Will artificial languages help me with anything?

By: | Post date: 2016-01-09 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Artificial Languages

Will they improve my thinking, logic, though process or my communication skills or understanding?

All language learning does, and so do artificial languages. I’d argue that you get to some of the interesting aspects of language learning—such as different approaches to semantics—quicker than you would learning natural languages. OTOH, there are some aspects of natural languages—such as pragmatics, discourse strategies, cultural interplay—which will be either immature or non-existent in most artificial languages. (Though what little there was was one of the most fascinating things for me about artificial language communities.)

I found that trying to communicate in artificial languages helped me think about some aspects of language (semantics, discourse structure) without distraction from other aspects (fricking morphology, culture). Then again, I got a similar epiphany from playing around with Tok Pisin…

Lojban will teach you a fair bit about formal semantics and logic, btw. Like both Jim Grossmann and User said, it’ll teach you less than a PhD in Formal Semantics—though probably as much as an undergraduate course in it.

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