Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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helppo kieli

Making an easier language
 
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What kind of features would you include in/exclude from a language to make it more transparent and easy to learn? With english I'd remove all verb declensions for person (think- I be, she do etc.) as pronouns (I, you) are used so much it's intelligable like that anyway. For other european languages I'd get rid of noun gender (mercifully english is spared this added complexity), as it doesn't seem to help convey information and probably confers few advantages if any at all.

P.S. the title is meant to say 'easy language' in Finnish, but I'm not well up on cases in Finnish, so it's probably wrong.

squigbobble, Jan 14 2004

AO nailed it http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Lajak
[k_sra, Oct 05 2004]

Langmaker http://www.langmaker.com/
An excellent site on language creation. [5th Earth, Nov 01 2004]

LogLan http://www.loglan.org/
So baked it's untrue. [squigbobble, Apr 23 2005]


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Annotation:







       all long words.
po, Jan 14 2004
  

       I have heard that English is the hardest language to learn. (I don't have any proof, just something that i heard)
babyhawk, Jan 14 2004
  

       //I have heard that English is the hardest language to learn.//   

       Not helped by the pick-n-mix spelling system.
squigbobble, Jan 14 2004
  

       funny I found it the easiest.
po, Jan 14 2004
  

       See link.
k_sra, Jan 14 2004
  

       Awww, and I was so sure this was going to be something about a Finnish Hello Kitty.
egads, Jan 14 2004
  

       There's a link showing that I can learn pigeon....I just don't see a whole lot of use for it..........
normzone, Jan 14 2004
  

       And here I thought this would be about helping [po] do something.
ato_de, Jan 14 2004
  

       It would have to be a language that allows distortions and still works. People will want to play with it. Some kids who went to Esperanto class told me that it was boring because they couldn't even do poems and word games.
kbecker, Jan 14 2004
  

       Ili ne havis lecionojn longe. Estas ebla fari kalemburojn in esperanto. Mi ne scias fari tiojn pro tio ke mi havis lecionojn mallonge ankaû.   

       Oof... Hope I got it all right.
Saruman, Mar 03 2004
  

       And I thought this was going to be about Kokopelli... damn dislexia!
zigness, Mar 03 2004
  

       Sure does sound like another incarnation of Esperanto to me. Feeshy-bone.
mailtosalonga, Jul 16 2004
  

       Moi Moi!
gnomethang, Jul 16 2004
  

       Wouldn't 'easy language' be something like 'uusi kieli'?
Almafeta, Oct 30 2004
  

       Please tell me you speak Esperanto [Saruman] and didn't just translate that. I'd love to have found one of the over one million (count them!) Esperanto speakers in the world.
harderthanjesus, Oct 31 2004
  

       [alfa] Hmmm... as my Finnish dictionary is 20 miles away I couldn't say, though I get the feeling that 'uusi' means 'new'... or is that 'uuti' (anybody want to try Babelfish?). [UnaBubba] Finnish pronunciation is really not hard to grasp (apart from 'a' and 'ä'), the Finnish family I stayed with were quite gobsmacked at my ability to read and pronounce it, it's understanding it that's hard! Mostly it's the alien and complicated grammar system that doesn't help, even Finns think it's hard! I s'pose this would be another Esperanto, but the intention is for it to not be euro-centric but to be more or less equally hard (or easy) for anyone to learn. The more I think about it, the more it occurs to me that half the philogists on the planet are trying to do the same thing. [gnome] Hei!
squigbobble, Apr 21 2005
  

       Like [egads], I clicked this thinking it was about a Finnish Hello Kitty. I fishbone for disappointment.
disbomber, Apr 21 2005
  

       When I got rid of my declension, I soiled myself. Never again!
bungston, Apr 21 2005
  

       Damn it; someone's beaten me to it, more or less. (see link)
squigbobble, Apr 23 2005
  

       I've been told more times than once that Hungarian is the most difficult language to learn.
natewill, Apr 23 2005
  


 

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