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If you had to choose a new lingua franca, what language would you pick? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 6 days ago by irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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[–] BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz 11 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Toki pona

Thus making everything open to interpretation

[–] morgan_423@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I'd honestly love to see something like that become an actual universal language. Simple grammar, sub 500 words, a little more meat on the bones to eliminate some of the ambiguity, but be easy enough to teach every kid in early grade school. Something that just allows basic communication and is accessible to everyone.

Don't think it's going to be an evolved toki pona though, it feels like most of its fan base just wants to keep it an impractical art hobby instead of allowing it to grow up to be something useful.

[–] isyasad@lemmy.world 7 points 6 days ago

I stopped believing in toki pona when I heard somebody say that "watermelon" would be "kili telo" (fruit [of] water). It goes without saying that "kili telo" would not be understood as "watermelon" unless they had heard it in English before, or heard someone use the English-derived "kili telo".
If you're going to use English-language ideas to form words, then English is a prerequisite language for speaking toki pona, and toki pona becomes useless.

I think if toki pona is developed as you describe, it could be much more useful than it is today.

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Isn't toki pona supposed to be an art language?

Is Esperanto similar to what you're talking about?

[–] morgan_423@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

Is Esperanto similar to what you’re talking about?

No, I think a true universal language is going to need minimal friction, and be as simple and vocab-limited as possible, to encourage mass adaptation.

For all its intent on being easier than other mainstream languages, Esparanto is still more complex than what I'm talking about.