jun 13 16:36:11 51061,
@Soviet Loli We don’t have any single-word examples in English, but it does
occur across multiple words. Think about the difference between “courtship”
and “core chip”, or “ratchet“ and “rat shit”.
Yevhenia Doskach
Thu Feb 10 16:36:12 51138,
@Marsh In BE it is pronounced /tsuːˈnɑː.mi/. So I guess, you're speaking on
behalf of AE.
Jollonk
Sun May 4 16:21:26 49558,
The reason natural languages (at least those of Indo-European descend) have the
masculine as the standard has nothing to do with sexism. The masculine used to
be just an animate, and later on a suffix could be added to these words to make
them feminine. This created a distinction between general animate and feminine
animate. This shifted to a difference between masculine and feminine, with some
archaic uses of the masculine as just an animate (general he in English, for
example). So, it’s an archaism of the animate function of the masculine, not
a view as women as a kind of man.
As for origin of that suffix, of which the form was -h2, it might have been a
collective. I don’t know why such a semantic shift would have taken place, or
what this means for how they saw women back then, but it might not have been
derogatory. I don’t know if this is possible with a collective, but with a
plural it is possible to mark respect in some languages, like vous in French.
If the same is possible for a collective, it might have been somewhat similar,
though, how exactly, I don’t know. Just claiming sexism feels like a bit of a
cop-out to me.
Also, I think people might just be tired of hearing about sexism everywhere
they go, so they don't appreciate it when it pops up again, unexpectedly. But,
it is your show, so you may include it if you want, of course. Just be aware
some might not like it.
Mike S.
Sun May 4 16:29:59 49558,
Jollonk, I agree with your points. As far as -h2, my own hypothesis is that
the two uses (fem. sing. & neut. collective) originated from two originally
separate suffixes that fell together due to phonological attrition (Like the
separate origins of English -s plural, -'s possessive, -s 3p sing verb
endings). I can't think of good way that -h2 could have developed two rather
distinct meanings otherwise.
The Major
Sun May 4 16:30:00 49558,
Actually many of them did have 3 grammatical genders; Neuter, Masculine and
Feminine.
Masculine Neuter merged, and the rest is history. There are a few remnants of
this in some of the European languages. It's not that the masculine is standard
it's dropped, and neuter is the one used, and then a female modifier. Man for
instance just mean human being, it's grammatically neuter because it never was
anything else, woman has the wo prefix, which probably was another root word in
the past meaning woman. Just like -inna in Swedish turns a neuter into
feminine, it's root is kvinna, meaning adult female. There is a second suffix
which does the same thing -(er)ska which I don't know the root word of, it's
technically a stemchanging suffix. Seeing as the neuter is -are compared to the
old -ir for masculine.
DingoSaar
Sat Sep 3 16:30:01 50557,
+The Major you make very good points, however, we in German have a neuter, and
addressing adult people in it feels just WRONG - you don't want a Neutrum, but
an Utrum (I had to learn the word, too).
Ne--utrum means "none of both" in latin, it seems - Utrum "any of both".
Many Esperantists also feel uncomfortable using "ĝi" as utric pronoun; in
1967, Manuel Halvelik just dropped the ĉapitelo: gi (or Arxaika Esperanto:
"egui").
Please: This does NOT the hell mean a ĉapitelo diminished respect for a word
(as feminine pronoun is "ŝi"); it's just that ne-uter is ĝi and utric is gi.
Therefore, female suffix is "-in-" and male "-iĉ-", with ĉapitelo.
While German took between middle xy GErman and modern xy German a word for
"human" ("Mensch/Minsch) that differed from "male" (Mann), there are still many
idioms where "Mann" includes ladies ("am Mann haben", "bemannen",
"Mannschaft"...).
English (and East German, too) just used the "generic masculine" as Utrum: "the
minister of education, Mrs Margot Honnecker".
Now the "fun fact": since the 1990s, all official communication has to be
"inclusive": "Dear Frauinnen und Frauen, Mitgliederinnen und Mitglieder,
Studierendinnen und Studierende". SINCE THEN, women in
mathematics/informatics/natural sciences/technics FELL - "being inclusive"
meant, here, that people STARTED to think about gender and MADE MINT "male" and
pedagogics/social sciences/philosophy "female", while the USA with their
"generic masculine" have about 50% of female MINT bachelors. It gets even worse
considering the majority of female MINT professionals/students is from Eastern
Germany where "Gendering" still hasn't established itself.
The ONLY way to "de-gender" professions (and thereby make females take them up)
seems to be radical utric use; if you don't have an utrum, radically avoiding
feminine movation and only speak in generalised masculine - so masculine Genus
(grammatical) loses its meaning "male Sexus" (again).
Also to take into consideration, here +Bon Bon might be able to add something:
In Slavonic languages, female endings are even in Names - Michail Gorbatschow
and Raissa Gorbatschowa. Slavonic women can sweep the floor with West-German
ones. In Eatern Europe (including CIS and East Germany), the economy needed
the female work force, so participation in the Workforce seems to be WAY
stronger than language in "making females equal"; however, I still hold NOT
using an Utrum makes those whose gender is not seen as "typical" in a
profession (male kindergardners, eg) "unnormal".
sofias. orange
Sat Sep 3 16:30:03 50557,
> nothing to do with sexism
> a suffix could be added to these words to make them feminine
also sexism does not depend on whether it's always been that way or has
changed. what matters is the social mechanisms it enables or enforces in the
moment that it is used.
DingoSaar
Sat Sep 3 16:30:04 50557,
+sofias. orange and, pray tell, what ARE ðose "mechanisms", empirically
(statistically) proven by evidence?
In medieval Europe, ðere was nobility ϗ agriculture, boþ seeing common males
ϗ lifestock males as workforce, females as "breeding stock" to be treasured -
it is anecdotal, but still ðere: In Chinese characters, "female" is a distinct
sign, "male" is combined by "Force" in ðe "Field". For "real" patriarchy,
commoners ϗ non-citizens were but a numberto till fields, build structures,
wage wars or - Russian Empire 19þ century - gamble away.
And yes, ðis is problematic even today: It is called ðe "disposable
dude"-meme in ðat "women and children" are to be protected, males are
replacable and disposable - see, eg, how few women even today serve in armed
forces or police, even hiȝ-risk work environments - which society tends to
fill wiþ disposable males. Also, custody strifes are even today heavily biased
against faðers (faðer/moðer anoðer example for non-movated male/female
roles). Yesterday, ðere was ðe "day against violence against women" because
one in þree has an experience wiþ violence - which is tragic, however, one in
TWO males experience violence, but ðis is deemed "normal" (even TRY to
organise a gender-less "day against violence" - nice to have got to read you).
In Indo-Germanic languages, you see movated "affixed" female forms (priestess,
engineeress...), but also (un-movated) "genuine female" terms (nurse, queen...
German "Zofe", "Amme" (midwive (Hebamme), nursing maid). Where you find ðose
terms, male and female terms are totally distinct (monk/nun). Esperanto
detractors even find it obscene "genuine female" words in Esperanto can be used
for males, too (fraulo/frauliĉo: bachelor, from German "Fräulein";
damo/damiĉo "noble" "esteemed sir" from French dame, male sieur). For ðis
reason, Ludwig Samenhof coming from a Yiddish/Polish/German/Russian/French
background used a female affix, because all ðose languages HAVE one. De
Beaufront took a male affix, too, for symmetry purposes.
Neiðer Samenhof nor de Beaufront had "sexist" motivations; and see, eg,
English who has made ðe "generalised masculine genus" an "utrum"
(gender-less), ðe F.R.Germany who puts female "-in" in EVERYÞING
(Mitglied/Mitgliederin, Studierender/Studierende), and France and Slavonic
countries who just add some "-e" or "-a" here and ðere and have many
"generalised/utric masculine genera" oðerwise, and only ðe fanatic
Dworkinists want to change it; stated reason in all ÞREE cases: "feminism".
Now, we have a historic precedence here: ðe FRG used movation (which is
criticised as "autrui" in French, "oðering" in English), ðe GDR generalised
masculine like English (FRG: Mrs engineeress Müller; GDR: Mrs engineer
Müller). Statistics show clearly ðat in ðe Western FRG, women in STEM become
rarer and rarer while males in Humanity sciences leave ðe field, also. Former
GDR even today, and English-speaking countries have much hiȝer "female
STEM/male Humanity sciences" rates.
So TODAY, we can say ðat Giismo (gi, li, ŝi, ĝi for utric he or she, he,
she, it) and Iĉismo are correct because of ðe data we have 1950-1990 and
1990-now in boþ Germanies; Esperanto and Ido were made 1860 and 1910.
Sexism is involved if someþing is used or made in a sexist motivation.
Historically, ðere were "castes" "common (disposable male) human" ("man"),
"common female human" ("woman", yes, ENGLISH: wo-man), "noble male human"
("lord") and "noble female human" ("lady"); sexism and "patriarchy" here are
not "males vs females", but 1% of males vs ðe rest of society; and ENGLAND
even disposed of a king qwho did not fulfill his gender-role by pouring molten
lead into his rectum - ðe "King" being ðe top-most "patriarch" in a
patriarchal society. "Reverse sexism" is as bull-crappy as "capitalism is ðe
exploitation of one human by ðe oðer, socialism is ðe reverse ðereof".
Find a worðy bullying-field to battle "sexism"; it may be easy to "strike
down" on ðe Esperanto and Ido communities, but REAL society-changing sexism to
fiȝt is to be found elsewhere. But ðat's no longer striking down, but an
uphill battle.
Nukestarmaster
Sat Sep 3 16:30:06 50557,
+DingoSaar Good points all around, but you are kind of hard to read. What do
you have against "th"?
Epic Stimulus
Sat Sep 3 16:30:07 50557,
Not Greek though
Skeletoaster
Sat Sep 3 16:30:08 50557,
Nukestarmaster he's probably typing on an icelandic keyboard or has some custom
preset for a personal conlang. either that or he's trying to lead the change of
english spelling by using the IPA to write in english.
Heads Full Of Eyeballs
Sat Sep 3 16:30:09 50557,
"I don’t know why such a semantic shift would have taken place, or what this
means for how they saw women back then, but it might not have been derogatory."
The way I've generally seen it explained is that Indo-European women were
viewed collectively, as either a group of women or part of the family-group. We
have a bunch of examples of that sort of semantic shift from later IE
languages. The Romanian word for "woman", femeie, derives from Latin familia
"family, household", for example. The German word "Frauenzimmer" (lit. "women's
room") is now a derogatory term for a woman, singular.
In many IE cultures you didn't address women by name, either -- in ancient
Greek we generally see men addressed by name, while women just get "o gune!",
"o woman!". And Roman women were typically just referred to by their husband's
gentile name.
All this is definitely reflective of a sexist ancestral culture, where men are
individuated but women are generic and interchangeable/defined by their
attachment to a man. It's not "derogatory" in the sense that it actively seeks
to insult women, it just reflects a view of women that's morally insulting.
Carl Avlund
Sun May 4 16:21:29 49558,
Great episode! I couldn't agree more with you regarding the flaws of Esperanto
and Ido's phonemes. I did sort of like Esperanto's orthography better. I mean,
I think it's absolutely idiotic to use ‹ĥ› for /x/ and ‹ŭ› for /w/,
but I think it's better to make a diacritical system than to use digraphs.
Whenever I see a conlang use ‹sh› for /ʃ/, I cringe in agony... In fact,
if Esperanto would've just used *‹ẑ› instead of ‹ĵ› for /ʒ/, I
would've been absolutely fine with it.
Oh, and then Zamenhoff should've turned those f*cking circumflexes upside
down!!! Seriously, ‹ˆ› is so f*cking ugly, like, why would he do that...
Anyway, awesome vid'!
109Rage
Sun May 4 16:21:30 49558,
If you wanna put music in the video, turn the music down, or turn your voice
track up.
ads13000
Sun May 4 16:21:32 49558,
Just a question: What does it take for a conlang to be reviewed by you?
Does it have to be sufficiently known? Does it just have to be reasonable? etc.
Martin Claaassen
Sun May 4 16:28:23 49558,
ads13000 he needs to be able to see the conlang and I guess it needs to be
fleshed out
109Rage
Sun May 4 16:28:25 49558,
On top of it needing to be available for him to research somewhere (preferably
somewhere on the internet), viewers request the conlang they want reviewed, and
he adds it to a list. The order in which he reviews them is based on how many
people request the video, and how many items he already had on the list.
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 16:28:26 49558,
aw dang I was gonna answer this question but Da best Rock and 109Rage beat me
to it
Hand Sanitizer Attack
Sun May 4 16:21:34 49558,
The music near the end was way too loud. Also, I love this series, but I find
it hard to focus on your voice when you talk that fast and have a pretty bad
mic.
109Rage
Sun May 4 16:29:25 49558,
Lucky for us, he has subtitles you can turn on.
Toimu13
Sat Sep 3 16:29:27 50557,
I prefer the older episodes without music. Please turn the music down or off.
Thank you.
Jordan Getulio
Sun May 4 16:45:09 49558,
The music was a bit loud near the end, I could barely hear what you were
saying, but otherwise a good review, keep up the good work!
Ptaku93
Sat Sep 3 16:50:30 50557,
Jordan Getulio oh boy this comment sounds like I would comment one year ago how
weird
Anteri Savukoski
Sat Feb 14 16:50:32 51305,
@Ptaku93 and this comment is something i would comment 1 year ago as well...
Keith Pickett
Sun May 4 16:45:11 49558,
why is it only in 360p ?
Thom Hopgood
Sun May 4 16:45:13 49558,
Notification squad!
Some Girl
Sun May 4 16:45:15 49558,
Even though I don't always agree with your opinions, I love your content and
respect your obvious linguistics experience (be it formal or informal) and
effort in making these videos! :)
Conlang Critic
Sun May 4 16:50:56 49558,
thanks Bill!
jcbk ninety
Sun May 4 16:45:17 49558,
I guest V0tgil is on the bottom forever.
Alexander Ferguson
Sun May 4 16:50:47 49558,
jcbk ninety until a worse auxlang comes along.
jcbk ninety
Sun May 4 16:50:48 49558,
Yeah!
Chase B
Sun May 4 16:50:49 49558,
Until material is available on Megdevi, David Peterson's personal language from
before he knew anything about linguistics
jcbk ninety
Sun May 4 16:50:51 49558,
Ooh.
Epic Stimulus
Sat Sep 3 16:50:52 50557,
Lol
Will Tannery
Sun May 4 16:45:20 49558,
Whoah I'm early
Celt of Canaan Esurix
Sun May 4 16:45:22 49558,
Might want to turn the music a tad bit down, I had difficulty hearing. Also
first comment!
Keegster
Sun May 4 16:50:13 49558,
You may have been the first comment, but I can't tell for sure because you
edited the comment, making it go further up in the comment stream.
The Ancient World
Sun May 4 16:45:24 49558,
owo what's this?
Nic Austin
Sun May 4 16:45:26 49558,
Hey hbmaster it's me jan meka