Ithkuil
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Ithkuil (Iţkuîl) is an extremely complex constructed human language created by American linguist John Quijada between 1978 and 2004.
In the author's description of Ithkuil: "A Philosophical Design for a Hypothetical Language", it appears as a cross between an a priori philosophical language and a logical language. The creator attempts to show how human languages could or may function. Ithkuil is designed to convey large amounts of linguistic information using fewer and shorter words than naturally-evolved languages; most sentences in other languages will be shorter when translated into Ithkuil. The language also designed to more overtly express deep levels of human cognition than is found in natural languages, particularly in regard to human categorization. It also strives to minimize the ambiguities and semantic vagueness found in natural human languages.
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[edit] Language description
- Lexicon: The lexicon potentially consists of 3,600 word roots (of which only about a thousand are implemented so far), each consisting of 2 consonant radicals; any root may be changed by extremely complex rules of grammar (ex. changing the vowel) that make it possible to create an enormous number of derivatives.
- Phonology: Ithkuil uses a complicated phonological system (65 consonants and 17 vowels) based on sounds from a variety of languages such as Chechen or Abkhaz. It may be very difficult for a speaker of a typical western Indo-European language to pronounce some of the sounds.
- Morphophonology: Ithkuil is primarily synthetic and secondarily agglutinative. Ithkuil morphophonology utilizes both consonantal and vocalic mutation, shifts in syllabic stress and tone, and many different kinds of affixes, including prefixes, suffixes, infixes and interfixes.
[edit] Phonology
The consonants of Ithkuil are as follows:
| labial | dental | alveolar | retroflex | postalveolar | palatal | velar | uvular | pharyngeal | glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| stop | p b pʰ p' | t d tʰ t' | c ɟ cʰ c' | k g kʰ k' | q ɢ qʰ q' | ʔ | ||||
| affricate | ʦ ʣ ʦʰ ʦ' | tʂ dʐ tʂʰ tʂ' | ʧ ʤ ʧʰ ʧ' | cç' | kx' | qχ' | ||||
| fricative | f v | θ ð | s z | ʂ ʐ | ʃ ʒ | ç ʝ | x ɣ | χ | ħ | h |
| nasal | m | n | ŋ | |||||||
| flap | ɾ | |||||||||
| lateral | l ɫ ɬ tɬʰ | ɭ | ||||||||
| approximant | w | j | ʁ |
/m n ŋ l ɫ ɭ/ can be syllabic. /h/ is pronounced [ɸ] when preceded by a vowel and followed by another consonant. /tɬʰ/ is in free variation with [tɬ']; the latter is more common at the beginning of a word. All consonants except /j w/ can be geminated; when geminated, /h/ is pronounced as a bidental fricative and /ɾ/ is prounounced as an alveolar trill.
The vowels of Ithkuil are as follows:
| front | central | back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| close | i y | ʉ | ɯ u |
| near-close | ɪ | ʊ | |
| close-mid | e ø | ɤ o | |
| open-mid | ɛ œ | ɔ | |
| open | æ | a | ɑ |
The diphthongs in Ithkuil are /ai æi ei ɤi øi oi ʊi au æu eu ɤu ɪu ou øu aɯ eɯ ɤɯ ʊɯ oɯ ɪɯ æɯ øɯ ʉɯ ae/. All other sequences of vowels are pronounced as separate syllables.
[edit] Example
listen |
| Pronunciation: /oum.pe.a æ.kx’æ.æ.ɬʊk.tɤx/ |
| Romanization: Oumpeá äx’ääļuktëx. |
| Translation: On the contrary, I think it may turn out that this rugged mountain range trails off at some point. |
[edit] Possible advantages
The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that the language that a person speaks may affect her or his way of thinking. Stanislav Kozlovsky speculates that a fluent speaker of Ithkuil, accordingly, would think up to five times faster than a speaker of a typical natural language. One may also argue that, Ithkuil being an extremely precise, synthetic language, its speaker would also have a clearer and deeper understanding of the world.
There exists no human who can speak Ithkuil, including its creator: “I don't speak Ithkuil, never have, never will, never claimed to.” — said John Quijada [citation needed].
[edit] Future revision of Ithkuil
After the publication of an article about Ithkuil in the Russian magazine Computerra, several Russian-speakers contacted Quijada and expressed interest in learning the language. Quijada has worked out a complete revision of the language's morpho-phonology to reduce the number of phonemes from 82 to 48 in order to make the language easier to pronounce (as requested by several people who claim they want to learn it), and is expected to post the revised alternative sometime in 2007. The revision of Ithkuil is tentatively called Iláksh, and information about this revision can be found here. A new script is considered.
[edit] References
- ↑ «Скорость мысли», Станислав Козловский — (Russian) Speed of thought by Stanislav Kozlovsky, Computerra, №26-27, June 20, 2004
