by raldu on 2/26/22, 7:38 PM with 51 comments
by AA-BA-94-2A-56 on 2/27/22, 12:07 AM
This, I think, forces the writer to rely more on the semantics and subtext of what they are saying. A reader could infer, for example, that after waiting for hours in the queue, a customer at the DMV would be frustrated; using `they said in frustration` is redundant and telling rather than showing.
It also forces the writer to describe some physical behaviour of their character that reflects emotion.
Example:
> "Please," Paul whimpered, "I don't want a fight."
VS
> "Please," Paul said, burying his shaking hands in his pockets, "I don't want a fight."
The second sentence is better, because it allowed me to communicate that not only is Paul scared, but he is trying to hide it. He is acting brave-- which reveals something about how our character handles situations. Much of what good fiction writing hopes to achieve is illuminating a character's attributes in a way that seems to blend in with prose.
---
My point is, by forcing a minimal style of writing, it actually forces the writer to think creatively. I have observed that creativity thrives with structure and rules, and rarely in absence of them.
by segfaultbuserr on 2/26/22, 11:22 PM
For example, instead of saying "before acceptance of unit, carry out the specified test procedure", you should write "before you accept the unit, you must do the specific test procedure." Also, the word "close" should only be used to mean "to move something to a position". Instead of writing "do not go close to the landing gear", one should write "do not go near the landing gear."
It's a special-purpose language and not meant to be a general writing standard, but the basic idea is similar to this project.
by WalterGR on 2/26/22, 8:06 PM
“The natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) is a linguistic theory that reduces lexicons down to a set of semantic primitives“
by raidicy on 2/26/22, 8:51 PM
In my opinion this allows you to learn the grammar and how to speak relatively easily( which is also helped by the fact that there are relatively few grammar Concepts)
Further there is an offshoot of the community called Toki ma, where it's emphasis is on building on the Concepts that are from Toki pona and extending them to be more of an aux lang and to be more fledged out as to be able to discuss complicated Topics.
With all that said, I really would like to see some sort of version of this for other languages. From my limited language learning it seems there's a huge learning curve in the beginning that can somewhat taper off after you get a good handle on a language's grammar. For example knowing definitively three to four hundred words you must know to be able to speak basic Japanese/Spanish/French etc, cuts down on your study requirements.
There are of course arguments against this, but it seems like a cool idea.
by hyperpallium2 on 2/27/22, 1:51 AM
It ends up like technical writing, where specific repeated phrases have specific meanings (I'm thinking legal writing and also Smith's The Wealth of Nations). Or Lisp written by Java programmers.
Galileo looked at the stars not like other people looked at them before. Because of this, he could see them well, not like people could see them before. When he was looking at them, he was holding something of one kind near his eyes. When someone holds something of this kind near the eyes, this someone can look at some places very far from the place where this someone is. A thing of this kind is called “a telescope.” When Galileo looked at the sky at night like this, he could see some places very far from the Earth well.
While recognizing its key goal of translatability, is it really true that many non-English languages lack abstract concepts? Sounds an anglo-centric proposition.
by Naac on 2/26/22, 9:02 PM
by sbmthakur on 2/27/22, 1:21 AM
I am looking for words whose frequency in casual conversations matches with the words mentioned in this article.
https://www.abc.net.au/education/learn-english/words-to-use-...
by mwcampbell on 2/26/22, 10:55 PM
A related objection: I imagine that if I, as a native English speaker, were to speak to a non-native speaker in minimal English, it would seem patronizing. I wonder what the actual intended applications of this are.
by hussainbilal on 2/27/22, 2:09 AM
(Edit: Also, the english my code comments deserve) (Edit 2: and my commit messages)
by asab on 2/27/22, 4:44 AM
by zackmorris on 2/26/22, 9:54 PM
https://learnthesewordsfirst.com/tools/CheckMinimalEnglish.h...
I couldn't find a minimal English translator online though. The closest are these for simple English, which I hadn't heard of either until addaon's comment here:
https://www.simplish.org/conversion/F1618DD6/
https://www.online-utility.org/english/simple_basic_helper.j...
https://seotoolzz.com/article-simplifier.php
https://ds.gpii.net/learn/accessibility-masterlist/translate...
I feel like if there was a semester class or certification to know how to convert one's language to minimal, and another to know how to convert between minimal languages, we'd be well on our way to being able to communicate with anyone.
The alternative is to invent a language like Common in role playing games, and expect everyone to learn it. Unfortunately, that just doesn't work, as shown by Esperanto's lack of adoption:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_Wikipedia
https://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/
To me, it looks a bit like the Spanish I know, but I can't really read it.
Programmers have Lisp and the shell and assembly and SQL and even C-based languages like Javascript that they can fall back to when explaining something. It's been a long time since I looked at a piece of mainstream code and didn't immediately grok what it's generally doing.
I feel like there's something to that. For example, I never had to "learn" PHP, because it stems from the context and metaphors used by the shell and C++. If you know how string interpolation works with "$var" and how associative arrays work with $array['dog'] = 'cat', then congratulations, you already mostly know PHP. But I never fully internalized how Ruby works, because it attempts to transcend the commonalities and be its own language, more like Perl maybe. I'm not quite saying that right, but maybe there's a term for that concept. Ruby might be more "expressive" than PHP, which can result in a steeper learning curve.
So translating English to Japanese, for example, might be like Python to Ruby, but we'd be better off doing something like Python -> C <-> C++ -> Ruby. That way anyone who knew C or C++ could generally communicate with anyone. But we don't teach (or even have) those common basis languages for communication?
by gmuslera on 2/26/22, 8:23 PM
But will this carry all the meanings (including cultural ones) of those words to the translations to other languages ?
by mrichman on 2/27/22, 2:43 AM