Fun fact! In danish we use the word "volapyk" to mean nonsense or incomprehensible speach. This isn't some niche thing, it's a completely normal day-to-day word. I had no idea it had Volapük as it's origin, and I'm guessing most other danes don't either. Cool video, keep it up:)!
Similar is in Esperanto. We use a word "volapukaĵo" (which means "a Volapük thing") to say gibberish. We also use a word "volapukisto" (Volapükist)... as an insult xD
I was reading about these languages an hour ago, and I'm now convinced that this video was made exclusively for me. So thanks for that, it was really informative!
Great conclusion, never thought of it this way. One thing that I enjoy about Esperanto is its respectability towards other languages, it is self recognized as an auxlang (not by the term itself) and a secondary language, thus respecting the world's language diversity.
Yes like I don't think that artificial language is too replace all languages in world. It is just to use in international conversation so everybody has more equal chances to use it more effectively. In your own country you still use your native just like non English speakers use English and their lang nowadays. And as international conversations are more and more available to common people I think that vision of such artificial lang is more real and needed than ever before
you completely miss the point of an IAL. not to replace the existing languages but to be a second language for all as a means of international communication. 한글 was constructed but is still has culture and still has some natural evolution.
you can use any language for international communication. bleeding a language of all its poetic incosistancies and cultural vocabulary is a detriment to art
@@theidioticbgilson1466except the language that will be used is the language of the culturally dominant. that reinforces the dominance and is a completely arbitrary choice. that wouldn't change if we just picked a different language and it would still give an advantage to the people who speak it natively. as for the other points, (1) cultural vocabulary will always exist and (2) if the language had 0 inconsistencies, even if that was a detriment to poetry, an IAL is supposed to be a bridge between cultures, not a replacement to all the world's languages. that is not relevant
You raise an interesting point and argue it well, but I have to disagree with the conclusion that a "perfect" auxiliary language, or at least one more suitable to international communication than any available natural language, is impossible, or an end not worth pursuing. First and most apparent is the fact that, in reality, language *can* function, and indeed thrive in the absence of many of the complexities found in natural languages, and there are two main examples I'd like to point out. First is the existence of creole languages, which are not inherently "simpler" than the languages they evolve from, but which do regularly and demonstrably eliminate a significant amount irregularity from their parent languages, and the existence of thriving creole-speaking communities is proof that such irregularity is not necessary for a language community to grow. Secondly, even among constructed languages which lack even the initial foundation of native speakers that creoles have, the Esperanto community is a vibrant and constantly evolving one, and, in my experience, the regularity of the language has done nothing but encourage this. Secondly, and in my opinion the reason constructed auxiliary languages are so important, is cultural neutrality. While Esperanto is highly Eurocentric, and indeed this in my mind is its greatest drawback, one must realize that to use a natural European language like English for the purpose of international communication would even moreso perpetuate a status quo of linguistic imperialism, and of language-based European (and by extension, white) supremacy. I don't mean to sound preachy, I find all languages beautiful and, due to my upbringing surrounded by English and French, I find the languages of Europe especially captivating. However, in discussions of international communication, one cannot ignore the inherently national, political, and cultural nature of language, and to choose one natural language above others and impose it on the rest of the world is to choose one nation, and one culture to impose on the world. Constructed languages, by their very nature of having no nation to call home, avoid this problem, and in my opinion are the ideal solution to effective international communication, though others (such as choosing not to use any particular language and instead investing in translation services) are possible. On a smaller note, in the video you make the claim that a language without homonyms would either need to be incredibly phonemically complex, or have words be incredibly long. In practice, this is not necessarily true due to the nature of how phonemes can be combined to form words. Take the phonology of Toki Pona for instance, a philosophical language designed to be as simple as possible - with 9 consonants and 5 vowels, there are 92 possible syllables at the start of a word according to the language's phonotactics, and 82 in subsequent syllables. This means that there are: 92 possible one-syllable words, 7,544 possible two-syllable words, 618,608 possible three-syllable words, And so on. As you can see, even with an extremely simple phonology, the number of possible words without homophony grows extremely rapidly. This is more of a minor point however since, even in Esperanto, there *are* in fact homophones, and this is okay since Esperanto doesn't attempt to be a language free from any homophony the way that a logical language like Lojban does, rather it simply has as a rule that no *root-words* should be homophonous. Anyway this is a very long response to a very old video, I'm gonna end it here. I did actually enjoy the video and your presentation style, which is why I wanted to respond to the points you raise and offer my own perspective. If you're reading this, I hope you have a great day! :)
@@TextuaryPlum this is also interesting tbh, we just talked about a new language but what about a language that has only things like “wdym, tbh, idk” like that? Isnt that more simple then making a whole new easier language?
@@TextuaryPlumthe contradiction that Natlangs are chosen as Lingua Francas because they’re perfect after saying Latin was the lingua Franca of Europe because there was no other alternative. There’s no actual qualitative reason for English and Sinitic languages to be the lingua Francas. They’re just the languages spoken by the two main world hegemons. They’re not suited to be IALs more than conlang AILs.
Interesting video! Kotava is a language I've never heard of (until now), and it looks cool. I appreciate Esperanto for what it is, even if it will never achieve its creator's original goal.
4:56 Esperanto almost worked out but some factors stopped that from happening. Volapük's creator was resistant to change unfortunately, I have no idea about the other ones though.
Esperanto has actually worked quite well and Zamenhof was open to change. His misstep was in appealing to French intellectuals (French being the most prestigious world language at the time). The French intellectuals proceeded to try to change the language to be more like French, which introduced most of the quirks and inconsistencies in the language. The world wars and rise in English set adoption back, but Esperanto is a good balance of the elements you want in a bridge language, it's a living language and in my opinion is the most human of the constructed languages.
You will notice from the map that esperanto is mostly known in Eastern Europe. This would obviously be the case since it was designed around Eastern Europeans and had a nice effect of lessening language barriers in an area with a lot of diverse languages. So, clearly, every region needs their own esperanto, and then once we've collapsed the world into a dozen or so languages, we can make an esperanto OF those esperantos and then boom, one world language, there are no flaws with this plan
I think the reason why these languages is because why would you learn a language nobody speaks when you can learn one harder but with more rewards, not something related to culture or needs of the people
Which part of Esperanto has “Slavic grammar?“ When I consider basic traits that are uniquely Slavic, verbal aspect, 6-7 case endings and no articles come to mind. Esperanto traits that mirror Slavic languages can also be found in Germanic languages and/or Romance languages.
@@Xnoob545 Ah yes, it's not like the word bloodbath existed before that geometry dash level, noooooo, how could that be? it's not like it's a word you can use in a sentence without it being considered a reference to anything
Pretty nice, as someone who kinda likes volapük (it's cute imo), the only objectionable part of this video for me was the graphic of how "Vola" and "pük" come from "world" and "speak" when the in the middle is actually just the genitive marker, making it "world's-speak," not a very bad mistake
Esperanto is a much, much more interesting language than most people give it credit for. If you like word games, or etymology or if you find the nature of language itself fascinating, you'd love it. It's worth remembering that it was never intended to replace any language. Rather, the opposite. It was intended to preserve language diversity by protecting minority languages from the language giants that are making them go extinct. It was intended to be a second language that was so easy that anyone could learn it alongside their mother tongue.
I still think that grammatical gender and subject-verb conjugation are useless, though. They add complexity without a big enough utility to justify using them. Subject-verb conjugation can be useful for languages where you can drop the subject pronoun like Spanish. But you can solve it by not allowing subject dropping in your conlang. And even though you allow subject dropping, you can still infer the subject from context, like in Japanese. And how about irregular plural forms? Why is the plural of "sheep" still "sheep"? Useless. Irregular verbs? Also useless. The problem you provided with "he haves" can be solved by getting rid of subject-verb conjugation and start saying "he have" instead. No information is lost here. How about "come, came, come"? Even though they're easier to pronounce than "come, comed, comed" because of the awkward consonant cluster /md/, you can solve it by making your conlang's past form marker using vowels instead of consonants. Or you can even get rid of tenses altogether and start inferring the time using adverbs instead. My point is, even though it's impossible to make the "perfect" language, it's still possible to make a better language than whatever is being used right now (English) for international communication. A lot of people may complain "This language is eurocentric, it's not fair for people who don't speak a European language because they have to learn it from scratch". Bruh, the current global lingua franca is English, it's anglo-centric, that's even worse than being eurocentric. A global lingua franca doesn't have to be perfect or neutral (because the current one is neither perfect or neutral). It just has to be simpler (the keyword here being SIMPLER, not SIMPLEST because that's impossible), so that it's easier to learn than English (or any other natural languages). You can even just take the current lingua franca (English) and simplify it for international communication, and that's much better than the current situation.
English does have a lot of room to improve upon as a de facto global language, but I honestly think any reforms, no matter how well conceived, aren't going to be adopted, simply because the language ain't broken. It would do with diacritic marks, though, because goddamnit, why is every "e" in "Mercedes" pronounced different?? Why the hell can't you at least know how an English word is pronounced just by _reading it??_
@@DonVigaDeFierro I think instead of applying the reform to the entirety of English, maybe people can make 2 versions of English: "traditional" English (used by native speakers and people who are interested in anglophonic culture) and "simplified" English (used for global communication and people who aren't interested in the culture). The simplified English would still be familiar enough to be understood by native speakers, but easy enough for people around the world to learn.
I really think you’re missing a lot of nuance, and some statements are entirely inaccurate. Also what are you saying when you say Esperanto wasn’t successful? There’s Esperanto speakers in 112 (approx.) countries, covering thousands of language groups including many indigenous and endangered groups. Esperantists have their own community and cultural norms - and they simply DO NOT erase other cultures. The whole ideological underpinning of the language is to prevent erasure and facilitate international communication. Sure Esperanto doesn’t evolve as fast as other natural languages, but evolution is still occurring (esperantists are a distinct cultural group comprising of people from thousands of other cultural groups). As for the formation and structure, I do (as a linguist with an interest in constructed languages) agree that Esperanto isn’t perfect and has some clear Eurocentric features. However, despite this, many non-European esperantists exist. China for example, has a university program in Esperanto. Some of the most prolific and influential esperantists come from Asian countries like Japan. Certainly Esperanto has faced challenges, the world wars, the persecution of Esperanto speakers in a number of countries, the split and creation of Ido. But overall, Esperanto has provided itself to be the most successful auxiliary language we have - over 100 years of consistent use and a growing community.
This czech language you put there is old czech from 19th/beginning of 20th century. We don't write like this anymore. We used "w" because our language was influenced by polish, but now we just write "v". Also we don't have as much grammar as we had back then and most of those words there are outdated and we use more modern words. Our grammar is still one of the hardest tho.
Uhh no. This rant was... just a rant. No truth in this actually. First of, the purpose of an International language is not to eradicate all other languages, but rather to be a means of communication that can be used universally, so we don't have to learn another country's complex language (I'm looking at you, English). It's one thing to learn English as a mother language. No harm in that. But to ask anybody to learn English as a second language when, like any other language, it's filled with quirks that make no sense and just weird irregularities, is nothing short of pure torture. There's a reason that hardly an perfect English speaker is not from English-speaking countries. Now I'm not targeting English here, it's just a place-holder. Take any evolved language and the same will apply. Esperanto was an attempt to make the perfect international language. By combining Grammar and Vocab from other languages, and making all the Grammar regular and almost-perfect, Esperanto is an attempt to make a language that everybody will find comparatively easy to learn, so anyone can speak it.
a language looses its functionality for basic things like poetry and songwriting when you bleed out all of the culture from it. english isn't complicated at all, just has allot of irregularities, plus that's what makes the language beautiful. to am or not to am doesnt have rhe same ring to it. esperanto???? perfect grammar??? everyone in the entire world has grammars so different from esperanto that it'd be tireing. mandarin speakers can't understand the tenses and cases, arabic speakers can't understand the grammar. also the closest to a perfect, easy grammar is indonesian. just research other beautiful languages. the entire niger-congo language family is easyer to learn. the entire austronesisn language family has easier granmar. the south east asian schprachbund is easier
@@theidioticbgilson1466 @The Idiotic B Gilson Nobody said Esperanto grammar is perfect. It was an attempt to make more universal language. Also Zamenhof was working on he had. After all it was 19th century way before era of Internet and intense globalization. He was from city that has a mix of many languages and his main priority was to make language for that people. I Also even though I love art in the problem of international lang it is not a main priority. International artificial language is most importantly to give people more equal chances and ease in INTERNATIONAL conversation. You still have your native language to use it in more artistic way. Cause right now native English speakers have natural upper hand in conversations in their language and for non native speaker to get to their level of handling and feeling of language is nearly impossible or at least much harder. Espernto was not to erase beauty of other languages. It is a tool to make conversation with people from other country than you easier.
@@alextarisa780 a pretty bad attempt also, zamenhof knew that other languages existed, he knew about hindustani, chinese, arabic and swahili, yet he didn't utilise them
@@theidioticbgilson1466 Dude, you can't take all ideas from all languages. What you'll end up with is some strange monstrosity that's just a hodge podge of random words from languages around the word. In the end, it would achieve nothing in the way of "leveling the playing field" because Cantonese, Hindi, Arabic, Vietnamese, Russian, etc are too different from one another to unit under one language. You have to ask yourself these questions; will it be a tonal language, will we use a alphabet, who's alphabet will be use, should we create our own alphabet, what sounds should we include, etc.... How can you encapsulate all these unique ideas into one language? You cannot.
@@chickenstrangler3826 good. a "hodgepodge" language would make a perfect ial. no it won't be tonal because tones are cross linguistically rare. it will use an alphabet because that is the easiest. it should use the cross linguistically most common phonemes instead of the phonemes pulled out of LLZ's arse lojban is a better ial than esparanto and its not even supposed to be an ial
I feel like danish is perfect to say that you shouldn’t be able to understand eachother and that you can only speak to your neighbors The only uniform part of the danish language is the grammar but the verbal parts change every 3 kilometres
Yeah. Let's just exclude the fact that the "perfect balanced languages" are mostly product either of colonization and/or imposition from an oppressive class over the others.
I think Croatian is close to perfect, we dont have silent letter and for sounds we cant asignt to a letter we just make a palatal such as š đ č ć ž dž nj lj, same goes for Serbian and Bosnian
Quite the informative video, and down to reality too. Nothing will be perfect. You could try to improve english by cutting it's alphabet down by removing C, Q, X, Z. C - S and K take it's spot usually, and you can substitute 'ch' with 'tsh' which make a very similar sound Q - is usually just 'k' or 'kw' Z- is pretty rare, so replacing wherever it exists with a phonetic equivalent, usually 's', would be good. (Another example is respelling 'pizza' as 'peetsa' or 'peatsa') X - is pretty much 'z', so follow its rule. If you need to ever say something that says 'x's name, then 'eks' works too.
Why don't we all switch to Proto-Indo-European? Anyone in þe region can find someþing familiar in its vocabulary unless you speak any of Afroasiatic, Turkic or Uralic languages as your first
Tbh I feel that the point of an auxlang is to act as a bandage over a seeping wound, the wound staying unhealed because we have yet to address the core issues. Cultural erasure, Inequality, and uneven access to learning materials to name a few. I just gotta be blunt about it, inequality isn't caused by a lack of a common utopian language, it's caused by a lack of a good global standard of living. I think we as a society should accept that we may never have a language everyone on earth speaks as a common language, but instead to embrace diversity and accept that if we're gonna talk to someone who doesn't speak our language, that we learn theirs maybe? Every auxlang has a pillar argument that they'll be strictly a secondary language but would that realistically pan out to be that way? I doubt it. For me I think that I'd rather speak 5 languages than for everyone on earth to speak only 1.
Go and take a good look in "Hindi" One of the best language with grammar The beauty of Hindi is "You write exactly what you speak" No meaningless "silent words"
Oh, btw, Hong Kong was in the rule of the British empire and was considered the last of it, so us, Hong konger, sticks to the English language EVEN NOW, every student there has been taught English since it was english’s territory. Therefore, no Hong kongers could argue about English.
@TextuaryPlum Addressing the conclusion of the video, your points have some relevance, but you exaggerate their importance. Natural languages (and accents for that matter) develop and evolve like organisms. That is to say they develop unintelligently and partially out of cultures not interacting with each other enough. In a world of cultures constantly mixing and communicating across the world, it is only natural that most communicative nations all develop one language.
step 1 to newspeak is abolishing/banning all other languages. step to is to ban every word that isn´t in the dictionary step 3 is that some committee writes new dictionaries, and every new dictionary is thinner than the previous None of those apply to Esperanto
Because until Esperanto has dozens of millions of regular users, nobody intelligent enough, educated enough and modest enough to pull it off will waste their time on creating an even better language. for the time being, Esperanto is the best we have, and improvements to it are feasible - a lot more feasible than improvements to English
I originally had a Toki Pona segment in this video! It’s very fun but didn’t really serve the point I was making. Will def make a vid about colangs in general some time
"Esperanto 'was' the most successful artificially constructed auxiliary language until...it isn't" That sounds like some other constructed auxiliary language replaced it as *most successful*, which as far as I know never happened. What happened is that chauvinists felt threatened and spread lies about the language and its speakers: jewish-communist plot, too difficult, unnatural, advocating a monolingual world... they used excuses like "if people learn Esperanto they won´t learn other languages nor the cultures attached". In reality Esperantists often learn MORE languages than their neighbours do Esperanto doesn´t have a fully Latin-based vocabulary. It has several words that are common to several big languages, but also has a whole bunch of germanic and slavic words. Maybe make that word*stems*. One of the beautiful things in Esperanto is that rather than having tons of separate words to memorise separately, you combine wordstems and prefixes/suffixes in a very consistent manner. As to the end of your video: most people don´t "boycott" Esperanto "because they instinctively know there's something wrong about it". They simply don´t learn it because it isn´t offered in school, they don´t even know it (still) exists, or they have the wrong idea about what it is. As to the title of your video: there will never be a perfect language, nor one that is "universal" in the sense that every possible human thought and feeling can be expressed accurately in it Case in point: the concept of "rant" does not exist in my culture - except maybe as symptom of a mental disease
komo meshikano jamaz entendi la gramamatika. Eh ayi el provlema, todo zuena ihual i no deberya importar laz letraz. Sólo bromeo. Mé gústó múchó él vídéó. Nó deberíán dé exístír lós ácéntós. Pórque, por que, por qué nó sé dóndé pónérlós
but there is a major floor in the english language, you have don't have words that have the meaning of the beautiful german words "doch" and "belastend" (the translations to belastend aren't good), and you have far to complex tense structures that feel unnecessary
Sure, but the whole point I'm making in this video is that the value of those words is relevant only to the languages that have them. And our views of what are "desirable" features are biased from our experiences. Like Schleyer, a Catholic Priest, viewed Latin in high regard, and that's reflected in Volapük.
I'm so glad þat you're making new videos, þese are þe best!
;)
Ðis izn’t fah enuf.
Pe
Amogus
@@astroturfisadude agreed
Fun fact! In danish we use the word "volapyk" to mean nonsense or incomprehensible speach. This isn't some niche thing, it's a completely normal day-to-day word. I had no idea it had Volapük as it's origin, and I'm guessing most other danes don't either.
Cool video, keep it up:)!
Very cool, Danes. I always support making fun of Volapuk
Similar is in Esperanto. We use a word "volapukaĵo" (which means "a Volapük thing") to say gibberish.
We also use a word "volapukisto" (Volapükist)... as an insult xD
@@amadeosendiulo2137 hm
@@valentinoricaza5696 Captain Archibald Haddock in Esperanto translation of The Adventures of Tintin uses this inslut a lot xD
@@amadeosendiulo2137 Mi ne uzas "volapukisto" kiel insulto, sed volapukaĵo jes
I was reading about these languages an hour ago, and I'm now convinced that this video was made exclusively for me. So thanks for that, it was really informative!
Yes Jakob I made it just for you!
Hey @TextuaryPlum I’m coming to change this one reply into two
Great conclusion, never thought of it this way. One thing that I enjoy about Esperanto is its respectability towards other languages, it is self recognized as an auxlang (not by the term itself) and a secondary language, thus respecting the world's language diversity.
Yes like I don't think that artificial language is too replace all languages in world. It is just to use in international conversation so everybody has more equal chances to use it more effectively. In your own country you still use your native just like non English speakers use English and their lang nowadays.
And as international conversations are more and more available to common people I think that vision of such artificial lang is more real and needed than ever before
Hm. You proven your point well, sir. I tip my hat off to you.
put ur hat back on it's sunny out
@@TextuaryPlum Very true.
I'm so happy you're making more videos, thank you for your efforts
ur welcome
you completely miss the point of an IAL. not to replace the existing languages but to be a second language for all as a means of international communication. 한글 was constructed but is still has culture and still has some natural evolution.
you can use any language for international communication. bleeding a language of all its poetic incosistancies and cultural vocabulary is a detriment to art
@@theidioticbgilson1466 imagine not knowing the difference between and auxlang and artlang
@@theidioticbgilson1466except the language that will be used is the language of the culturally dominant. that reinforces the dominance and is a completely arbitrary choice. that wouldn't change if we just picked a different language and it would still give an advantage to the people who speak it natively.
as for the other points, (1) cultural vocabulary will always exist and (2) if the language had 0 inconsistencies, even if that was a detriment to poetry, an IAL is supposed to be a bridge between cultures, not a replacement to all the world's languages. that is not relevant
You raise an interesting point and argue it well, but I have to disagree with the conclusion that a "perfect" auxiliary language, or at least one more suitable to international communication than any available natural language, is impossible, or an end not worth pursuing.
First and most apparent is the fact that, in reality, language *can* function, and indeed thrive in the absence of many of the complexities found in natural languages, and there are two main examples I'd like to point out. First is the existence of creole languages, which are not inherently "simpler" than the languages they evolve from, but which do regularly and demonstrably eliminate a significant amount irregularity from their parent languages, and the existence of thriving creole-speaking communities is proof that such irregularity is not necessary for a language community to grow. Secondly, even among constructed languages which lack even the initial foundation of native speakers that creoles have, the Esperanto community is a vibrant and constantly evolving one, and, in my experience, the regularity of the language has done nothing but encourage this.
Secondly, and in my opinion the reason constructed auxiliary languages are so important, is cultural neutrality. While Esperanto is highly Eurocentric, and indeed this in my mind is its greatest drawback, one must realize that to use a natural European language like English for the purpose of international communication would even moreso perpetuate a status quo of linguistic imperialism, and of language-based European (and by extension, white) supremacy. I don't mean to sound preachy, I find all languages beautiful and, due to my upbringing surrounded by English and French, I find the languages of Europe especially captivating. However, in discussions of international communication, one cannot ignore the inherently national, political, and cultural nature of language, and to choose one natural language above others and impose it on the rest of the world is to choose one nation, and one culture to impose on the world. Constructed languages, by their very nature of having no nation to call home, avoid this problem, and in my opinion are the ideal solution to effective international communication, though others (such as choosing not to use any particular language and instead investing in translation services) are possible.
On a smaller note, in the video you make the claim that a language without homonyms would either need to be incredibly phonemically complex, or have words be incredibly long. In practice, this is not necessarily true due to the nature of how phonemes can be combined to form words. Take the phonology of Toki Pona for instance, a philosophical language designed to be as simple as possible - with 9 consonants and 5 vowels, there are 92 possible syllables at the start of a word according to the language's phonotactics, and 82 in subsequent syllables. This means that there are:
92 possible one-syllable words,
7,544 possible two-syllable words,
618,608 possible three-syllable words,
And so on. As you can see, even with an extremely simple phonology, the number of possible words without homophony grows extremely rapidly. This is more of a minor point however since, even in Esperanto, there *are* in fact homophones, and this is okay since Esperanto doesn't attempt to be a language free from any homophony the way that a logical language like Lojban does, rather it simply has as a rule that no *root-words* should be homophonous.
Anyway this is a very long response to a very old video, I'm gonna end it here. I did actually enjoy the video and your presentation style, which is why I wanted to respond to the points you raise and offer my own perspective. If you're reading this, I hope you have a great day! :)
4:48
Esperanto was envisioned as a second tongue and it's creator asked it's readers to improve upon it.
Not a bad video, not quite too fond of the ending, but uplifting at the same time. Great job!
Wdym!
@@TextuaryPlum this is also interesting tbh, we just talked about a new language but what about a language that has only things like “wdym, tbh, idk” like that? Isnt that more simple then making a whole new easier language?
@@TextuaryPlumthe contradiction that Natlangs are chosen as Lingua Francas because they’re perfect after saying Latin was the lingua Franca of Europe because there was no other alternative. There’s no actual qualitative reason for English and Sinitic languages to be the lingua Francas. They’re just the languages spoken by the two main world hegemons. They’re not suited to be IALs more than conlang AILs.
Interesting video! Kotava is a language I've never heard of (until now), and it looks cool. I appreciate Esperanto for what it is, even if it will never achieve its creator's original goal.
4:56
Esperanto almost worked out but some factors stopped that from happening. Volapük's creator was resistant to change unfortunately, I have no idea about the other ones though.
the problem is, esperanto is essentially flawed. you can't make it a good language without completely relearning it
Esperanto has actually worked quite well and Zamenhof was open to change. His misstep was in appealing to French intellectuals (French being the most prestigious world language at the time). The French intellectuals proceeded to try to change the language to be more like French, which introduced most of the quirks and inconsistencies in the language.
The world wars and rise in English set adoption back, but Esperanto is a good balance of the elements you want in a bridge language, it's a living language and in my opinion is the most human of the constructed languages.
You will notice from the map that esperanto is mostly known in Eastern Europe. This would obviously be the case since it was designed around Eastern Europeans and had a nice effect of lessening language barriers in an area with a lot of diverse languages. So, clearly, every region needs their own esperanto, and then once we've collapsed the world into a dozen or so languages, we can make an esperanto OF those esperantos and then boom, one world language, there are no flaws with this plan
i always finish your videos feeling like i just had a nice cup of tea
Aw
I think the reason why these languages is because why would you learn a language nobody speaks when you can learn one harder but with more rewards, not something related to culture or needs of the people
Which part of Esperanto has “Slavic grammar?“ When I consider basic traits that are uniquely Slavic, verbal aspect, 6-7 case endings and no articles come to mind. Esperanto traits that mirror Slavic languages can also be found in Germanic languages and/or Romance languages.
3:24
a czech speaking here, i dont think we have much words with silent letters. On that note,
why, english, why.
Ithkuil is the perfect language. Take it.
*Cries in Esperanto*
Esperantists don't cry. They simply sit around struggling to say *scii*
@@TextuaryPlum Jes, mi povas konfirmi ĝin
@@TextuaryPlum Mi povas elparoli "scii" ĝuste!
Do "ploras", ĉu ne, samideano?
@@TextuaryPlum lmao half of the time we just say sii or cii because it's just too much
OH MAN THAT ENDING THO THE COMMENTS ARE FINNA BE A BLOODBATH
a bloodbath!
Geometry dash reference?
@@Xnoob545 Ah yes, it's not like the word bloodbath existed before that geometry dash level, noooooo, how could that be? it's not like it's a word you can use in a sentence without it being considered a reference to anything
Pretty nice, as someone who kinda likes volapük (it's cute imo), the only objectionable part of this video for me was the graphic of how "Vola" and "pük" come from "world" and "speak" when the in the middle is actually just the genitive marker, making it "world's-speak," not a very bad mistake
Why doesn't this have more views? This is a very epic video
Esperanto is a much, much more interesting language than most people give it credit for. If you like word games, or etymology or if you find the nature of language itself fascinating, you'd love it. It's worth remembering that it was never intended to replace any language. Rather, the opposite. It was intended to preserve language diversity by protecting minority languages from the language giants that are making them go extinct. It was intended to be a second language that was so easy that anyone could learn it alongside their mother tongue.
You are so right
I still think that grammatical gender and subject-verb conjugation are useless, though. They add complexity without a big enough utility to justify using them.
Subject-verb conjugation can be useful for languages where you can drop the subject pronoun like Spanish. But you can solve it by not allowing subject dropping in your conlang. And even though you allow subject dropping, you can still infer the subject from context, like in Japanese.
And how about irregular plural forms? Why is the plural of "sheep" still "sheep"? Useless. Irregular verbs? Also useless.
The problem you provided with "he haves" can be solved by getting rid of subject-verb conjugation and start saying "he have" instead. No information is lost here.
How about "come, came, come"? Even though they're easier to pronounce than "come, comed, comed" because of the awkward consonant cluster /md/, you can solve it by making your conlang's past form marker using vowels instead of consonants. Or you can even get rid of tenses altogether and start inferring the time using adverbs instead.
My point is, even though it's impossible to make the "perfect" language, it's still possible to make a better language than whatever is being used right now (English) for international communication.
A lot of people may complain "This language is eurocentric, it's not fair for people who don't speak a European language because they have to learn it from scratch". Bruh, the current global lingua franca is English, it's anglo-centric, that's even worse than being eurocentric.
A global lingua franca doesn't have to be perfect or neutral (because the current one is neither perfect or neutral). It just has to be simpler (the keyword here being SIMPLER, not SIMPLEST because that's impossible), so that it's easier to learn than English (or any other natural languages). You can even just take the current lingua franca (English) and simplify it for international communication, and that's much better than the current situation.
English does have a lot of room to improve upon as a de facto global language, but I honestly think any reforms, no matter how well conceived, aren't going to be adopted, simply because the language ain't broken.
It would do with diacritic marks, though, because goddamnit, why is every "e" in "Mercedes" pronounced different?? Why the hell can't you at least know how an English word is pronounced just by _reading it??_
@@DonVigaDeFierro I think instead of applying the reform to the entirety of English, maybe people can make 2 versions of English: "traditional" English (used by native speakers and people who are interested in anglophonic culture) and "simplified" English (used for global communication and people who aren't interested in the culture). The simplified English would still be familiar enough to be understood by native speakers, but easy enough for people around the world to learn.
Not exactly. The plural form of Fish is Fish.
Unless you are talking about multiple different species of Fishes.
@@comradecameron3726 ive never heard sombody say fishes, if they are refering to multiple types they will just say there are lots of types of fish
(toki) toki pona li toki pona suli
I really think you’re missing a lot of nuance, and some statements are entirely inaccurate. Also what are you saying when you say Esperanto wasn’t successful? There’s Esperanto speakers in 112 (approx.) countries, covering thousands of language groups including many indigenous and endangered groups. Esperantists have their own community and cultural norms - and they simply DO NOT erase other cultures. The whole ideological underpinning of the language is to prevent erasure and facilitate international communication. Sure Esperanto doesn’t evolve as fast as other natural languages, but evolution is still occurring (esperantists are a distinct cultural group comprising of people from thousands of other cultural groups). As for the formation and structure, I do (as a linguist with an interest in constructed languages) agree that Esperanto isn’t perfect and has some clear Eurocentric features. However, despite this, many non-European esperantists exist. China for example, has a university program in Esperanto. Some of the most prolific and influential esperantists come from Asian countries like Japan.
Certainly Esperanto has faced challenges, the world wars, the persecution of Esperanto speakers in a number of countries, the split and creation of Ido. But overall, Esperanto has provided itself to be the most successful auxiliary language we have - over 100 years of consistent use and a growing community.
Mi tute konsentas. ❤
þese videos are great and I’ve made it my goal to use þ as much as possible while typing becuase yes
We need you back. You're like þe avatar, disapeared when þe world need you þe most.
I love it when Princess Carolyn appeared at the end, I love your videos!
I love your way style of videos just totally love it
Me too
@@TextuaryPlum 😂
Babe, wake up, new TextuaryPlum video just dropped
should have set an alarm
This czech language you put there is old czech from 19th/beginning of 20th century. We don't write like this anymore. We used "w" because our language was influenced by polish, but now we just write "v". Also we don't have as much grammar as we had back then and most of those words there are outdated and we use more modern words. Our grammar is still one of the hardest tho.
NO NOT ESPERANTO AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
I love your videos i hope your channels explodes as you start amking videos again
While I disagree wiþ þe final message of þe video, I þought þis was really well made and entertaining! Þumbs up!
toki pona li pona nanpa wan tan ni: tenpo lili kin la, jan li ken kama sona e ona. o kama sona!
It already exists its called sanskrit
It has no mistakes , extremely phonetic,perfect grammar,and no two words being same
Uhh no. This rant was... just a rant. No truth in this actually.
First of, the purpose of an International language is not to eradicate all other languages, but rather to be a means of communication that can be used universally, so we don't have to learn another country's complex language (I'm looking at you, English). It's one thing to learn English as a mother language. No harm in that. But to ask anybody to learn English as a second language when, like any other language, it's filled with quirks that make no sense and just weird irregularities, is nothing short of pure torture. There's a reason that hardly an perfect English speaker is not from English-speaking countries.
Now I'm not targeting English here, it's just a place-holder. Take any evolved language and the same will apply.
Esperanto was an attempt to make the perfect international language. By combining Grammar and Vocab from other languages, and making all the Grammar regular and almost-perfect, Esperanto is an attempt to make a language that everybody will find comparatively easy to learn, so anyone can speak it.
a language looses its functionality for basic things like poetry and songwriting when you bleed out all of the culture from it. english isn't complicated at all, just has allot of irregularities, plus that's what makes the language beautiful. to am or not to am doesnt have rhe same ring to it.
esperanto???? perfect grammar??? everyone in the entire world has grammars so different from esperanto that it'd be tireing. mandarin speakers can't understand the tenses and cases, arabic speakers can't understand the grammar. also the closest to a perfect, easy grammar is indonesian. just research other beautiful languages. the entire niger-congo language family is easyer to learn. the entire austronesisn language family has easier granmar. the south east asian schprachbund is easier
@@theidioticbgilson1466 @The Idiotic B Gilson
Nobody said Esperanto grammar is perfect. It was an attempt to make more universal language. Also Zamenhof was working on he had. After all it was 19th century way before era of Internet and intense globalization.
He was from city that has a mix of many languages and his main priority was to make language for that people. I
Also even though I love art in the problem of international lang it is not a main priority. International artificial language is most importantly to give people more equal chances and ease in INTERNATIONAL conversation. You still have your native language to use it in more artistic way.
Cause right now native English speakers have natural upper hand in conversations in their language and for non native speaker to get to their level of handling and feeling of language is nearly impossible or at least much harder.
Espernto was not to erase beauty of other languages. It is a tool to make conversation with people from other country than you easier.
@@alextarisa780 a pretty bad attempt
also, zamenhof knew that other languages existed, he knew about hindustani, chinese, arabic and swahili, yet he didn't utilise them
@@theidioticbgilson1466 Dude, you can't take all ideas from all languages. What you'll end up with is some strange monstrosity that's just a hodge podge of random words from languages around the word. In the end, it would achieve nothing in the way of "leveling the playing field" because Cantonese, Hindi, Arabic, Vietnamese, Russian, etc are too different from one another to unit under one language. You have to ask yourself these questions; will it be a tonal language, will we use a alphabet, who's alphabet will be use, should we create our own alphabet, what sounds should we include, etc....
How can you encapsulate all these unique ideas into one language? You cannot.
@@chickenstrangler3826 good. a "hodgepodge" language would make a perfect ial.
no it won't be tonal because tones are cross linguistically rare. it will use an alphabet because that is the easiest. it should use the cross linguistically most common phonemes instead of the phonemes pulled out of LLZ's arse
lojban is a better ial than esparanto and its not even supposed to be an ial
That ending though-
I feel like danish is perfect to say that you shouldn’t be able to understand eachother and that you can only speak to your neighbors
The only uniform part of the danish language is the grammar but the verbal parts change every 3 kilometres
Yeah. Let's just exclude the fact that the "perfect balanced languages" are mostly product either of colonization and/or imposition from an oppressive class over the others.
I think Croatian is close to perfect, we dont have silent letter and for sounds we cant asignt to a letter we just make a palatal such as š đ č ć ž dž nj lj, same goes for Serbian and Bosnian
Þat's really cool bro keep making þese types of videos i like it
👌
This deserves more views
Wow, must be nice being here so early
Enjoy
つまり例えば任意の母国語こそが完璧なのですね!納得です!(Comment by Japanese)
i love these incoherent rambles of yours
Gotta occupy myself somehow
You used "Th" instead of "Þ"😭😭😭 what happened to you? I þought your wiþ us😭
Quite the informative video, and down to reality too. Nothing will be perfect.
You could try to improve english by cutting it's alphabet down by removing C, Q, X, Z.
C - S and K take it's spot usually, and you can substitute 'ch' with 'tsh' which make a very similar sound
Q - is usually just 'k' or 'kw'
Z- is pretty rare, so replacing wherever it exists with a phonetic equivalent, usually 's', would be good. (Another example is respelling 'pizza' as 'peetsa' or 'peatsa')
X - is pretty much 'z', so follow its rule. If you need to ever say something that says 'x's name, then 'eks' works too.
No, they should just remove Q, V and X and be like normal languages
face ≠ phase. the s voices intervicallically meaning c is used for the distinction
@@theidioticbgilson1466 hmm so why does vase exist
Why don't we bring back C to for the "sh" sound and "ch" can be "tc"
For Z - you do realiZe s and z make different sounds
FINALY someone who does linguistics videos!
So well put. I love the take
i swear þhese videos are always so interesting
I trnsformed Japanese with the Greek alphabet
Word:Onsen(ΟΨΣΕΨ)
Word:Heiwa(ΛΗΠΑ)
Word:Mukashibanashi(ΜΥΚΑΣΙΒΑΝΑΣΙ)
Longest place name in Japan in my conlang
ΖΑΜΑΓΑΠΑΛΑΜΑΘΙΖΟΓΑΜΙΧΥ
Yamagawahamachiyogamizu
Why don't we all switch to Proto-Indo-European? Anyone in þe region can find someþing familiar in its vocabulary unless you speak any of Afroasiatic, Turkic or Uralic languages as your first
research PIE's grammar is ongoing and from what we can tell, it's staggeringly complex
@@theidioticbgilson1466 yes, kind of, but I think its phonetics and grammar can be simplified a little bit to make it easier to learn for modern folks
@@МаксимСтепанов-м6ч itll need alot of simplifying
We should just speak a modified version of greek. And im not greek saying this.
Star Wars: The Textuary Menace
Tbh I feel that the point of an auxlang is to act as a bandage over a seeping wound, the wound staying unhealed because we have yet to address the core issues. Cultural erasure, Inequality, and uneven access to learning materials to name a few. I just gotta be blunt about it, inequality isn't caused by a lack of a common utopian language, it's caused by a lack of a good global standard of living. I think we as a society should accept that we may never have a language everyone on earth speaks as a common language, but instead to embrace diversity and accept that if we're gonna talk to someone who doesn't speak our language, that we learn theirs maybe? Every auxlang has a pillar argument that they'll be strictly a secondary language but would that realistically pan out to be that way? I doubt it. For me I think that I'd rather speak 5 languages than for everyone on earth to speak only 1.
toki pona
没有动工is very深爱的：（
You should colab with jan misali, aka mr conlang critic
Hmm… I do þink þat toki pona is good.
Yayyy a new vid!! Really interesting 🤔
Yay!
Go and take a good look in "Hindi"
One of the best language with grammar
The beauty of Hindi is
"You write exactly what you speak"
No meaningless "silent words"
The perfect language doesn't exis-
Ancient Greek: 🗿
Can't people make ONE serious language video. Instead of just "hehe among us"
Volapꞟk no binon badik.
Oh, btw, Hong Kong was in the rule of the British empire and was considered the last of it, so us, Hong konger, sticks to the English language EVEN NOW, every student there has been taught English since it was english’s territory.
Therefore, no Hong kongers could argue about English.
Time to make an auxlang and name it Perfectese™
anglish
i adore romance vocabulary
Þats
þe type of þiŋs we need
@TextuaryPlum Addressing the conclusion of the video, your points have some relevance, but you exaggerate their importance. Natural languages (and accents for that matter) develop and evolve like organisms. That is to say they develop unintelligently and partially out of cultures not interacting with each other enough. In a world of cultures constantly mixing and communicating across the world, it is only natural that most communicative nations all develop one language.
I would not cry about cultural erasure if a group of people came up with a simplified english. At the very least, we need a spelling reform asap lmao
thanks!
you're welcome!
Wow sounds like New Speak
step 1 to newspeak is abolishing/banning all other languages.
step to is to ban every word that isn´t in the dictionary
step 3 is that some committee writes new dictionaries, and every new dictionary is thinner than the previous
None of those apply to Esperanto
is toki pona
If everyone learns a second language (while maintaining their native one), how is that cultural erasure?
Great video as usual
Thanks!
Why Esperanto
Because until Esperanto has dozens of millions of regular users, nobody intelligent enough, educated enough and modest enough to pull it off will waste their time on creating an even better language. for the time being, Esperanto is the best we have, and improvements to it are feasible - a lot more feasible than improvements to English
Þey who use this how do I use Þ?
the best langange is tonki pona and i dont beed to prove it!!1!1!q!!!1!
I originally had a Toki Pona segment in this video! It’s very fun but didn’t really serve the point I was making. Will def make a vid about colangs in general some time
@@TextuaryPlum WHAT MY SHITPOST MADE SENSE?
Sed Tokipono eĉ ne estis kreita por esti universala lingvo.
@@amadeosendiulo2137 from what i can understand, the accurate response to this is "this was a joke", so ill just say thaf
@@ashaler__ I know people... I mean I know Esperantsits that serously say that Toki Pona is the best language.
þis the best video þat i’ve ever seen!!!
Mi amas esperanton
I just wanted to write a comments
get ready for a salty storm of dogmatic defensive esperantists lol
After building a language on my own I think these people were just lazy.
toki pona…
Þe "perfect" language bay be like:
Toki pona.
Yeah but esperanto was supposed to be a global SECOND language.
Forget all that. Ukrainian is THE language to learn for everybody on the planet and universe
Good video
Thanks u 2
"Esperanto 'was' the most successful artificially constructed auxiliary language until...it isn't"
That sounds like some other constructed auxiliary language replaced it as *most successful*, which as far as I know never happened. What happened is that chauvinists felt threatened and spread lies about the language and its speakers: jewish-communist plot, too difficult, unnatural, advocating a monolingual world... they used excuses like "if people learn Esperanto they won´t learn other languages nor the cultures attached". In reality Esperantists often learn MORE languages than their neighbours do
Esperanto doesn´t have a fully Latin-based vocabulary. It has several words that are common to several big languages, but also has a whole bunch of germanic and slavic words. Maybe make that word*stems*. One of the beautiful things in Esperanto is that rather than having tons of separate words to memorise separately, you combine wordstems and prefixes/suffixes in a very consistent manner.
As to the end of your video: most people don´t "boycott" Esperanto "because they instinctively know there's something wrong about it". They simply don´t learn it because it isn´t offered in school, they don´t even know it (still) exists, or they have the wrong idea about what it is.
As to the title of your video: there will never be a perfect language, nor one that is "universal" in the sense that every possible human thought and feeling can be expressed accurately in it
Case in point: the concept of "rant" does not exist in my culture - except maybe as symptom of a mental disease
Þis sure is Þe perfect language
I have been using þe letter þorn for a while now and I gotta say þat it's great
t oki p ooooooooona
tru
komo meshikano jamaz entendi la gramamatika. Eh ayi el provlema, todo zuena ihual i no deberya importar laz letraz.
Sólo bromeo. Mé gústó múchó él vídéó. Nó deberíán dé exístír lós ácéntós. Pórque, por que, por qué nó sé dóndé pónérlós
*ESPERANTO 2*
*ESPERANTO 2*
You cheated with title. I was thinking about perfect language for some time and thought that you will tell what it is, but no. Dislike
Ok sorry
[Epic]
but there is a major floor in the english language, you have don't have words that have the meaning of the beautiful german words "doch" and "belastend" (the translations to belastend aren't good), and you have far to complex tense structures that feel unnecessary
Sure, but the whole point I'm making in this video is that the value of those words is relevant only to the languages that have them. And our views of what are "desirable" features are biased from our experiences. Like Schleyer, a Catholic Priest, viewed Latin in high regard, and that's reflected in Volapük.
Doch is like "nuh-uh" or "on the contrary".
here's how to improve english
þ
what about 3 (yogh)
@@theidioticbgilson1466 no
Don't forget, use C and X for CH/SH, and I'm sure Π Σ Δ Ξ Λ Ω will have some purpose
BRING BACK Þ