Why I hate conlangs
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- Опубліковано 16 січ 2024
- 📚 Sources
Crystal, David. 2008. “artificial languages”. In A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics (6e). Blackwell.
Ethnologue. How many languages are there in the world? www.ethnologue.com/insights/h...
Hayek, Friedrich A. 1969. Studies in philosophy, politics and economics. Touchstone.
Wikipedia. Constructed language. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constru...
📖 Further Reading
In the land of invented languages: Adventures in linguistic creativity, madness, and genius (Arika Okrent)
amzn.to/4aFiZs4
Language death (David Crystal)
amzn.to/48mtEGQ
When languages die: The extinction of the world's languages and the erosion of human knowledge (K. David Harrison)
amzn.to/47pAZEa
Words of wonder: Endangered languages and what they tell us (Nicholas Evans)
amzn.to/3vz5ytF
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#conlangs #conlang #languages #linguistics #Dothraki #Navi #Elvish #LOTR #Esperanto #Quenya #Sindarin
Nobody cares that a model railroad doesn’t go anywhere. And conlangs aren’t stealing resources from endangered languages. Most conlangers have very strong feelings about saving endangered languages, but lack the time, training, and resources to do much beyond spreading awareness and maybe donating to organizations. There’s no money in conlanging for the overwhelming majority of conlangers, but it is a cheap, fun hobby with a strong online community. It’s definitely cheaper than model trains, in any case.
i agree
@@Meneer_Davis I question why one would assume that an endangered language is more valuable than a constructed one. Is it sentiment?
As a conlanger myself, and an undergrad in linguistics focusing on minority languages, I'd like to give my two cents. I do think that this video contains misconceptions about conlangs, and actually about conlangers as well. Please take this as constructive criticism, I don't mean to insult or offend. I do really like your content, and that is why I feel free and safe enough to give my opinion on here.
Intentions behind conlangs are extremely diverse. Of course, conlangers don't think about many things natural languages do, because it's statistically impossible that at least one conlang in the world has at least one feature from all natural languages (assuming "features" are quantifiable and countable). The regularity of some conlangs also largely depends on intent: naturalism, for example, does not seek regularity at all costs, and naturalists keep in mind that most natural languages are not "regular", and so irregularities are designed (or just happen, which depends on your method, which is a whole other huge topic).
The "depth" or "richness" of a conlang largely depends on the conlanger's knowledge and expertise. Maybe no conlang can be equal in richness to natural languages, but I've seen some come really really close. And knowledge and practice also often leads people to steer away from Indo-European features and start to actually look at the world's diversity and to what languages around the world can actually do.
Conlangs are controlled languages, sure. But why is that bad? Some languages can be controlled, and most of those are conlangs. Not all conlangs are experiments on, or plan to influence, human thought, because these things largely depend on the language's purpose. "Natural language is not something that can be designed" but no one is claiming that conlangs are natural languages.
I don't believe that conlangs divert the attention away from minority languages. It depends on personal experience, and, for me, it was quite the opposite. I now speak a minority language at an intermediate level thanks to conlanging. I was looking at features for inspiration, and I came upon this minority language and it was "love at first sight". That conlanging project died, but the passion for that language stayed, and after years I'm still actively learning it. So one thing doesn't exclude the other.
If Google Translate has Esperanto and not Navajo, that is not conlanging's fault: it's Eurocentrism. I'm sure you would agree to some extent. Why else would a constructed language with a few thousand native speakers (yes, there are native speakers) be more interesting than another language with way more speakers to stakeholders? It's because of lack of investment and because the system was built around European languages, not because of conlanging, or at least I really don't think so.
These arguments are often "debunked", in a way, by conlangers, especially those with higher-degree education, because some think people might "bark up the wrong tree". While it may seem like conlangs take up space from endangered languages, that is not always the case, and they can actually be useful in that sense. I think that the dinamics that divert attention from these natural languages are actually quite different and unrelated to conlanging.
Sorry for the long comment! I hope this is useful insight from inside the community.
i'd add that some conlangs kinda become natlangs. toki pona is growing and changing as people use it in different ways.
modern hebrew was constructed based on historic hebrew documents (following the sound changes based on other languages around the places where hebrew originated)
nowadays, modern hebrew is clearly a full language onto itself and it is still actively changing
I especially agree with your point about the google translate argument. Theres definitely a problem but the root of the problem is not that esperanto is constructed and navajo is natural.
what minority language did/are you studying?
@@rvat2003 I'm studying Irish Gaelic, I understand Catalan fairly well and I have studied it in the past; I've dabbled in other languages like Greenlandic (technically not a minority language but one could argue), Basque, and others. I speak one natively too, btw. I also plan on focusing on studying the sociolinguistics of minority language dynamics and language activism in my university degree, but in the meantime I'm trying to finish my course and study those on my own
i ain't reading all that
An important thing to note: while it might look like conlanging takes attention away from endangered or otherwise under-supported languages, it's also what gets a lot of people interested in linguistics in the first place, including myself as Klingon catching my eye eventually led to me now helping with Dakota revitalization. (Not to say you should give conlangs any attention here, since most people watching this channel already have some background or interest in linguistics, just that conlanging does have some value in that way)
I would like to see sources in regards to the claim that conlangs harm minority languages or distort language understanding. This is a pretty wild and grandiose claim to make without evidence
Fr!
To paraphrase David J. Peterson, most reasonable people don't think that we shouldn't make fiction stories because there are so many non-fiction stories that should be told. A fiction book often has a completely different function to a nonfiction book, and a conlang often has a completely different purpose to a natlang. I feel this partially counters some of your problems presented in this video, which of course, are still valid.
Lost me immediately with the "takes attention away from endagered languages". One language based art form existing is not an existential threat to real world languages. It would be detrimental to insert an irl language, and thus culture because language and culture are inseparable when known properly, for example, into a fictional property as that would misrepresent and fictionalize a real world language/culture. So that's not a solution at all. Stopping conlanging isn't a solution for anything; writers and worldbuilders, movie directors, authors etc etc shouldn't have to restrict themselves in their artistic endeavors because of something happening in the world that has fuck all to do with them. Real languages evolve, diverge, and go exctinct. That's natural. Unless you want to take it upon yourself to document with native precision every language and its etymology and metaphorical language, go ahead. But it's no one else's responsibility and certain cultures with endangered languages don't even want their languages documented, at least from what I've seen, in writing, and that would be a trespass for someone to do in such a case. This reminds me of traditional artists complaining over digital artists killing art because they follow a different area of artistic study. You have nothing to add to the conversation dude, and you sound obnoxious, not virtuous. You're not speaking for anyone. Learning real languages and conlanging are 2 completely different things and they don't have any responsibility to one another.
You also mentioned Navajo and google translate. You realize it's a cultural belief that the Navajo language SHOULD NEVER be written down as according to Navajo spiritualists it is a holy language from the Holy People, which has already been abused in the past, and it's not appropriate to write it down, (this happening is even involved in some prophesies). See this is why you shouldn't try to speak for other people. Did you even know that? That there's an actual culture tied to irl languages that would be impacted by actions of people that have nothing to do with it?
There’s a Navajo course in Duolingo though.
I myself actually know around three native Esperanto speakers. Maybe that's my bubble, but there's definitely more than that... but also, getting mad at Esperanto having Google Translate support but not Navajo feels like you're getting upset at the wrong thing
Yeah... we need more languages not less.
@@eestimarksistBurger, communism doesn't work. Neither does Estonia.
Agreed, I don’t see how that’s the fault of conlangers
To your first couple of points, it sounds like the conlangs you are familiar with are either international auxiliary languages or languages meant to invoke those of a specific real word geographical region (those from Tolkien or in Game of Thrones). International auxiliary languages are based on big languages and have very standardized grammar, not because their designers are ignorant and failed at making a natural language... but because that's the entire point of them. They are meant to be easy to learn. Their purpose is to provide a simple intermediary language for people who don't share a language to pick up quickly in order to enable communication without everyone having to already have learned everyone else's more complicated natural languages, or (more likely) the speakers of the smaller languages just having to learn the language of the speaker of the more "dominant" language. And from there they having an actual ability to learn each-other's native languages through communication. Making grammar simple and standardized is the goal. Pulling from languages that the most amount of speakers are at-least familiar with is also to make it easier to pick up quickly. (Although there are also IALs that do actively avoid being too similar, in etymologies especially, to any existing languages in order to put all speakers on a level playing field in terms of familiarity.) Sure, you can (and should) fault Esperanto for being too Eurocentric (specifically Latinocentric), and having needlessly complicated features just because that's how Romance languages do it. But "Esperanto is kinda bad as an IAL actually" is a pretty common position in conlang communities, even among many Esperantists.
Many people have already commented on the idea that conlangs are stealing attention from minority languages, but I'd like to add one thing I haven't seen mentioned: Making a dictionary for a language you made up, and going to learn a minority language (one that presumably isn't well documented, seeing the need for such a dictionary) and then becoming fluent enough in it to write a dictionary for it are very different things. Aside from the wast difference in time and resources and skills needed, the latter also carries a much greater risk if done wrong. A non-native amateur just slapping together a dictionary or other linguistic resources without a fluent grasp on the language can do active harm to the survival of an endangered language. Get something about a fake language wrong? You are about on the level of someone recollecting the plot of a novel wrong. Get something about a real endangered language wrong? You've just dangerously misrepresented someone else's struggling minority culture to a potentially massively larger amount of people than those that are part of that culture.
Hey! Someone sent this video on a conlang server I'm part of (it showed up in their recommended), and became topic of discussion!
To clarify: Not in a hateful way or anything. We wrote down the different points you made and are now talking about why we agree or disagree with them.
The consensus was that they're very reasonable, but I just want to share the main points that we made in response.
- Many of us only really got interested in linguistics as a whole after learning about conlangs. A lot of members started learning more obscure languages to help with making more realistic conlangs, and are actively trying to support resources for those being more readily available
- The argument of conlangs taking attention away from natlangs that need it more felt kind of like Whataboutism. They are both separate enough to not impact each other too much in that regard (people making dictionaries for conlangs are not taking anything awy from indigenous languages, but instead using a privilege that they can also still use to support natlangs. it's not a finite resource). At the same time they are inter-connected in a way that interest in one can spark interested in the other, supporting them both.
- conlangs often looking similar to i.e. Indo-European languages is definitely a thing, but it depends a lot on the community. Some, like the one I'm part of, have many members taking inspiration from lesser known languages and even sometimes mostly extinct languages. I know someone who is learning directly from members of different native tribes resident in the US, which is super cool
- conlangs show the limits of human understanding, and while we literally can not take everything into account that influences natlangs, it's still an interesting thing to observe and experiment with
also, as a last and very personal point, conlangs can do a great job helping people navigate the world. I made a language based solely on physical touch a couple years ago (currently refining and expanding on it), to help when I went non-verbal for any reason. When i.e. having a panic attack, things like sign language or writing our thoughts down were impossible for me and my roommate at the time. So instead we had a simple system of taps and swipes that would let the other know exactly how we were feeling and if we needed anything.
that kind of stuff is obviously very niche, and if I didn't start working on a conlang for it, we straight up would not have had a way to communicate in some situations.
dude it's not your fucking dissertation
this is just some stuff that came up in conversation? language is all about communication, and people learning from each other@@alphabeticnumber687
For someone self-described as interested in linguistics, google "whataboutism". Conlangs and natural languages both exist in the category of languages, and language-time can only be dedicated to one of the two - this isn't countering an accusation with saying "what about ", but countering "I'm going to learn " with "why don't you learn a real language that's meaningful in some way?".
Also, r.e. your "system of taps and swipes"... Do you not have a phone? Could you not tap and swipe on the phone to, I don't know, send a text? Get a life.
@@acex222I feel like many of the comments' points are actually reasonable as it is unfair to say that conlanging shouldn't be done just because there are endangered languages. As said, conlanging actually fished so many potential linguists that eventually became interested in doing language documentation, or at least in supporting them. If not for it, they never would've started. It's also quite presumptuous that people can't do both. Language documentation gets very tiring from time to time and having a related but different hobby could keep you interested in the field and therefore continue. Plus, conlanging is often an art project, while working with endangered languages needs good professional work. Not everyone is going to be a professional linguist and it's not ideal to entrust a very important job to mere amateurs. So instead, it is better to encourage conlangers to also become interested in natural language work instead of just discouraging and invalidating them and their conlangs. Many of them are simply inexperienced in the field and need further guidance.
Thank you for taking the time to summarize these points for me! I'm very glad to hear that the video sparked what sounds like productive conversation on the conlang server. One thing someone pointed out to me recently is that some of my critiques are most accurate in regards to languages in fantasy books, where the languages are often an afterthought. Obviously there are plenty of exceptions (Tolkien most prominently), but it does seem like all of the worst stereotypes come from there-throwing in random meaningless apostrophes because they seem exotic, making all the words following English phonotactics, etc.
I'm not sure I agree that conlangs and indigenous languages are competing for the same attention, nor that there's some sort of zero-sum economy of attention such that people can't enjoy and appreciate both. People tend to engage with Klingon or Dothraki or Elvish in order to engage more fully with the fandom of fictional worlds they love; it's not an alternative to the serious study of indigenous languages. Engaging with these languages isn't, and isn't intended to be taken with the level of high-stakes seriousness that studying an indigenous language with the intent of providing people access is, so I'm not sure it's helpful to tut-tut people for enjoying conlangs when they could be doing the more serious work of studying an indigenous language. These are not interchangeable activities. You might as well tell people "stop playing video games and learn Navajo instead."
Your remark about conlangs being bland imitations of European languages suggests that you aren't as familiar with ones like Klingon or Dothraki as you think you are.
If conlangs don't interest you, there's nothing wrong with that (they're not super interesting to me either), but I found the high-minded moralism of this video to be misplaced. What's standing in the way of people learning sign language or Navajo or a sign language is the limited access to teachers, the difficulty of the undertaking, and concerns about who is allowed to teach (and profit from the teaching of these languages). Learning Navajo to a degree that you can speak it with a respectful degree of proficiency is EXTREMELY difficult and the type of person who is learning Elvish for fun is very probably not up to the challenge - they wouldn't be more inclined to learn Navajo if you took their Elvish away.
1: I don't owe shit to minority languages
2: I only need one language to communicate
3: I conlang as a hobby not as a job
AHHA FRR!
Esperanto was a conlang in 1887, in the 19th Century. We are now in the 21st Century. Esperanto has become a natural living language, as a test-tube become a child like any other child. Nobody can control it. It is like any other living language - some proposals become accepted by the language community, most do not. Esperanto has its own native speakers, a rich original literature and its own songs, drama, poetry, etc. Incidentally, apart from Esperanto, I am fluent in 8 other natural languages, including Irish.
i agree with this for the conlangs that are as difficult to learn as natlangs. however, i will say, learning toki pona in just under two weeks taught me a lot about the structures a language can have and the ways meaning can be derived from language. i genuinely think it equipped me to better understand how other languages work in more than a "this translates into that" way like duolingo teaches. it encourages thinking in the language rather than focusing on what youre trying to say in english first. now onto learn the language my immigrant parents wanted me to learn as a child
aa toki sina ni li pona tawa mi!
Esperanto does actually have a few native speakers
In fact, between one and two thousand.
I conlang for fun, and the study of endangered language issue always is a criticism. We’re not linguists, we’re artists using the medium of linguistics to create expression. The two are not mutually exclusive. We don’t detract from the preservation of language (assuming such speakers want outsiders speaking their language). This is also why it would make sense for a linguistics channel not to talk about it, it’s art not linguistics. It’s like some one who studies the chemistry of pigmentation and paint media talking about painting techniques. Sure he could, but it’s not his wheelhouse.
Also, yes, most conlangs use European based languages as inspiration because IE lang family is immense, and most UA-cam consumers speak one themselves. You have to start with what you know before you branch out.
Your commentary about endangered and minority languages I agree with, but your opinions on conlangs sound to me (somewhat exaggeratedly) like "there are endangered ecosystems in the world, therefore nobody should make landscape paintings".
Or why writing fictional stories and not real ones?
I think one of the big difference is that Esperanto speakers produce content in their language that can be used to train LLMs for translation, while Navajo speakers don't produce so much corpus you could feed to an algorithm.
Although it'd be great if Google Translate had Navajo as an option, Esperanto does have more speakers (albeit the huge majority aren't native, there's a total of between 200,000 and 2 million, depending on estimates). It's gone through a process of naturalization, it has one single standardized orthography, and has much more written content.
Each of those, separately, aren't a big deal, but they contribute so much to making an automatic translator (which is essentially a way to convert from one standardization to another one). I believe Facebook's NLLB aims at including languages like Navajo.
Thank you for your content. I love learning about language, linguistics, etymology and anything of the sort. I'm a huge history lover and genealogist. You popped up on IG and I went to to follow you on here and TikTok. I am so grateful for people with your knowledge sharing what you know for people who haven't pursued this at a college level.
I personally create some conlangs, and ironically, the more I create them, the more I realize how beautiful natural languages are...
Bibliaridion has literally made some badass extremely complex type of conlangs
The way you move, and the way your camera moves, gives me motion sickness.
The background moving is REALLY distracting
Close your eyes and listen.
as an amateur conlanger, i think all of us are striving to make our languages more closely resemble that kind of complexity you only find in the real world. while i do think its near enough impossible, it is a fun challenge, albeit frivolous in the end. great vid!
your earlier points resonate with me, the last one does not: more time spent on conlangs does not equal less time spent on endangered natural languages. for the overwhelming majority, conlanging is a hobby, more like chess or going for walks than professional fifieldwork in papua new guinea. perhaps you could make a stronger case that conlangs take away attention if you were talking specifically about academic research. but even then it seems strange to pin it on conlangs in particular
Hi. Thanks for the video, I agree. I wonder if you feel almost the same about doing things (such as writing fiction or giving L2 courses) on dead classical languages or reconstructed protolanguages. I feel conflictuated about that since it is a respectable hobby for specialists but may also sustract attention about real alive endangered languages
I'm a conlanger, and I don't have a phd or even a major in linguistics but I've been studying it for 2-3 years now and you're completely right I do disagree about a few things you're saying like for instance: a conlang can't be as complex as a natural language. some people know that not everything is not neat and tidy and they make the language be not so neat and tidy like that. but I get the general point of what you're saying and as a canadian I have a few local indigenous languages and you've inspired me to learn a little more about them because it's fun trying to learn a language and not be able to know what to expect next when you're learning it. :).
With the completion of the minimalist program, conlangs are an excellent way to push boundaries and further study language. I think they are the most important tool for linguistic study as of now.
I agree with you! Thanks to making conlang i found it easier to pronouce things!
Just to approximate the arguments you made, conlangers don’t use unique stuff like in a few real world languages but conlangers and somehow threatening endangered languages by using their unique aspects
The purpose of the creation of Quenya and Klingon is different, but for Esperanto and the like, the purpose is easing the communication between different groups of people so they tend to focus on the communities’ own languages and they happen to be Indo-European ones. People create what they know. Interslavic, Folkspraak, Interlingua…and I see that they try to smooth out the irregularities of the natural languages to be clean. That’s mostly the whole point.
Another point i didn't see here is that if Esperanto is far from perfect and very euro-centric, I do wonder if its adoption as a language of worldwide communication wouldn't have been preferable to English, a natural language (or any other European or Asian (often) colonial power's language like French, Spanish, Chinese etc.). Of course we could discuss the usefulness of having such a language in the first place.
Ill share this to my conlanging friends, well have a good laugh im sure!
I understand what you want to say when you explain that conlangs are not as natural languages in sense that they are too much regular. As a conlanger who is totally NOT linguist or something, I just want to precise that conlagers need to learn their language, and they can't make too much irregularities because they have to find themselves among their proper conlang, that may be very complex at the grammar or vocabulary level.
Not really sure why the number of native speakers of Esperanto is relevant. Esperanto has a lot more speakers than Navajo speakers, so it's a language more in need of google translate's resources
Navajo has over 100,000 native speakers. Seems unlikely Esperanto has anywhere near that many.
@@LinguisticDiscoveryEsperanto had an estimated 2000 native speakers as of 2006
@@LinguisticDiscovery I meant more that the total number of speakers should matter more than native speakers i think
@@LinguisticDiscoveryEsperanto has 2 million speakers or at the very least, many more than Navajo. Using google before spreading misinformation isn’t hard
@@horsermchead2504 That figure is based on Sidney Culbert's work, but based on more recent work it seems he may have overestimated fairly considerably. There's a wellknown phenomenon of people claiming Esperanto-speaker status but not actually having much comprehension when tested; based on Svend Nielsen's investigation the actual number of speakers is probably in the tens of thousands, not millions.
He: I am just not a huge fan of conlangs
The title: *why I hate conlang*
You are kinda pushing your view of how conlangs should be on other people. A conlang being similar to Indo-European is any worst than one that isnt and it’s very presumptuous to assume that this comes out of a lack of knowledge
Evidente oni ne povas imiti 10000-jaran (aŭ pli longan) lingvan disvolviĝon kiam oni faras iun planlingvon nur dum kelkaj monatoj. Ŝajnas al mi ke tio konsekvence limigas la amplekson de la planlingvo, tial ĝi plurfoje estas pli simpla, eble pli enuiga sed ankaŭ pli facile dokumentita: novuloj povas tuj partopreni en verkado kaj vortaro, ne tiel estas la naturaj lingvoj kiuj devigas multjaran studon.
Laŭ mi tiu ĉi afero ne estas elekto de unu kontraŭ la alia. Mi lernis la etnan lingvon (la Sunda), la nacian lingvon (la Indonezia), kaj la Anglan en la lernejo. Poste la Japanan kaj EO-n mi lernis kiel ŝatokupo nur ĝis N4 kaj B1 nivelo.
Did you know that I can translate this with Google Translate, but if you had written it in Navajo I couldn't? Something seems wrong with that picture.
@@LinguisticDiscovery Okay, so advocate for the inclusion of Navajo. There aren't a limited number of language slots on the software.
The Sappir Whorf hypothesis has been thoroughly disproven and shat on
Wow, so much ignorance in so little time.
Girl this is under the impression that conlangers are trying to make a language an actual official language 😂😂 its just people who want to make their own way to communicate, no shit that its not gonna be like a natural language because its not meant to be
I feel like a couple of points you raise here are looking at half the picture...
You say it'd be great if more people spent time working on natural, endangered languages, trying to help and revitalize communities. And yes! Of course, I agree, it'd be great. But if you don't really know what you're doing when creating a dictionary, a grammar, or content in an obscure language, you're going to mess up. And, I don't know about you, I'd rather mess up my quirky little conlang that only I and a couple friends will ever know about, than making a terrible mistake in revitalizing an endangered language that leaves generations of people believing they are continuing the legacy of their ancestors.
Reconstruction is a big deal, and not something hobbyists should be doing. There's also the concern that why should I, a Catalan-speaking young man help reconstruct or revitalize Dalmatian, Zenati or Navajo. I have no connection with those cultures whatsoever, and I truly believe those efforts need to be made from locals, experts, and governments, who will be the ones to ultimately speak the language. It almost feels like an appropriation, like those UA-camrs who "SHOCK NATIVES BY SPEAKING IN PERFECT CANTONESE".
That being said. One of the conlangs I'm working on is a very free, artistic and liberal reconstruction of the Iberian language. Often times, reconstruction and conlanging overlap, since they use similar mediums and methods. And those can serve as training for young linguistics nerds to know what they're doing in a future reconstruction.
How did you get the time to write this all?
@@OmkarDas12345 I have no life /hj
Conlangs aren't less _real_ than natural languages.
They're less real in the sense they are facsimiles of natural (real) languages. They matter less. They have less relevance, impact, and meaningfulness.
@@acex222 Quenya, Dothraki and Klingon have far _more_ "relevance, impact, and meaningfulness" than … take your pick of near-extinct language spoken by a dozen people in the Amazon or something.
@@ShankarSivarajan Go consoom more, you inhuman, soulless ghoul.
You two are both giving your sides bad names. It is true that conlangs are facsímiles, but saying they "matter less" is an unnecessary comment. But more importantly, invalidating and insulting threatened linguistic traditions just because they are small and don't impact you is r@c1st af, especially when you compare them to those specific conlangs which were made because their writers live in consumer societies where their languages are privileged and prestigious.
@@rvat2003 I fear I may have been misunderstood: I'm emphatically _not_ "invalidating" anyone's language; obscure Amazonian "linguistic traditions" that barely anyone knows of are definitely still languages too. But _by construction,_ this hypothetical language _isn't_ relevant or impactful or meaningful outside of a very small group, so those are poor criteria by which to judge whether or not something a language counts as "real."
In fact, the people who _are_ "invalidating and insulting" linguistic traditions are the ones who consider constructed languages _lesser_ than natural ones.
Just a ridiculous way of thinking. Do you really believe in reality apart of fiction. This is just ridiculous. I work for both: conlang and to help the indigenous languages in my state of Brazil.
I agree with you
Clearly this guy hasn't seen the S language.
A link would be useful.
Just an observation - as of late I get recommended a lot of small channels with like... really bad takes. This one included. I don't see any reason to think you don't actually have some investment in language studies, but if I - as somebody who has at best a passing interest in conlanging by watching jan Misali et al. - can already spot that this take completely misunderstands literally everything about conlanging and conlangers... what's the point of putting this video out there? Is this ragebait? Are you seriously trying to build your channel on outrage? Is this actually why so many tiny channels are being recommended?
I'm only saying this because of the volume of small, terrible channels being recommended. It feels like a ragebait machine. If I were only commenting on your channel in particular, I'd be much more gentle and constructive. I could definitely be wrong and this is just a coincidence.
"Why I hate Conlangs"
"I don't hate conlangs themselves,"
Good job ragebaiting every conlanger on UA-cam!
This. I think peoples’ creativity is amazing and I love encouraging that. I personally have a hard time, though, when I take a step back and remember that for various reasons people don’t always have access to their language rights. Whether that be because there are little to no resources for their language, or there are other political concerns. With that in mind, and given the complexity of indigenous experiences especially in the United States, how would you go about getting involved with a community to help address their language needs and wants? This is something I’ve been puzzling out for a while and am curious about your thoughts considering your work with the Chitimacha language. Thanks for the video as always ❤
The thing is that if you truly take a step back and look at the bigger picture, conlanging is what actually makes people interested in minority and indigenous languages. It's a really common story that people look for inspiration and then just learn an indigenous language because they really liked it. Remember that conlangers are language nerds and are often aware of language rights violations and minority language dynamics, and they will act accordingly 😅
@@sicilanguageist oh yeah! I love conlangs, in fact they were one of the things that helped me realize I liked languages in general. My comment was an attempt to talk about my personal interest in minoritised languages and ask a question related to that. Sorry if it came off as me looking down on conlanging in general, very much not what I meant to do
I understand
Totally agreed. As a linguist interested in YT "edutainment content", I do get a lot of recommendations for conlang content. & it's fun! I don't at all object to seeing ppl's artlangs for the same reason I don't object to karaoke. & sometimes the karaoke is even so good I'd listen to it performed professionally. But it is def fair to say that many (but not all) conlangers aren't particularly literate in the scope of human language, particularly given that my subfield of study was linguistic typology. Maybe it's social media brain-poisoning making me perceive "linguistics content" as a zero-sum game, but I do worry abt the fact that High Valyrian & Klingon get more attention from mainstream discourse than the hundreds of indigenous languages facing total extinction.
This is such a distorted view of the world. Do you really think that there would be more attention paid to reviving indigenous languages if conlangs like High Valyrian and Klingon didn't exist? If anything, there would be fewer people paying attention, as the people who got into linguistics thanks to pop culture would instead have gone into more culturally relevant fields.
Please could you explain to me just why we should preserve the plethora of minor languages as living languages.
As far as I see it, the concept of language is to allow the transfer of information. You only need one language to achieve that ( OK, maybe also a sign language for the deaf ). In fact it is better to have just one language. That way whatever anyone says or writes can be instantly understood by everyone else.
What is important is the information not the encoding scheme - the message not the medium.
We should just create an archive of all the languages and save all the information stored in the languages ( translating it into the one common language ) and then let the languages die.
If you have only one language for a very large amount of people, it'll inevitably split into multiple languages, like what happened to Latin, and you'll have the same problem again
@@aer0a The romance languages diverged before the era of mass literacy and communication. The few people who were taught to read and write tended to communicate in Latin - which has remained relatively stable for a couple of millennia.
In the modern era we have printed dictionaries and grammar books and national level education curricula. On top of this there are now mass media such as radio, television and cinema which help to reinforce the standard language within the general population. As a result languages like English and Spanish have remained fairly constant for a couple of hundred years across large parts of the globe.
If you set up an official academy for the language ( like French and Spanish have ) then you can maintain the integrity of the language forever.
@@GraRLS Having a group control a language won't stop it from changing. For example, the French one is trying to get people to stop using English loanwords and use French words instead, and it's not working. Also, different places that both speak the same language still have different dialects that speak or spell differently e.g. UK English vs. American English, German German vs. Swiss German, European Portuguese vs. Brazilian Portuguese, European Spanish vs. American Spanish, European French vs. Canadian French
@@aer0a I suspect the divergence of the various variants of American Spanish developed well before the founding of the RAE ( 1713 ). When each country became independent they set up their own academies to formalise their own versions. This would have been as much as a political decision to emphasis there rejection of the former colonial power. If a new world language were to be created by a neutral internation organisation in the era of mass communication and computerisation these factors would apply.
Have you ever learned another language to fluency - not just the grammar and vocabulary, but its linguistic culture, in and among the people who speak it?
"Natural languages are messsy"... Oh yeah. just listen to French! 🙂
Try Thai!
@@Ggdivhjkjl oh I already know our neighbors languages are tricky at best. I'm just amused by French when quite a few translation won't make sense in English :-)
Or english pronoucation
@@Kuba_speed-cu9rr yup. With every type of accent
@@czarcoma frr
Shout out to Ryukyuan, the native language of Okinawan people! Japanese has been replacing it over time, such that in recent generations, native speakers are dwindling away. Everything I've heard from and about it is quite facinating and beautiful. This is another real life language that deserves love and attention!
There are at least 10 languages within the Ryukyuan family, including Okinawan (Uchināguchi).
That’s not a conlang lol
Tell me you didn't watch the video without telling me you didn't watch the video @@horsermchead2504
because you say you highlight indigenous and endangered languages, can you please highlight the Washo language? it's got close to 10 native speakers left and all of the resources for the language stopped being worked on after 2008.
also, just saying, you have the idea of conlanging all wrong, it's not an attempt or mindset to control language or ideas, or even thoughts, I have no idea where you got all that from, like you said, it's an artform, these people try their hardest to make a good language to the best of their understanding, and to connect with language itself and gain a better understanding. I've tried and failed to make conlangs, but in the process I learned more about languages as a whole. so please stop making up reasons to hate an entire artform and community and just tell us what we can do better and how we can achieve that, that would be greatly appreciated.
wtf is this?!
I totally agree with you. It's interesting that people are super interested in worldbuilding and fantasy because they desire interaction with difference, with diversity, with the other/exoticized foreign things/people, but they don't realize how rich the cultural world we've inherited and how quickly we are losing that world...
I like this commentary. However, only some conlangs are meant to mimic real world languages. Many serve a purpose, like a fictional story or a con-world. And, many conlangers actually do study minority languages and some of those concepts. I do agree that there are so many RL languages to learn, but creating your own can deepen your understanding of hitherto unknown concepts.
Sorry but i don't buy it! Looking at this video i can tell there wasn't too much research! I've seen a lot of conlangs on reddit with not indo-european structure. Conlangs don't disort how languages work, to be honest making a conlang helped me understand languages more and now it's easier for me to pronouce diffrent words! Conlangs are made by someone of course but for me words sometimes went by itself. Conlang being form of manipulation? For the 1st time i heard something like that-
Who ordered a yappachino 🤓🤓🤓
Why i got this???? I ordered something else >>:(((
bad take
⛳️ Flagged for hate speech
So people can't share their hobbies because other people don't pay attention to indigenous languages?
Typically yes.