Esperanto, Ido, Indonesian, or Afrikaans.
Globasa. A constructed language, but with most world language families represented, and a process that ensures new words meet a few other good criteria.
Barring that, toki pona.
Esperanto. Logical. Clear. Easy.
Mi amas Esperanton!
French, we could all be a little more french when keeping our leaders on a leash
I’ve heard good things about Indonesian/Malay. It probably helps it was a regional lingua franca for a long time.
English was legit the best choice in Europe - analytic, with vocabulary drawn from a couple major families, and (almost) no grammatical gender. If only we could unfuck the orthography…
Lojban, or Toki Pona for shits and giggles.
Sanskrit.
Lojban
Are we sure it’s actually usable as a natural language?
I have no clue, but it’ll be better than a language that thinks it’s acceptable for words like “read”
to not just have two different meaning, but two different pronunciations.And while writing this, I just learned that pronunciation should be spelled with “u” instead of “ou”.
That makes no sense.Yes, the spelling is terrible, even if the spoken language is not.
For who? As in I have to stop using English and start using the language or as in the world will all now just speak this language, no qualifications? If it’s the former, probably something like Esperanto. If it’s the latter, Lojban.
Dutch, but only because I’m tired of Dutch people telling me I really shouldn’t have bothered when they find out I learned to speak Dutch.
I just like learning different languages because it lit|really provides new frameworks of understanding for me, goddamn.
Nou ja zeg!
Dit zelfver-nederland-cultuurtje moet blijkbaar
nog altijd blijven opkijken naar de taal waar het hoofdland
op dit moment verder afglijdt naar het fascisme.Hey, can you translate this to English?
Because what Google gives me doesn’t make sense:
This self- Dutchifying culture apparently still has to look up to the language, while the main country is currently sliding further towards fascism.
I think it’s worth it learning dutch if you nail the accent, especially common ones found 50 years ago (as in dubbed Pipi Longstocking).
Swedish, very pretty language
Esperanto. It’s an artificial language designed to be easy to learn and communicate in. Although it’s worth noting that there are esperanto dialects and speakers of one don’t necessarily understand speakers of another.
Although it’s worth noting that there are esperanto dialects and speakers of one don’t necessarily understand speakers of another.
WHAT!? OK biggest failure of an artificial language in my book then
I think this is actually a success: this is the process of all languages. A usable language will evolve and grow, and something as geographical dispersed and isolated as Esperanto will certainly show divergence if it is being used.
So rather than a failure, I think this demonstrates it can be a real language. Though my interest in language isn’t for communication. So eh. Your milage may very.
Why not lojban?
I think it is easy, but I speak only european languages. Not sure if it is really easier or I just feel that is easy because I know the languages I do.
I would love to say mandarin/chinese, but tonal languages scares me.
I made a grammar rule set (not a complete conlang yet) where verbs don’t need to be conjugated, and information about time is separated from the verb; A new lingua franca, IMHO, should not have verb conjugation.
I wouldn’t, because everyone would just have to learn another new language if they learned English because it’s the current one.
Also note that script is historically mostly used for communication over large distances and times.
Historical scriptures (such as the bible) got transported across half the globe and copied and passed down for more than a thousand years. The scripture transcends both space and time.
If you only want to communicate with your neighbour, you don’t need a lingua franca. Lingua franca is exclusively for writing down, and communicating over very large distances (such as the internet). In that case, no pronounciation is needed. So it is possible to have an abstract sign language that doesn’t even have a standardized pronounciation.
This might sound absurd at first, if you never thought about it, until you realize that is how a lot of our information is already transported. There are a lot of sketches and visualizations of important data that are graphics, plots, charts, drawings, and such, that don’t have a standardized pronounciation. The information is transported visually.
mathematics or cartoons work great for communicating ideas to people who don’t speak the same language you do.
essentially, all languages are made up. we therefore need to focus more on universal languages that are the same everywhere. mathematics are one example, but surprisingly, so are comics. many of the emotions displayed there are widespread and close to universal.
