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Culture: Language: Logical
Desperanto   (+21, -3)  [vote for, against]
A Turing tarpit of a different kind

This word is actually in Urban Dictionary with a different meaning, but it fits so well i want to use it.
I don't agree with the belief that language completely determines our perception of the world, but i think it helps.
A constructed language that "tells it like it is" for people understood to be depressed by those delusional wretches who aren't. Among others, it has the following features:
The first person singular pronoun is pejorative, so it translates as something like "this scum" or "this wanker". The second person pronouns are always honorific: there is a Sie/Usted/vous form but no "Du/tu" form, as one has no friends. There is no first person plural because one is fundamentally alone in the Universe: there is no "we".
The zero morpheme marks negation, the passive voice and the dative. This is because one is a victim of circumstances and has no control, things happen to one and one cannot act meaningfully, and because negation is the normal state of things. Basically the opposite of the Rastafarian use of "I".
Receptacles can only be described as half-empty rather than half-full, temperatures described in terms of coldness, elevations in terms of depths rather than heights. Similarly, in pairs of antonyms such as "good/bad", the unmarked form is the negative one. Similar considerations apply to the likes of "good" (literally translated as "unbad"), "health" (non-illness) and so forth.
Cardinal numbers are negative and have to be stated to be positive, so the positive sign is needed to indicate that a number is not negative. This is a corollary of the "glass half empty".
"Hope" is an expletive and "optimist" is the worst insult imaginable.
Some translations:
Happy: Deluded
Alive: Not dead yet
Exists: Suffering
Birth: Afflicted
Death: Recovered
Time is counted in nights and winters rather than days and years (this is actually true in Old English).
In this language, everything is possible, but nothing positive is easy to express, and it will therefore be better at describing the world than mainstream languages, which are used by people who are not depressed and so it contributes to their inability to see reality as it actually is. The point of this language is to take off the rose-tinted spectacles.
-- nineteenthly, Mar 27 2009

Desperanto - from Urban Dictionary http://www.urbandic...php?term=desperanto
[normzone, Mar 27 2009]

This is how this discussion makes me feel? http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/bf/
Brainfucked [nineteenthly, Mar 27 2009]

"Dead she is" _22Dead_20she_20is_22
Even more Yoda-like [nineteenthly, Mar 28 2009]

Not a patch on [Normzone] Going_20him_20with_...eally_20is_20out_3f
Example of the above syntax. [nineteenthly, Mar 28 2009]

Double-plus un-bad.
-- coprocephalous, Mar 27 2009


This wanker doesn't find the idea completely pointless - Temporarily (because all things are transient and eventually die) take responsibility for this stale croissant and replace your suffering with a fleeting state of delusion, if only for a moment.
-- zen_tom, Mar 27 2009


Unbad grief.
-- theleopard, Mar 27 2009


"Thanks". I had another thought: Maybe replace certain conjunctions so that "nand", "nor" and "nimplies"(?) are standard operators but the others are contrived, so instead of saying "not both...and...", you just say a word for "...nand...", but to say "...and..." you have to say something like "not nboth...nand...". This isn't quite the same as emotional negativity, but does have the virtue of making it hard to say something, thereby isolating people more effectively.
-- nineteenthly, Mar 27 2009


Time should be counted in bad things to come. Someone isn't 10 winters old, but is fated to have to suffer though 80 more dark winters, statistically.
-- loonquawl, Mar 27 2009


//take responsibility //
sp. "be burdened with guilt"
-- coprocephalous, Mar 27 2009


That would be guilt without control, which is bloody "brilliant" because there would be nothing which could happen to this scum to make that burden any less bad.
I can see that some way of doing air quotes with words might be "useful".
-- nineteenthly, Mar 27 2009


Neniu komprenas min se mi parolas en esperanto, aber wenn ich auf Deutsch sprechen, viele Leute selbst hier mich verstehen, und Du bist eine Person die kannst. Are you saying you're depressive?
-- nineteenthly, Mar 27 2009


I would love to see/hear something religious in this language. Maybe one of those horrid praise songs or pentacostal shouts.

It's time to go have some Dreary-o's.
-- RayfordSteele, Mar 27 2009


You'll have to settle for some abused Eagles lyrics, and a link.

Desperanto, why don't you come to your senses?
You been sitting on fences for so long now
Oh, you're subjective
And you got narrow relevance
These things that are pleasing' you
Can hurt you somehow

Don't you draw the probably funny card
She'll beat you if she's able
You know idiosyncratic’s your best bet

Words that seem to be of limited use
Have been laid upon your table
But you only want the ones that you can't get

Desperanto, oh, you ain't gettin' no younger
Your pain and your hunger, they're drivin' you so
And close but not quite, well, that's just some people talkin'
Probably only funny to people who know

Don't your fishbones chill in the winter time?
The sky won't snow and the sun won't shine
It's hard to tell the night time from the day
You're losin' all your highs and lows
Ain't it funny how the feeling goes away?

Desperanto, why don't you come to your senses?
Come down from your fences, open the gate
It may be rainin', but there's a rainbow above you
You better let somebody bun you, before it's too late

-- normzone, Mar 27 2009


I'll unsubtract from the imbalance of the futile voting on this 'delusional posting' by giving honorific you negative (negative 1) un-fish.
-- phundug, Mar 27 2009


Oy, this is exactly what I need, another langauge like Yiddish. It sure is optimistic of you to hope that this idea is less than terrible.
-- Laughs Last, Mar 27 2009


[Normzone], my night has been made by you, sire. This piece of scum can tell which way the votes are being made?
-- nineteenthly, Mar 27 2009


I can't tell you how unhappy this idea has made me. BUNS ALL AROUND. BUNS FOR EVERYONE!
-- blissmiss, Mar 27 2009


Moribunditly crapulent.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Mar 28 2009


I hate it. [+]
-- jaksplat, Mar 28 2009


hmm... properly spoken it would probably sound alot like Yoda from Star Wars... object first, subject last.
-- FlyingToaster, Mar 28 2009


unwow.
-- neilp, Mar 28 2009


<shakes head> No, not a bad idea at all. [-^2]
-- shudderprose, Mar 28 2009


[FlyingToaster], the two links to ideas that have been posted by this so-called "individual" which are the opposite to below express a thought which is considerably less unlike Yoda than this "idea". It might be found by you that perusal of these could be inflicted upon you in a manner which is neither more than completely unpleasurable nor boring.
-- nineteenthly, Mar 28 2009


Importantstuff first, mumbling the rest. Talk easier, less energy.

visions of Marvin the Robot HHGTTG.
-- FlyingToaster, Mar 28 2009


Well, that'd be consistent with the idea of Yiddish, as that's sometimes seen as a dialect of German. There's a possible PhD thesis in that. Also, Du bist nicht so traurig wie müde? Depression doesn't occur in isolation. There are factors like the fact that the entire world is completely shit, but also physiological ones such as fatigue, as cause or effect, anæmia and hypothyroidism. The mind doesn't float around free from the body, after all, or rather, if it does, for a lot of people it's not doing that right now. Actually, i suppose it is for a lot of us, since it's situated in cyberspace, but - um Gottes willen, you know what i mean.
-- nineteenthly, Mar 28 2009


Russian is up there, with the unworst.
-- loonquawl, Mar 28 2009


Sorry about that, but i do appreciate that the last word of your anno was very much in the spirit of this idea.
-- nineteenthly, Mar 28 2009


Ah, that old chestnut. "Sorry" as in expressing my sorrow, not as in apologising. I should probably express myself so that other people understand me, but why change the habits of a lifetime?
-- nineteenthly, Mar 28 2009


glum, gloomy, gruesome, gleech; me likey!
-- bonkers777, Mar 28 2009


Maybe every word should begin with a G.
-- nineteenthly, Mar 29 2009


That's already been done in the Gnome desktop of certain linuces.
-- pertinax, Mar 29 2009


Meanwhile, back on topic, I have a counter-proposal to make. That is, a language just as negative but more energetic as this one, which should be called Exasperanto. In Exasperanto one doesn't have to like the world as it is, but one has not yet despaired of getting sh*t done in it, sometimes, against the odds.
-- pertinax, Mar 29 2009


Good one. Not sure how it would work though, needs some thought on my part. Incidentally, and back off-topic, if there's more than one of you, by analogy with "linuces", would that make you [pertinaces] or [pertinaxen], or are you totally unique?
-- nineteenthly, Mar 29 2009


I think the phonological inventory of such a language would consist entirely of glottal stops and pharyngeal fricatives.
-- nineteenthly, Mar 29 2009


//more energetic as this one, which should be called Exasperanto//
or a bit more loony: rant'o'ranto.
-- FlyingToaster, Mar 29 2009


Or a language based entirely on catchphrases from Christmas theatre productions. Pantoranto.

It's behind you!
-- DrBob, Mar 30 2009


"OH NO IT ISN'T!"
-- gnomethang, Mar 30 2009


Desperado: All vowels are shifted towards the Mexican Gangster end of the spectrum and spoken as though through a cigarillo clasped between clenched teeth so as to convey feelings of enstubbled sweatynesss and criminal desperation:
Shopkeeper: Thankyou Mrs Gonzales, that'll be One Pound, Thirty-Five Pence please.
Mrs G: Eye keeel you for my seeester! Eye theeenk!
Shopkeeper: Here's your change, see you next week!
Mrs G: Steenking greengo, I speet at you...etc
-- zen_tom, Mar 30 2009


That would be Spaghetti Western Romance.
-- nineteenthly, Mar 30 2009


Sp: "useful" =unworthless.
-- ye_river_xiv, Mar 31 2009



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