A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | CH | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9
| Ithkuil | |
|---|---|
| Iţkuîl | |
    Iţkuîl written in the Ithkuil writing systems | |
| Pronunciation | /ɪθˈkʊ.il/ |
| Created by | John Quijada |
| Date | 1978–2023 2023–present (as New Ithkuil) |
| Users | 1 |
| Purpose | Constructed language
|
| Morphophonemic | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | None (mis) |
| Glottolog | None |
| IETF | art-x-ithkuil |
Ithkuil is an experimental constructed language created by John Quijada.[1] It is designed to express more profound levels of human cognition briefly yet overtly and clearly, particularly about human categorization. It is a cross between an a priori philosophical and a logical language. It tries to minimize the vagueness and semantic ambiguity in natural human languages.[2] Ithkuil is notable for its grammatical complexity and extensive phoneme inventory, the latter being simplified in an upcoming redesign. The name "Ithkuil" is an anglicized form of Iţkuîl, which in the original form roughly meant "hypothetical representation of a language."[2] Quijada states he did not create Ithkuil to be auxiliary or used in everyday conversations. Instead, he wanted the language for more elaborate and profound fields where more insightful thoughts are expected, such as philosophy, arts, science, and politics.[3]
Meaningful phrases or sentences can usually be expressed in Ithkuil with fewer linguistic units than natural languages.[2] For example, the two-word Ithkuil sentence "Tram-mļöi hhâsmařpţuktôx" can be translated into English as "On the contrary, I think it may turn out that this rugged mountain range trails off at some point."[2] Quijada deems his creation as too complex to have developed naturally, seeing it as an exercise in exploring how languages could function. Nevertheless, it was featured in the Language Creation Conference's 6th Conlang Relay.
Four versions of the language have been publicized: the initial version in 2004, a simplified version called Ilaksh in 2007, a third version in 2011, and the current version (as of February 2023), called New Ithkuil.[4][5][6][7] In 2004[8]—and again in 2009[9] with Ilaksh—Ithkuil was featured in the Russian-language popular science and IT magazine Computerra. In 2008, David J. Peterson awarded it the Smiley Award.[10] In 2013, Bartłomiej Kamiński codified the language to parse complicated sentences quickly.[11] Julien Tavernier and anonymous others have since followed suit.[12] Since July 2015, Quijada has released several Ithkuil songs in a prog-rock style as part of the album Kaduatán, which translates to "Wayfarers."[13] Recently, online communities have developed in English, Russian, Mandarin, and Japanese.
History
Influences
IPA: [ˈpʊl꜔꜖.l̩ ʊˈɪ꜔꜖qɪʃx ˈma꜔꜖ʔwaɫɡ ɛʁjaʊfɤˈnɪ˥ɛn ˈpæθ꜔꜖wɯç aʊˈxɤ꜔꜖ʔjaɬt xnɛʔwɯɬˈtaʔ꜔꜖ʂʊɪ ˈtʊ꜔꜖a kɪt꜔꜖ œlːˈa꜔꜖ jaˈqaz꜔꜖mʊɪv lɪʔjɯɾˈzɪʂ꜔꜖kaʔ p’am.ˈm̩꜔꜖ a.ɪlɔˈwɤ꜔꜖tʃːa ʃʊʔˈjɛh꜔꜖taʂ] ⓘ
Ithkuil evolved over 45 years as a linguistic experiment beyond Western Indo-European languages in response to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and Charles J. Fillmore’s case grammar into "a complex, intricate array of interwoven grammatical concepts" with "ideas inspired by countless hours studying texts in theoretical linguistics, cognitive grammar, psycholinguistics, language acquisition, linguistic relativity, semantics, semiotics, philosophy, fuzzy set theory, and even quantum physics." Ithkuil was heavily inspired by cognitive linguists including George Lakoff, Ronald Langacker, Gilles Fauconnier, and Len Talmy.
For his influences, Quijada cites the obscure "morphophonology of Abkhaz verb complexes, the moods of verbs of certain American Indian languages, the aspectual system of Niger–Kordofanian languages, the nominal case systems of Basque and Dagestanian languages, the enclitic system of the Wakashan languages, the positional orientation systems of Tzeltal and Guugu Yimithirr, the Semitic triliteral root morphology, and the hearsay and possessive categories of Suzette Elgin's Láadan language". The writing system's logical design borrows principles from Ethiopic and Brahmi scripts, but employs a unique morphophonemic principle.[2] The script used throughout the Ithkuil grammar bears a superficial resemblance to Hebrew square script and the various Klingon fonts. Furthermore, Ilaksh had a "cartouche script" and a cursive format (the former of which had been an upcoming aesthetic project of the designer's).
Ilaksh (2007)
The initial publication of Ithkuil in 2004 had an extensive phonology of 65 consonants and 17 vowels. After a mention of Ithkuil in the Russian magazine Computerra,[8] several speakers of Russian contacted Quijada and expressed enthusiasm to learn Ithkuil for its application to psychonetics, with several complaining about its difficulty in pronunciation. Quijada remade Ithkuil's morphophonology with 30 consonants and 10 vowels (and the addition of tones) and published the revision on 10 June 2007 as Ilaksh.[2] The language featured other amendments to grammar, including some additional Levels and a change of Cases. It was redesigned to be easier to speak and included an additional writing system.[14][15][16] The initial sequential "informal" system suitable for handwriting or compact typesetting, and a "formal" logographic system with artistic possibilities resembling Maya scripts.
In the "informal" writing system, several parallel sets of lines are shaped to correspond sequentially to the different parallel sets of lexemes and inflections. It is directly pronounceable. The author designed it with reserve for convenient handwriting. The overall design would permit compact, clear, black-and-white rendering.
In the colorful "formal" script, a single complex glyph represented an entire sentence. Diversely shaped, shaded and superimposed cartouches represent the syntactic relations of the verb and noun phrases of a sentence. The edges of the cartouches had particular shapes that indicate one set of inflections, the colors indicate another set of inflections, and the textures yet another one. On the cartouches, letters of hexagonal outline would spell out the forms of particular lexemes. The cartouches formed phrases, with primary phrases overlapping subordinate phrases. The coloring system utilized different color densities and texturing for different colors in order to be usable by colorblind people. These density conventions also allowed the formal system to be inexpensively printed in black-and-white, or inscribed or imprinted on stone or other materials.[17]
Ithkuil (2011)
Ilaksh was superseded by a morphologically similar language also termed Ithkuil because of its ties to the initial publication. The script uses a unique morphophonemic principle that allows sentences representing grammatical categories to be pronounced in multiple ways as the speaker sees fit. It was deemed the final version of the language, which grew attention to conlangers on social media. One blog translates "I am sleepy because those damn cats were fighting all night and I couldn’t sleep well!" as ur-rn aičnattîbi tei n-nrai’dáčnuitîb ti wëqam-msukšš hwaičúitôkçuxh rrolp żü’âluss.[18]
In 2014 the category of register was introduced and in 2015 a mathematical and measurement-based sublanguage was published. Dozens on the community Reddit forum have proposed revisions to make the language more learnable. Quijada plans to adopt the cartouche script "for use as an alternative, 'ornamental' writing system for artistic purposes" to Ithkuil in a future update of the language.
New Ithkuil (2023)
Owing to complaints about the difficult patterns in the language morphology, on 30 October 2017 Quijada published a tentative outline for a new version of the language, addressing learners' desires for a more agglutinative morphophonology, including a restructured formative outline, and extended use of Adjuncts for shortened expression of the grammar to further create phonaesthetics. Quijada has considered mandating verbal categories expressed in formatives to be redundantly spoken aloud in adjuncts to be more naturalistic. Despite the complexity of the language, intended only as an experiment without concern for the constraints of human learnability, he has published several updates for a new language predicated off the original grammar, most recently in November 2019.[19][20] The new language is intended to feature an expanded lexicon and writing system that can be handwritten.
In February 2023, Quijada published the fourth iteration of the language, titled New Ithkuil, and announced that the previous version would remain online for archival purposes.[21]
Outline
Phonology
The phonology consists of 31 consonants and 9 vowels. The consonants are as follows:
| Labial | Dental | Alveolar | Alveolar~Retroflex | Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| central | lateral | ||||||||||
| Nasal | m (m̥) hm | n̪ n
(n̪̥) hn |
ŋ ň/ņ | ||||||||
| Stop/ | voiced | b | d̪ d | d͡z ẓ | d͡ʒ j | ɡ | |||||
| voiceless | p | t̪ t | t͡s c | t͡ʃ č | k | ʔ ’ | |||||
| aspirated | (pʰ) ph | (t̪ʰ) th | (t͡sʰ) ch | (t͡ʃʰ) čh | (kʰ) kh | ||||||
| Fricative | voiced | v | ð ḑ | z | ʒ ž | ||||||
| voiceless | f | θ ţ | s | ɬ ļ | ʃ š | ç | x~χ | h | |||
| Trill | (r) rr | (ʀ) řř | |||||||||
| Flap | ɾ~ɽ r (ɾ̥) hr | ||||||||||
| Approximant | w | l̪ l | (ɹ) r | j y | (w) | ʁ̞ ř | |||||
The consonants c’, č’, k’, p’, q, qʰ, q’, t’, and xh are eliminated, x is pronounced ~, ň will be written as n before k, g, or x, and dh is now written as ḑ (or optionally đ or ḍ). The clusters with h are disyllabic in word-medial positions, but usually form allophones when found at the beginning of words. For example, word-medially kh would be pronounced as in the English word "backhanded", but kh is pronounced in the New Ithkuil word "khala". The forms hl, hr, hm, and hn can be pronounced either as , , , and respectively, or as separate consonants. Combinations of a voiced consonant plus following -h- are always dissyllabic. r is pronounced as a tap , but becomes a trill when geminated. Following another consonant, a non-geminated r may optionally be pronounced as an apico-alveolar-retroflex approximant . When ř is geminated it is either or can be strengthened to a uvular trill .
The vowels are as follows:
| Front | Central | Back | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Close | i~ɪ i | ʉ~y ü | u~ʊ u |
| Close-mid | e~ɛ e ø~œ ö | ə~ʌ ë | o~ɔ o |
| Open | æ ä | a~ɑ a |
The vowels ê, î, ô, and û are removed from Ithkuil III to allow for easier memorization. The letter ä, pronounced , is introduced. a is pronounced ~ɑ, e is pronounced e~ɛ, i is pronounced i~ɪ, o is pronounced o~ɔ, u is pronounced u~ʊ, ë is pronounced ə~ʌ, ü is pronounced as ʉ~y, and ö is pronounced as ø~œ. Rules for external junction between words have been described for speakers to be able to clearly parse word boundaries.
Stress is marked with an acute diacritic on letters without diacritics and the circumflex on letters with a diaeresis. The letters i and u are marked with a grave diacritic when they are unstressed and the first of more than one vowel after a consonant to remind the reader that they are pronounced iː and u and not j nor w, respectively.
Grammaredit
The grammar is largely the same as in Ithkuil III, but with a greater focus on the scope of grammatical categories to be more logical. Stem pattern has been replaced by stem specification, and Suffixes were renamed Affixes. The categories of Designation, Sanction, and Modality have been supplanted by affixual forms. Possessive cases are named Appositive; Associative cases split into Associative, Adverbial, Relational, and Affinitive; and Comparative cases are eliminated. The Ca complex is modular and various categories follow a 9-valued vowel sequence. Incorporated roots have been replaced by a system of concatenation. Formatives and personal reference categories now have the option to carry Effect, a category prescribing beneficial, detrimental, or neutral states to a referent.[excessive detail?]
Lexiconedit
The lexicon includes over 6000 roots and 600 affixes.
Writing systemedit
Ithkuil's writing system is unique to the language and is not similar to any natural writing systems. The writing system is morpho-phonetic, meaning two types of graphemes are used: one to represent different grammatical concepts, such as case, number etc. and the other to represent roots and affixes. John Quijada provides an example, saying that an example of word in a morpho-phonemic writing system would be gø (pronounced went), where the root would be "go" and past tense would be indicated by diagonal bar through the vowel.
Possible advantagesedit
The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis postulates that a person's language influences their perceptions and cognitive patterns. Stanislav Kozlovsky speculated[8] in the Russian popular-scientific magazine Computerra that a fluent speaker of Ithkuil, accordingly, would think "about five or six times as fast" as a speaker of a typical natural language. The Sapir–Whorf hypothesis would suggest that, Ithkuil being an extremely precise and synthetic language, its speakers would have a more discerning, deeper understanding both of everyday situations and of broader phenomena, and of abstract philosophical categories.
However, strong forms of the hypothesis, which postulate that language determines thought and not only influences it, have been rejected by mainstream linguistics.[22] Moreover, in line with this, Quijada has stated he does not believe a speaker would think necessarily any faster because even though Ithkuil is terse, a single word requires a lot more thought before it can be spoken than it would in a natural language.[23]
Kozlovsky also likened Ithkuil to the fictional Speedtalk from Robert A. Heinlein's novella Gulf, and contrasted both languages with the Newspeak of the communicationally restricted society of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Ithkuil is by far the most complete language of the three, as the lexicon and grammar are described in far greater detail. John Quijada acknowledged the similarity of Ithkuil's design goals to those of Speedtalk,[3] remarking that,
however, Heinlein's Speedtalk appears to focus only on the morpho-phonological component of language, whereas Ithkuil has been designed with an equal focus on morphology, lexico-morphology, or lexico-semantics. Additionally, the apparent purpose of Heinlein's language is simple rapidity/brevity of speech and thought, while Ithkuil is focused on maximal communication in the most efficient manner, a somewhat different purpose, in which brevity per se is irrelevant.
Past versionsedit
Ithkuil (2004)edit
The original version of Ithkuil had a significantly more complicated morphophonology.
Phonologyedit
At the left of each cell in the table below is the phoneme, and at the right its transliterated representation. The original 65 consonants were as follows: