Although I have never completed a fully functioning language, I have worked on conlangs of my own. I have studied Korean, Japanese, Spanish, English, Latin, Mandarin Chinese grammars, and I looked at many conlangs such as Ithkuil and Esperanto.
What I have realized from studying languages and studying conlanging is that conlanging is a very minor and almost esoteric hobby that very few people enjoy. Conlanging requires a lot of time and effort because language is a tool that attempts to cover every aspect of human thinking, which it does quite well (better than any other tool available now). It is rewarding to create a language of your own. Or to create a language so exotic and weird that you yourself have a hard time grasping (like Ithkuil). However, it still remains a hobby for very few people because language does not really work when you have only one or two people interested in learning it. Language required a community of human users, and conlangers can't usually get a community of speakers. For most of us, language learning is a daunting task and even those who dare to learn a new language usually chooses some "useful" language. One in which you can read interesting books. One in which you can watch a movie, enjoy a song, enjoy a poetry, etc. However, conlangs usually lack culture. Thus, to most people, conlangs are not worth learning. And that is the fundamental hindrance to creating your own language. As I worked on my conlangs, I wanted a community of speakers of my conlangs. But who would learn a language that nobody uses? As of now, conlanging is like producing bullets when there are no guns around. As a very futuristic and idealistic solution, I have looked at artificial intelligence. To have a computer speak a human language we need to make an AI as smart as humans (this means that an English-speaking robot is an AI-complete problem). But I really wanted a community of beings speaking my conlang. Wouldn't it be fun to watch intelligent agents having conversations in the language of your own creation? That is why I have decided to become an AI researcher and to do that I gonna be majoring in computer science. Quite a unique reason to study CS, but I don't think CS is the only way to help develop AI. Neuroscience, scanning technology, computer hardware component research will all have to combine to achieve such a great feat. So, as of now, my conlanging is on hold as I try to make beings that will speak my conlangs.
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Jin Woo WonAn undergrad at Columbia University, studying Computer Science and in particular artificial intelligence. Archives
October 2017
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