The "I'm Procrastinating" Conversation Thread

[gonger]

Check out the video

I stopped watching when she said "it [the language Toki Pona] can be ambiguous at times".
Beg your pardon, a constructed language that turns out to be ambiguous?

Gonger
(player is a Dipl.-Ling. in RL)

[Illysia]

Dipl.-Ling?

It's ambiguous because it is actually too simplified. The lady in the video said essentially that we don't actually need to speak in more complex terms for talking about the things around us, but you can't get much done with that language other than indicate only the most basic needs and somewhat communicate familiarity with others. That also doesn't account for the complexity of language needed for organizing people, relating histories, distinguishing family members, describing art, math, or any derivatives of those concepts... It's just too simple.

[Rigwyn]

Well, you wanted simple.....  Anyways, I just stuck that up there because I thought it was somewhat amusing.  Would I bother to learn it? No, not without good reason.

[Illysia]

I would definitely try Elven languages before I did Toki Pona.  It's amusing until you realize it's meant to be taken seriously. Although I trust it is useful in the context where it is used.

[Rigwyn]

I was under the impression that Toki Pona was more of a gimmick than a practical auxiliary language.

[Illysia]

It probably is to many but that lady was taking it seriously.

[gonger]

Dipl.-Ling?

Sorry, should have been more clear there... Dipl.-Ling. stands for Diplom-Linguist, University diploma in linguistics (with specification Computational Linguistics in my case).

It's ambiguous because it is actually too simplified. The lady in the video said essentially that we don't actually need to speak in more complex terms for talking about the things around us, but you can't get much done with that language other than indicate only the most basic needs and somewhat communicate familiarity with others. That also doesn't account for the complexity of language needed for organizing people, relating histories, distinguishing family members, describing art, math, or any derivatives of those concepts... It's just too simple.

Agreed - too simple, no nuances, no way to express your personality, plus tons of ambiguity. Maybe this was conceived as an academic study project, but as said elsewhere in this thread, she was taking it so seriously...

[LigH]

That's hilarious. Can't wait to hear LigH's take on this.

German is a fusional language, many words were made by concatenating different aspects of an entity. And in certain circumstances, these parts are split and wrapped around a whole partial sentence describing small details verbosely. Nesting sentences is a really bad habit. Kurt Tucholsky wrote "Ratschläge für einen guten/schlechten Redner" (Advices to a good/bad speaker). His advices to a bad speaker contain a ridiculous example of a multiple(y?) nested sentence which can hardly be understood. And just as much as we can nest sentences, we can also smash together new words.

[Illysia]

Ah I suspected that might be it but I wasn't sure. So how does computational linguistics differ from other areas?

Hmm... Well, now LigH has spoken. Perhaps that is where English gets some of its habit of slapping words together with little regard for whether or not a word should be slapped together. However, I think that, perhaps, what prevents English from going as far as German is that we hate too many syllables, at least American English does, and we'll start trying to simplify a word down to fewer syllables just as soon as we create it. 

Another player told me about this language called lojban though. So far I have only read introductory information on it but so far it seems like a mathematician's take on language, which sounds a little discouraging to me as it is sounding like it is taking to much ambiguity out of language. It is supposed to be logical and completely unambiguous, but it is also suppose to leave room for the expression of emotions and metaphor. I don't know how it is yet as I haven't gotten as far as grammar.