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Ithkuil
Ithkuil is an experimental constructed language created by John Quijada. 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. 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." 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.
Meaningful phrases or sentences can usually be expressed in Ithkuil with fewer linguistic units than natural languages. 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." 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[update]), called New Ithkuil. In 2004—and again in 2009 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. In 2013, Bartłomiej Kamiński codified the language to parse complicated sentences quickly. Julien Tavernier and anonymous others have since followed suit. Since July 2015, Quijada has released several Ithkuil songs in a prog-rock style as part of the album Kaduatán, which translates to "Wayfarers." Recently, online communities have developed in English, Russian, Mandarin, and Japanese.
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 Ithuilic Language" or also known as "Malëuţřait" by the community.
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:
Thus, the approximate translation of iţkuîl was "an idea/fantasy of a complete purposeful system of complementary speech elements", or simply "an imaginary language".
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.
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".
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Ithkuil
Ithkuil is an experimental constructed language created by John Quijada. 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. 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." 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.
Meaningful phrases or sentences can usually be expressed in Ithkuil with fewer linguistic units than natural languages. 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." 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[update]), called New Ithkuil. In 2004—and again in 2009 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. In 2013, Bartłomiej Kamiński codified the language to parse complicated sentences quickly. Julien Tavernier and anonymous others have since followed suit. Since July 2015, Quijada has released several Ithkuil songs in a prog-rock style as part of the album Kaduatán, which translates to "Wayfarers." Recently, online communities have developed in English, Russian, Mandarin, and Japanese.
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 Ithuilic Language" or also known as "Malëuţřait" by the community.
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:
Thus, the approximate translation of iţkuîl was "an idea/fantasy of a complete purposeful system of complementary speech elements", or simply "an imaginary language".
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.
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".
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