What do you think a PERFECT language should be like?

Shuimo   Fri Nov 13, 2009 11:13 pm GMT
What do you think a PERFECT language should be like, whether it is in actual existence or not?
fraz   Fri Nov 13, 2009 11:44 pm GMT
No male and female genders. What a lot of groundwork that would save. Genders don't really add anything to a language anyway. Who actually cares whether a table is a boy or a girl? Are we culturally enriched by such knowledge?
Antimooner K. T.   Fri Nov 13, 2009 11:50 pm GMT
And no male and female verb forms.
genderless   Fri Nov 13, 2009 11:52 pm GMT
no articles
frequency is the answer   Fri Nov 13, 2009 11:56 pm GMT
In my opinion the perfect language would be a frequency based language, rather than based on different phenomes. That is, only one sound 'aaahh' or something, but the frequency imparts meaning in the same was as an alphabet. For the sake of example, something like:


a= aaaaah at 30-40 Hz
b= aaaaah at 40-50 Hz
c= aaaah at 50-60 Hz
d = aaaah at 60-70 Hz

and so on...
Antimooner K. T.   Fri Nov 13, 2009 11:59 pm GMT
I wonder if you enjoy buildings with good acoustics, and tuning pianos.
Danny   Sat Nov 14, 2009 12:27 am GMT
It'd be called


BUTT FUCK!
para mim   Sat Nov 14, 2009 9:12 am GMT
A perfect language should be a mixture of Slavic languages and Romance languages, that is a language with lots of verb tenses and moods, cases and articles.
Cle   Sat Nov 14, 2009 9:41 am GMT
It should be a mixture of English and Spanish in the Western World, with the phonetic system of Spanish and the grammar and verbs of English.

In Asia, it should be a mixture between Chinese and English. English grammar and Chinese vocabulary. Whitout tones. Latin alphabet.

Using Spanglish and Chinglish you would travel around the World.
poiu   Sat Nov 14, 2009 10:47 am GMT
Why should the perfect language be easy? The harder the better.....I am not keen on learning simple languages, they're quite boring
Guest   Sat Nov 14, 2009 11:04 am GMT
A Sanskrit - Xhosa crossover.
marcus minimus   Sat Nov 14, 2009 10:55 pm GMT
If the perfect language is the simplest, I suppose you'd want:

- no tones
- syllable timing
- only 20 or so easy sounds: a e i o u (spanish vowels), and simple consonants like p, b, t, d, f, v, g, k, m, n, s z
- no inflections/conjugations at all (no tense, number, mood, voise, personal endings, etc.)
- no gender, or noun cases at all
- completely phonetic spelling in a simple alphabet
- easy word order
- no articles

Question: Would a simplified language like this actually be functional?

Should we allow prefixes and suffixes that change one word (an adjective, for example) into another (a verb, like "enlarge" or lengthen"), or does this add unwanted complexity?
Pitanga   Sat Nov 14, 2009 10:57 pm GMT
IMHO Latin is the perfect language.
Antimooner K. T.   Sun Nov 15, 2009 12:39 am GMT
I am not keen on learning simple languages, they're quite boring.-poiu

Which ones have you studied?
poiu   Sun Nov 15, 2009 9:15 am GMT
Which ones have you studied?

German, HUngarian Russian, Basque, They are not particulary difficult in my opinion but they are supposed to be hard