More Comments and Criticisms Re LangX

Previous LangX Comments and Criticisms (2000)

Correspondence on Deja.com (2001)

About the issue of naming, I don't think LangX is a bad idea as a sort of code name, implying as it does that x is something that does not exist yet, but that we have to discover (or invent, be it as it may).

However, I don't really like the idea of the Lang25 and Lang29, etc. Well, on one level, you can say that well, we won't be alive anyways by the time some of the more advanced levels come into play, so maybe it doesn't matter. But what I wonder is, are you seeing it just as a possibility or is it something that you would actually want to legislate. I mean, suppose that people decide that in the first proposal, there should be not 20 consonants but say 19, or 21.Then suddenly the term would have to change. So I guess the question would be, would you be attached to that nomenclature and resist changes just to follow the guideline? As long as the answer is no, I don't see any problem, but in that case it might be better to clarify that the progression is simply your projection of how things will develop, and not a blueprint for the project. If, on the other hand, it is a blueprint, then at some point it will become a political issue, right?   (JW  28/8/05)

There are two questions here: firstly, whether the phoneme counts etc. are correct - and secondly, whether the LangX Project itself has a long-term future.

The first is easily answered: yes, the numbers are somewhat arbitrary, and a neat but numerically-unrealistic mnemonic timescale shouldn't be allowed to throw the project into jeopardy. Time will tell. The numbers and timescale should certainly be rebased if necessary.

The second raises various issues relating to the desirability of a single universal language in the distant future incorporating all the ideal aspects of existing languages, and to the best means of getting from here to there. If anyone can suggest a better path than the LangX route via a gradually expanding and creolising global pidgin they are very welcome to share it here.

But in any case, politics and legislation are not an issue. The powers that be understand the current linguistic dilemma facing the world, and if LangX has legs - and they see no reason to oppose it - they will let it run; and if they subsequently wish to facilitate it they will deal with the politics and legislation on our behalf.   (AA  30/8/05)

I don't think monolingualism is desirable at all.    (JH  24/8/05)

Try telling that to the billions of monoglots on Planet Earth!

And let me repeat excerpts from the two samples of scientific evidence I presented here (on "Auxlang") earlier:

From “The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language” (David Crystal, 2nd Ed., 1997) p 364:

“....People who have “perfect” fluency in two languages do exist, but they are the exception, not the rule. The vast majority of bilinguals do not have an equal command of their two languages: one language is more fluent than the other, interferes with the other, imposes its accent on the other, or simply is the preferred language in certain situations. For example, a child of French/English parents ..... Her linguistic competence certainly did not resemble that of monolingual teacher-mothers. This situation seems to be typical. Studies of bilingual interaction have brought to light several differences in linguistic proficiency, both within and between individuals. Many bilinguals fail to achieve a native-like fluency in either language. Some achieve it in one (their “preferred” or “dominant” language), but not in the other."

Also:

"One of the most striking facts about language learning is that the second language is not nearly as easy to learn as the first. The question is why. In most areas, people tend to be better learners the second time around. What is it about the way we acquire, represent or process language that makes us less proficient learners the second time around?........perhaps second-language learning differs from the first simply because it must be learned in the context of the first. The first language may set up patterns and habits that, at least in some cases, are inconsistent with the second.....age itself may be a factor. Many changes occur with age that could affect language learning and create the wide range of individual differences that are the hallmark of learning a second language—loss of ability to segment sounds, loss of neurological plasticity, increased capacity to recall and store input, changes in motivation to learn and self-consciousness."   (AA  2/9/05)

You seem to be advocating the abolition of all natural languages once we have a good enough auxlang being used widely enough. That would be a terrible loss of cultures and all the knowledge built into them. For reasons I pointed out above, I don't think any auxlang or other form of conlang can improve on all other languages in every important respect at the same time, and so there will always be a need to conserve natural languages (and the better-developed conlangs as well) as part of our cultural and scientific heritage.    (JH  24/8/05)

Your incorrect assumption in the first sentence morphs into a false premise. Perhaps the following excerpt might help to explain what LangX is about:

“On the other hand are those who discount the possibility of self-sufficient or autonomous entities communicating indefinitely on a second-hand basis, believing that all languages will eventually merge into a single language by way of an official IAL, and claiming that this process is merely a conscious continuation of what is already occurring. Decades or centuries after the official IAL inauguration, everyone might still learn at least two languages at school, but they would expect the IAL to develop relative to the mother tongues.

They would point to the precedent of pidgins and creoles, inasmuch as pidgins were IALs on a smaller scale, formulated for essentially the same reason - the pertinent fact about pidgins being their tendency to become creolised: a process shown to derive from children learning and using the pidgin as a mother tongue. Thus, although pidgins were originally employed as purely auxiliary trading languages - second languages that nobody used as a mother tongue - children of certain traders, seafarers etc. evidently learned the pidgins as mother tongues, and elaborated them with borrowed or intuitive grammatical constructions and new words from various sources - exactly as tends to happen with mother tongues or primary languages in their developmental phase.

Correspondingly, since the IAL will begin its life essentially as a global pidgin, there is every chance that it will be elaborated by future generations in a similar way and for the same reasons. The modern world contains an ever-increasing number of itinerant key workers and administrative personnel employed by transnational corporations and international agencies. Such people will find the IAL particularly useful, whether or not they possess other second languages such as English, and consequently the children of some of them are likely to pick up the IAL as a mother tongue. The intuitive elaboration of the IAL might then be expected to follow, in concert with more formal and conscious innovative attempts by authors, advertisers, film-makers etc. who might well wish to write in the IAL directly in order to access the global market, the whole being co-ordinated and kept within acceptable bounds by the IAL committee.

Assuming this process of development came to pass, the relationship between the IAL and every national tongue would be comparable to that which formerly existed between the minority ethnic tongues and the great national languages which entirely surrounded them. Thus, even as islands of minority ethnic tongues have been surrounded by a sea of English, every language would eventually find itself within the matrix of the IAL. And correspondingly, even as English formerly diluted and absorbed minority ethnic tongues in its midst, English would itself be absorbed, along with all other languages, into one universal tongue of enormous capacity and subtlety.

The history of the dogged survival of certain minority ethnic tongues clearly shows that such a process would never be achieved by force, rather would it happen for cultural and economic reasons. Thus, if speakers and writers were to deliberately use the international auxiliary language to reach the widest possible audience or readership, and listeners were to learn it - and tune into it - to keep up with the latest news and newest thought from anywhere in the world, there is little doubt that this common language would develop its own character as a truly global tongue, even as primary creative impetus went into it. If this did indeed happen - whether through neologism, transliteration, or other aspects of linguistic development - the national languages of the world could be expected to successively abandon their separate identities, over a period of centuries, in order to become part of it: in the same way that some minority ethnic tongues have hitherto become submerged in national languages.

Thus there is no reason to suppose that an international auxiliary consciously developed for creative usage would not gradually obtain the linguistic and euphonic capacity to incorporate all useful features, whether structural or decorative, from both "national" and constructed languages. Indeed, it might well display these assets more precisely and harmoniously than their own more or less irregular grammars, partial phonologies and ramshackle orthographies. In such a scenario the mother-tongues would continue to be preserved in written and recorded form, but ultimately for sentimental value rather than linguistic information."    (AA  2/9/05)