From Esperanto to ET: Artificial Languages in the Internet Era (2004)

Re:From Esperanto to ET: Artificial Languages in the Interne... by throwaway7645 on Monday December 26, 2016 @03:48PM (#13259704)

Toni Poka is neat, but not very expressive (as the intent. It makes a fun little language to learn though. Engadget (think it was them) did a lengthy write up awhile back. I'd rather learn something mind expanding like Lojban than restrictive like Toki Pona. However, I did read that it can be a useful exercise to come up with phrases to explain a concept/word your language doesn't have. Toki Pona probably doesn't have "computer", but maybe you can represent that with "glowing communications box"?

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Re:From Esperanto to ET: Artificial Languages in the Interne... by schoen on Friday December 30, 2016 @02:59AM (#13283192)

I'd agree toki pona is unlikely to be as mind-expanding as Lojban, but the kind of creativity that you mention, working within constraints, can be "mind-expanding" too -- just as composing poetry within a specific form, or practicing constrained writing, can be.

Even though there are some fundamental designed-in limitations in toki pona (for example, we don't officially have comparatives, relative clauses, or quotation! you can say "a is a little x and b is very x" or use a kind of formula with "x this: y"), it can be surprising how many things can be expressed reasonably well given the effort.

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Re:From Esperanto to ET: Artificial Languages in the Interne... by anotheryou on Monday December 26, 2016 @03:58PM (#13259742)

I chose it because the effort is so low and I wondered what thinking with such limited vocabulary feels like.

Computer might be: ilo sona - device of knowledge

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Re:From Esperanto to ET: Artificial Languages in the Interne... by throwaway7645 on Monday December 26, 2016 @05:10PM (#13260046)

Haha. Glad you were able to translate that.

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