
Ithkuil: A Philosophical Design for a Hypothetical Language - simonebrunozzi
http://www.ithkuil.net/
======
ainar-g
If you found Ithkuil interesting, you might also enjoy:

* Loglan, a human language with a regular grammar.

* * Site: [http://loglan.org/](http://loglan.org/)

* * Wiki: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loglan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loglan)

* Toki Pona, an extremely simplified language.

* * Site: [http://tokipona.org/](http://tokipona.org/)

* * Wiki: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona)

~~~
lidHanteyk
I find it interesting that you'd recommend Loglan instead of Lojban. Any
reasoning behind that? ki'e .i co'o

~~~
ainar-g
I've been anticipating this comment :-) There are a few reasons:

1\. I personally think that Loglan is a much more human language. You know,
with capital letters and no overuse of the apostrophe.

2\. I've been a somewhat active member of the Loglan Institute's mailing list.
I still am a member, but I haven't posted anything in over twelve years, I
think.

3\. Back in the day, I also significantly improved the article about Loglan on
the Russian Wikipedia. It had a “Good Article” badge for a few years, until a
review found it “not good enough” :-/

4\. Like a lot of Loglan-lovers, I think that the circumstances behind
Lojban's “forking out” from Loglan are somewhat fishy. IIRC, there was some
bad blood between “The Three Old Men” of Loglan and the Le Chevaliers,
although my memory of the details is very holey.

~~~
lidHanteyk
I, too, have contributed to Wikipedia, although I don't really find my
contributions to GA/FA efforts to have colored my preferences.

I'm not sure what you find "fishy" or "holey"; a trip down memory lane is
relatively easy. Lojban's early history explains the "bad blood" very well:
James Cooke Brown, inventor of Loglan and head of the Loglan institute, was
upset that people wanted to use Loglan in their own ways, without his
approval. [0][1] The dispute was so bad that the courts got involved. [2] The
Logical Language Group decided that it would be better to fork the language
than to deal with Brown's attempts to control the community.

pe'i ko tavla fo lo jbobau fi'o kansa lo se jbobau

Edit: I found lojbab's own words on the fork:
[https://mw.lojban.org/papri/the_Loglan-
Lojban_Dispute](https://mw.lojban.org/papri/the_Loglan-Lojban_Dispute)

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loglan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loglan)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban)

[2]
[https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/5914bf26add7b049347ac5...](https://www.casemine.com/judgement/us/5914bf26add7b049347ac54e)

------
andolanra
A friend of mine one jokingly but reasonably accurately described Ithkuil as,
"Build a language with as much derivational morphology as humanly possible,
then add some more, and you've got Ithkuil." It's a fascinating experiment and
a lot of fun to read about.

As a fascinating side-note: the language was also at one point adopted by some
kind of fringe pseudo-religious movement called "Psychonetics" as a
"…technology of human consciousness." There's a fascinating article about
Ithkuil, its creator, and its adoption by that movement here:
[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/24/utopian-for-
be...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/24/utopian-for-beginners)
(and the previous HN discussion of it here
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8180493](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8180493)
)

~~~
ainar-g
I think those Psychonetics people were also inspired by Heinlein's ideas about
Speedtalk[1] from “The Gulf”.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speedtalk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speedtalk)

------
simonebrunozzi
I have been fascinated by "human language" design for a long time, and reading
about Ithkuil brought back a lot of memories. Designing a language is super
hard!! I partially designed one to use in a novel I wrote ~16 years ago (the
novel is only available in Italian). [0]

The language was called "galatico" (as a tribute to Isaac Asimov), it was
comprised of 64 alphabet signs, represented by bit-like letters. In the novel
you can get a few glimpses at the language design. It was fun. And hard. And
fun.

[0]: [https://www.amazon.com/Nonovvio-Italian-Simone-Brunozzi-
eboo...](https://www.amazon.com/Nonovvio-Italian-Simone-Brunozzi-
ebook/dp/B07B8MFDB8)

~~~
yuchi
Sorry for your predictions about 2025 are going to be debunked in a few years
:) I’ll keep the book on my list

~~~
simonebrunozzi
Who knows? Maybe I was 100% right!! :)

------
TotempaaltJ
Oh damn! I've been theorizing to my friends about a language like this.
Assuming that linguistic relativity[1] holds true, this would be super cool to
learn, and potentially highly effective as a form of communication. The author
goes into this a bit in the FAQ[2]

Probably super hard to learn (if not effectively impossible)... Is there any
"native level" speakers of Ithkuil? Seems unlikely, since even the author
hasn't learned it fully.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity)
[2] [http://www.ithkuil.net/faqs.html](http://www.ithkuil.net/faqs.html) under
"Some people have claimed that using Ithkuil, a person would be able to think
five times faster. Do you believe this?"

~~~
Retra
As far as I understand it, the general scientific consensus is that linguistic
relativity does not hold true. More anecdotally, I don't often find myself
constructing sentences before having an intuitive (non-linguistic)
understanding of what I am trying to express, and the process of putting ideas
into words doesn't feel like it would be advantaged by high information
density, but rather that the majority of filler-words are useful for smoothing
out the process and providing information at a more controlled pace, which can
be useful for things like adding emphasis to particular phrases and concepts.

~~~
Isomorpheus
From what I've seen, there is evidence for the weak linguistic relativity
hypothesis. Is that wrong?

~~~
Retra
Not _per se_ , but that would allow for any inefficiencies to be moved around,
which is not contrary to what I'm arguing. It's quite a bold claim to say that
people will think faster or more efficiently in general, but not as bold to
say they will think faster or more efficiently about some things. You might be
able to make a language more efficient for technical communication while
making it less efficient for poetic communication, but I don't believe you can
make a language more efficient at everything people need to communicate.

------
ilaksh
When I found out about this conlang several years ago I thought it was the
most amazing thing. And so I adopted the name for my email address. And a
variation for my HN account. I was hoping people would read about it and
automatically become smarter. Lol.

I did receive a couple of emails in Russian that seemed to be about the
language. But after browsing back like 95,000 gmail messages back to 2007 I am
not able to find them. I just looked at like 30 pages of older messages, not
all of them. I don't know how to search for Russian text in gmail. I tried
Google Translate for hello but that just showed all messages that said hello
in English.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
It used to be possible to do something like "lang:russian" or "lang:ru" in the
search box, but I think either the function has been deprecated, or I just
have bad memory :)

------
ilyagr
It seems to me that, in order for such an informationally dense language to
actually be used, especially as spoken word, it would need to include a layer
of error-correcting codes on top of the basic language. That could be a
fascinating linguistic concept on its own, especially if one could design the
error correcting layer in such a way that a human being (as opposed to a
computer) could conceivably become fluent in it.

I would guess the author has thought if this; wonder if it already exists.

~~~
maxander
Natural human grammar _is_ error correcting codes, essentially. If sentence
should e corrupted, e.g. like this one is, it usually is immediatly visible
that is wrong, and what the “correct” should be.

IIRC, one of the criticisms of Ithkuil is that there’s so much semantics
packed into the syntax that this doesn’t work for it- a corrupted Ithkuil
sentence often turns out to be a valid sentence with a different meaning.

~~~
ilyagr
Yes, that's exactly why I think Ithkuil should have an error-correcting layer
on top of it. It's interesting if one could be designed in a way that is
different from natural language, but still useable and effective.

------
the_decider
The mind-blowing story behind Ithkuil: It was created by a middle-aged self-
educated postal worker. Years later, it became exteremely poplular among
Russian Neo-nazis who wanted a philosophically “pure” language for their
“pure” race. [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/24/utopian-for-
be...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/12/24/utopian-for-
beginners/amp)

------
TotempaaltJ
Might want to tag this (2011)?

See also the latest update, a new language based on Ithkuil:
[http://www.ithkuil.net/new_morpho-
phonology_v_0_8.pdf](http://www.ithkuil.net/new_morpho-phonology_v_0_8.pdf)

~~~
ainar-g
After all those years, he's still at it! I remember a long time ago, when I
was still in school, I've sent Mr. Quijada an E-Mail proposing some
simplifications to the then-upcoming Ilaksh's phonetics. My English was much,
much worse back then, but to my surprise, he actually replied! His response
made my whole week or even month.

------
CodexArcanum
Wow, seeing this posted really took me back! I, too, was obcessed with Ithkuil
when I was in school. I thought it was just the best idea, to construct a
dense, powerful, (dare I say) "perfect" language. Too bad I never actually got
fluent in it, but then I saw a few years ago that he'd rebooted it as a new
language. Conlangs and language design in general is a lot of fun, I'm glad to
see he's still doing it.

------
lettucehead
Anyone curious about ithkuil should apprise themselves of the attempt of the
number two most wanted terrorist in Ukraine's tangential involvement with this
language as a result of some Institute for the Harmo ious Development of Man
or other ( _not_ the institute of Gurdjieff's, just similarly named)

------
jes5199
“The native script used to represent Ithkuil is both alien and complex.”

interesting choice

