Ithkuil
| Ithkuil | |
|---|---|
| Iţkuil | |
   Iţkuîl written in the Ithkuil writing systems | |
| Pronunciation | /ɪθˈkʊ.il/ |
| Created by | John Quijada |
| Date | 1978–2023 2023–present (as New Ithkuil) |
| Users | None |
| 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 found in natural human languages.[2] Ithkuil is notable for its grammatical complexity and extensive phoneme inventory, the latter being simplified in the latest 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. It was featured in the Language Creation Conference's 6th Conlang Relay.
Four versions of the language have been published: 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[update]), 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.
Etymology
[edit]Versions of Ithkuil are generally numbered with Roman numerals, e.g. Ithkuil I, Ithkuil II. Despite this, Ithkuil has other names attached to it, either officially named or was named by the Ithkuil-enthusiast community: Ithkuil I version was named as "Iţkuîl" (anglicised: Ithkuil; /ɪθˈkʊ.il/) which became the origin of the name "Ithkuil", Ithkuil II as "ilákš" (anglicised: ilaksh; /iˈlǎkʃ/), Ithkuil III as "Elartkha" or "elartkʰa" (/εˈlârtkʰa/), and Ithkuil IV which is commonly referred to as TNIL or "The New Ithkuilic Language" or also known as "Malëuţřait" by the community.[14]
Ithkuil
[edit]The word iţkuîl was a formative derived from the root k-l (broadly concerning "speech", "voice", or even "interpretation") through the addition of several morphological determinants:
- The -u- vocalic infix
- kul was the holistic variety of the Stem 2 of the three other possible stems from k-l. Translating roughly as "a meaningful unit of speech", i.e. "a word", it gave no emphasis on the meaning or the vocal rendering of the word.
- The u → uî mutation of the infix
- Secondary mode, as opposed to primary mode, meant that the word kuîl is not to refer to a real-life phenomenon, but rather to a mental representation, or projection, of that phenomenon; to an imaginary or hypothetical object. Thus translating as, "a made-up word".
- A grade 8 mutation of the first radical consonant: k → ţk
- The configuration of the term was composite. Roughly corresponding to the plurality concept in Indo-European languages, it also implies the objects in question (words, kuîl) to be diverse, while forming a "coherent emergent entity" (rather than just a collection or an array of different words), thus meaning "a vocabulary" or "lexicon".
- The i- vocalic prefix, one of the 24 possible for formative roots
- The extension was delimitive, perceiving "vocabulary" as entire, with clearly distinguished boundaries, as opposed to it being just a local manifestation – such as slang or a dialect – of a broader lexicon (-ţkuîl).
- The affiliation of the set of objects in question was coalescent. This indicates that the individual members of the set act together toward a higher purpose by coordinating their complementary functions. Thus, "a vocabulary/lexicon" becomes "a language".
- Syllabic stress on the penultimate syllable (-u-)
- The perspective of the noun is monadic, seeing "the language" as a single and specific entity, rather than a collection of many languages existing separately, the general phenomenon ("human languages") or the abstract idea of language.
Thus, the approximate translation of iţkuîl was "an idea/fantasy of a complete purposeful system of complementary speech elements", or simply "an imaginary language".
History
[edit]John Quijada's youth
[edit]John Quijada was born around 1959 in Los Angeles, United States to a Mexican-American immigrant couple. He is a native English speaker and can speak French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. He also claims to be able to read in Catalan and Interlingua; however, he cannot converse in these languages.[15]
Quijada's interest in conlanging began when he was introduced to the utopian politics of the Esperanto group as well as some books from a record store near his home.[dubious – discuss] In addition, during the 1970s, he discovered an album by the French band Magma, a progressive rock-genre group band which made songs in Kobaïan, a constructed language they created. He created his first constructed language at the age of 15 he called Mbozo. It was a combination of Romance-Germanic languages with vocabulary and phonology derived from African languages. Later on, he also created the Pskeoj, a language which was generated from "random typing on a typewriter".[16]
John Quijada pursued a linguistics degree at the California State University, Fullerton with the ambition to become an anthropologist in the field of linguistics. However, he was unable to complete his undergraduate studies due to financial problems.[15][16][17] He then worked at the Department of Motor Vehicles with the hope of continuing his studies when he had enough money.[17] In the meantime, he continued his studies in linguistics by himself. He "spent hours in the library" reading books on the elements of a language that is fairly exotic compared to many other languages in the world. In addition, Quijada also made annual visits to Cody's Books, a legendary bookstore in Berkeley, California to find new reads. From his reading, Quijada found "unique and exotic" features some languages have and had the desire to unify all of those into one language.[16][17]
Influences
[edit]
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)
[edit]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.[18][19][20] 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.[21]
Ithkuil (2011)
[edit]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.[22]
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)
[edit]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.[23][24] 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.[2]
Outline
[edit]Phonology
[edit]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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| median | 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 d͕ | z | ʒ ž | ||||||
| voiceless | f | θ ţ | s | ɬ l͕ | ʃ š | ç | x~χ | h | |||
| Trill | (r) rr | (ʀ) řř | |||||||||
| Flap | ɾ~ɽ r (ɾ̥) hr | ||||||||||
| Approximant | w | l̪ l | (ɹ) r | ||||||||