jansegers @jansegers@qoto.org
Webosoof
Joined Oct 2019
jansegers
boosted
Wuhan Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Global Cases (by JHU CSSE)
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
#Wuhan #OfficialStats #map #CoronaVirus #Pandemic #mapa #lipu_ma #nanpa_ike #Wujan #Janseke #anno2020
jansegers
boosted
On the Belgian TV a professor who is part of an European task force against diseases declares that there are CASES in ALL CHINESE PROVINCES of the virus now. He also says he don't understand why a global alert wasn't given ...
Just now on radio, a journalist announces that they would be two confirmed cases in FRANCE, one in PARIS and one in BORDEAUX.
#Wuhan #China #AllProvinces #France #Paris #Bordeaux #CoronaVirus #pandemic #ike_sijelo #ma_ale #anno2020
Major thematic relations
Following major thematic relations have been identified:[2]
Agent
deliberately performs the action (e.g., Bill ate his soup quietly.).
Experiencer
the entity that receives sensory or emotional input (e.g. Susan heard the song. I cried.).
Stimulus
Entity that prompts sensory or emotional feeling – not deliberately (e.g. David Peterson detests onions!).
Theme
undergoes the action but does not change its state (e.g., We believe in one God. I have two children. I put the book on the table. He gave the gun to the police officer.) (Sometimes used interchangeably with patient.)
Patient
undergoes the action and changes its state (e.g., The falling rocks crushed the car.). (Sometimes used interchangeably with theme.)
Instrument
used to carry out the action (e.g., Jamie cut the ribbon with a pair of scissors.).
Force or Natural Cause
mindlessly performs the action (e.g., An avalanche destroyed the ancient temple.).
Location
where the action occurs (e.g., Johnny and Linda played carelessly in the park. I'll be at Julie's house studying for my test.).
Direction or Goal
where the action is directed towards (e.g., The caravan continued on toward the distant oasis. He walked to school.).
Recipient
a special kind of goal associated with verbs expressing a change in ownership, possession. (E.g., I sent John the letter. He gave the book to her.)
Source or Origin
where the action originated (e.g., The rocket was launched from Central Command. She walked away from him.).
Time
the time at which the action occurs (e.g., The pitcher struck out nine batters today)
Beneficiary
the entity for whose benefit the action occurs (e.g.. I baked Reggie a cake. He built a car for me. I fight for the king.).
Manner
the way in which an action is carried out (e.g., With great urgency, Tabitha phoned 911.).
Purpose
the reason for which an action is performed (e.g., Tabitha phoned 911 right away in order to get some help.).
Cause
what caused the action to occur in the first place; not for what, rather because of what (e.g., Because Clyde was hungry, he ate the cake.).
There are not always clear boundaries between these relations. For example, in "the hammer broke the window", hammer might be labeled an agent (see below), an instrument, a force, or possibly a cause. Nevertheless, some thematic relations labels are more logically plausible than others.
#SemanticRoles #ThematicRoles #functions #Agent #Patient #Instrument
catpad | 2004-12-22
Hello, fellow tokiponas,
I decided to make the process of learning Toki Pona even easier and funnier and prepared the visual "cards" that contain most of the words from the official dictionary.
I hope they will help you to memorize the words better!
https://tokipona.livejournal.com/5772.html
#TokiPona #images #sitelen #jan_toki #catpad #sona_nimi #anno2004
WIKITONGUES- Koishi speaking Toki Pona.webm
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WIKITONGUES-_Koishi_speaking_Toki_Pona.webm
Re: unicode support
Fri Sep 03, 2004
[...]
Wikipedias with over 100 articles:
Беларуская (Belarusian) – Bosanski (Bosnian) – Kaszëbsczi (Kashubian) – فارسی (Persian) – Gaeilge (Irish) – हिन्दी (Hindi) – Ido – Bahasa Jawa (Javanese) – Kurdî (Kurdish) – Lëtzebuergesch (Luxembourgish) – Lietuvių (Lithuanian) – Latvie¨u (Latvian) – Hō-ló-oē (Southern Min) – Plattdüütsch (Low Saxon) – Langue d'Oc (Occitan) – संस्कृत (Sanskrit) – Slovenčina (Slovak) – Basa Sunda (Sundanese) – தமிழ் (Tamil) – ไทย (Thai) – toki pona – Tatarça (Tatar) – اردو (Urdu) – Tiếng Việt (Vietnamese)
[...]
Lingvonomoj
[...]
toki Sikipe[1] la albana
[...]
[1] - Alternative: toki Sipe
La vortoj por Albanio (ma Sipe) kaj la albana lingvo (toki Sikipe) estas la ununura paro, kies nomoj malkongruas en la listoj en la oficiala libro. Supozeble tio estas eraro. Estus rekomendinde uzi la saman vorton en la sama teksto (do aŭ la paron ma Sipe kaj toki Sipe, aŭ la paron ma Sikipe kaj toki Sikipe).
Ambaŭ Sipe kaj Sikipe estas bonaj laŭnormaj tokiponigoj de la albanaj vortoj shqip (/ʃcip/, la albana) kaj Shqipëri (/ʃcipəˈɾi/, Albanio). La unua elektas pli emfazi la silaban strukturon, dum la dua elektas konservi la konsonanton /c/.
Konsiderante, ke unu formo ne estas objektive pli bona ol la alia, la plej logika solvo estas akcepti Sipe kaj Sikipe kiel eblajn variaĵojn unu de la alia, por kiuj ne estas oficiale proponita prefero.
[...]
https://tokipona.neocities.org/pu-lingvonomoj.html
#TokiPona #languages #toki #nimi_toki #anno2020 (estimate)
[...]
sago on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
It's interesting that you're not the only person here who's approached toki pona from a NLP perspective.
toki pona is about the worst case for an NLP language, I would think. It puts all the communication burden on the semantics and pragmatics of the language. It doesn't make human expression, feelings, interests, creativity or community simpler, just the language.
There are other conlangs designed to be unambiguous. toki pona was designed to be the opposite: maximally general.
On the specific point of having to learn a compound lexicon - that is true a little, but not as much as you'd think. Sure there are conventional compounds for saying certain things, but you are very welcome (and aesthetically encouraged) to find other ways of expressing the same thing. You might find 'ilo nanpa' defined as a computer in a compound lexicon, and I use that sometimes, but my 'ilo nanpa' is also my 'ilo musi' and my 'ilo pali' (and sometimes my 'ilo pakala'). The key insight is that the language doesn't have to describe what a thing is, but what it means to you. That changes, it cannot be properly documented, and is almost impossible to parse. I take that as a feature, not a bug. Part of the pleasure of toki pona is the endless poetry of it: the joy of finding curious and evocative ways of expressing yourself.
[...]
Toki Pona: A created language that has only 100 words (theatlantic.com)
132 points by chippy on Feb 23, 2016 | hide | past | web | favorite | 88 comments
yongjik on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
> The point is simplicity. And in Toki Pona, simple is literally good. Both concepts are combined in a single word: pona.
That's how you end up with words like English "cool", which means low(-ish) temperature, except when it's about people, or "blue", a particular color, except when it's about feelings.
It's anything but simple, and honestly it doesn't sound good to me, either.
VLM on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
I have read the toki pona book. Its interesting but cheaty.
You can't get rid of complexity by squeezing a balloon and pretending the enormous bulging out shared dictionary of nouns is "not really words".
English only has 26 letters, its really simple to learn English! Well, sure, sometimes you have to string together quite a few of those 26 letters in the correct order to get the point across, but its not really hard to learn English.
Likewise toki pona is an exercise in what amounts to stringing together long winded syllables.
It was disappointing, I was interested in the language with the idea of fooling around with natural language processing, which is complex, so a simpler language should allow easier to write simple toys. Perhaps I've found a silver bullet? Yet its actually a very complicated language because of the balloon analogy, you can't squeeze the complexity somewhere else and declare victory. It requires all kinds of memorization and life experience and humor and creativity and judgment calls about stringing together it's sylableWords into what in English would mostly be one word.
Even if its not a silver bullet, its still kind of cool. I ended up having more fun, while continuing to accomplish nothing, with a pidgin englishs. I ended up with a reasonable parser for butler english. I thought it would be funny to write a parser that turned butler english into coq and then replied back to me with what coq thought of my statements. Then I realized I was bored and moved on to something else. For at least awhile recreational natural language processing can be a lot of fun and is a wide open area where whatever you do, its probably a newly trodden path, at least if its weird enough. Here's a strange idea if I get back into the hobby. Can I make a butler english to toki pona automated translator? Hmm.
sago on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
It's interesting that you're not the only person here who's approached toki pona from a NLP perspective.
toki pona is about the worst case for an NLP language, I would think. It puts all the communication burden on the semantics and pragmatics of the language. It doesn't make human expression, feelings, interests, creativity or community simpler, just the language.
There are other conlangs designed to be unambiguous. toki pona was designed to be the opposite: maximally general.
On the specific point of having to learn a compound lexicon - that is true a little, but not as much as you'd think. Sure there are conventional compounds for saying certain things, but you are very welcome (and aesthetically encouraged) to find other ways of expressing the same thing. You might find 'ilo nanpa' defined as a computer in a compound lexicon, and I use that sometimes, but my 'ilo nanpa' is also my 'ilo musi' and my 'ilo pali' (and sometimes my 'ilo pakala'). The key insight is that the language doesn't have to describe what a thing is, but what it means to you. That changes, it cannot be properly documented, and is almost impossible to parse. I take that as a feature, not a bug. Part of the pleasure of toki pona is the endless poetry of it: the joy of finding curious and evocative ways of expressing yourself.
kaoD on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
The language is simple (a few words, even fewer grammar rules) but obviously communicating with it is _very_ complex.
The problem with Toki Pona is it doesn't serve a purpose and journalists often can't convey exactly what it is because... it's nothing. If you try to explain Toki Pona in the context of natural languages, which are meant to communicate somewhat-precisely, of course it seems complex (because concepts are complex, no matter how much you try to simplify the language).
I try to explain it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11157977
canjobear on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
How often does that really lead to confusion though?
I can't think of a time someone said "blue" meaning sad and I thought they meant "blue" the color.
Humans are great at disambiguating things.
yongjik on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
If you are a native speaker, rarely. Otherwise, all the freaking times (for the first ten years or so).
E.g., consider the difference between a "cool guy" and a "cool attitude". If you think about it, they describe almost totally opposite situations.
Or consider "No, it's cool." After all, "it's hot" means the temperature is high.
duaneb on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
> "cool attitude"
Do you actually use this much, though? I had to double take because I'm not familiar with the phrase and I'm a native speaker. Typically you might use cool to in this way to describer an action or gerund, or with a prepositional phrase, or as an adverb.
Heck, if anything, I'd say a "cool attitude" is a calm attitude—as in, the person played it cool.
afandian on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Maybe not that exact phrasing but "he gave me a cool look" can mean exact opposites. Depends entirely on dialect / register. The direct metaphorical version ("he gave me an unfriendly look") is reasonably common in English. The other reading of it isn't so much, but is perfectly understandable (probably incorrectly).
tehwalrus on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
How about an "icy glare"?
kaoD on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
> If you are a native speaker, rarely. Otherwise, all the freaking times (for the first ten years or so).
Not a native speaker. Not my experience at all. In fact, from my experience watching people learn English around me (and teaching some of them), reusing concepts like this actually helps them get the meaning because they can relate to words they know.
Maybe it's because such metaphors are pervasive in my native language too?
> E.g., consider the difference between a "cool guy" and a "cool attitude". If you think about it, they describe almost totally opposite situations.
I don't see how they're opposite. Hot-headed people (see how the metaphor is still at play?) aren't considered cool at all.
> Or consider "No, it's cool." After all, "it's hot" means the temperature is high.
What do you mean? "It's cool" = "the situation isn't hot". You don't have to worry about being burnt (again, same metaphor) by the situation.
yongjik on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Maybe your native language has metaphors similar to English, or maybe your friends are better at learning English than my friends. :P
But my point is that many metaphors look "natural" only after you learn it: you have to memorize them, and you think it's natural only because you've been doing it all your life.
E.g., "hot-headed" is a decidedly English metaphor. In Korean, "his head is getting hot" would mean he's getting annoyed/angry at the present situation, not that he has a propensity for getting annoyed in general (which is what English "hot-headed" means).
Similarly, English "cool" doesn't just mean "the situation isn't hot."; it also implies a positive situation. In contrast, you can say "The show only received a lukewarm reception.", but you can't say "It's OK, he was lukewarm about the mishap."
As another example, in Korean, you "turn blue" when you're shocked/aghast, not when you're gloomy. All this stuff is basically a minefield of subtle misunderstandings.
kaoD on Feb 24, 2016 [-]
Yeah but, once you memorize them, the metaphors are pervasive and follow common patterns. I think having a similarly-metaphorical language helps taking cues from context. I haven't seen it taking ten years or so to memorize them.
Phrasal verbs on the other hand? A nightmare! I've been speaking English "fluently" for more than 15 years and I still struggle with them.
There's definitely some overlap of metaphors in western languages though, and English culture influence over western media helps establishing those metaphors too (we don't use "blue" as "sad" in our language, but it's not hard for us to relate to it since it's in so many songs).
true_religion on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
> consider the difference between a "cool guy" and a "cool attitude"
I always thought the ideas were conflated. That to be 'cool' originally meant to be unflappable in the face of adversity which was akin to having a cool attitude.
mchaver on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
If context is missing (paper is torn, parts of conversation are missed) then "overloaded words" can easily be misinterpreted. People have various techniques for correcting these communication errors: make an assumption based on one's own knowledge of speaker, make an assumption based on one's own knowledge of the topic or beliefs or reconfirm the meaning with the speaker. I am sure there are a lot more.
For non-native speakers overloaded words can be challenging to deal with. Overloaded words and close sounding words are also a common source of language games and art. All human languages have ambiguity at some level.
rosser on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
What about the word "mai" in Thai? Depending on tone, it has at least five different meanings.
"/Mai \mai ^mai vmai mai" (tone marks added) is literally a meaningful sentence in Thai — and not one that's obviously constructed for lulz like "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo".
lgessler on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
To a Thai speaker, "/Mai" and "\Mai" sound as different as English "sit" and "seat", although much of the world would insist that the two in English sound nearly the same, just as English speakers insist that "/Mai" and "\Mai" sound nearly the same.
maaku on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Words differing in tone are only the same from a linguistically chauvinistic perspective.
rosser on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
You don't think there are differences in tone between many homonyms in English? No, it's not a "tonal" language, but that absolutely doesn't mean they don't exist, or aren't widely used.
Or is your assertion that "Buffalo buffalo..." is pronounced by repeating the exact same pattern of sound eight times?
peteretep on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
You're confusing stresses and tones.
I think if you say the phrase "to buffalo" and "a buffalo", you'll pronounce those words in the same way. It's only when putting a sentence together that you'll stress them differently to indicate their usage in that sentence.
In tonal languages, you always say the word with the given tone, regardless of context.
mrob on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
British English (and American English?) sometimes uses stress to distinguish between nouns and verbs written the same way, eg. "record a record", "permit a permit", "present a present". It's possible that "buffalo a buffalo" should ideally have this difference, but buffalo is so rare as a verb that the difference has been lost.
kybernetikos on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
People can often tell the difference between "vial" and "vile", even though I feel like I'm pronouncing them the exact same way.
rwj on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Except that vial has 2 syllables, and vile has only 1 syllable.
taejo on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
In your accent (and lots of other people's too, but not in mine, and apparently not in that of the person you're responding to).
The sequence /aɪl/ never appears in my English dialect: there's always a schwa-ish sound before the /l/
Houshalter on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
In what accent? They sound the same to me. "Vy-uhl". How do you pronounce them?
thedaemon on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Vyle. Like Gomer Pyle. I'm from the southern US and pronounce these words differently, one and two syllables.
marvy on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
I suddenly want to try this experiment
oneeyedpigeon on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Simply ask someone else, out loud to spell the word [...] and pick one or the other. Would be interesting if you get > 50% hit rate.
pbhjpbhj on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Vile is a more common word. Some adults probably don't know the word vial at all.
kybernetikos on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Yes, because of this, I always say them both and ask them which I said first.
duaneb on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
> Or is your assertion that "Buffalo buffalo..." is pronounced by repeating the exact same pattern of sound eight times?
English doesn't require semantic tone, its use just makes conversing easier.
Houshalter on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
This reminds me a lot of a natural language processing tool called word2vec. It reduces words into vectors, where each dimension represents something about the meaning about the word. E.g. whether it's a place, or if it's male or female.
And these vectors are not designed by humans, but learned from data. It's optimized so that words that occur in similar contexts have similar vectors. E.g. places tend to occur near words talking about places, like "there" or "go", and male names tend to occur near "he" and "his", etc.
You can do really interesting things with these vectors. Like 'King'-'man'+'woman'='queen'. Recently a computer program beat the word analogy part of an IQ test using this. It's useful in computer translation. Take two languages and constrain a few identical words to have the same vector. Then all the other words also end up with similar vectors.
Anyway, with something like this, the actual words and symbols don't matter, just the 100 or so dimensions needed to accurately represent the meaning of every word. Of course speaking a 100 dimensional vector is way less efficient than a single word or symbol.
But perhaps using this, we could come up with an absolute minimal set of symbols necessary. And some rules for combining them to get all words.
I know a lot of the comments here are complaining that this doesn't make a good natural language. But that's not the point of an auxiliary language. The main thing auxiliary languages should optimize for is how easy it is to learn. Simpler is better. Reducing the words and grammar is hugely important.
Another advantage of such an approach, is that it might be more amenable to machine translation. Which is another advantage for an auxiliary language.
rhaps0dy on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
That may be the way to reduce duplication and bloat in the Lojban [1] root-word list. Currently, about 1300 root words exist. A lot of them have overlapping or redundant meanings, and it has already been proposed to (manually) unify them and reduce their number.
Combined with the already existing rules for word composition, and the grammar, it could make a very nice language.
The idea is still very far from possible completion though. One (of several) things to look at is: how do we characterize word composition? word vector adding? averaging? I guess the operation could be learned too.
[1] Lojban is an artificial language based in predicate logic http://lojbo.org/ .
Source for the "could be used in AI" claim in that website: http://www.goertzel.org/new_research/lojban_AI.pdf .
zachrose on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Cool. There's a similar project put forth by linguists in the early 70s called Natural Semantic Metalanguage, with about 70 "primes" that all other words can be factored out as, like you would have to do if you wrote a dictionary without circular definitions.
Unlike Toki Pona or the other languages mentioned in the article, Natural Semantic Metalanguage is mostly used for thought experiments and to analyze existing languages for ambiguities and double meanings.*
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_semantic_metalanguag...
*"Double meanings" may not be the right word, but is there a word to describe what happens when a system is non-orthagonal and the same piece winds up with multiple responsibilities?
mintplant on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Overloading?
zachrose on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Totally, perfect!
oneeyedpigeon on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
For us geeks :-) others know such words as 'homonyms'.
zachrose on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
But within NSM scholarship, overloading is probably more descriptive than words that happen to sound the same but have well-known distinct meanings. In blurb form:
"This book is based on two ideas: first, that any language--English no less than any other-represents a universe of meaning, shaped by the history and experience of the men and women who have created it, and second, that in any language certain culture--specific words act as linchpins for whole networks of meanings, and that penetrating the meanings of those key words can therefore open our eyes to an entire cultural universe. In this book Anna Wierzbicka demonstrates that three uniquely English words--evidence, experience, and sense--are exactly such linchpins. Using a rigorous plain language approach to meaning analysis, she unpacks the dense cultural meanings of these key words, disentangles their multiple meanings, and traces their origins back to the tradition of British empiricism. In so doing she reveals much about cultural attitudes embedded not only in British and American English, but also English as a global language."
http://www.amazon.com/Experience-Evidence-Sense-Cultural-Eng...
monitron on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
There was a nice episode of The Allusionist about Toki Pona, where you can hear people trying to learn and speak it:
https://soundcloud.com/allusionistshow/tokipona?in=allusioni...
escherize on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Toki Pona has a five-color palette: loje (red), laso
(blue), jelo (yellow), pimeja (black), and walo (white).
Like a painter, the speaker can combine them to achieve
any hue on the spectrum. Loje walo for pink. Laso jelo
for green.
I wonder if there's a reason for using the pigment color combinations instead of the light combinations of color.
2muchcoffeeman on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Because that is what most of us learn as children?
Even now, other than white and black, I'd have to think what light combinations make what colour.
david-given on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Of course, one of the problems with colours is that different cultures have different colour values.
The Celtic languages like Scots and Irish Gaelic distinguish between dearg, which is the red of paint or blood, and ruadh, which is the red of hair or heather. To them these are completely different colours, and a native Gaelic speaker would be really confused to find that English translates them both as the same word.
Toki Pona's limited root vocabulary really just demonstrates its cultural biases.
JshWright on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Or the fact that many languages don't distinguish blue and green at all.
mrob on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
I learned paint mixing as a child, but the only color mixing I do now is with RGB sliders. I find subtractive color much more difficult. And I know more people who make computer art than who use traditional media. I wouldn't be surprised if additive color systems have surpassed subtractive in popularity.
peteforde on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
I actually know the woman who created Toki Pona, here in Toronto.
She taught me that professional translators can only translate into their native language, which I found frustrating but it made sense.
diskcat on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Wait what?
This doesn't sound right to me at all.
There is no arbitrary skill ceiling that can only be achieved by being a native speaker.
vidarh on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
There is no arbitrary skill ceiling, but I think you underestimate how much long term immersion matters. I've lived in the UK fo 16 years. I started learning English at 7 and in school from I was 10, and used it daily from about 14 (I'm 41 this year).
Yet living in the UK I still regularly come across idioms and words that are second nature to people who grew up here that I haven't heard before.
E.g. I have a six year old son in primary school here, and through that now come into contact with expressions that people that grew up here experienced in primary school, and that most of them may not have used since then but are aware of, but that are totally new to me.
And I think this matters much more when translating into a target language than in the source language. While you may fail to recognise some idioms, it is easier to recognise something that sounds odd or words you don't know, than to recognise that you are missing vocabulary you didn't think was necessary (e.g. the word "mufti" was entirely new to me when my son started school; prior having him in school, if I was asked to translate anything about coming in out of school uniform, I'd have never known I was "missing" a word, and would have used a longer expression instead).
PhasmaFelis on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
I can kind of see the logic. It's certainly possible for an adult to learn to speak another language indistinguishably from a native speaker, but in practice there's a surprisingly large gap between that and a person who can speak fluently on complex subjects with no fear of being misunderstood, but makes occasional minor errors--or even usages which are grammatically correct, but sound stilted--that betray them as non-native.
There's a big jump between 99.9% and 100%, is what I'm saying, and if you want a really professional translation job, you're not going to settle for 99.9%. And the thing is, you can't tell the difference between 99.9% fluent and 100% fluent without being 100% fluent. So if you want to be sure you're getting 100% fluency, a native speaker is your best bet.
diskcat on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
>but in practice there's a surprisingly large gap between that and a person who can speak fluently on complex subjects with no fear of being misunderstood, but makes occasional minor errors--or even usages which are grammatically correct, but sound stilted--that betray them as non-native.
Well the purpose of translation is communication, not hiding your nativeness, do I don't see the point of this.
>There's a big jump between 99.9% and 100%
Well the jump is between 0.1%
>and if you want a really professional translation job, you're not going to settle for 99.9%.
That's like saying if i wanted to hire an engineer to build me a nuclear reactor im gonna pass everybody who scored 99.9% on a test in favor of the magical unicorn who by virtue of being born in the beautiful blue glow of a reactor is the only being capable of scoring 100%.
Either the gap is actually bigger then 99.9-100 as you say, or the gap is so small as to be insignificant.
People can vary greatly in english skill if they are not native and while you can most likely figure out whether or not they were born where by their accents and their way of speaking, a sufficiently skilled speaker would give you no more trouble in communicating to you whatever complex ideas they might have in their mind.
The only reason I can think of of this restriction is protectionism, i.e. a translator union located in England would want to protect its members from competition and find it most convenient to claim a special status on nativeness without coming off as obviously anti-competitive.
Grue3 on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Imagine a translator who is 50% fluent in source language and 100% fluent (native) in target language. He would often misunderstand the source text and, even though he can produce target language natively, the translation would be incorrect.
Now imagine a translator who is 100% fluent in source language and 50% fluent in target language. He completely understands the source text and, using only simple sentences, can accurately convey the meaning in the target language.
This thought experiment demonstrates that the knowledge of source language is far more important for the accuracy of translation.
PhasmaFelis on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Both of those people would be equally unacceptable as a professional translator. It's true that #2 would be better if those were your only two options, but that's an unrealistic limitation.
A guy who is 99% fluent in source and 100% fluent in target will generally produce a flawless translation--if he happens across a word or idiom in the source that he doesn't quite understand, it will stand out to him, and he will pause to research it before continuing.
A guy who is 100% fluent in source and 99% fluent in target will produce a perfectly clear but very slightly stilted translation, because he's not aware of the few mistakes that he makes.
If you're translating a commercial product and you have my two guys to choose between, you would want #1.
diskcat on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
>A guy who is 100% fluent in source and 99% fluent in target will produce a perfectly clear but very slightly stilted translation,because he's not aware of the few mistakes that he makes.
Why isn't the reverse true? It is only that the lossyness of the conversion process is invisible in the result, so somebody reading it would not know that it's wrong, it still produces the same quality of translation i.e. that its not perfect (or as good as can be).
Additionally, there are so many words in english that it's not possible to know them all, and so one has to assume that all people are at most 99%. But my english alarm doesnt go off everytime a word like 'mellifluous' isn't used. So I even doubt the claim that a guy who is 99% in the target language will make a 'stilted' translation. There exists a skill level where a person can produce a text that won't read as 'wrong' but won't be as good as it could possibly be and this skill level is sufficient to not have a text feel stilted. Not to mention most people do not have the same writing skills, and a very good high school student writer writes a much more pleasing text than his schoolmate who is not very good.
igravious on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Think about it this way.
Case 1: SRC->TGT (fluent) gives you a grammatically correct text that may have bits that are lost in translation. Misunderstood idioms and connotations. A reduction in nuance.
Case 2: (fluent) SRC->TGT gives you an incorrect text that contains errors of syntax and semantics, that doesn't use natural sentence construction. It'll reads like it was written by someone with less than a perfect grasp on the language, which will be true. They won't be able to accurately convey the meaning because they won't have an accurate grasp of the target language.
Also in case 1 you can consult expert quality reference texts to make up for your lack of knowledge in the source language. Not so in case 2.
Al-Khwarizmi on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
I think fluency in the target language is more important for the reasons PhasmaFelis and igravious say. Or to put it more bluntly, because understanding is generally an easier task than speaking/writing.
For example with my level of English (a lowish C2), I can understand all kinds of texts, including literary texts (I read lots of novels), but there is no way I can write English at a literary level. I would tell the facts of the story just fine, but the special "feeling" that good writers give to the text would be lost.
Curiously, this notion (that the best translator is one who is native or 100% fluent in the target language) is widely accepted in Western cultures, but someone told me that in China is the other way around. When they hire Chinese to English translators, they especially value their knowledge of Chinese, not English. Which may partially explain the "Engrish" phenomenon...
Grue3 on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Well, if I wanted a Chinese text explained to me, I'd rather have a native Chinese explain it to me than somebody who is fluent in my own language and studied Chinese.
I see it all the time with translations from English to Russian. Because I know English better than most translators, I can spot all sorts of mistakes. I'm pretty sure a native English speaker, even with mediocre proficiency in Russian wouldn't have made those mistakes.
gutnor on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Translation also requires you to produce a style that is consistent with the source material. Professional translation is used to produce a similar quality document as the source material.
If you translate english legalese into Spanish, you expect Spanish legalese output.
Writing skills and specific domain experience is necessary. That is easier to achieve that level in your native language living in the target country.
Nowadays, translator are rarely used for "meaning translation" ( like translating journal article for the managers ) as there is always some foreigner guy speaking that language and able to "explain" rather than translate the material. Except for less common language like Hebrew, Japanese, ... or big governmental organisations.
BTW I think the requirement is reversed for interpretation. You need to be native of the source language, because you need to convey the meaning regardless of the form.
dagw on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Translating is often more than mechanically trying to convey the rough meaning. You want to capture the rhythm and flow and poetry (or lack of) in the original. You want to try to map idioms an word play from one language to another, and so and so forth. This requires a near-native level of understanding of the language you are translating to
I have a friend who is a translator and one of the hardest things for him in the beginning was not to act as a editor. If the original has a long, badly structured sentence with a misplaced comma, then you have to try to translate that into a long, badly structured sentence with a misplaced comma.
indians_pro on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
i think ur parent assumed without saying that both translators were equally (well?) versed in the source language, so ur example does not compute.
gliese1337 on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
You're correct, and that's not a universal restriction. But it is true that there are a lot of translation & interpretation jobs which do require that the translator only go into their native language, especially for large-scale operations that only need to communicate one-way (like simultaneous interpretation for speeches).
dibujante on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
I used to be a DE>EN and ES>EN translator. Although there's no skill ceiling, it is still a professional etiquette among translators to translate into their native languages.
giancarlostoro on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
It seems odd to me too considering my native language is my weaker language. English is my second language but I flow better in it than I do Spanish... Odd. I'm better translating Spanish to English than the other way around, and yet still so many words lose me in Spanish so it gets harder for me.
xerophyte12932 on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
I think the requirement is that ONE of the languages be the person's native language. Because language is so much more than just language, its also about culture. As another commentator pointed out , "cool" can mean so many things, which are in both similar and different at the same time. You need to understand culture to understand these differences.
Yes, English isn't my native tongue but I understand it just as well as a native would, but how many non-native languages can I have such a deep understanding of? I can translate from my native tongue to english and vice versa, but translating between two non-native languages perfectly seems like too difficult a task. Even if I am great at it, its possible that a native speaker of one of the lanugages would be better at it than me
chippy on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
The article also describes another more complex language. Toki Pona on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona
Both languages seem to encourage thinking about language and how we describe things and the world. A bit like E-Prime (of which I'm a fan).
kseistrup on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
The other, more complex, language is called Ithkuil ⌘ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithkuil
zdkl on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Iun-niu ti casexh
I keep thinking of implementing a crude translator for that lovely language but lack the skills. Anyone interested in playing around with it?
personjerry on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
So it's like the vi of languages? I.e. memorize the relatively few meanings of the "words" and then customize/combine them to the context. Seems like with languages there would be a lot more room for ambiguities though.
solipsism on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
No. vi has a grammar, like all natural languages, including this one I guess. vi's is simple, mostly combining a noun with a verb, plus some simple modifiers. It sounds like the interesting thing about this language isn't that it has a grammar, it's that it has so few (and well chosen?) words that virtually every noun and every verb must be expressed by combining these building-block words. vi doesn't seem like that to me.
arethuza on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Possibly a strained analogy - but for a very simple system that is Turing-complete there is always Combinatory Logic which only needs two very simple functions (S & K):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatory_logic
nikolay on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Link to the homepage: http://tokipona.org/
scottyates11 on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
“What is a car?” “You might say that a car is a space that's used for movement, tomo tawa”
Luckily, it is not widely used. Otherwise, it would be a nightmare of translators, especially for Google Translate developers!
Before I wiki it, I thought it was a language used by the tribes in Africa or ancient civilization, but it was created in 2001!
Find out more about it on Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_Pona
kaoD on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Toki Pona isn't meant as a universal language to be translated from nor to translate into (unlike e.g. Esperanto). When you translate from/to, a lot of subtleties are lost (which is exactly what Toki Pona intends).
Toki Pona is just a "toy" language (for lack of a better adjective), somewhat like yoga for the language (for lack of a better simile). Each person uses Toki Pona in their own way: for some it's pushing language to the limit, for some it's just fun, some others consider it an experiment in psychology, an experiment in language construction, an introspection tool, a challenge, poetry in and of itself...
Obviously it's not the best to communicate precisely, just like yoga asanas aren't meant to walk.
sago on Feb 24, 2016 [-]
Perhaps 'recreational' rather than 'toy' is a better word. :) The analogy with yoga is good, or plenty of programming languages. They make you better as a person, stretch you, widen your knowledge, and expand your mind, without necessarily being directly useful. For me it is enjoyable, definitely poetry. Though the opportunities to actually speak it is very limited.
sina sona ala sona e toki pona? (do you know it?) ... if so: sina kama sona tan seme?
kaoD on Feb 24, 2016 [-]
I assume "sina kama sona tan seme?" means "where did you learn it from?". Did I get that right?
A small nitpick: proper nouns have to be preceded by a Toki Pona common noun or noun phrase (in this case toki, language) and then the proper noun in capitalized case. E.g.: toki Toki Pona, telo Coca Cola, etc. I.e. proper nouns must modify a preceding common Toki Pona noun.
---
mi toki e toki Toki Pona. taso mi jo ala e tenpo mute. tan tenpo suli la mi toki ala e toki Toki Pona. mi kama sona tan tan mute. lipu Tokipona.net en lipu Tokipona.org en lipu Reddit.com/r/tokipona li pona. lipu Tokipona.org li anpa. taso lipu Forums.tokipona.org li pali. sina wile la sina ken toki tawa mi lon ni: "el" en nimi mi pi lipu HN, lon kulupu Gmail.
(I speak Toki Pona, but I don't have a lot of time. It's been a long time not talking Toki Pona. I've learn it from many different sources. tokipona.net, tokipona.org, /r/tokipona are good. tokipona.org is down but forums.tokipona.org is still working. If you want, you can contact me at "el" concatenated with my HN username at gmail.)
sago on Feb 24, 2016 [-]
Nitpicking is welcome! mi toki mute alla pona. I've not seen 'toki Toki Pona' used that way though, I've rarely seen it capitalised and used as a proper noun. So 'sona e toki pona' (nimi pi lipu pi jan Piljin e 'o kama sona e toki pona!'). That said, the rule for the extra verb I end up dropping quite often from carelessness, so 'sina telo allo telo Coca Cola?' rather than 'sina telo allo telo telo Coca Cola?' So it was a good nitpick.
'tan seme' is usually 'why', I think (I learned it as a compound lexicon entry I guess). 'sine sona kama tan seme?' for where from?
Thanks.
kaoD on Feb 24, 2016 [-]
Ah! Very true. My Toki Pona is very rusty as you can see. I forgot a lot of compound lexicon and idioms :(
I've always seen 'Toki Pona' used as a proper noun following the proper noun rules to avoid confusion with 'good talk' and the like (which I guess is the purpose of the rule in the first place, as well as discouraging proper nouns). I learnt it a long time ago so maybe the requirement has been dropped? Or lousy usage since it's very common that people forget to follow the proper noun rule. In 'kama sona e toki pona' I'd be inclined to understand "learning to talk well" rather than "learning Toki Pona". Perhaps that was the intent? Anyways, there's so much outdated and non-canonical material, and most of the canon has holes and even doesn't follow its own advice. And actual usage has diverted so much too (plus having zero native speakers everyone has their own usage). "Language-ing" is hard :P Even more so in a vague language like Toki Pona.
The Coca Cola example would require 'e' to mark the direct object ('sina telo ala telo e telo Coca Cola'). I've grown so accustomed to a common noun following 'e' that it missing sounds really jarring.
mi toki e toki Toki Pona tan ni: toki Toki Pona li musi tawa mi. toki Toki Pona li pona kin tawa ali! tenpo suli la mi toki mute e toki Toki Pona. taso tenpo ni la mi toki lili e ni.
V-2 on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Interesting. Eye is "oko" (same as in Polish), a man is Jan ("John"/"Ian" in Polish), a hand is "luka" ("ręka" or "renka" in Polish, "ruka" in Russian), a leg is "noka" ("noga"), a mouth is "uta" ("usta") etc.
But the creator isn't Polish or even Slavic, even though the interviewed language fan (?) Krzeminska is. Go figure
riffraff on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
"oko" is also similar to words of romance origin (compare: "ojo" in spanish and "occhio" in italian).
Anyway, the author of the language basically just got random words off of many languages, see
miseg on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Is there a good sub-Reddit with interesting topics like this about language?
doublec on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
There's a subreddit for constructed languages: https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/
riffraff on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics ?
a_c on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
> In Chinese, the word computer translates directly as electric brain.
Computer has two translation in mandarin, while "electric brain" is the only translation in cantonese
hawkice on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
This is straight off the top of my head, but are you referring to 计算机？ I have always considered that best translated as 'calculator', but obviously it is used in a lot of places where the English wouldn't be calculator.
Of all the massively incorrect reporting out there on Chinese language and culture, this seems pretty innocuous.
sswezey on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
If you think about it historically, calculator would be a more accurate translation - it was something that computed or calculated numbers for you. In German, calculator and computer are also both Rechner.
rosser on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Previous discussion:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9914534
cromwellian on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
First thing i thoughtof was Darmok and Jilad at Tinagra. :)
nightmiles on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Original article from July 2015: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/07/toki-p...
The BI copy doesn't even bother correctly distinguishing pull quotes from the following text in its copy-paste job.
dang on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
Thanks. Url changed from http://uk.businessinsider.com/the-worlds-smallest-language-h....
thealistra on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
I can't see this kind of language used for technical documentation or at any kind of tech workplace. There are already nuances with current languages. This would be terrible.
majewsky on Feb 23, 2016 [-]
A fruitful interpretation could be that there is no one language for all jobs. Just as programming languages are chosen for the specific task at hand, you can also choose a natural language by its effectiveness for the current task.
Toki Pona : Albania / Albanian
Strange : first time around the proper adjective is different for the country and the language
Albania : ma Sipe
Albanian : toki Sikipe
I'm wondering how to name the inhabitants ...
jan Sipe or jan Sikipe ?
source:
https://www.jchr.be/tokipona/nomspropres.htm
#TokiPona #nimi_ma #nimi_toki #Albania #Sipe #Albanian #Sikipe
Dictionnaire non officiel français-toki pona
http://jchr.be/tokipona/dico-fr-tp.htm
#TokiPona #français #French #Kanse #dictionnaire #dico #puku_nimi #lipu_nimi #talika_nimi #anno2018
Toki Pona
Dungpusher | 24.3.2015
Toki pona is a nice little, simplistic conlang I stumbled into like a month ago. Essentially, a Canadian linguist named Sonja Lang had created a simplistic, vague language with only 120 words, missing most of everyday vocabulary. I’ve studied it using Memrise and I can claim now to be able to speak it fluently.
It’s pretty awesome. You can express yourself and think simply with it and the full meaning of someone’s text is never revealed. You are forced to be simple when using it. I can imagine some cavemen speaking it among themselves. It has no tense or number and is so attached to present. There is, of course, a way to refer to past times but it’s not necessary. After all, it focuses on basic things in life. It’s not designed to complicated expression of yourself. It’s cool in one way: the reader will never know for sure what the writer meant
To offer an example of it, I translate the first paragraph. It’s not perfect and I changed the composition of language because toki pona can’t into my linguistic diversity:
toki pona li toki lili en pona. tenpo mun pini la mi sona e ni. pona la jan toki Sonja Lan tan ma Kanata li pali e toki pona kepeken nimi ala mute. insa ni li lon ala nimi mute pi ali. mi sona e toki pona kepeken ilo Memrise. tenpo ni la mi ken toki e ni: mi li pona e toki pona
Try to learn language and translate that, so you’ll get the idea!
ΚΟΣΜΟΣ
Η ΔΙΑΦΟΡΕΤΙΚΗ ΦΙΛΟΣΟΦΙΑ ΤΗΣ TOKI PONA
Η πιο μικρή γλώσσα του πλανήτη έχει μόλις 123 λέξεις -Κι όμως μπορείς να πεις τα πάντα! [εικόνα]
20|07|2015
Είναι γνωστό πως κάθε γλώσσα με το πέρασμα των χρόνων εμπλουτίζεται. Είναι σαν τη φυσική της εξέλιξη και ταυτόχρονη πορεία με τους ανθρώπους της ανά τους αιώνες.
Για να πει κάποιος κάτι που δεν γνωρίζει το περιγράφει με δύο ή περισσότερες λέξεις. Τι γίνεται, όμως, όταν μία γλώσσα έχει μόνο 123 λέξεις;
Η Toki Pona είναι η πιο μικρή γλώσσα στον κόσμο, με τον εμπνευστή και τους γνώστες αυτής να ισχυρίζονται πως μπορούν να εκφράσουν οποιαδήποτε ιδέα. Αυτή η οικονομία της μορφής επιτυγχάνεται με τη μείωση της συμβολικής σκέψης στα περισσότερα βασικά στοιχεία της, τη συγχώνευση συναφών εννοιών και με μεμονωμένες λέξεις εκτελούν πολλαπλές λειτουργίες του λόγου.
Σε αντίθεση με τις υπόλοιπες γλώσσες, η Toki Pona θέλει μόνο 30 ώρες για να μπορεί κανείς να την χειρίζεται με άνεση. Αυτή η ευκολία, κάνει πολλούς να πιστεύουν πως θα μπορούσε να είναι η ιδανική διεθνής γλώσσα. Ηδη η γλώσσα εξυπηρετεί αυτό τον σκοπό μέσα στις διαδικτυακές κοινότητες.
Πέρα από μια γλώσσα, η Toki Pona θέλει να βάλει τους χρήστες της σε έναν διαφορετικό, πιο μινιμαλιστικό τρόπο σκέψης. Η σπανιότητα των όρων δημιουργεί ένα είδος δημιουργικής περίφρασης, που απαιτεί ιδιαίτερη λεπτομέρεια. Το αποτέλεσμα λέγεται πως θυμίζει την αποδοχή και την μη κριτική στάση ενός ατόμου απέναντι σε συναισθήματα, σκέψεις και αισθήσεις της στιγμής.
«Τι είναι το αυτοκίνητο;» - «Είναι ο χώρος που χρησιμοποιούμαι για μετακίνηση».
Η πραγματική, ωστόσο, ερώτηση είναι «Τι είναι το αυτοκίνητο για σένα;»
Αυτό, όπως, και τα περισσότερα πράγματα γι' αυτή τη γλώσσα, η απάντηση είναι σχετική. Τα περισσότερα πράγματα αλλάζουν και πρέπει να προσαρμοζόμαστε σε αυτά.
«Υπάρχει ένα πνεύμα που λέει πως η Toki Pona μας βοηθά να μιλήσουμε για τα πράγματα που πρέπει να μιλήσουμε. Υπάρχει και ένα άλλο πνεύμα που λέει ότι ίσως υπάρχουν πράγματα στα οποία δεν χρειάζονται απλά να αναφερθούμε.
What is a Language?
Toki Pona is a language created in 2001. It favours simplicity and under-specification – the language has 14 letters, and only 123 words!1 A general consensus among Toki Pona speakers is that it takes only about 30 hours to master.2 Speaking Toki Pona, even fluently, is a continual exercise in the use of metaphor, creativity and circumlocution, in much the same way that learners of a second language rely on these strategies.
When speaking a language that one does not know well, one must improvise to find ways to say things with his or her limited knowledge of vocabulary and grammar. Sonja Lang, a Toronto-based linguist, intentionally created Toki Pona to be a language based on minimal vocabulary and simple grammar. “If you can express yourself in a simple way, then you really understand what you’re talking about, and that’s good,” Lang claims (ibid).
The language has no tense, gender, or number. All words appear to contain a single morpheme. Most, but not all, words can be either a verb, noun, or modifier, depending on their placement in a sentence.3 Speakers string separate words together, and modify word order, in a subjective and context-dependent form of compounding. For example, “tomo tawa,” a space used for movement, could mean ‘car.’ The language places a heavier than usual onus on the listener to follow a speaker’s logic, as the range of potential ambiguity with neologisms is vast. If I say “telo pimaje wawa,” a ‘powerful dark liquid’ I might mean coffee. I could also mean something else.
[...]
Az Şeyle Çok Şeyin Anlatıldığı Dil: Toki Pona
Her ay bir yapay dili tanıttığımız yazı dizimizde bu ay Toki Pona’yı ele aldık. Kanadalı dilbilimci Sonja Lang tarafından oluşturulan Toki Pona, amaçladığı hedeflerler ile kendini diğer yapay dillerden farklı kılıyor.
Yazar: Emrullah KARA
Her ay bir yapay dili tanıttığımız yazı dizimizde bu ay Toki Pona’yı ele aldık. Yapay bir dili, kısaca, belirli bir amaca hizmet etmek üzere veya belirli kriterlere göre kişi veya kişilerce oluşturulan dil olarak tanımlayabiliriz. Özellikle son yüzyılda popüler kültürde yer edinen bazı film ve kitaplar için oluşturulan yapay dillerin hayranları da azımsanamayacak kadar çok. Toki Pona diğer yapay dillere göre nispeten yeni bir dil ancak basit kuralları ve amaçladığı hedeflerler onu diğerlerinden farklı kılıyor.
Yapay dillere özellikle romanlarda daha fazla rastlıyoruz. Daha önce kaleme aldığımız, Suzette Haden Elgin tarafından kadınlar için oluşturulan Láadan dili ya da George Orwell’ın 1984 romanında kullandığı Yenisöylem dili bunlardan yalnızca birkaçı. Bir önceki ay bahsettiğimiz Yenisöylem dili, dilin düşünceyi kontrol etmek için başlıca bir araç olarak kullanılabileceğini gösteren eşsiz bir örnekti. Toki Pona ile Yenisöylem dillerinin hizmet ettiği amaç hemen hemen aynı fakat ‘’niyetleri’’ farklı. Yenisöylem, kitleleri kontrol etmek için kullanılırken, Toki Pona düşünceyi ve iletişimi sadeleştirme amacıyla felsefi bir dil olarak tasarlanmıştır.
Kanadalı dilbilimci Sonja Lang tarafından oluşturulan Toki Pona’nın taslak hali ilk olarak 2001’de çevrimiçi olarak yayımlanmış ve 2014’te ise tam hali Toki Pona: The Language of Good ismiyle yayımlanmıştır. Dili konuşan kişi sayısı tam olarak bilinmemekle birlikte, bu dile ilgi duyanlar, genel olarak sosyal medya, forumlar ve bazı internet siteleri üzerinden etkileşim kurarak dili öğreniyorlar. Dilin oluşturulma hikayesi ise bir hayli ilginç. Yukarıda da bahsettiğimiz üzere Sonja Lang, Toki Pona’yı ilk olarak 2001’de yayımlıyor ve onunla birlikte dili öğrenip konuşmaya başlayanlar Yahoo üzerinden iletişime geçip bir grup kuruyorlar. 2009’a kadar kullandıkları bu grupta üyeler dilin gelişimi üzerine kafa yoruyor ve değişiklikler öneriyorlar. Toki Pona’yı konuşanlar arttıkça, Sonja Lang dili ‘’törpülemek’’ ve geliştirmek için topluluk üyeleriyle birlikte çalışıyor ve son olarak da 2014’te en son halini yayımlıyor.
Toki Pona; 9 sessiz, 5 sesli olmak üzere 14 Latin harfinin ve 125 kelimenin kullanıldığı minimalist bir dil ve Sonja Lang bu dili oluştururken Taoist felsefeden ilham almış. Başlıca amacı ise çok az şeyle çok fazla anlamın ifade edilmesini sağlamak ve pozitif düşünceyi artırmak denilebilir. Herhangi bir kültürde herhangi bir dili konuşan kişinin, kelimeleri kolay bir şekilde telaffuz edebildiği ve öğrenebildiği bu dil, insanların düşünce sürecindeki karmaşıklığı ortadan kaldırmasına da yardım etmeyi amaçlıyor. Toki Pona’nın anlam olarak kelime kökenine indiğimizde birçok dili görebiliyoruz. Toki Pona anlam olarak İyinin Dili anlamına geliyor ve Tok Pisin[1] dilindeki toki (dil) kelimesi ile Esperantodaki bona fiilinden türetilen pona (iyi/basit) kelimesi ile oluşturulmuş. Bunun yanı sıra karma bir dil olan Toki Pona, kelime haznesinde İngilizce, Fince, Gürcüce, Esperanto, Hırvatça gibi birçok dilden türetilmiş kelimeler barındıyor.
Toki Pona dilindeki kelime köklerinin dillere göre dağılımı.
Grafik, Wikipedia’dan alınmıştır.
Yalnızca 125 kelimeyle iletişimin kurulduğu bu dilde bağlam en önemli role sahip. Örneğin; moku kelimesi hem yemek hem de içmek anlamlarına geliyor. Bu kelimenin kullanıldığı bir cümlede ifade edilmek istenen anlamı sonuç olarak hem nesne hem de bağlam belirliyor. Bunun yanı sıra, kelime sayısı az olmasına rağmen belirli bir anlam ifade edilmek istendiğinde birleşik kelimeler kullanılıyor. Örneğin, Toki Pona’da müzik kelimesi için bir kelime bulunmuyor. Müzik diyebilmek için ses anlamına gelen kalama ile sanatsal, eğlenceli vb. anlamlara gelen musi kelimelerinin birleşimi olan kalama musi (eğlenceli/sanatsal ses) demeniz gerkiyor. Aynı örneği arkadaş kelimesi için de verebiliriz. Toki Pona’da arkadaş kelimesi tıpkı müzik kelimesi gibi ince bir anlama sahip. Arkadaş demek için jan (insan, kişi) ve pona (iyi, canayakın vb.) kelimelerinin birleşimi olan jan pona (iyi insan) kelimesi kullanılıyor.
Ayrıca, Toki Pona’da herhangi bir cinsiyet ayrımı belirten kelime bulunmuyor. Örneğin, ona kelimesi erkek, kadın ve cansız varlıklar için üçüncü tekil şahıs olan o anlamına geliyor fakat cinsiyet belirtilmek istenildiğinde erkekler için mije, kadınlar içinse meli ekleri kullanılabiliyor. Buna ek olarak, tekil ve çoğulluk kavramları da yok. Ancak, bir şeyin çoğul olduğu durumlarda isteğe göre çok anlamına gelen mute kelimesi kullanılabiliyor.
[1] Papua Yeni Gine’de konuşulan karma bir dil.
Kaynakça:
Toki Pona – Wikipedia
Toki Pona: ”The Language of Good” – Youtube/Langfocus
Tok Pisin – Wikipedia
(*) Toki Pona’nın dilbilgisi üzerine verilen örnekler Langfocus isimli Youtube kanalındaki videodan alınmıştır.
https://www.ceviriblog.com/2019/05/27/az-seyle-cok-seyin-anlatildigi-dil-toki-pona/
(144) Zvláštní jazyk “Toki pona”
03/01/2020SLOWCZECH AUDIO, INTERMEDIATE
Ahoj, znáš youtube kanál Langfocus? Autor kanálu LangFocus je Paul a Paul mluví o jazycích. Mluví o ruštině, japonštině, hebrejštině, arabštině, španělštině, italštině. Mluví o tom, jak jsou si arabština a perština podobné. Mluví o tom, jakými jazyky se mluví ve Švýcarsku, mluví o tom, jak lépe studovat cizí jazyky, mluví taky o tom, jak on se učí jazyky… No a hlavně, mluví taky o esperantu a o jazyce, který se jmenuje Toki Pona. Já už jsem o esperantu taky mluvila v epizodě 133. Esperanto je umělý jazyk, je hrozně jednoduchý a je zábava se ho učit, protože v esperantu neexistují výjimky jako v normálním přirozeném jazyce. Ale co Toki Pona? Už jsi někdy slyšel(a) o Toki Pona?
Toki Pona je stejně jako esperanto umělý jazyk. Toki znamená “jazyk” a pona znamená “dobrý”, v překladu to je “jazyk dobra”, the language of good. Je to jednoduchý jazyk, který obsahuje pouze 123 slov. Fakt, že má jen 123 slov, tě doslova nutí přemýšlet a mluvit jednoduše. Je potřeba najít jednoduchý způsob, jak říct to, co chceš říct. Toki Pona má tedy jenom 123 slov a navíc taky používá jenom 14 písmen. Čeština má asi 250 000 slov, ale používáme zhruba 45 000 slov. Anglický oxfordský slovník obsahuje cirka 600 000 slov, ale běžně se používá asi 170 000 slov. Na druhou stranu, rodilý mluvčí používá asi 20 000 slov aktivně a 40 000 slov pasivně. A k běžnému domluvení se, když se učím cizí jazyk, mi stačí 3 000 slov. Ale o tomto tématu budu mluvit v jiné epizodě.
No, a tak teda Toki Pona, tento jazyk má jen 123 slov. Toki Pona není ani příliš rozšířený ani velmi oblíbený jazyk, ale samozřejmě existují jazykoví nadšenci. Tento jazyk mají rádi jazykoví fanoušci z následujícího důvodu: cílem Toki Pona není zjednodušit komunikaci. Cílem Toki Pona je především zjednodušit tvoje myšlení a odstranit všechny nedůležité detaily. Toki Pona se zaměřuje na to, co je opravdu důležité.
Pro mě je Toki Pona zajímavý, protože je chytřejší než Esperanto. Esperanto je velmi jednoduchý jazyk pro lidi, kteří umí francouzsky, italsky, německy, polsky, rusky a anglicky. Rozumíš, co znamenají slova jako “hundo, fenestro, libro, suno, kolbaso”? Jojo. Pes, okno, kniha, slunce a klobása.
A tak zatímco Esperanto vychází z germánských a románských jazyků, Toki Pona vychází z více různých jazyků. Toki Pona vychází z angličtiny, finštiny, čínštiny, gruzínštiny, francouzštiny, holandštiny, chorvatštiny a kreolštiny. Takže když jsi Číňan nebo Fin, je pro tebe Toki Pona jednodušší než Esperanto. Teoreticky.
A jak Toki Pona funguje, když má jenom 123 slov? Musíš skládat slova dohromady a z kontextu chápat, co ti chce druhý člověk říct. Například: moc se mi líbí, že v Toki Pona neexistuje slovo pro “auto”. “Auto” se v Toki Pona řekne “tomo tawa”. “Tomo” znamená dům, budova nebo pokoj a “tawa” znamená jet, jít, hýbat se. Takže auto se v Toki Pona řekne “jezdící dům”.
Slovo “alkohol” taky neexistuje, a tak ho musíme vytvořit. Alkohol se v Toki Pona řekne “telo nasa”, což znamená “směšná voda”. Nebo slovo “telefon” se řekne doslova “komunikační nástroj”. Další příklad je “učitel”, který se doslova v Toki Pona řekne “člověk, který dává znalost”. To je moc zajímavé, co myslíš?
Ale proč, proboha, mluvím o Toki Pona? Osobně jsem se Toki Pona neučila, i když na naučení se 123 slov ti stačí 2 hodinky. Mně se totiž líbí koncept tohoto jazyka. Samozřejmě ho nemůžeme používat v diplomacii a v politice, kde potřebujeme detaily a jednotlivé nuance nám pomůžou lépe se vyjádřit. Ale jednoduchost Toki Pona mi připomíná, jak někdy příliš přemýšlíme. Jak příliš se někdy stresujeme. Jak moc věcí doma máme. Jak moc aktivit chceme dělat. Jak moc přátel chceme mít. Jak moc peněz chceme mít. A to všechno naráz = A to všechno najednou. To ale nejde a jsme jenom nešťastní. Podle mě je fajn si připomenout zlaté pravidlo, že “méně je někdy více”. Není lepší si vybrat jednodušší život? Není lepší si koupit jenom jedno auto? Není lepší mít jenom tři trička? Není lepší mít minimalistický pohled na svět? Není lepší dělat jenom jednu věc naráz? Není lepší se učit jenom jeden jazyk naráz? Není lepší si jako dezert dávat vždy čokoládovou zmrzlinu? Rozhodování je potom jednodušší, potřebujeme méně energie a můžeme se v životě soustředit na to, co je opravdu důležité. Co myslíš ty?
Eliška
L’hypothèse dite de Sapir-Whorf : la langue façonne notre perception du monde
Éditions Assimil | 2 Mai 2019
L’hypothèse dite de Sapir-Whorf : la langue façonne notre perception du monde
Pour le linguiste Benjamin Lee Whorf et bien d’autres penseurs, la langue que nous parlons restreint notre capacité de penser. Apprendre une autre langue nous permettrait-il de penser autrement ? Les créateurs du lojban et du toki pona, deux langues construites, ont eu l’ambition de se libérer de l’emprise de leur langue maternelle. Premier volet de notre série consacrée à l’influence de la langue sur la pensée en 3 épisodes.
kulupu
n group, community, society, company, people
IEML concepts ~ TP kulupu
k.wo.- school of thought kulupu
k.wa.- community of action kulupu
k.wu.- community of taste kulupu
k.we.- residential community kulupu
k.-y.-' scientific community kulupu
k.-a.-' civil society kulupu
k.-i.-' technical community kulupu
k.-j.-' artistic, literary community kulupu
k.-h.-' religious institution kulupu
s.o.-wa.-'A:.-' community of language game players kulupu
p.a.- community kulupu
n.a.-n.a.-' spiritual community kulupu
Webosoof
Joined Oct 2019
